Science "game changer," new peer reviewed study finds Antarctic ice thicker than previously thought. Climate models say ice "should be shrinking" due to global warming, but observed science finds Antarctic ice thicker and growing each year. Scientist says, "We were biased toward thinner ice," Nature Geoscience-Guardian

"“We were biased towards thinner ice. It was a bit like a doctor diagnosing a condition by prodding the skin”"...said Dr. Williams of  IMAS. 
 
11/24/14, "Antarctic ice thicker than previously thought, study finds," Oliver Milman, Guardian.com "First of its kind robotic survey of underside of sea ice floes reveals denser ice fringing the continent."

"Groundbreaking 3D mapping of previously inaccessible areas of the Antarctic has found that the sea ice fringing the vast continent is thicker than previous thought.

Two expeditions to Antarctica by scientists from the UK, USA and Australia analysed an area of ice spanning 500,000 metres squared, using a robot known as SeaBed.

The survey discovered ice thickness average between 1.4m and 5.5m, with a maximum ice thickness of 16m. Scientists also discovered that 76% of the mapped ice was ‘deformed’ – meaning that huge slabs of ice have crashed into each other to create larger, denser bodies of ice.

The team behind the research, published in Nature Geoscience, have hailed it as an important breakthrough in better understanding the vast icy wilderness. The findings will provide a starting point to further work to discover how ice thickness, as well as extent, is changing.

Previously, measurements of Antarctic ice thickness were hindered by technological constraints. Ice breaking ships could only go so far into ice to measure depth, while no-one had drilled much more than 5.5m down into the ice to extract a core for analysis.

SeaBed, an autonomous underwater vehicle (or AUV), was used by the research team to analyse ice thickness at an underwater depth of 20 to 30 metres. Driven in a “lawnmower” pattern, the two-metre long robot used upward-looking sonar to measure and map the underside of sea ice floes. Oceanography robots are usually focused on the sea floor.

The mapping took place during two expeditions, in 2010 and 2012, that took researchers to the coastal areas of the Weddell, Bellingshausen, and Wilkes Land regions of Antarctica. The teams came from the British Antarctic Survey, the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies in Tasmania and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US.

Dr Guy Williams, from IMAS, said the research is an important step in gauging changes to Antarctic ice.

“Sea ice is an important indicator of the polar climate but measuring its thickness has been tricky,” said Williams, the report’s co-author. “Along with the satellite data, it was a bit like taking an X-ray of the ice, although we haven’t X-rayed much of it, just a postage stamp.

“The key thing is that this is a game changer because it was previously very challenging to measure ice depth. We were limited to visual observation from the decks of ships or ice cores and take measures.

“It was a lot of hard work and quite crude, which means we were biased towards thinner ice. It was a bit like a doctor diagnosing a condition by prodding the skin.”

Williams said researchers will now make routine surveys of ice thickness to determine changes over a long period of time. As well as tracking alterations due to climate change, the research will be of interest to marine biologists due to the creatures, such as krill, that inhabit the region.

“This is a big step forward in our knowledge but we’ll need to have longer missions in larger areas,” he said. “What we ultimately want is a team of autonomous robots that self deploy all across the Antarctic, like the spokes in a wheel.”

Hanumant Singh, an engineering scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution whose lab designed, built and operated the AUV, said: “Putting an AUV together to map the underside of sea ice is challenging from a software, navigation and acoustic communications standpoint.

“SeaBed’s manoeuvrability and stability made it ideal for this application where we were doing detailed floe-scale mapping and deploying, as well as recovering in close-packed ice conditions.

“It would have been tough to do many of the missions we did, especially under the conditions we encountered, with some of the larger vehicles.”" via Climate Depot

================================

"According to climate models, the region's sea ice should be shrinking each year because of global warming. Instead, satellite observations show the ice is expanding, and the continent's sea ice has set new records for the past three winters."...
 
