Good morning all! Welcome to the Saturday Lecture here at the Blogmocracy Observatory and BBQ joint. Today we are going to explore the effect that the Sun has on lighting. Yes, I know. The Global Warming Climate Change Chaos Disruption ‘scientists’ (most of whom aren’t scientist in the field in question) do not ever place that thermonuclear reactor that is 8 light minutes away in their climate models. The Sun can effect weather here on earth, and effect the climate too! I know, it’s crazy.
Here is the Abstract:
Abstract
The response of lightning rates over Europe to arrival of high speed solar wind streams at Earth is investigated using a superposed epoch analysis. Fast solar wind stream arrival is determined from modulation of the solar wind V y component, measured by the Advanced Composition Explorer spacecraft. Lightning rate changes around these event times are determined from the very low frequency arrival time difference (ATD) system of the UK Met Office. Arrival of high speed streams at Earth is found to be preceded by a decrease in total solar irradiance and an increase in sunspot number and Mg II emissions. These are consistent with the high speed stream’s source being co-located with an active region appearing on the Eastern solar limb and rotating at the 27 d period of the Sun. Arrival of the high speed stream at Earth also coincides with a small (~1%) but rapid decrease in galactic cosmic ray flux, a moderate (~6%) increase in lower energy solar energetic protons (SEPs), and a substantial, statistically significant increase in lightning rates. These changes persist for around 40 d in all three quantities. The lightning rate increase is corroborated by an increase in the total number of thunder days observed by UK Met stations, again persisting for around 40 d after the arrival of a high speed solar wind stream. This result appears to contradict earlier studies that found an anti-correlation between sunspot number and thunder days over solar cycle timescales. The increase in lightning rates and thunder days that we observe coincides with an increased flux of SEPs which, while not being detected at ground level, nevertheless penetrate the atmosphere to tropospheric altitudes. This effect could be further amplified by an increase in mean lightning stroke intensity that brings more strokes above the detection threshold of the ATD system. In order to remove any potential seasonal bias the analysis was repeated for daily solar wind triggers occurring during the summer months (June to August). Though this reduced the number of solar wind triggers to 32, the response in both lightning and thunder day data remained statistically significant. This modulation of lightning by regular and predictable solar wind events may be beneficial to medium range forecasting of hazardous weather.
Here is the link for the entire article. There are some other interesting topics within the article itself and I invite our more intrepid readers to check it out.
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Here is an update on a past suject:
EXTREMOPHILES BLASTED BY COSMIC RADIATION: On May 10th, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus flew four colonies of halobacteria to the stratosphere, setting a high-altitude ballooning record for this species of microbe. During the two and a half hour flight, they ascended to 111,000 feet. Radiation data from an X-ray/gamma-ray sensor on the payload have just been analyzed and, suffice it to say, the microbes had a blast:
The halobacteria were hit by ionizing radiation 28 times stronger than at ground level, similar to what they might experience on the planet Mars. It might seem counterintuitive that the radiation peak did not occur at the apex of the flight. Instead, the extremophiles absorbed their greatest dose about half way up. This peak at ~60,000 feet is the “Pfotzer Maximum,” named after physicist George Pfotzer who discovered it using balloons and Geiger tubes in the 1930s.
When cosmic rays crash into Earth’s atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles. With increasing depth in the atmosphere, primary cosmic rays decrease as the secondary particles increase. This complex situation results in a maximum dose rate in the tropopause, not the overlying stratosphere. .
The students have been flying halobacteria through the Pfotzer Maximum to explore the possibility that terrestrial extremophiles could survive in places like Mars. The answers are growing inside an incubator in the students’ AP Biology classroom. Stay tuned for updates from the Petri dish.
