Extinction level event? 42,000 years ago Earths magnetic field shrank to nothing

Don’t look now, it’s a climate disaster of massive proportions and it has nothing to do with CO2.

Scientists have just discovered what they say was a wild era 42,000 years ago — where the Earth’s magnetic field practically disappeared. They’ve called it the Adams Event (after Douglas Adams of Hitchhikers Guide fame).

This was hidden previously, just before the Laschamp Excursion which we’ve known about since 1969. That event happened about 41,000 years ago – during which the Earth’s magnetic field briefly flipped. It was a pretty big deal in itself. For 800 years the field strength fell to 28% of it’s current strength and was reversed North-to-south.  Due to the weak magnetic field, the theory is that cosmic rays zinged further into the atmosphere and created a layer of enriched beryllium 10 and carbon 14 which remains to this day in a thin slice around the world buried under all the layers of dirt that came after it.

This ancient kauri tree found in Ngāwhā, New Zealand, was alive during the Adams Event. Photo: Nelson Parker

The giant kauri tree log preserved in Ngāwhā, New Zealand, was alive during the Adams Event. Photo: Nelson Parker https://www.nelsonskaihukauri.co.nz/

Extraordinarily, during all this, one giant Kauri tree managed to live for more than 1,700 years. It grew in New Zealand, and people got quite excited to find this log in 2019. They have now published a paper on it. (Yes, we are talking about tree rings from 40,000 years ago, and by teams that don’t want to talk much about cosmic rays in the modern era. )

What’s more exciting than a flipped field?  It’s having almost no field at all. 

As far as the climate goes, if they are correct, this would have been a very tough and wild era. Around 42,000 years ago — in the lead up to the flip, they estimate the magnetic field was so weak it was at barely 0 – 6 % of current strength. Earth’s shield would have been down, gone, and the ultraviolet light and cosmic radiation was flooding in. Presumably, the ozone layer and jet streams, cloud cover, it all changes.

This is assuming that the dating is right and the layers mean what they think (and there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical). Anthony Watts asked Willie Soon, who is dubious. Cooper et al are talking about modeling some of these aspects (which I am ignoring). Even if their assumptions on the ozone layer are wrong, if the magnetic field dropped, it would be hard to believe that this would not change all kinds of events — like ocean cycles, cloud cover, and the sea surface temperature.

The real point of this paper that interests me and should not be lost under the personalities or junk modeling, is the Be10 and C14. Was there a point when Earths Magnetic field fell? If so, when and what flowed from that? 

Somehow our ancestors survived this. Though the Neanderthals and some other species may not have. Indeed, a magnetic flip or fail, would be a decent candidate for the Neanderthal extinction. It was thought that the last of Neanderthals may have lived until 35,000 or even 28,000 years ago on the Iberian Peninsula, but better data suggests it really did all end “around 40,000” years ago. In which case, the timing coincides with what must have been a dreadful time to live — an ice age, plus magnetic shocks.

Earth’s Magnetic Field during a flip (right). NASA

A climate catastrophe

Prof Chris Turney describes a bad era (this is the climate scientist who was once stuck on a cruise-in-thick-Antarctic-ice). [Update: Though let’s not let personalities cloud what we might find in the data.]

Ancient relic points to a turning point in Earth’s history 42,000 years ago

The temporary breakdown of Earth’s magnetic field 42,000 years ago sparked major climate shifts that led to global environmental change and mass extinctions, a new international study co-led by UNSW Sydney and the South Australian Museum shows.

During the magnetic field breakdown, the Sun experienced several ‘Grand Solar Minima’ (GSM), long-term periods of quiet solar activity.

Even though a GSM means less activity on the Sun’s surface, the weakening of its magnetic field can mean more space weather – like solar flares and galactic cosmic rays – could head Earth’s way.

“Unfiltered radiation from space ripped apart air particles in Earth’s atmosphere, separating electrons and emitting light – a process called ionisation,” says Prof. Turney.

“The ionised air ‘fried’ the Ozone layer, triggering a ripple of climate change across the globe.”

— Newsroom UNSW

“End Days”

There would have been auroras all over the Earth, and many lightning storms. 

Dazzling light shows would have been frequent in the sky during the Adams Event.

Aurora borealis and aurora australis, also known as the northern and southern lights, are caused by solar winds hitting the Earth’s atmosphere.

Usually confined to the polar northern and southern parts of the globe, the colourful sights would have been widespread during the breakdown of Earth’s magnetic field.

“Early humans around the world would have seen amazing auroras, shimmering veils and sheets across the sky,” says Prof. Cooper.

Ionised air – which is a great conductor for electricity – would have also increased the frequency of electrical storms.

“It must have seemed like the end of days,” says Prof. Cooper.

It may have caused many extinctions and changes in human behaviour

It’s a leap into pure speculation, but hey:

The researchers theorise that the dramatic environmental changes may have caused early humans to seek more shelter. This could explain the sudden appearance of cave art around the world roughly 42,000 years ago.

“We think that the sharp increases in UV levels, particularly during solar flares, would suddenly make caves very valuable shelters,” says Prof. Cooper. “The common cave art motif of red ochre handprints may signal it was being used as sunscreen, a technique still used today by some groups.

“The amazing images created in the caves during this time have been preserved, while other art out in open areas has since eroded, making it appear that art suddenly starts 42,000 years ago.”

If human art did leap 42.000 years ago, I think there would have been a bit more to it, than time indoors. If times were so tough, there would also have been a major genetic bottleneck, similar to the one circa 70,000 BC when the volcano Toba exploded and nearly wiped humans off the planet.

Earth’s magnetic field is wandering now. Maybe that matters?

The Earth’s magnetic field does seem to be wandering around |  Courtesy of John Hillhouse, USGS

The whole 1.5 degrees of apocalyptic warming won’t seem quite so apocalyptic if Earth’s magnetic field shrinks. We might miss our satellites and electric power grids…

An accelerant like no other

While the magnetic poles often wander, some scientists are concerned about the current rapid movement of the north magnetic pole across the Northern Hemisphere.

“This speed – alongside the weakening of Earth’s magnetic field by around nine per cent in the past 170 years – could indicate an upcoming reversal,” says Prof. Cooper.

“If a similar event happened today, the consequences would be huge for modern society. Incoming cosmic radiation would destroy our electric power grids and satellite networks.”

What does this mean for the current climate scare machine? It means lame excuses.

Prof. Turney says the human-induced climate crisis is catastrophic enough without throwing major solar changes or a pole reversal in the mix.

“Our atmosphere is already filled with carbon at levels never seen by humanity before,” he says. “A magnetic pole reversal or extreme change in Sun activity would be unprecedented climate change accelerants.

“We urgently need to get carbon emissions down before such a random event happens again.”

So if Earth’s magnetic shield is about to collapse don’t build underground bunker-cities inside Faraday cages — get cracking installing solar panels as fast as you can.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of this paper and the Adams Event in the wash… In the meantime, it’s a spectator sport to watch how the Apocalypse Science absorbs some conflicts of catastrophe.

UPDATE: There are criticisms that not all extinctions are occurring at 40K years ago as stated in the paper. This would be the weakest part of the claims of environmental catastrophe.

Also: The lead author Alan Cooper got sacked recently for allegations that he bullied staff. He denies it. Skeptics ought be aware but also wary that this necessarily means much in a debate about data and observations. Ad homs are still ad homs.

h/t Willie and Eric for further info.

REFERENCE

Cooper, A et al (2021) A global environmental crisis 42,000 years ago Science. 19 Feb 2021: Vol. 371, Issue 6531, pp. 811-818, DOI: 10.1126/science.abb8677

9.3 out of 10 based on 52 ratings

156 comments to Extinction level event? 42,000 years ago Earths magnetic field shrank to nothing

  • #
    williamx

    Ok from above. Quote:

    “Our atmosphere is already filled with carbon at levels never seen by humanity before,” he says. “A magnetic pole reversal or extreme change in Sun activity would be unprecedented climate change accelerants.

    “We urgently need to get carbon emissions down before such a random event happens again.”

    End Quote.

    Oh No, No, No, here we go again. Why? Why? Why?

    Another person with a degree saying the sky is falling….
    What drives these learned people to spout nonsense.

    If I was the esteemed scientist,

    I would be more worried about the possible magnetic pole reversal….

    Rather than a co2 concentration of 0.04 %

    601

    • #
      Geoff Croker

      “What drives these learned people to spout nonsense.”

      Tax payer money.
      Kudos from peer group otherwise known as “Look at me”.
      Nothing else to do that gets “money for nothing”.
      Power over the “underclass”.
      MSM fame.

      The order varies according to cycles of the moon.

      471

    • #
      GlenM

      This amounts to prognostications from a committee rather than hard science ; too much conjecture and supposition. That a reversal of the planet’s field would have huge effects is not doubted. Once again they re introduce the CO2 monster into the equation – totally unrelated to the physical subject in order to compound a putative cataclysm.

      281

      • #

        The C14 and Be10 was either there or it wasn’t. Let’s debate the age of the rings and the error bars. Was there a magnetic field collapse? If so, what were the implications of that?