11/24/14, "Robot Sub Finds Surprisingly Thick Antarctic Sea Ice," by Becky Oskin, Senior Writer, Live Science

"Antarctica's ice paradox has yet another puzzling layer. Not only is the amount of sea ice increasing each year, but an underwater robot now shows the ice is also much thicker than was previously thought, a new study reports.
 
The discovery adds to the ongoing mystery of Antarctica's expanding sea ice. According to climate models, the region's sea ice should be shrinking each year because of global warming. Instead, satellite observations show the ice is expanding, and the continent's sea ice has set new records for the past three winters. At the same time, Antarctica's ice sheet (the glacial ice on land) is melting and retreating.

Measuring sea ice thickness is a crucial step in understanding what's driving the growth of sea ice, said study co-author Ted Maksym, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Climate scientists need to know if the sea ice expansion also includes underwater thickening. [Album: Stunning Photos of Antarctic Ice] 

"If we don't know how much ice is there is, we can't validate the models we use to understand the global climate," Maksym told Live Science. "It looks like there are significant areas of thick ice that are probably not accounted for."

The findings were published today (Nov. 24) in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Like icebergs, much of Antarctica's floating sea ice in underwater, hidden from satellites that track seasonal sea ice. And it's difficult to take direct measurements from ships or drilling, because the thickest ice is also the hardest to reach, Maksym said.

The researchers were stuck aboard an icebreaker in 20-foot-thick (6 meters) pack ice for more than a week after taking advantage of a lead, or open water, that accessed thick ice, he said. "Obviously that carried some risk, and we were stuck until the wind changed direction again," he said.
 
Pinging the ice

Over the last four years, the international group of researchers has mapped the bottom of sea ice with an underwater robot, or autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), during two research cruises offshore Antarctica. The AUV can swim to a depth of about 100 feet (30 m) and has upward-looking sonar to survey the bottom of the sea ice.icebreaker offshore Antarctica.

"With the AUV, you can get under ice that is either difficult to access or difficult to drill, and in each region, we found some really thick ice, thicker than had been measured anywhere else," Maksym said.

Almost all of the sea ice that forms during the Antarctic winter melts during the summer, so scientists had assumed most of the ice never grew very thick. Previous studies suggested the ice was usually 3 to 6 feet (1 to 2 m) thick, with a few rare spots reaching up to 16 feet (5 m) in thickness. For comparison, most of the Arctic sea ice is twice as thick (6 to 9 feet, or 2 to 3 m), with some regions covered with 12 to 15 feet (4 to 5 m) of ice.

The robot sub surveys, which were spot-checked by drilling and shipboard tests, suggest Antarctica's average ice thickness is considerably higher than previous estimates. On average, the thickness of the ice was 4.6 to 18 feet (1.4 to 5.5 m). In the three regions it surveyed, the robot sub found that deformed, thickened ice accounted for at least half of and as much as 76 percent of the total ice volume, the researchers report.

"Our study shows that we're probably missing some of this thick ice, and we need to try to account for that when we try to compare what we see in models and satellites to what we see in the field," Maksym said.

The thickest ice measured during the survey was about 65 feet (20 m) thick, in the Bellingshausen Sea, Maksym told Live Science. In the Weddell Sea, the maximum ice thickness hit more than 45 feet (14 m), and offshore of Wilkes Land, the ice was about 53 feet (16 m) thick.
 
Next steps

These thick, craggy floes likely wouldn't exist without the fierce winds that circle Antarctica from west to east, the researchers said. Winter storms bash up the ice, freezing and reforming the rubble into new, thicker ice. "It must have been crunched up a tremendous amount and [the floes] piled up on top of each other," Maksym said. "The ice can generate enormous amounts of force if you have these strong winds. [The wind] is like an accordion, stretching it out and squishing it back together again."

The researchers' next step is to measure how much of Antarctica's total sea ice this thick ice represents. Maksym said it could be a "reasonably significant area of the pack."

The sea ice growth around Antarctica has averaged about 1.2 percent to 1.8 percent per decade between 1979 and 2012, according to the 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report. The increases are concentrated primarily in the Ross Sea in western Antarctica.

