I was in somewhat of a quandary as to which blog to post this in. I am interested in many fields of science for many reasons. Atmospheric phenomena are of interest to me because of what I keep seeing in dreams, very intense auroral phenomena and unusual refractive phenomena as well.
I do believe there may well be a physical basis for both in the future, at least I can see a possible mechanism but so far I haven't seen evidence of a documented trend although my own observations seem to trend towards increased auroral activity.
When I was young living with my parents, most nights where the weather was conducive to it, I would sleep outside on the patio in a sleeping bag. I liked to do this because I enjoyed looking at the stars before I fell asleep, and because the cool fresh air made sleep seem more refreshing. When I was in my teens I had some problems with my back that seemed to be exacerbated by sleeping on a soft mattress, the hard cement under the sleeping bag seemed to result in less back pain.
When I was young I spent much more time outside at night than I do as an adult, yet, all but one of the aurora sightings I have had in the Seattle are have been in the last five or six years in spite of increased light pollution in this area. My experience alone may well be a statistical fluke. I am curious to know if others have noticed the same thing.
There may be physical mechanisms that will cause an increasing level of auroral activity at non-polar latitudes. My thoughts on this are along multiple lines. In the last 100 years, the strength of the Earth's magnetic field has declined by 50%. At the same time, minor poles have become stronger and more complex.
Past magnetic reversals of the poles have been recorded in the forms of magnetism frozen into the spreading sea-floor. Knowing the approximate rate of sea-floor growth we can know when magnetic reversals have occurred in the past and the nature of those reversals.
We know that reversals in the past have happened with exactly the same type of pattern we are seeing now, an increase in the complexity of the Earth's magnetic field with minor poles opposing the polarity of the major poles and increasing in strength until eventually they become dominant and at that point a reversal has occurred.
The overall picture sees the earth's magnetic field dropping, then building up in the reverse direction, or, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it drops, then builds back up in the original direction.
The predominate magnetic fields are frozen as magma from the mid-ocean rifts cools. Knowing the spreading rate of the new sea floor being created at these rifts we can determine when reversals have occurred in the past. What we now know is that while the meantime for magnetic reversals to occur is approximately 200,000 years, the actual time between reversals is quite chaotic and may be anywhere from almost instantly to over two million years.
Based upon the current rate of fall many scientists have deduced that the next reversal will most likely happen sometime in the next century. Fields recorded in the rocks often follow a logarithmic decay rather than a linear one, in that case a reversal will most likely occur in our lifetimes.
The picture of the Earth's magnetic field that seems to be emerging is not that of a bar magnet being randomly flipped, the magnetic field actually looks more like limited noise. To explain that term, white noise contains frequencies all across the spectrum, limited noise places a limit on the lowest and highest frequencies possible, and that appears to be the pattern we see frozen into the spreading sea floor.
Presently, the Earth's magnetic field is on a downward trend. The rate of wandering of the magnetic poles has increased. A minor pole in the South Pacific has become so strong that it entirely cancels the Earth's magnetic field over part of the South Pacific.
The Earth's magnetic field normally shield us from incoming particles from the sun by deflecting the solar wind, and that portion which does make it through follows the Earth's magnetic lines of force back and forth between the poles. The Earth's magnetic field not only protects the planet but also the immediate vicinity around earth providing protection for satellites.
There are no records of any mass extinctions corresponding with a magnetic field reversal so I do not believe biological life is threatened by this event. One would expect some increase in radiation at ground level but not life threatening, more on the order of what you might experience if you were to live in a higher latitude or a higher altitude.
Tibetans living at 15,000 feet or there abouts have the longest life expectancy of any people on Earth. While their herding life style may contribute to this, there is some evidence that low levels of radiation may actually be beneficial. The body ramps up the production of natural antioxidants in response.
The main danger to us is the threat it poses to our technology. Rapidly fluctuating magnetic fields induce huge low frequency currents into long power transmission lines exploding transformers and taking the lines out of service. The lack of protection from the solar wind near the earth exposes satellites to radiation that can damage them. The Southern Pacific anomaly has already been responsible for the death of at least one satellite.
More solar wind reaching the upper atmosphere will also affect the ionosphere and by extension radio propagation. Exactly how it will affect it remains unknown.
Where these charged particles, mostly energetic electrons, enter the upper atmosphere, they ionize molecules there and when those molecules drop back to their normal state, they emit photons which is the source of the light we see as an Aurora display. Different gas molecules and different states of ionization cause different colors of light to be emitted, but there are a limited number of discrete spectral lines involved.
If the Earth's magnetic field becomes much weaker and more complicated, two effects can be expected. First, more of the solar wind will not be deflected and will interact with the earth, either impinging upon the upper atmosphere or being caught up in the more complex magnetic field lines. The increasingly complex field will bring charged particles into the atmosphere at locations that we don't presently see.
This may be responsible for the intense auroral displays I see in my dreams. There are other possible factors as well.