        Turley’s CO2 remarks are just the window dressing for a religion. Worth noting as examples of how nonsensical their foundational beliefs are, but nothing more. They are acolytes pretending to be scientists, but that doesn’t mean the data they get is worthless, or that 100% of everything they say is wrong.

        Because they tell themselves they are scientists, sometimes accidentally they will still produce something interesting and useful. Our job is to look at the data, ignore the personalities. (“The man” is after all, an ad hom form of reasoning, even if his failures were some of the most spectacular of the last 20 years.)

        150

    • #
      Serp

      Yes williamx I had already copied the same string for comment.

      Our Precious Atmosphere being overfilled with carbon is a piece of insanity Kubrick missed when he did Doctor Strangelove.

      He’s a real eccentric Prof Turney and could have stepped out of a futurist fantasy written in the nineteenth century.

      92

    • #
      Epicurious

      “Our atmosphere is already filled with carbon at levels never seen by humanity before,”

      On two counts, wrong. 1. Its carbon dioxide, dummy alleged Prof, and 2. much higher levels have existed before, just do the homework alleged Prof.

      60

    • #
      WXcycles

      Our internet is already filled with tedious academics at levels never seen by humanity before,” he says. “A magnetic pole reversal or extreme change in Sun activity would be unprecedented in terms of climate-clown doom speculation.

      Fixed

      81

  • #
    sophocles

    … and it was probably the major cause of the Australian megafaunal extinction, not humans.

    The Gothenburg magnetic variation which coincided with the Younger Dryas c. 12,000 to 10,000 YA, was another Magnetic Field failure. The effects lasted some thousands of years and were possibly the driving force behind all the Anatolian underground cities.

    180

    • #
      Klem

      If it turns out that a pole reversal was the cause of megafaunal extinction rather than humans, there will be millions of extremely disappointed misanthropists wandering around.

      281

      • #
        John R Smith

        “there will be millions of extremely disappointed misanthropists wandering around”
        One of the the curious aspects of the Climate Change Cult.

        70

    • #
      R.B.

      According to other researchers, Australia’s mega fauna was surviving in similar conditions as today according to analysis of chemical composition of fossils. There really is doubt that climate change was responsible. Eucalyptus trees started to dominate the landscape at least 2 million years ago. While there some evidence of greater dominance more recently, it coincides with humans lighting more fires.

      15-40 kya was significant colder than 42 Kya. It was also colder 60 Kya and the whole of the last 40ky of the previous glacial period was colder (According to No stock ice core). The mega fauna fossils start disappearing after the last interglacial, so while doubt it was all due to humans, it’s pretty certain to be nothing to do with climate.

      11

  • #
    Scissor

    I want to know who cut that tree down and why. Sure looks like it was cut nice and straight.

    160

    • #
      Klem

      One really long chain saw.

      70

      • #
        JCR

        Actually to Greg.

        I lived in NZ for several years, many in the biosciences field. One of the theories there was that there had been offshore eruptions off the east coast from the undersea volcano chain there. That was believed to have caused at least one major tsunami which would account for the inundations you mentioned that swamped the kauris. Further evidence advanced was that there were findings of seashells and other marine artefacts at significant elevations in both the North and South islands.

        Kauri is indeed a magnificent wood. My ex-wife and I had several pieces of kauri furniture which we eally treasured.

        70

    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      A friend in the office knows much about those Kauri trees. They are currently all buried under earth because some huge wave event about 41,000 years ago knocked all the trees over and filled in the gullies and rivers. They’ve been digging out the kauris the last hundred years because it’s a fantastic timber visually, and they no longer live as a species.

      So this particular one was dug out of an old swamp and been probably cut the root bowl off it to move it.

      check out the timber work from the kauri tree on the web. some fascinating stuff.

      170

      • #
        sophocles

        Kauris still live as a viable species. They’re all protected so they can’t be milled. However, there is no limit on milling what is known as “swamp kauri.”

        Most of the “swamp” kauri was low value top (crown) wood left behind after the logs were harvested in the 19th century. Some very few complete trees most likely ended up in the swamps because they became too massive for the supporting bank … so in those ones went. These are particularly valuable because they aren’t just crowns but they’re also rare.

        Come to Auckland and you can see the kauri in the Cascades park in the Waitakere Hills. There are plenty of majestic specimens to introduce you to …

        60

        • #
          sophocles

          If you want kauri timber, look in the UK, possibly London.

          That’s where the harvested logs ended up.

          60

          • #
            sophocles

            I was told that by a Joiner (furniture maker) whom I have no reason to disbelive.

            The kauri was sent to London for the English navy to manufacture masts and rigging from but for some reason it was found to be not fit for purpose.

            I will say from being the proud owner of some, it makes absolutely beautiful furniture.

            50

      • #

        It seems that the NZ Kauri is still growing in parts of NZ. The scientific name is Agathis australis. Qld has a Kauri pine with the scientific name Agathis robusta ie it is in the same family as the NZ kauri. In WA there is a tree called Karri which is actually a eucalypt -eucalyptus divesicolor, one of the tallest of this family. Jarrah is eucalyptus marginata. As with all eucalypts they burn but can recover. The Kauri pine, Hoop pine and Bunya pine are trees associated with gondwanaland as one presumes is the NZ Kauri. They have survived because they are in semi-tropical rain forests where there has been little bushfires eg Maleny Qld

        20

    • #
      Sceptical Sam

      Good question.

      Perhaps this is the answer?

      A monster kauri log hauled out of the ground near Kaikohe could prove immensely important to science.

      The log, which is 16m long and weighs 60 tonnes, was found during excavation for a new geothermal power station near Ngāwhā Springs earlier this year.

      Last week, scientists completed a radiometric analysis to reveal the kauri stood between 41,000 and 42,500 years ago – making it the only tree found anywhere in the world that was alive during a mysterious shift in the world’s magnetic field.

      Photo of its condition on recovery is interesting:

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/monster-kauri-log-recovered-deep-in-the-ground-near-kaikohe-to-shed-light-on-mysterious-ancient-event/OCCVMQAWVDQDLYNRWDZV56MYCY/

      20

    • #
      Tilba Tilba

      If you have the chance to visit the Waipoua Forest north of Auckland, I strongly recommend it – the kauri trees are outstanding.

      20

      • #
        sophocles

        True.
        But:
        The kauri in Cascades park in the Waitakeres are not as far away as the Waipoua Forest. They’re all very much closer. Comparatively, they’re almost within walking distance.

        20

  • #
    David Maddison

    I wonder how many people will blame “carbon pollution” or other anthropogenic causes for the deteriorating magnetic field and demand similar reductions in standard of living (except for the Elites) as is the case for “carbon”?

    And I’ve always wondered how migratory bird species that sense the magnetic field manage during low or zero magnetic fields. Obviously they somehow manage because they are still here.

    With the appalling education people receive these days I wonder how many of the Sheeple even know of the origin or significance (or even existence) of the earth’s magnetic field (but they will know all 87 “genders”).

    171

    • #
      ghl

      A layman’s comment.
      Without a magnetic field to funnel the charged particles to the poles,and concentrate them into the sheets we see, I would expect an invisible, diffuse, stratospheric glow on the day side of the planet.No Northern Lights.
      Since lightning is caused by charges building up until the air ionizes and conducts, a distribution of ions may induce premature discharge, reduced lightning bolt energy.
      He’s not a physicist is he? Nor shy about mouthing off.

      21

    • #
      sophocles

      David:

      It’s been suggested by the migratory bird X-spurts that they, the birds, aren’t limited to just magnetic navigation but are pretty sharp astronomical navigators too.

      41

    • #
      sophocles

      The link from Skeptical Sam (#4.1.1) just above is to the NZ Herald article which includes a photo of the “raw” log. The end in the title of this post has been tidied up.

      The photo at the link shows its condition after having been hauled out of the ground. Lots of hockey-sticks could be manufactured from that … umm … twig. And there would be enough wood left over for lots of hokey-sticks, too.

      My guess for the “tidy up” would br to enable the tree rings to be counted to see how old it was in tree-years before its entombment. The slice could then be carbon (or whatever the dating-du-jour method is now) dated to determine it’s geological age.

      10

  • #
    Andrew

    A serious issue that will eventually happen.
    I wonder when it does however instead of mitigating for it the rich will hit the poor with magnetic taxes and make up some dribble about how its all our fault.

    180

  • #

    Tunney! the stuck in the ice man?? !!!
    Blimey

    100

    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      Yes him. Anything that man says should be held in suspicion, or ignored entirely (safer bet).

      I remember well his explanation for going to the artic, and the things he said while there. He’s a shill with an agenda, nothing more. His words are worthless.

      180

  • #
    Mike Jonas

    I’m highly sceptical of paleoclimate pronouncements based on tree rings. And why wouldn’t I be, given their appalling record. There is one sign, though, that this paper is genuine: it doesn’t mention CO2. I’ll keep an open mind.