Sea ice in the nearby Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas has significantly decreased. Researchers suspect these regional differences could result from stronger winds or increased meltwater from the Antarctic ice sheet, or a combination of both factors."

======================

11/24/14, "Thick and deformed Antarctic sea ice mapped with autonomous underwater vehicles," Nature Geoscience
. 
"Satellites have documented trends in Antarctic sea-ice extent and its variability for decades, but estimating sea-ice thickness in the Antarctic from remote sensing data remains challenging. In situ observations needed for validation of remote sensing data and sea-ice models are limited; most have been restricted to a few point measurements on selected ice floes, or to visual shipboard estimates. Here we present three-dimensional (3D) floe-scale maps of sea-ice draft for ten floes, compiled from two springtime expeditions by an autonomous underwater vehicle to the near-coastal regions of the Weddell, Bellingshausen, and Wilkes Land sectors of Antarctica. Mean drafts range from 1.4 to 5.5 m, with maxima up to 16 m. We also find that, on average, 76% of the ice volume is deformed ice. Our surveys indicate that the floes are much thicker and more deformed than reported by most drilling and ship-based measurements of Antarctic sea ice. We suggest that thick ice in the near-coastal and interior pack may be under-represented in existing in situ assessments of Antarctic sea ice and hence, on average, Antarctic sea ice may be thicker than previously thought."

 

.

Obama speech to Brisbane college students promoting the $1 billion a day imaginary global warming industry was result of last minute request he made of his Australian hosts. Despite repeated Australian requests, White House officials refused to provide text of the speech in advance or even a summary-The Australian

In 2012 alone $1 billion a day was spent on the notion of man caused global warming.

"Despite repeated Australian requests, White House officials refused to provide a text of the speech to their Australian hosts in advance, and did not provide a summary of what would be contained in the speech."...

11/21/14, "Obama ignored Embassy's warning's on climate change speech," The Weekend Australian, Greg Sheridan

"Barack Obama defied the ­advice of his embassy in Canberra to deliver a stinging attack on the Abbott government’s climate policies in Brisbane last weekend.

The US embassy, under the leadership of ambassador John Berry, advised the President, through his senior staff, not to couch his climate change comments in a way that would be seen as disobliging to the Abbott government, sources have revealed.

When The Weekend Australian put this information to the US embassy, a spokesman said: “As is the case with all presidential speeches, President Obama's remarks at the University of Queensland in Brisbane were prepared by the White House.

It is normal practice when the US President makes an overseas visit that the ambassador in the country he is visiting is consulted about the contents of major speeches. It is unusual, though not unprecedented, for an embassy’s advice to be ignored.

The Obama speech in Brisbane was added to the President’s program at the last minute. During his extensive talks with Tony Abbott in Beijing at APEC, 

Mr. Obama did not make any mention of a desire to make a speech, 

or of any of the contentious climate change content of the speech.

Only in Naypyidaw, in Myanmar, immediately prior to the leaders travelling to Brisbane for the G20 summit, did the US party demand that the President make a speech 

and that it be to an audience of young people
.
At the speech, the President did not ­acknowledge the presence of Governor-General Peter Cosgrove.

...[click excerpts to enlarge]











=============================

Some excerpts above are from FreeRepublic.com

11/21/14, "Obama ignored Embassy's warning's on climate change speech," The Weekend Australian, Greg Sheridan

====================

Ed. note: The Australian is subscription. Part of the Australian story above was copied on the GWPF site. I found a few additional excerpts from the Australian article at Free Republic. What they had I copied above. The two portions above with grey background are screenshots from the article posted on GWPF. For whatever reason, GWPF is among sites along with PamelaGeller.com, DemocratsAgainstUNAgenda21.com and others from which I can't copy and paste. One is free to imagine why someone would want to limit public exposure to these websites. via WUWT, via Climate Depot

Obama Ignored US Embassy’s Warnings On Climate Change Speech - See more at: http://www.thegwpf.com/obama-ignored-us-embassys-warnings-on-climate-change-speech/#sthash.oiHe5Dgf.dpuf

In filthy China citizens are forced to live amid mountains of trash and stench in streets-UK Express

11/21/14, "As Britain sends tonnes of waste to China…residents wade through dirty streets," UK Express, Helen Barratt

"Importing thousands of tonnes of waste from British households has left this Chinese city with a dirty habit."