This last sunspot cycle was the most intense on record. All indications suggest that the next cycle will be even stronger. This would lead to more solar coronal mass ejections causing geo-magnetic storms here on earth. Increased solar activity may play a role in increased auroral activity that I see. This could also be the reason that I've seen more in the last six years than I have seen in the previous 42 years of my life.
I believe the auroral phenomena is actually considerably more complex than scientists appreciate. Most of the particles following the Earth's magnetic field lines are reflected as they approach the magnetic poles and bounce back and forth between the poles repeatedly for a long time. A particle may be trapped this way for years.
Many years ago the United States exploded a bomb high in the upper atmosphere. It was not known at the time that the Earth had natural radiation belts. This increased the intensity of them for several weeks. A few years later, thinking bigger and better, the United States exploded a much more powerful hydrogen bomb at a different more polar location in the upper atmosphere. This time it took around eight years for the radiation belts to return to more normal levels. This gives you an idea of how long a particle can be trapped and reflected back and forth.
The interaction of the Earth's magnetosphere with the solar wind also produces a natural dynamo. Plasma, a conductive medium, moving through the Earth's magnetic field, acts just like a copper wire cutting through the magnetic lines of force in a generator. The potential created in this natural dynamo is huge and like any electrical circuit, needs a return path to close the circuit.
The interaction is extremely complex however owing to a number of factors. Because charged particles along a field line tend to remain along that line, there is a complex interaction between them. The return path for the dynamo currents take several paths. They induce a motion in the plasma causing a current to flow in the opposite direction, this is one way they complete the the path. Some follow another path between the poles. While not generally scientifically accepted, there are so many accounts of the Aurora coming down to the ground in Alaska, some by credible scientists, that I am inclined to believe that some current may actually go through the atmosphere to the ground even though the air is too dense for ionization to easily occur. The energies involved are tremendous.
An aspect of this phenomena is that there is a sheet of current in the ionosphere that follows the day / night boundary. I suspect that this is somehow enhanced in the process because in my dreams, I see these high intensity auroras happening just before sunrise or just after sunset.
At any rate; these are some possible mechanisms for increased auroral activity and activity at lower latitudes.
Then there is the issue of refractive events. These happen naturally and are due to different refractive indexes that are present in warmer less dense and cooler more dense masses of air acting like a lens to bend light. This is the cause of mirages we see in the summer where it looks like there is a puddle of water on the road but when you get there it is dry.
Refractive phenomena can also cause some less common but far more spectacular phenomena in the atmosphere. Normally, it causes light to bend somewhat around the Earth and this has the effect of making the sunrise appear slightly before the sun is actually above the horizon. This is because light is bent from around the horizon to us making the sun appear above it. The same phenomena makes the sun appear to set after sunset.
Usually, this phenomena is fairly small, however, since it is dependent upon differences in atmospheric density which may be increased by certain weather phenomena, it is possible for this effect to be increased radically at times. Particularly this tends to happen in the polar regions. This can cause land beyond the horizon to become visible, under extreme conditions it can even cause the earth to take on a bowl appearance where distant lands rise into the sky and are visible.
The accounts of some explorers believing that they saw a continent near the north pole may be the result of this phenomena. Land from far away may have become temporarily visible because of this condition.
In the dreams I see this phenomena happening more extreme than it does presently. Locally, across the sound, I have seen this effect to some degree when weather conditions are right. From Westport, along the Washington coast on the south side of Grays Harbor, near Sunset, refractive effects actually split the image of the sun into two pieces and I was fortunate enough to get a photograph of this effect.
Since this phenomena is driven by temperature and density variations in the atmosphere, all that is required to explain an increased predominance is an increase in these variations. In general, global warming appears to be associated with more violent weather and perhaps could be responsible for increased variation in the temperature and density of layers of the atmosphere driving this phenomena.
These effects could be responsible for driving these phenomena, increased auroral activity, anomalous timing and locations of the auroral activity, and increased refraction events, which I see repetitively in my dreams.
I don't want to scare anyone by relating these dreams and visions. I do see the distant outcome as highly desirable and positive.
However, I also see two paths, or more correctly a range of paths, getting to that point and the path that we take can either, on the most optimistic side, be extremely pleasant, tranquil, and fun for us, or on the most pessimistic point extremely painful, but, the choice of which extreme we take is up to us collectively.
All that we have to do to take the pleasant path, is to adopt a position of love and respect for all other life forms on this planet and the planet herself. This means putting an end to war, helping those less fortunate than ourselves, caring for our environment and those we share it with, taking only what we need from Earth. If we do these things, then we will take the pleasant route to the future.
On the other hand, if we continue waring with each other, if we continue to treat other life forms as expendable and fail to care about them, if we continue to rape our planet for resources and waste them, it is not going to be a pleasant path to the future and many of us will not make it, bodily at least. My dreams do not cover what happens to us spiritually after our physical demise in this negative scenario but it is most unpleasant leading up to that point. Massive volcanism, sulfur fouled air, our own military turning against us, it is nothing that we want to experience.