    131

    • #
      Klem

      I’ve walked through many clear cut forests over the years and i always stop and compare the tree rings exposed at the stump. One thing that ive learned is that tree stumps never agree with each other. They they can be only a few meters apart and one stump will show decades of wonderful warm sunny weather while the next stump records decades of clouds and misery. Matter if fact, one side of stumps often disagree with the other side.

      Dendochonology is voodoo science.

      161

      • #
        PeterS

        Absolutely correct. Relying on tree rings for dating is just another hoax. Anyone remember Mann and his tree ring proxy circus that was exposed as all lies by Steve McIntyre over a decade ago?

        191

        • #
          el gordo

          What about Mungo Man as a cross reference? There might be something in the bones.

          http://www.visitmungo.com.au/who-was-mungo-man

          13

          • #
            David Maddison

            As I understand it, it is prohibited to study the remains of Mungo Man.

            40

          • #
            David Maddison

            el gordo, that link is not science-based. Where do they get this nonsense from?

            Mungo Man cared for his Country and kept safe the special men’s knowledge.

            90

            • #
              el gordo

              Yeah, because of cultural sensitivity the bones were returned to country in 2017.

              14

              • #
                David Maddison

                Why doesn’t this “cultural sensitivity” apply to other early human remains? Why were these ones allowed to be destroyed? A tragic loss of scientific knowledge. Plus it is very unlikely that these remains were related to modern Aboriginals or indeed any modern humans. At least that was on the basis of genetic analysis, before history was revised.

                50

              • #
                Dennis

                Did they vote for JoeBama?

                wink

                70

              • #
                el gordo

                It would have been good to take a slither of bone to forensically see what might have happened. Assuming that increased cosmic radiation could be found after all that time.

                Anyway its no big deal, 42,000 years ago people were living in Hobart, we may find some paleo information to confirm the hypothesis that there was a pole reversal.

                ‘ … it is very unlikely that these remains were related to modern Aboriginals or indeed any modern humans.’

                Link?

                00

              • #
                el gordo

                The original settlers in Hobart were fuzzy wuzzy angels, the first Australians.

                10

            • #
              Lawrie

              Could the prevalence of auroras have led the aborigines to imagine the “Rainbow Serpent”. I watch the Aurora on TV and it writhes across the sky. Hey Jo we may have solved another “mystery”.

              70

              • #
                Sceptical Sam

                Watch out.

                Turley and his ship of fools will have a paper out on that as quick as a bolt of lightning! He’s the true definition of a media tart.

                Provided Flim Flam and his Megafauna mates don’t beat him to it.

                40

              • #
                Tilba Tilba

                Could the prevalence of auroras have led the aborigines to imagine the “Rainbow Serpent”.

                No – the Rainbow Serpent is what it sounds like – it is mythology relating to rainbows. Almost all cultures have mythology relating to rainbows, even Judy Garland.

                10

              • #
                Sceptical Sam

                Well, Tilba Tilba, if you’d ever been up Gulaga you’d know that’s not the case in your namesake country.

                On Gulaga, the Rainbow Serpent is represented by a long serpentine rock. It is here that the serpent went underground on the mountain and created all the rivers, and then came back up again on Gulaga to look at his work.

                20

          • #
            PeterS

            More voodoo science. Give it up el gordo, you are only making a fool of yourself.

            40

        • #
          Tilba Tilba

          Good grief – we have tree-ring deniers now … there is no end to it!

          22

      • #
  • #
  • #
    Richard Owen

    The end of the Australian megafauna is usually placed about the time of this possible magnetic reversal but those in Asia and North America only disappeared about 12,000 years ago (except for mammoths – see Wrangel island).
    The disappearance in Australia was thought to be due to the climate getting drier, or to the arrival of aborigines who hunted them to extinction. But thanks to the ABC and Bruce Pascoe (Dark Emu) we ‘know’ that aborigines arrived long before that (and long before the migration out of Africa at the time of the Mt. Toba eruption), Curiously those early cave painters didn’t record Megalania the 6 metre carnivorous lizard.
    The extinction in North America has been blamed on a meteor strike or climate change or on hunting by Clovis culture arrivals, but not as yet on Donald Trump.
    Humans survived both these events, without (as far as we can tell) running around in circles screaming hysterically “the sky is falling”.

    230

  • #
    RossP

    Mike
    I assume there was a little sarc. in your comment about tree rings.

    Here is article about where the tree was found and an explanation for Scissor, about the clean cut.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/giant-ngawha-swamp-kauri-log-dated-to-40500-years-old/PM2BHREF4JCBBRN7B6GSJN4CNA/#:~:text=A%20massive%20swamp%20kauri%20log,dramatically%20influenced%20the%20Earth's%20climate.

    There is a small industry in the upper North Island of NZ, pulling old logs from the Kauri “Swamps” (like peat swamps). They are after the wood for making furniture etc.

    There used to be massive Kauri forests up there –one of the reasons it was heavily logged in the past was to sell timber to San Francisco to help rebuild it after a big fire in the early/mid 1800s. In fact it is not a stretch to say Auckland’s economy really started from the revenues of these sales.

    130

    • #
      JCR

      The British navy also liked kauris for masts and spars for the ships. Kauris have a long straight trunk except for the canopy.

      50

      • #
        sophocles

        But none of them were used. They were found to be `unsuitable for purpose.’ I don’t know why.

        30

        • #
          Bruce

          Probably the same reason as for the rejection of the Norfolk Island pine; tall and straight-grained, but insufficiently robust and not rot / bug – proof.

          The Royal Navy (and commercial ship-builders) had developed a great liking for the “White Pine” which was abundant in the North American colonies, especially in the area around Maine.

          Come the Revolution, brothers, and all that, this supply was under new management, intent of building its own Navy and merchant fleet.

          Hence the GLOBAL search for a replacement that was light, not excessively prone to splitting and readily available in commercial quantities in the required sizes.

          EVERY maritime power on the planet was looking for the same materials, be they animal (whale oil), tallow), vegetable (timber, flax, hemp and sisal) or mineral, (copper, lead, zinc), etc.

          20

          • #
            sophocles

            The Norfolk Pine has only a little clear trunk at the bottom. The rest of it has branches all the way up. The branch knots make it very unsuitable for ship masts.

            The NZ kauri, though, has most of its trunk as clear wood so at first sight, it seems to be ideal for ship masts and spars.

            20

  • #
    Angus Black

    Do people actually listen to the Christmas Turkey any more?

    111

  • #
    Bruce

    Pole Dancing?

    It seems to have been happening with monotonous regularity for a very long time.

    Those of us who learned to navigate with a map and compass were made aware of it in our long-lost youth. “Magnetic Deviation” is not some weird inner-city social practice.

    Then, there is the geological record. Magma / lava, being in a super-heated fluid state is decidedly non-magnetic. Take a blow-torch to a “permanent” magnet sometime and see what happens.

    The US navy was doing surveys of the world’s ocean floors back in the late 1950’s / early ’60’s. When they plotted out the magnetic data graphically, portions of the sea-bed looked like a giant, somewhat wonky chessboard; alternating areas of opposite polarities. This was sea-ed lava, frozen into the magnetic polarity du jour.

    You probably do not want to be above ground during these reversals, which may take months or possibly years to complete. Being blasted and baked by a cocktail of cosmic radiation is bad for the health. SOME exposure is actually biologically “necessary” (See “Hormesis), for life that developed and somehow managed to survive on a planet steadily dosed with cosmic nasties. Marine life and the crews of Boomers will probably be less affected.

    100

  • #
    Jojodogfacedboy

    One thing they’ve yet to study or research is our planets balance…
    If you add water in the past, our planet was more balanced as weight dispersal.
    It also could take alot more abuse from meteors and asteroids strikes as water dispersed the shock waves.

    Just saying…

    They don’t like me to put my research out.
    Velocities modeling and mapping.

    41

    • #
      Jojodogfacedboy

      If our planet was a cylinder shape, we would have one diameter velocity.
      Being a planet, we have a multitude held back by our pressure.
      This is generated by our trapped in the Sun orbital exhausted gases.

      31

  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    26 MAY 2020: The Mysterious Anomaly Weakening Earth’s Magnetic Field Seems to Be Splitting

    “What is certain, though, is that the South Atlantic Anomaly is not sitting still.
    Since 1970, the anomaly has been growing in size, as well as moving westward at a pace of approximately 20 kilometres (12 miles) per year.
    But that’s not all.

    New readings provided by the ESA’s Swarm satellites show that within the past five years, a second centre of minimum intensity has begun to open up within the anomaly.”

    https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-anomaly-weakening-earth-s-magnetic-field-seems-to-be-splitting-into-two

    25 June, 2020: Weird: Out of Nowhere, Something Just Rocked Earth’s Magnetic Field

    “On June 23rd, Earth’s quiet magnetic field was unexpectedly disturbed by a wave of magnetism that rippled around much of the globe.
    There was no solar storm or geomagnetic storm to cause the disturbance.
    So what was it?”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/25/weird-out-of-nowhere-something-just-rocked-earths-magnetic-field/

    70

    • #
      Serp

      Earth will end not with a bang but a mandelbrot.