"These filthy photographs show monstrous mounting piles of waste overflowing into streets and even blocking roads in the city of Shenzhen in southern China's Guangdong Province.

The smell is so bad nauseous residents have taken to wearing masks.

 

 

Tonnes of plastic recycling being sent from Britain and other European countries is being blamed for the backlog, as tough EU laws have forced local authorities and businesses on the continent to recycle more.

 

As a result, migrant labour, including council staff, are jumping from being council rubbish sorters to private companies where they can earn more cash.

And that has left Shenzhen with domestically-produced rubbish piling up on the city's streets.

One local Sun Fu, 33, said: "We have been forced to wear masks to deal with the smell, and sometimes roads can be blocked as the rubbish heaps topple over when they get too high. Something has to be done about this."

While the country is drowning in a mass of waste, China drives the global waste trade, importing more than 3 million tonnes of waste plastic and 15 million tonnes of paper and cardboard a year including vast amounts coming from the UK.

As landfill charges are rising in UK, it is becoming cheaper to send waste to China on the vast number of shipping containers arriving in Britain with Chinese exports.

 
Freight experts in Britain said the return waste trade to China is accelerating rapidly." via Free Rep.

 

 

 

    

Images: 

"A resident tries to mask the smell of rotting waste in China," Cen photos
"China is struggling to maintain its waste management work"
"A van is trapped, surrounded by waste in the road" 
"Residents have been complaining to the council for months"

"Traffic tries to dodge the mounds of waste" 



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US government will finance fossil fuel production in Ukraine, announcement made during Biden trip, no mention of wind or solar. From 2009 to 2013 US production of crude oil on fed. land dropped 6%, natural gas dropped 28%

11/21/14, "WH Vows to Boost Fossil Fuel Production – in Ukraine," CNS News, Penny Starr

"The Obama administration, no fan of fossil fuels, has delayed a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline for six years, but today it announced its support for fossil fuel production in Ukraine.

“We are supporting Ukrainian efforts to enhance its own energy production, including through technical assistance to help restructure Ukraine’s national oil and gas company, Naftogaz, and through the introduction of new technologies to boost outputs from existing and new conventional gas fields in Ukraine,” says a fact sheet released by the White House.

The fact sheet, which lists all the ways the U.S. is assisting Ukraine, was issued in conjunction with Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to that country.

There is no mention in the fact sheet of developing alternative energy sources such as solar or wind energy generation in Ukraine, as the Obama administration insists the U.S. must do.

Moscow cut off gas supplies to Ukraine over unpaid debts in June, and Ukraine is now relying on domestic supplies and shipments from other countries.

The development of oil and gas resources on public lands in the United States has declined under the Obama administration, which is making a multi-billion investment in renewable energy.

U.S. production of crude oil and natural gas on state and privately owned lands rose from 2009 to 2013 by 61 percent and 33 percent, respectively, according to the Congressional Research Service. But on federal lands and offshore areas, production of crude oil dropped by 6 percent and natural gas by 28 percent over the same period.

While he's in Ukraine, Biden will announce that the U.S. is giving $3 million to the United Nation’s World Food Program to help “displaced” people and others suffering from the ongoing conflict with Russia in eastern Ukraine.

That brings the total U.S. financial commitment to Ukraine to $320 million for the year. “The United States stands ready to continue to work with our partners to provide Ukraine with sufficient financing as it stabilizes its economy and carries out urgently needed reforms,” the fact sheet states.

The fact sheet also includes a wide range of other assistance, from defending human rights to trade diversification.

According to the White House, Biden, who is traveling with his wife, Jill, is meeting today with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and will next travel to Turkey."



.

