I'll start right off and say that I don't believe the current observations regarding the rise in global temperature averages is due 100% (or even 50%) to human generated carbon emissions. The earth has a history of what we call Ice Ages, and it's a little overdue for one, based on historical averages. Every one of them was preceded by a warming period, and that pattern has been happening since LONG before man, or even mammals, were on the planet.
I'm going to continue by saying that I support environmental conservation measures, and strict limits on pollution, including carbon emissions. Just because I don't think we're 100% responsible for the latest 'catastrophe' doesn't mean I think we should try to be. If we see poor people living in filth, we often assume they're lazy, or handicapped, or just ignorant. Industry lives in filth and we call it 'efficient', or 'profitable', and that's ignorant, short term thinking. A lot of that industrial filth causes measurable physical harm, both to people and structures, and if mankind ever starts holding our industries accountable for that damage, things on this planet will change quickly, in a lot of ways.
My personal view, based on my own observatioins, are that the current warming and strengthening weather events are being caused by the current weakening of the earth's magnetic field.
A overall weakening, and a significant increase in the 'chaotic' nature of the earth's magnetic field (including having two north poles for a while pretty recently) has been observed over the last 4 decades. This isn't a crazy conspiracy theory I saw on the internet, or some new trend of scientific alarmism I'm trying to start.
I first started daydreaming about the correlation between the magnetic field and weather back in 6th grade (about 30 years ago), when I first learned that people had been measuring the magnetic field for quite some time. It was the first time I had seen a map of the field drawn out accurately, and I noticed that 'tornado alley' in the US sat roughly around the '0' line, where the opposing polar fields meet.
I'll say now that I haven't done a lot of deep research and math into this theory, it remains a completely untested hypothesis, as far as I know. If any of you reading this have heard of anyone else talking about something similar, I'd love it if you could link me to their work (or even their half assed blog posts ;) in the comments.
With that disclaimer (and plea for connections) out of the way...
Some of you may have read the news about the magnetic field before. The reversal of earth's magnetic poles, and the very brief (relatively to the cycle) weakening and collapse of the magnetic field just before and after is another one of earth's fairly well known cycles. Current observations of the field suggest that we are going through this flip now, and the poles may very well reverse in most of our lifetimes.
Some of you may also know that our magnetic field deflects quite a bit of the sun's radiation away from the surface of the planet. Most of you probably know that the sun's radiation is what heats up the earth.
Differences in temperature are a major factor in the movement of the winds, this is part of what drives the strength of hurricanes and tornadoes. There are other factors, like barometric pressure (also affected by temp) and humidity, as well as relative positioning of the warm and cold fronts, but at the end of the day this whole beautiful dance, like so much of nature, comes down to the exchange of energy between hot and cold.
It stands to reason that when the magnetic field weakens, the surface of the earth where the field is weaker should recieve more radiation, and consequently more warming, from the sun. I believe that in places where the field weakens significantly over a small area, it can create concentrated areas of warmer than normal air, and I believe that action is what is driving the 'exreme' storm events we've been seeing.
When I used to tell people about all of this, I would tell them they can learn a lot about weather and the magnetic field at the noaa.gov website, but these days I want to give a disclaimer about that, as well.
If you use government funded science websites often, you probably saw a reduction, or complete removal of these services for a time during the Trump administration. I know at least some parts of the NOAA site were down for a while. They all seem to be back up now, but I have noticed at least two subtle differences with the interactive map of the magnetic field.
First, it no longer clearly shows the two magnetic north poles we recently experienced (and may still be experiencing, actually, I haven't checked, but it looked like the extra pole was re-absorbing) when you turn on the pole indicator. You can still see the anomolies in the field that the extra pole was creating (or a result of), so I don't believe the field data was changed, it seems they just removed the 'marker' for the other pole. Second, you used to be able to select a range of years, and they would generate a downloadable animation of those years for you, but that feature has been removed.
I'm not really worried about the poles being reversed, but I do worry a bit about that brief time the field is gone. If I'm remembering correctly, the time the field is non-existent can range from days up to a decade, with days being most common. The time the poles stay reversed is around a couple decades, and the cycle repeats every 26,000 years or so. I don't know how damaging the sun's radiation will be to humans, or crops, if this were to happen right now. I know it's unlikely to be comfortable. If we had to endure even a year of that...
Another disclaimer, I may be WAY off on those numbers. It's late, I'm tired, it's been at least 10 years since I did any deep reading on this subject. I wanted to look it up again, but I also want to get this post done tonight. If there's a lot of interest, we can work it all out in the comments.
I actually want people to see this and share their ideas, so I'm going to keep it under 1500 words and find a pretty picture to stuff in here. Be safe out there, everyone.
Don't forget your sunscreen 馃榿