      10

    • #
      William Astley

      AGW was a scam. We just experienced a Dansgaard-Oeschger warming period (D-Os occur every 1470 years and appear in both glacial and interglacial climates). It appears, we are now going to experience a Heinrich event. Heinrich events are caused by what causes geomagnetic excursions. See the paper below which finds that in the past there was a geomagnetic excursion and then abrupt an abrupt cooling event like the Younger Dryas.

      The past interglacial periods, for all of the 100,000 year glacial/interglacial cycles, have been less than 10,000 years in duration. The past interglacial periods ended abruptly.

      The only physically possible explanation to explain is currently happening/did happen is something (the sun) is directly forcing the geomagnetic field. And the sun’s effect on the geomagnetic field when the sun does it special thing, depends on the earth-sun orbital configuration such as the timing of when… The earth is closest to the sun.

      Currently the sun is closest to the sun in December, which explains why this geomagnetic field excursion will affect the Southern Hemisphere. This explains why the South Atlantic Geomagnetic field anomaly is suddenly increasing in size and suddenly moving West.

      Paleomagnetic excursions

      https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02919335

      “Every magnetic excursion event corresponds to paleointensity minima, anteceding those established abrupt paleoclimatic change events, such as the Younger Dryas and the Heinrich Events (H1–H6). Here, we tentatively propose that these geomagnetic excursions/reversals can be viewed as precursors to climate abruptness.

      During the transitional stages when the earth’s magnetic field shifted between a temporal normal and a negative period, the earth’s magnetic paleointensity fell correspondingly to a pair of minima. “

      By correlating our results with published regional and worldwide reports, 4 excursion events out of 10 apparent reversal signals (labeled from GT-1 to GT-10) were identified as excursion events coeval with the Mono Lake Event (28.4 kyr–25.8 kyr), Laschamp Event (43.3 kyr–40.5 kyr), Gaotai Event (82.8 kyr–72.4 kyr) and the Blake Event (127.4 kyr–113.3 kyr), respectively. GT-9 correlates with the above-mentioned Gaotai Event, GT-7 and GT-6 correspond to two stages of the Laschamp Event and GT-5 to the Mono Lake Event. It is noteworthy that the so-called Gaotai Event has not been reported as a pronounced paleomagnetic excursion in the Northwestern China.

      http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/416/

      Is the geodynamo process intrinsically unstable?

      Recent palaeomagnetic studies suggest that excursions of the geomagnetic field, during which the intensity drops suddenly by a factor of 5-10 and the local direction changes dramatically, are more common than previously expected. The `normal’ state of the geomagnetic field, dominated by an axial dipole, seems to be interrupted every 30 to 100 kyr; it may not therefore be as stable as we thought.

      Recent studies suggest that the Earth’s magnetic field has fallen dramatically in magnitude and changed direction repeatedly since the last reversal 700 kyr ago (Langereis et al. 1997; Lund et al. 1998). These important results paint a rather different picture of the long-term behaviour of the field from the conventional one of a steady dipole reversing at random intervals: instead, the field appears to spend up to 20 per cent of its time in a weak, non-dipole state (Lund et al. 1998).

      http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/BardPapers/responseCourtillotEPSL07.pdf

      Also, we wish to recall that evidence of a correlation between archeomagnetic jerks and cooling events (in a region extending from the eastern North Atlantic to the Middle East) now covers a period of 5 millenia and involves 10 events (see f.i. Figure 1 of Gallet and Genevey, 2007). The climatic record uses a combination of results from Bond et al (2001), history of Swiss glaciers (Holzhauser et al, 2005) and historical accounts reviewed by Le Roy Ladurie (2004).

      Recent high-resolution paleomagnetic records (e.g. Snowball and Sandgren, 2004; St-Onge et al., 2003) and global geomagnetic field modeling (Korte and Constable, 2006) support the idea that part of the centennial-scale fluctuations in 14C production may have been influenced by previously unmodeled rapid dipole field variations.

      In any case, the relationship between climate, the Sun and the geomagnetic field could be more complex than previously imagined. And the previous points allow the possibility for some connection between the geomagnetic field and climate over these time scales.

      00

  • #
    Jojodogfacedboy

    Our observed science truly did a disservice to our knowledge base as many processes occur that we do not see or is mistaken in the past but never corrected.
    Remember our scientists and education are never wrong…just tweaked a multitude of times to fit the narrative.

    41

  • #
    Matthew Bruha

    If it isn’t because of CO2 it must be DJTs fault (sarc)

    131

  • #
    Kalm Keith

    When I first saw a news article on this late last night I wondered if Jo might do a post on it. 🙂

    Mike, above, commented that there’s no mention of CO2; Mike, that’s for the next paper, next year’s grant.

    It’s funny how the magnetic field perturbation only affected the Neanderthals.

    “Somehow our ancestors survived this. Though the Neanderthals and some other species may not have.”

    That’s a clue not to be overlooked.

    As I understand it, the physiology of those coming “out of Africa was vastly different to those Neanderthals coming out of the “North”.

    Hot sunny Africa encourages the tall, thin, dark skinned adaptation to repel and dissipate heat from the environment and within.

    Eskimos demonstrate the opposite requirements of white skin and a reduction in surface area to body mass ratio to prevent heat loss.

    Neanderthals had the largest brain size known. Their heads were relatively large but they compensated by having large, hooked noses that helped “keep the heat in” and were physically opposite to the Africans.

    My belief is that this latest “paper” is all about taking the focus off the real reason for their extinction: The Weather.

    Having inhabited and adapted to the cold northern climes, the Neanderthals were undoubtedly pushed South by the building ice that came with the last major glaciation which reached its peak twenty thousand years ago.

    In the new warmer environment their physiology became a handicap and despite a bit of mixing eventually lost out.

    In short, my view is that the progress of the last major glaciation pushed the Neanderthals down into a region to which they were not physically adapted.
    The locals seemed to survive so it’s unlikely that the Magnetic Option caused Neanderthals demise.

    Perhaps the purpose of this paper is to divert attention away from the part played by the Milankovic cycle theory which would destroy the idea of CO2 induced Climate change and Death from overheating.

    KK

    81

    • #
      Mike Jonas

      I wonder whether they are setting up the next excuse for climate model failure: Our predictions were not quite right because we hadn’t allowed for magnetic field reversal. Once we put it into the models, they became perfect again.

      40

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Sixty five years ago we could look South at the amazing display of the Aurora Australis.

        Now I’m worried that we might have suffered a magnetic field reversal but everything’s O.K.

        Si ti erus m’I.

        KK

        10

        • #

          KK, the other possibility is that it wasn’t physiology, but social aptitude. The Sapiens from Africa and the middle East appear to have been better networkers, more gregarious, perhaps with larger tribes. Impossible to know but it could be that ultimately the networkers won though sheer numbers. If they could copy the techniques of the brainy neaderthals but translate that into large societies it may have given them the key advantage.

          30

          • #
            Kalm Keith

            Good point about the numbers ; the Neanderthals may simply have been a relatively small group.
            Although they had noticeably larger craniums it doesn’t necessarily translate into better thinking skills, so there are numerous factors to examine besides the suitability of physical attributes to the new climate.

            10

            • #
              Kalm Keith

              Another point is that the Neanderthals were thought to have gone extinct in the vicinity of 30,000 years ago which was the peak of the last glaciation.

              10

    • #
      Chris

      There is evidence of Neanderthals living in what is now Israel and they were there for a considerable amount of time.

      20

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Thanks, I haven’t looked into this for twenty years so I’m a bit behind recent developments.

        As an aside, when I came across the Neanderthal history the extra large head was put up as a possible issue during birth.
        Considering that they moved from up there in the cold to near the equator over a very long period, it couldn’t have been that much of a worry.

        Relative to modern humans their brain size was huge.

        20

  • #
    Wet Mountains

    I do love watching the science channels. Great education. However, there are key words and phrases I watch for. I call them “Disclaimers”. Words and phrases such as ‘the theory is’, ‘if correct’, ‘assuming’, ‘even if’, ‘may have’, ‘could explain’, etc. These words are used in case what is being presented as “near fact” turns out to be wrong, the author can retreat to the safe zone behind these words.
    In cases like this (and I think this article was excellent) I ask myself one fundamental question, “Is there anything I can do to prepare for or positively influence the outcome.
    I am old and have little time to worry about issues I cannot positively effect. I would rather worry about a giant meteor hitting the earth and pay taxes to have a group watch the skies for just such a meteor so they can warn me in time, so I can prepare by digging an underground shelter and storing enough food and water to last myself and my extended family for 100 years until the surface of the earth cooled enough for water to begin to condense.

    61

  • #
    PeterS

    This is like the express goal by the West to reduce emissions at all costs that will make as much impact on the climate as stop breathing for one second every day. So what are the “experts” going to suggest we do about the magnetic pole switch? Stop using electric motors for 1 second each day? Western governments and many people have certainly been fooled by fake “science”.

    81

  • #
    tom0mason

    Oh NO! Another pseudo-scientific report stuffed to the rafters with assumptions, conjecture, and supposition and a big message of doom. More catastrophe for the snowflake generation to ‘take action’ over — invent a new dance, chant incoherently about the one true Gaia at some UN talkshop, etc.