Jacksonville, Florida set new cold record two mornings in a row. 'Any thoughts that the winter of 2014-2015 wouldn't be as bone-chilling as last year's may have just been put on thin ice.'-news4jax

11/20/14, "141 year old cold weather record falls in Jacksonville," news4jax.com, Blake Mathews, Weather producer, meteorologist, Jacksonville, Fla.

"24 degrees breaks old record of 30 set in 1873!"

"Thursday morning not only broke an "ancient" record from 1873, but we also dropped to the second coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of November in Jacksonville. 

According to the National Weather Service, for the second morning in a row, Jacksonville set a new cold weather record. Thursday mornings temperature dropped to a bone chilling 24 degrees breaking the old record of 30 degrees set in 1873.

If that wasn't cold enough for you, Thursday's 24 degrees also marks the second lowest temperature ever recorded in the month of November, beaten out only by the year 1970 when the mercury dropped to 21 degrees in Jacksonville in November.

Some areas around Woodbine, GA flirted with the upper teens as the temperature officially there dropped to 20 degrees.

Any thoughts that the winter of 2014-2015 wouldn't be as bone-chilling as last year's may have just been put on thin ice. And it's only November.

Tuesday morning was the coldest Nov. 19 across the United States since 1976, some 38 years, according to Dr. Ryan Maue, meteorologist with WeatherBell. The average temperature across the entire country was just 19.4°.

An astounding 226 million people in all 50 states, that includes the tropical paradise of Hawaii, were below freezing at the same time putting an exclamation point on an already paralyzing winter season -- that hasn't even officially started yet.

Even Florida didn't escape the icy grip. 

The thermometer at Jacksonville International Airport plummeted down to 27° Wednesday morning breaking the old record of 28° in 2008. Thursday's record of 30° also appears to be in jeopardy; a record that dates back to 1873, or 141 years ago.

Even the snow covering the ground is amazing. Roughly 50.4 percent of the lower 48 was covered with snow -- more than double the amount normally seen for this time of year. At this exact same time last year, just a scant 12.1 percent of the country had snow on the ground....

Jeff Masters is meteorology director at the online site Weather Underground. He says the low temperatures are January-like instead of what's normal for November. He says it's 15 degrees to 35 degrees below average over a big chunk of the country, thanks to arctic air.

According to the Climate Prediction Center 1,998 cold weather records were set over the past seven days with 1,360 of those records being low max highs. That means that the temperature was the coldest day time high ever observed for that day."...via Drudge





.

Chinese Communist gov. of trusted Obama 'CO2 partner' Xi Jinping sends reporters to spy on college profs to ensure no talk of why gov. officials are so rich, etc. Pressure comes as US universities such as Duke and Stanford open China campuses-AP

11/21/14, "Chinese state media give profs a chilling warning," AP via Washington Post

"Over two weeks, the Communist Party-run Liaoning Daily newspaper sent reporters to sit in on dozens of university lectures all over the country looking for what the paper said were professors “being scornful of China.” 

During visits to more than 20 schools, the regional paper wrote last week, it found exactly what it said it was looking for: Some professors compared Mao Zedong, first leader of China’s communist government, to ancient emperors, a blasphemy to party ideology upholding Mao as a break from the country’s feudal past. Other scholars were caught pointing out the party’s failures after taking power in 1949. Some repeatedly praised “Western” ideas such as a separation of powers in government.

“Dear teachers, because your profession demands something higher of you, and because of the solemnity and particularity of the university classroom, please do not speak this way about China!” implored the article, since widely distributed on social media throughout China.

Chinese professors have long endured monitoring and some degree of political interference, but this kind of public shaming was unprecedented in China’s recent history, said Zhang Wen, a journalism professor at the University of Science and Technology Beijing. For some, it evokes memories of the bloody political purges of the Cultural Revolution 40 years ago.

Since taking power last year, President Xi Jinping’s government has tightened controls over a wide range of society, from artists to churches. And while academics have traditionally been held up as respected voices of authority in Chinese society, many view the public investigation as an order to watch what they say in classrooms, Zhang said.