    From https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/96781940/swamp-kauri-reveals-ancient-antarctic-meltings-link-to-rising-temperatures

    Writing in The Conversation, study lead author earth sciences and climate change professor Chris Turney, from the University of New South Wales, said all the model simulations showed the same thing.

    “Regardless of the amount of freshwater released into the Southern Ocean, the surface waters of the tropical Pacific nevertheless warmed, causing changes to wind patterns that in turn triggered the North Atlantic to warm too,” he said.

    “Regardless of how it happened, it looks like melting ice in the south can drive abrupt global change, something of which we should be aware in a future warmer world.”

    So snowflake what happen then is just like now, and you’re all gonna die! /SARC-off

    91

  • #
    Alistair Crooks

    Naturally I’m sceptical, especially when scientists of Turney’s caliber are involved (why is it that my scepticism rises every time I see the word “professor”?). I take all this with a grain or two of salt but … Forget a few degrees of warming or cooling – the real threat to our hyper-specialised world is (to my mind anyway) a Carrington Event. A pole reversal will do nicely.
    It would be a bit like Texas only everywhere simultaneously.

    31

  • #
    Old Goat

    The real danger to humanity is stupid. This is unlimited unlike intelligence which is . If the magnetic poles reverse and the earths magnetic field drops dramatically we will lose most electronic devices and be forced to fight over what resources are left . Maybe the preppers have it right. If you thought Covid was bad this is many orders of magnitude worse – ask yourself , what would you do to survive ? Murder and cannibilism ? taking food from someone else and letting them starve ? Civilisation is fragile….look at what happens in the animal world .

    70

  • #
    Chris

    I have read that one of the reasons we have life on Earth is because of the magnetic field. Mars does not have one and as a consequence solar storms strip the atmosphere from the planet Whereas the magnetic field prevents this from happening on Earth.

    41

  • #
    John R Smith

    Artificial (Anthropogenic) Magnetosphere?
    Wouldn’t we need one of those for interplanetary travel?

    30

  • #
    Rosco

    One of the authors is professor “Turkey” of trapped in Antarctic SUMMER ice whilst investigating shrinking summer ice due to climate change.

    Grain of salt time !!!

    61

  • #
    David Maddison

    Warmists will be shocked by the prospect of a change in Earth’s magnetic field because they know nothing of the history of the Earth and falsely think the magnetic field in invariant, just as they do the climate.

    51

    • #
      sophocles

      Yeah. It’s going to be fun …

      Solar Cycle 26 is predicted (by some) to not have sun spots … and to be very cold.

      50

  • #
    Billy Bob Hall

    I heard the ‘South Atlantic Anomaly (a region of geo-magnetic chaos) is moving and getting bigger ?

    30

  • #
    Brian Parker

    Is it possible that the ice age causes the magnetic pole fluctuations?
    A potential mechanism might be the large masses of ice (1500 to 3000 metres thick) bear down on the crust at the north and south poles and interrupt/modify the spin of the core?
    Changing the spin of the core could change the earths magnetism.

    Cheers
    B

    40

    • #
      David Maddison

      It is certainly well known that the redistribution of mass during glaciation causes wobbles in the Earth’s spin plus crustal depression. It seems likely that core circulation could be affected.

      20

    • #
      Mike Jonas

      Good point. But it’s not the rotation of the core, it’s rotation of the whole planet. Ice increase at the poles draws mass nearer to the axis. and that increases rotation speed. But fear not – salvation is at hand! If we put in lots and lots of wind turbines, they slow Earth’s rotation using the force from the prevailing wind. They can be a lot cheaper too, because they don’t have to spin or generate electricity, just be there.

      50

  • #
    liberator

    They had to throw in their that comment about levels of CO2 – sorry carbon in the atmosphere to make the boogy man even scarier. As if a reversal of the magnetic fields is not scary enough? I’m more concerned about the reversal of the fields, than a bit of CO2 in the atmosphere. Same as I’m more concerned about further pandemics, asteroid strikes,solar eruptions, massive volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, global cooling, than I am about a potential warming of the Earth, all of which have a higher potential to kill a lot of humans than carbon.

    40

  • #
    Dennis

    So what happened to the indigenous people of Australia?

    Latest claim 65-70,000 years ago based on Kakadu National Park cave excavations.

    50

  • #
    RoHa

    The compass on my iPhone doesn’t point North, but East. It’s starting already!

    40

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Looking at the cave dwelling theory I wondered if those people were told they had to go back to living in the open in order to save the planet what would be the reaction?

    Its the same as ‘experts’ now telling us we have to exist without electrical power to do the same isn’t it?

    30

  • #
    Clyde Spencer

    Nowhere have I seen an explanation of how cosmic rays would selectively destroy ozone. If an oxygen atom were to take a hit, it might transmute it to another element, but that should happen in direct proportion to the number of di-atomic oxygen molecules compared to the tri-atomic ozone molecules. That is, it shouldn’t be a big effect. I think that the authors are speculating outside their field of expertise.

    70

  • #
    Frost Giant Rebellion

    Good news and bad news.

    1. Bad News: Extinction, near extinction and catastrophic events are cyclical. They always come around and we are overdue.

    2. Good News: The same sorts of innovations we need to survive a series of natural catastrophic events, or false flags pretending to be same, have a large overlap with what is needed to regain our sovereignty as a middle power, to deter war, or to prevail if need be.

    3. Good News Again: The analysts and intellectuals we have giving advice on our defence policy actually seem to be very smart guys. You listen to guys like Paul Dibb and some of the others. No slouches. Serious people.

    4. Bad News: Their analysis is never holistic enough. Not close but no cigar. Not even close and not even a roll-your-own cigarette.

    10

    • #
      el gordo

      The cyclic nature of the system should give us plenty of time to prepare, if the signs are obvious. Humanity is ingenious and should find a way through, we are space travellers now.

      Don’t suppose Paul Dibb mentioned that in June the US is going to announce that we are not alone? This would sort of make the Alliance irrelevant.

      00

      • #
        Frost Giant Rebellion

        But the signs aren’t obvious. For example disasters are associated with supernovae. But the disaster comes first. Then the supernova tells us where the disaster has come from, only after the survivors are picking up the pieces. Yes that goes against Einstein but team Einstein were crazy spinners from the getgo.

        Supernovae all come from a central gravity shock. That shock hits us then the shock from the consequences of the first shock hit us also. So that the Quaternary extinction event is associated with the Vela Supernova. And the central galaxy shock that came before it. Now each supernova from Vela onwards have been more distant from us, and less catastrophic to us. The last one coming in the early 1600’s I think. So that wave has petered out. When the next shockwave comes from the centre it will be nasty. And the first rebound supernova will probably be worse. And there will be no warning whatsoever in either case. Only confirmation after the fact.

        20

        • #
          el gordo

          I won’t be losing any sleep on that tipping point, the 42,000 year event was more likely an Excursion rather than a Reversal. Cosmic ray bombardment wasn’t so severe.

          ‘ … paleointensity measurements show that the magnetic field has not disappeared during reversals. Based on paleointensity data for the last 800,000 years, the magnetopause is still estimated to have been at about three Earth radii during the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. Even if the internal magnetic field did disappear, the solar wind can induce a magnetic field in the Earth’s ionosphere sufficient to shield the surface from energetic particles.’ wiki

          10

          • #
            sophocles

            The Laschamp “excursion” was a full reversal, but only lasted c. 400 years, with the magnetic field around 25% of normal.

            20

  • #
    Frost Giant Rebellion

    Its not a tipping point. If you have a single shock from the centre that causes the quaternary extinction event, and indirectly every major supervolcano/supernova in the history books then runs out of steam by the early 1600’s ….. Well thats one primary incident followed by 11, 000 years of disasters. Now that that cycle has run out I don’t think we will be waiting all that much longer for a buildup in pressure in Sagittarius A*. The idea that we even have a recorded history is due to the reality that every subsequent disaster was much fainter than the first two.

    These magnetic reversals are small beer. Small potatoes compared to the galaxy centre shocks. The 42,000 year story is only recent. As bad as it probably was it didn’t steal the press off the quaternary extinction event, nor even the bronze age collapse.

    We aren’t even ready for another Carrington event of 1859. The Carrington event, were it to happen today, would bring down the grids in many unlucky countries. I just don’t know where your “she’ll be right” attitude is coming from. Particularly as I pointed out, and you seem to have missed, that the same adaptations are necessary for national defence.

    20

  • #
    WXcycles

    What is the climate affecting link though?

    Personally, over the past 16 months, I have come to a view that the geomagnetic field is inducing a higher sink of the lower stratosphere into the troposphere, and also is locking pressure systems roughly in place in the upper and middle atmosphere, and this results in the intervening jets moving in a more zonal and fixed location, that is ‘locked’ coincident with geomagnetic structures, and is therefore no longer behaving like a free-flowing fluid. Structure has emerged in chaotic flow. And the only candidate I can see for doing that is geomagnetism.