“I think this is a very bad thing,” he said. “Teachers need some freedom to interpret facts. If not, why have teachers then? Students can just read books. I think this is definitely a warning to us.”

Just months after Xi took power last year, Chinese authorities outlined seven topics that professors shouldn’t talk about in their classes, including judicial independence, civil society and the wealth of government officials, according to Xia Yeliang, a former Peking University economics professor who was fired last year for supporting democratic reforms in China.

In addition to Xia, at least two other Beijing-based professors have been disciplined for their teachings about sensitive topics such as the Arab Spring uprisings and constitutionalism in China, Zhang said.

Economics professor Ilham Tohti was even sentenced to life in prison in September on separatism charges in part for championing the rights of the country’s Muslim Uighur minority during his lectures at Minzu University in Beijing. That sentence was upheld by a higher court Friday.

“I don't think there's any question we're in the midst of a renewed crackdown on dissent,” said David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong-based China Media Project, which studies the practice of journalism in the country. “It seems there is a broader attempt to limit discussion on a whole range of issues in academia and in the press that the party regards as sensitive.”
 
The growing pressure hits as several U.S. universities, including Duke and Stanford, open campuses in China, hoping to tap into the country’s enormous and growing pool of students.

Last year, more than 130 faculty members at Wellesley College in Massachusetts signed a letter warning that firing Xia would jeopardize a new academic partnership between the college and Peking University.

Several U.S. institutions, including the University of Chicago and Penn State, have ended their relationships with the Chinese government-run Confucius Institute, which has opened branches in hundreds of universities and schools around the world. U.S. professors have complained that instructors at the institutes have promoted a rosy, state-approved vision of China and are trained to avoid discussion of sensitive subjects such as Tibet and the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Bruce Lincoln, a University of Chicago religious studies professor, said he and others there objected to the Confucius Institute independently running its program and offering classes for school credit.

“If they’re partnering with an American university and ... are supplying the teachers and the curriculum, and the university calls it one of their courses, I think something terrible is going on,” Lincoln said. “It’s as if we let the tobacco industry offer its course in health sciences.”

In China, the Liaoning Daily article has also sparked furious debate on Chinese social media about the need for intellectual autonomy versus patriotism in academia.

Zhang Ming, a politics professor at Renmin University in Beijing, noted in a rebuttal that the story doesn’t cite specific professors or schools, only saying reporters visited classrooms in Beijing, Shanghai and three other cities, during which “they listened to nearly 100 expert classes.”

“They didn’t say who said what, they just said the problem was big,” Zhang said. “It’s a very strange thing.”

Also, Chinese professors asked why the story came out in a northeast Chinese branch of state media rather than the People’s Daily or another national publication. Liaoning Daily declined Thursday to comment on their story.

In its article, the paper said it was responding to reports that many professors were “blackening” the country in their lectures.

“We felt we had to write this open letter so that our teachers could better consider questions like these: How should China be taught objectively and accurately in the classroom?” the article read. 

“How can students be taught all at once with expert knowledge and a bright attitude?”

According to Xia, now a visiting fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian U.S. think tank, the article showed the Chinese government was no longer hiding what had always been private or unspoken pressure on academics. It was an unmistakable move by the government, he said, to rein in public discourse in a corner of Chinese society that has up until now enjoyed more freedom.

“The way they’re doing it, they’re trying to terrorize Chinese academics,” Xia said. “This is like in the Cultural Revolution. If you have foreign connections, they can say you’re anti-Chinese. They can treat you like enemies.”"

Peer reviewed study finds sun's magnetic field significantly affects number of lightning strikes in UK-Environmental Research Letters-BBC

"The study has been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters."

11/18/14, "Sun's magnetic field boosts lightning strikes across the UK," BBC, Matt McGrath

"The number of lightning strikes across the UK has been significantly affected by solar activity, according to new research.

Scientists say the Sun's magnetic field is bending the Earth's own field, increasing our exposure to cosmic rays.