    Something changed to affect it, and it appears it is solar magnetic activity inducing the sinking of the stratosphere into the troposphere, thus swelling and accelerating the jets (in both hemispheres), moving them both more equatorward, until they combine into a new equatorial jet flow, over the Eastern equatorial Pacific and central equatorial Atlantic.

    Those equatorial jets are still there btw, the central and east Pacific one is very large and strong today, as well as deep.

    So I’ll paint a picture a little speculative picture here:

    What if continental ice-sheet formation is associated with the migration of the locked sinking stratospheric air structure relatively suddenly (geologically speaking), rather than just a more persistent expression of same, for longer?

    What if that re-creates the normally subtropical jets in another locked and more equatorward location that is wider, deeper, stronger and more zonal than even what we see now?

    What if these both move so equatorward that they become a single very wide mobile zonal equatorial jetstream flow, that covers the entire ITCZ region globally (as it is currently attempting to) and the winds do in fact reach all the way down to the surface? Then the westerlies under the ITCZ would disappear, and be replaced by strong easterly from the much deeper jetstream flow.

    The entire ocean circulation pattern and trade flow regime would also dynamically alter with it. And suddenly it begins to regularly snow every winter to +/- 15 degrees Latitude of the equator. And cloud would cover the warmest parts of the ocean. And more of the ocean would be windier.

    The roaring 40s would become the roaring 30s, etc., and evaporation from those oceans would remain high, and deposit as snow as rain and snow as lower latitudes. Thus continental ice-sheets will form when two subtropical jets meet over the equator, and turn into a single, faster, wider and deeper global zonal jetstream belt.

    And I think that’s the meaning of the equatorial jet in the Eastern Pacific, that is the indicator of the trend in this direction, to the jets getting closer to the equator, and partially unifying into one jet. I think this is the process that occurs during a glaciation. Added meridional flow is not the mechanism which creates the ice-sheets. It’s also not the mechanism which produces the cooling WX phase onset we can now see developing.

    All the things that we thought or presumed would be essential elements to doing this are not what does it. Very surprisingly, the added variability input comes from above, not from the poles, via enhanced meridional jet flow. I think the locked sinking stratospheric air has at this point demonstrated that what we thought would occur during cooling, is not what actually occurs. So for me, I’m moving on to look at how this really works and what novel weather and climate change mechanisms are implied to get there and sustain these locked patterns, which are opportunistically enhanced by favorable phases of Milankovitch orbital cycles.

    IMO, I now see the Little Ice Age as a global single equatorial jetstream flowing band in operation, but minus favorable Milankovitch cycle orientation, and was also followed by a reversal of solar activity level to a more active phase. Thus the LIA coldness imparted was capped, and it ended, the jets reverted to subtropical seasonal twins.

    Plus LIA is characterized by increased variability for most of its duration, rather than particularly cold conditions during all of its duration. A period of higher variability is what it really was, and that variability became net cooling because the surface winds were stronger, more often, because the jets were wider, faster and deeper, more often. Stronger winds at mid and higher latitude tends to produce more snow and ice. Wind –> evaporative cooling –> higher humidity –> snow –> higher albedo, etc., more sea ice can form, glaciers and ice sheets can net grow, if spring and summer remain cooler for longer.

    The winds trigger the cooling effect as a part of increased energy present at the surface from the very deep jets, creating higher weather variability almost everywhere.

    Thus, multi-decade weather cycles that blend seamlessly into solar-system level climate cycles. Solar-mediated sinking stratospheric air’s variability can explain the entire causative gamut of weather and climate variability observed when overprinting on orbital Milankovitch cycle dynamics, as well.

    So yeah, I think we will find, and are finding that geomagnetism will be a major part of understanding multi-decade warming and cooling phases, plus climate warming and cooling. Ultimately the Sun controls that geomagnetic field’s expression.

    What I don’t understand is how a geomagnetic field structure induces and moderates ultra dry stratospheric air sinking into the troposphere, and holds pressure systems insitu in the upper and middle troposphere, to enable bother the locked sinking pattern, and the locked jets, that are being jacked up in speed, depth and volume of flow (and thus a rising average higher surface wind speed) by this infiltrating ultra-dry stratosphere?

    Yes, it’s a fluid, but put a conductive fluid in magnetic field, and you get induced structure and flow. But what changed in the field when the sun went quiet, which caused the ultra-dry stratosphere to sink more than ‘normal’, into the relatively ultra-wet troposphere?

    This personally I think this is the key to understanding the mechanism of how the Sun’s activity, Earth’s geomagnetism, and resulting sinking stratosphere altering jet activity and standing pressure systems, could very rapidly transform the mid-troposphere from two subtropical jets, to just one massive wide whole depth of troposphere equatorial jet blowing eastward, down to sea level at the equator.

    It would disrupt the entire ITCZ system and tropical weather and trade winds, globally. And as the existing jets here get stronger, and more equator-wards, they also become deeper and more zonal, then coalesce into Equatorial Jets.

    This is today, at 39,000 ft, and this equatorial jet feature is new, it is the convergence of both jets at the equator, and it is associated wit bery high levels of sinking ultra dry stratosphere, all around it.

    https://i.ibb.co/3dXjPSn/Screenshot-2021-02-22-Windy-as-forecasted.jpg

    And note that the fastest jet on earth last night was in the Southern Hemisphere? … … yeeeaaah … well, … that was not really supposed to be there … schhhh! … we’re not supposed to notice dramatic changes in tropospheric behavior. One day we’ll be allowed to notice this, but not until a confected excuse, related to rising CO2, has been cobbled together and wheeled out. As you can imagine that’s a delicate task, so please be patient, one day meteorologists will be allowed to notice it.

    But it would be really nice though if they noticed that gigantic jet that’s formed over the Equator in the central and Eastern Pacific. That one is a bit hard to miss, not to mention that it’s been there most of the time since December 2019 until now. So I do worry some that if we got a single global equatorial jetstream at 500 km/h that no one at the UK Met Office, BOM, or US National Weather Service would notice.

    Maybe next time.

    Anyway this is why the atmosphere currently has me thinking in terms of geomagnetism as the causative factor for a higher rate of stratospheric sinking expanding the jets equatorward. Time and observations will tell if it is so.

    50

    • #
      Frost Giant Rebellion

      The thing is WXCycles is “THE MAN” as the kids say. His observations are without peer. I suspect he pretends to be a trace gas hysteric in public and I have my theories as to who he might be. Don’t worry about the post. Let it go. Its not that important one way or another. But if he were more realistic about the way that one form of energy can transmute into another form of energy, and the sort of yields involved, then everyone would understand his observations and theories a lot better.

      00

  • #
    sophocles

    The current state of the planetary field from NOAA

    Magnetic declination map:
    https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/WMM/data/WMM2020/WMM2020_D_BoZ_MILL.pdf
    left hand map …
    Hum. It’s messy. Worse is to come …

    While you’re there, check the Total Intensity map.
    Right-hand map ..

    (both maps linked on same page.)

    10

  • #
    Deano

    Does anyone know why the earth’s magnetic field reversed or almost disappeared? I assumed that field was the result of events when the earth was formed and in a cooled earth, should remain quite stable. Obviously not.

    10

    • #
      WXcycles

      Earth has not cooled.

      It should have cooled, but it did not cool, and no one really knows why.

      This paradox is complicated further when geologists found that xenocryst and xenolith inclusions in volcanics and plutonics, derived directly from the mantle itself (which can be proven from polymorphic pressure temperature transition sequences in their crystallography), have almost no radionuclides or daughter isotopes within them, geochemically, when analysed.

      In fact all the significantly radioactive heavy elements are found in crustal rocks, there’s no trace evidence in mantle samples that they exist anywhere else.

      Which means the mantle and core can not be heated by radioactive decay of heavy elements. And yet the outer core is a liquid, and the area between the crust and uppermost mantle (Asthenosphere) is partially melted. Perhaps 5% is magma, where there is sufficient H2O present to allow it to melt … why hydrothermal systems form in the crust.

      So there is no credible or adequate explanation for the residual internal heat and its enduring steady maintainence for most of the past 5 billion years.

      So thoughts/theories about what creates and sustains a thermally enabled geomagnetism are very poorly based, and very poorly understood.

      Let alone why the poles drift, or why they become chaotic and ‘flip’ regularly.

      But ‘regularly’ is a very long time interval within geology. The chances of it occurring during a period of human civilization are very low, not worth worrying about, other than the curiosity of the mechanism, and the anomalous maintained unexplained internal heating of Earth.

      It’s very much not consistent with what we physically know. Our physical knowledge is clearly incomplete. It’s generation is referred to as a dynamo, but we really don’t know if that’s what causes it.

      The Science is very much not ‘settled’. We’ll be centuries more trying to figure it out (if we get better at managing human affairs), and we may not be able to verify what causes geomagnetism and pole drift.

      Geomagnetic reversals are extremely common, geologically speaking, and almost completely randomly appearing in geological history. There are some patterns, but its generally chaotic, unpredictable, and very much unexplained.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal

      Statistical properties of reversals
      Several studies have analyzed the statistical properties of reversals in the hope of learning something about their underlying mechanism. The discriminating power of statistical tests is limited by the small number of polarity intervals. Nevertheless, some general features are well established. In particular, the pattern of reversals is random. There is no correlation between the lengths of polarity intervals.[17] There is no preference for either normal or reversed polarity, and no statistical difference between the distributions of these polarities. This lack of bias is also a robust prediction of dynamo theory.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo_theory

      Formal definition
      Dynamo theory describes the process through which a rotating, convecting, and electrically conducting fluid acts to maintain a magnetic field. This theory is used to explain the presence of anomalously long-lived magnetic fields in astrophysical bodies. The conductive fluid in the geodynamo is liquid iron in the outer core, and in the solar dynamo is ionized gas at the tachocline. Dynamo theory of astrophysical bodies uses magnetohydrodynamic equations to investigate how the fluid can continuously regenerate the magnetic field.[9]

      It was once believed that the dipole, which comprises much of the Earth’s magnetic field and is misaligned along the rotation axis by 11.3 degrees, was caused by permanent magnetization of the materials in the earth. This means that dynamo theory was originally used to explain the Sun’s magnetic field in its relationship with that of the Earth. However, this hypothesis, which was initially proposed by Joseph Larmor in 1919, has been modified due to extensive studies of magnetic secular variation, paleomagnetism (including polarity reversals), seismology, and the solar system’s abundance of elements. Also, the application of the theories of Carl Friedrich Gauss to magnetic observations showed that Earth’s magnetic field had an internal, rather than external, origin.

      There are three requisites for a dynamo to operate:

      An electrically conductive fluid medium
      Kinetic energy provided by planetary rotation
      An internal energy source to drive convective motions within the fluid.[10]

      So we’re back to what causes the Geothermal gradient in Earth to be maintained over ~5 billion years?

      Radiogenic heat
      The evolution of Earth’s radiogenic heat flow over time
      The radioactive decay of elements in the Earth’s mantle and crust results in production of daughter isotopes and release of geoneutrinos and heat energy, or radiogenic heat. Four radioactive isotopes are responsible for the majority of radiogenic heat because of their enrichment relative to other radioactive isotopes: uranium-238 (238U), uranium-235 (235U), thorium-232 (232Th), and potassium-40 (40K).[14] Due to a lack of rock samples from below 200 km depth, it is difficult to determine precisely the radiogenic heat throughout the whole mantle,[14] although some estimates are available.[15] For the Earth’s core, geochemical studies indicate that it is unlikely to be a significant source of radiogenic heat due to an expected low concentration of radioactive elements partitioning into iron.[16] Radiogenic heat production in the mantle is linked to the structure of mantle convection, a topic of much debate, and it is thought that the mantle may either have a layered structure with a higher concentration of radioactive heat-producing elements in the lower mantle, or small reservoirs enriched in radioactive elements dispersed throughout the whole mantle.[17]

      There is a net energy deposition or energy generation source, deep within the Earth and humans don’t know what it is or how it works. It is believed to be radioactive but the Xenolithic mantle rocks fail to show any evidence that a sufficient concentration of radioactive elements is present in the mantle. If the mantle is convective and slowly overturning with time, why were these alleged radioactive elements not mixed and thus distributed throughout the entire mantle? In short, there is no evidence that it’s radioactivity heating the earth. But even the radioactivity explanation thinks almost none of the heating can be coming from the iron core.

      Yet the geodynamo theory requires that the heating be coming from the core, to power up and maintain a liquid metal dynamo.

      So don’t wait-up for a factual cause of polar wander or pole reversal, as other than theories, which conflict badly with geochemical and radioactive evidence we have from extruded and plutonic intrusive rocks, there won’t be a clear causative understanding available within your life time.

      Some pretend to know but they do not know, and we actually may never know what does it, because real science is testable, and this does not appear to be testable. No one knows what powers Earth’s geodynamics.

      [It goes without saying of course, that likewise, climate model predictions are also not testable and have no relationship with Science. They are tuned political baloney, designed to cynically extract funding for public sources, by a bunch of free-loaders, and can only ever be that.]

      60

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        That last paragraph is great.

        Simplicity is always a good starting point, and applying this to the Earth’s internal energy budget we can list a few factors.

        – The Earth is spinning, and man, there’s a lot of rotational energy there that any coal fired electricity generation turbine would love to own.

        – There’s molten iron in this spinning core.

        – the Earth is constantly under the influence of outward solar energy “fields” that might interact with the spinning core.

        – Earth is also moving through energy fields associated with our galaxy.

        – alignment with the Sun gives us very cool poles and warm midriff which may encourage and discourage heat flow from the core respectively leading to an average core energy loss rate of 0.09 Watts per sq metre at the surface.

        – we can see the effect of pressure on fluids when we go from sea level to mountain top; say 15°C sea level to minus 5°C at the top of the Eiger at 14,000 ft.

        – pressure at Earth’s core would be significant: if there’s a lapse rate in the atmosphere, what’s the lapse rate in the liquid core. So much that some of the core tries to escape: refer to Hawaii for constant examples.

        It’s a big problem to picture.

        KK

        20

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        “Earth has not cooled.”

        Depends what you mean by “cooled”.

        Given that the Earth has crusted over in the last 4.6 Billion years or so, it’s understandable that the cooling has slowed; but to say the Earth isn’t cooling, not too sure about that.

        10

        • #
          Bruce

          Entropy ROOLZ!!

          00

          • #
            Frost Giant Rebellion

            Actually Entropy is a localised phenomenon. Its not to be considered as how the universe (taken more broadly) works. The 20-somethings who have been subject to the cult of personality in the physics department, need to be placed under the direction of the more serious minds of the 50 plus year olds, down the hall, in the philosophy faculty.

            00

            • #
              Bruce

              Problem is that most of the Philosophy department is staffed by screaming totalitarian types whose sole search is for “problems” to which they can apply their “solutions”.

              10

              • #
                Frost Giant Rebellion

                Well here we have a way to make them useful. Technical skills interrogating and beating up on physicists, who have gotten a little bit big headed for the scientific method.

                00

        • #
          Frost Giant Rebellion

          Crusted over in the last 4.6 billion years. Sounds like NASA solar system creation myth to me. It could actually be true, I think such a process did happen with the very new planet of Venus. But we don’t want to be relying on NASA creation myths when we make that judgement.

          02

      • #
        Deano

        What a comprehensive answer WXcycles! Thanks for that point that the earth should be cooler than it currently is if it was just a ball of, well, earth. I like the Dynamo Theory as an interesting idea.

        00

      • #
        Philip

        excellent read. Thank you

        00

      • #
        Frost Giant Rebellion

        “Earth has not cooled.”

        Its as Zoe would have it. Earth is producing some of its own heat. I would have it that a planet will quickly cool after its formation, if its formation involved a lot of heat. As when Venus was reconstituted from a comet and its entourage. But supposing a smaller planet is in the boondocks? It will cool quickly, or indeed it may start off cool. But once it grows to a certain threshold size, that planet will start producing its own pristine energy and matter. Bearing in mind that the laws to do with conservation of mass and energy are not only not true, but logically impossible. So these laws may be kind of right locally (for the most part) but they cannot be right for the universe taken as a whole.

        So knowing this we have to then scout about the place looking for the location of new mass and energy creation. So as we can see, we have now found one of these venues, and its beneath our feet.

        00

        • #
          Kalm Keith

          O.K. Now I got it.

          There’s no other explanation so that must be correct.

          Very sciency.

          00

          • #
            Frost Giant Rebellion

            You can’t THINK of another explanation that fits the data. Thats just a fact. Not even one. “I know. Its only rock and roll. But I like it.” (Jagger) I know its only science but I like it. And you are supposed to account for the data, no matter how angry people get at you.

            Yes WXCycles brings the news that the earth should have cooled down by now. So the reality is that the earth is producing its own thermal energy. You don’t need to get all upset about it. You won’t die following the scientific method. You might THINK you will die but you won’t.

            00

    • #
      Frost Giant Rebellion

      No they don’t know Deano. And they can’t know. Because their view of the structure of planets, just for one thing, is wrong. If they had these things right, then they could answer these questions very easily for us. But sacred cow science, and cult of personality science, does not deliver the answers.

      10

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        O.K.
        I think I got it now.

        10

        • #
          Frost Giant Rebellion

          Good Kalm Keith. You may go in peace. But before you do, why don’t you read over all these incredible things WXCycles is saying in his post above. Now I take it that this is representative of where the cutting edge science is at the moment. And you will see that its so completely different than what you would expect from the traditional NASA creation myth.

          Its not as if WXCycles is part of any adventurous science rebellion right? And yet thats where he thinks matters stand.

          01

      • #
        Deano

        Yet they’re predicting climate conditions down to 0.1 degrees C and sea levels to within millimeters 100 years in advance.

        10

  • #
    Goose

    THIS PLANET IS HOW OLD?????? IT’S BEEN THROUGH ONE HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN WE COULD EVER INFLICT SHORT OF NUCLER DEVASTATION!