These rays are believed to increase the number of thunderclouds and trigger lightning bolts in some locations.

Over five years, the UK experienced 50% more strikes when the Earth's magnetic field was affected by the Sun.

Fields of influence
 
The manner is which lightning bolts are triggered has long puzzled scientists as the air is known to be a good insulator of electricity. 

Something else needs to come into play to conduct the electrical charges built up in thunder clouds down to the ground.

Since the 1990s, researchers have speculated that the magnetic activity of the Sun could be linked to lightning on Earth.

Current theories hold that high energy particles called galactic cosmic rays provide the necessary link that lets the current flow into a lightning bolt. 

This latest work suggests that the orientation of the Sun's magnetic field is playing a significant role in the number of strikes. 

The researchers believe the field is like a bar magnet, so as our star spins around sometimes the field points towards the Earth and sometimes away. 

"What we found was there is significantly more lightning in the UK when the field is pointing towards the Sun than when its pointing away which was surprising," said Dr Matt Owens from the University of Reading, the lead author on the study.

"What we think is happening is that the Sun's magnetic field is pulling or pushing on the Earth's field and that's letting energetic charged particles down into the atmosphere at different locations and the idea is that these actually trigger lightning."

"For lightning, you need a thin conducting channel like a wire, and galactic cosmic rays can provide this thin column of ionisation in the atmosphere."

The researchers found that over a five year period between 2001 and 2006, the UK experienced a 50% increase in thunder and lightning rates when the solar magnetic field was pointed away from the Earth. 

In Summer, the rates were higher, with an almost doubling of lightning strikes in July compared to when the magnetic field was pointing in the other direction.

Because of good quality records, the scientists confined their work to the UK. They believe that the same effect is playing out over the globe but with different results, so while lightning might increase over Britain, it may have decreased over Canada or Siberia.

Lightning forecast 
 
While the researchers admit that the mechanics of how cosmic rays might trigger lightning is still a theory, they believe that their discovery of an association with the movements of the Sun's magnetic fields, could lead to better predictions of thunder and lightning events. 

As the nature of the Sun's magnetic fields are well known, meteorologists could incorporate this information into weather forecasts. 

"It has real implications," said Dr Owens.

"If you can get a weather forecast good to a week ahead then yes I think we could say something about lightning rates a week ahead as well."

Recent research has also focussed on how climate change is likely to increase the amount of lightning strikes around the world. Dr Owens believes that the mechanism that his study identifies still holds, regardless of the temperature. 

"If you heat up the atmosphere you've got more convection, more water vapour, you get more thunderclouds," he said. 

"If you've got more thunderclouds, you get more lighting but I still think the triggering of that lightning could be dependent upon the Sun and its magnetic field."

The researchers now want to extend their work to look at longer historical records to see if the correlation still stands. 

According to Dr Owens, some scientists are keen to take a more "Benjamin Franklin" approach to prove the theory.

"The fundamental lightning triggering experiments are difficult to do in the lab and difficult to measure in situ," he said. 

"Some of my colleagues have been trying to launch charge sensors on balloons, through thunder clouds - it makes our health and safety officers sweat!" 

The study has been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters."

============================
===========================

11/18/14, "Modulation of UK lightning by heliospheric magnetic field polarity," iopscience.iop.org, ERL  

"Abstract

Observational studies have reported solar magnetic modulation of terrestrial lightning on a range of time scales, from days to decades. The proposed mechanism is two-step: lightning rates vary with galactic cosmic ray (GCR) flux incident on Earth, either via changes in atmospheric conductivity and/or direct triggering of lightning. GCR flux is, in turn, primarily controlled by the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) intensity. Consequently, global changes in lightning rates are expected. This study instead considers HMF polarity, which doesnʼt greatly affect total GCR flux. Opposing HMF polarities are, however, associated with a 40–60% difference in observed UK lightning and thunder rates. As HMF polarity skews the terrestrial magnetosphere from its nominal position, this perturbs local ionospheric potential at high latitudes and local exposure to energetic charged particles from the magnetosphere. We speculate as to the mechanism(s) by which this may, in turn, redistribute the global location and/or intensity of thunderstorm activity."