    20

  • #
    William Astley

    In the last decade, it was discovered (by the geomagnetic field specialists), that the earth’s geomagnetic field has abruptly and cyclically, changed in a manner which it is absolutely and unquestably, impossible to explain using a ‘self-generating’ concept.

    What I have just said is not a ‘theory’. The self geomagnetic field concept is stone cold dead. It is not part of the solution.

    What I have is the result of ten years of research. It is an observational fact that is a paradox.

    There is absolutely hard evidence of immense changes to the geomagnetic field that has occurred in days and months. These immense changes are happening now also. The geomagnetic field abruptly started to change in 1997.

    It physically impossible for a core change in the earth (even if there was a physical force to change the force) to cause surface changes which have been found to have occurred again and again.

    All of the past climate changes, including the small climate changes have been found to correlate with abrupt movement of the North geomagnetic field and immense regions of the surface of the earth that suddenly abruptly have reverse polarity.

    The geomagnetic poles are the region of the earth that has the least amount of protection/deflection of cosmic rays (high speed protons). When the North geomagnetic pole abruptly moves south, that creates a region of the earth that suddenly receives more cosmic radiation and increase cloud cover.

    These sudden abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field changes are temporary… the surface disturbed/recharges geomagnetic field and the liquid core integrates the surface forcing. The geomagnetic strength correlates with planetary temperature. The geomagnetic field strength is roughly 3 to 4 times greater during the weakest field points, which occur during the interglacial period, than the glacial period.

    What I have said above is a fact. There is a Nova PBS program that discussed the finding of abrupt changes in the North geomagnetic pole position, which were found by analyzing the magnetic field/direction and strength; by that was captured in 100,000 dated ceramic tiles, which taken from French and Italian Chalets.

    The finding of sudden abrupt changes to the geomagnetic field…. in the past… Is all the more interesting as the geomagnetic field suddenly started to change in 1997. This was also discussed, same Nova program. No explanation.

    The largest climate changes, in the climate record, are called Heinrich events. The Heinrich events are cyclic and correlate with strange abrupt geomagnetic field changes on the surface of the earth.

    For example, the Younger Dryas abrupt change, 12,900 years ago. from an interglacial climate back to a glacial climate, at a time when solar insolation at 65N was maximum, for 1200 years, with 70% of the cooling occurring in less than a decade, correlates with the largest change to the geomagnetic field in the last 20,000 years.

    At the time of occurrence of the YD, there is a large region in Sweden, Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion, abruptly changed polarity.

    The current Geomagnetic field generating model electrical not correct. The Geomagnetic field is not caused by a convection currents in the liquid core. That ‘model’ cannot explain the current or past geomagnetic field observations.

    A) North Pole Location Changes (post 1997)
    Starting in 1997…. The Geomagnetic North pole ‘drift’ suddenly increased by a factor of ten from 15km/yr to 55 km/yr.

    B) Geomagnetic field strength of the entire planet was decreasing in about 5 per cent century and starting in 1997, the geomagnetic field intensity of the planet started to decrease 5 per decade.

    What Caused Recent Acceleration of the North Magnetic Pole Drift?

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010EO510001/pdf
    The north magnetic pole (NMP) is the point at the Earth’s surface where the geomagnetic field is directed vertically downward. It drifts in time as a result of core convection, which sustains the Earth’s main magnetic field through the geodynamo process. During the 1990s the NMP drift speed suddenly increased from 15 kilometers per year at the start of the decade to 55 kilometers per year by the decade’s end.
    This acceleration was all the more surprising given that the NMP drift speed had remained less than 15 kilometers per year over the previous 150 years of observation. Why did NMP drift accelerate in the 1990s?

    http://cio.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/2000/QuatIntRenssen/2000QuatIntRenssen.pdf

    Younger Dryas Abrupt Cooling Event

    …we argue that this is indeed supported by three observations: (1) the abrupt and strong increase in residual 14C at the start of the Younger Dryas that seems to be too sharp to be caused by ocean circulation changes alone, (2) the Younger Dryas being part of an approxl. 2500 year quasi-cycle also found in the 14C record that is supposedly of solar origin, (3) the registration of the Younger Dryas in geological records in the tropics and the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.
    The Younger Dryas (YD, 12.9}11.6 ka cal BP, Alley et al., 1993) was a cold event that interrupted the general warming trend during the last deglaciation. The YD was not unique, as it represents the last of a number of events during the Late Pleistocene, all characterised by rapid and intensive cooling in the North Atlantic region (e.g., Bond et al., 1993; Anderson, 1997).

    Moreover, the YD seems to be part of a millennial-scale cycle of cool climatic events that extends into the Holocene (Denton and KarleHn, 1973; Harvey, 1980; Magny and Ru!aldi, 1995; O’Brien et al., 1995; Bond et al., 1997). Based on analysis of the 14C record from tree rings, Stuiver and Braziunas (1993) suggested that solar variability could be an important factor affecting climate variations during the Holocene (see also Magny, 1993, 1995a),

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003358947790031X

    The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion
    http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134%2FS0016793212050076#
    Manifestation of the gothenburg geomagnetic field excursion in sediments on the northwestern Central Russian Upland

    “Abstract
    The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion in a broad sense ranges from 13,750 to 12,350 years BP and ends with the Gothenburg Magnetic Flip at 12,400−12,350 years BP (= the Fjärås Stadial in southern Scandinavia) with an equatorial VGP position in the central Pacific.

    The Gothenburg Magnetic Flip is recorded in five closely dated and mutually correlated cores in Sweden. In all five cores, the inclination is completely reversed in the layer representing the Fjärås Stadial dated at 12,400−12,350 years BP. The cores were taken 160 km apart and represent both marine and lacustrine environments.”

    40

    • #

      Here is a definition for you to remember.

      Scientific theory “A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested and verified in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results.”

      Theory is the highest level of scientific explanation. Facts are part of theory and don’t usurp it.

      00

  • #
    sophocles

    The Younger Dryas is perhaps a Special Case. See

    https://cometresearchgroup.org/comets-diamonds-mammoths/

    20

  • #
    Mike

    …’we urgently need to get carbon emissions down’ , you lost me with that statement. Being a geologist you had me believing the catastrophic potential of a cosmic polar magnetic flip! then you introduced the evil CO2 emissions (?AGW induced) & the implication that we can ‘dial’ it down to save the planet prior to or synchronous with a major planetary reversal event! Hey we are just mere mortals. May have to leave this cosmic stuff to the universe-galaxy gods & tag along. 😊

    10

  • #
    CHRIS

    Recent research says that that the Magnetic Poles will flip at any time…which I agree with. This, coupled with solar activity/cycles, shows that a panic about CO2 levels in the atmosphere is a big fat joke.

    10

  • #

    UPDATE: There are criticisms that not all extinctions are occurring at 40K years ago as stated in the paper. This would be the weakest part of the claims of environmental catastrophe.

    Also: The lead author Alan Cooper got sacked recently for allegations that he bullied staff. He denies it. Skeptics ought be aware but also wary that this necessarily means much in a debate about data and observations. Ad homs are still ad homs.

    h/t Willie and Eric for further info

    20

    • #

      I have personal knowledge of the situation at Adelaide so I wont write too specifically but it is possible that this is a reason to be wary. I was surprised this was published as early as it was waiting for more to come out as time went on, hence the lack of my usual acerbic comments.

      10

    • #
      Frost Giant Rebellion

      ” There are criticisms that not all extinctions are occurring at 40K years ago as stated in the paper. This would be the weakest part of the claims of environmental catastrophe.”

      Not really because catastrophes seem to be pretty frequent. Not frequent enough to have prevented the historical record going back to the Sumer. But frequent enough to stop us getting our act together for any length of time. The scientific bias against the understanding of repeating disasters, leading to civilisational reversal, stops us being serious about solving a lot of our problems. Not the least of which is national defence. But we need to have this feeling that no ultra-rich parasitism is okay because we have bigger fish to fry. More important things to prepare for.

      I thought the Mammoth pretty much was taken out by the quaternary extinction event(s). And that the Mastodon was finally cleaned up around about the time of the bronze age collapse. Its not something I’d take to the betting table but archeologists have thought this one time or another. So its not one incident at 42000 years taken out all the big species.

      Prior to the quaternary extinction event North America was fundamentally uninhabitable. Not just because of the icy cold. But you had incredible predators. Like the flat nosed bear. And these terrifying packs of giant wolves. We are pretty used to thinking of ourselves as the Apex predator. Used to be that we were on the menu, and a lot later on than 42, 000 years ago.

      00

  • #
    Philip

    None of you people listen to Diamond of Oppenheimer Ranch Project ? He advocates pole reversal. He and Adapt 2030, on youtube, both doomsayers, but rally hard against co2 warriors.

    I thought in Geology 101 they taught us about pole reversal, I thought it was just a given and its happened many times

    10

  • #

    […] This article explains how new research has discovered that just 42000 years ago the Earth’s magnetic field reduced to a very low level and that this would have caused dramatic changes to the climate due to cosmic radiation entering the atmosphere. It could happen again but let’s hope not. […]

    00