"1. Introduction

The electrification of thunderclouds is generally accepted

to result from strong updrafts in the mixed-phase region (e.g., [4]), where the presence of both a downward flux of graupel and and upward flux of ice crystals can produce charge transfer and separation by collisions [24]. Indeed, parameterization of these processes [8] in numerical weather prediction models has led to successful forecasts of lightning flash rates [30]. A number of observational studies, however, suggest lightning flash rates may also be modulated to some degree by external factors such as solar magnetic activity [25], though the mechanism(s) and even sign of response are still under debate. On solar-cycle timescales, both positive [27] and negative [21] correlations have been found between sunspot number and thunderstorm activity. On shorter time scales, lightning over the USA has been found to decrease following impulsive reductions in galactic cosmic ray (GCR) flux by strong heliospheric magnetic field (HMF) enhancements [6]. Conversely, smaller, recurrent HMF structures appear to increase UK lightning and thunder rates, possibly via lower energy solar particles compensating for the GCR decrease [26]. These thunderstorm trends have all been linked with changes in energetic charged particle flux incident on Earth and hence changes in global atmospheric conductivity [9] and/or global lightning trigger rates [22].

The HMF is formed by the solar wind dragging coronal magnetic loops anti-sunward while both magnetic foot points remain rooted on the rotating solar surface [19]. Thus the large-scale HMF forms an Archimedean spiral, making an angle of approximately 45° to the Earth–Sun line in near-Earth space. If the overall polarity of the HMF is pointing toward (T ) the Sun, near-Earth HMF will have magnetic field components and in geocentric solar ecliptic coordinates (where X points towards the Sun, Y points away from Earthʼs orbital motion and Z is normal to the ecliptic plane), whereas away polarity (A) will result in and . At any one instant, there are typically 2 or 4 large-scale T or A 'sectors' in Earthʼs orbital plane, meaning the Earth is embedded in a given sector for an average of 7–14 days (e.g., [18]). This study investigates the effect of HMF polarity on lightning occurrence."

"2. Data

There are a number of methods for detecting thunderstorm activity, but long-term studies at mid-to-high geomagnetic latitudes are best performed by radio networks, which detect radio sferics from lightning strokes. In this study, lightning stroke rates, R_L, were obtained from the UK Met Officeʼs arrival time difference (ATD) network of radio receivers in Western Europe [15]. It detects the VLF component of broad-band emission ('sferics') from lightning and uses the relative timing to determine location. The ATD system is primarily sensitive to cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning over Europe, but can detect lightning worldwide with reduced sensitivity. In order to ensure uniformity of the lightning measurements and enable more direct comparison with the UK-based thunder-day data described below, lightning data are limited to events within a radius of 500 km of central England. Ongoing development of lightning detection systems makes long-term thunderstorm activity studies problematic. However, between September 2000 and May 2005 the ATD system was not subject to any modifications affecting its sensitivity. After this period the radio network was expanded and increased in sensitivity to form ATDnet, which detects a larger number of smaller sferics. During May 2005 to 2007, this increase was only moderate, with the annual mean of R_L increasing by around 50%. We include these data in the study by normalizing R_L after May 2005 by 0.64, though accept that this results in the inclusion of smaller lightning events than in the initial period. (We note that our results are largely unchanged whether these later data are included or not.) Post May 2007, further developments to ATDnet meant the sensitivity increased by around 400%. Without any means to discriminate between CG lightning and smaller, inter-cloud lightning, these data are dominated by qualitatively different lightning events from pre-2007. In order to not preferentially emphasize any one season, we only consider whole years of data, 2001 through 2006 inclusive. Data are converted to daily mean lightning stroke rates to remove any diurnal variations and to enable direct comparison with R_TH data.

Audible thunder records from UK Met Office manned observing sites can serve as an independent, if low fidelity, validation of radio observations. This observation is subject to false positives (such as vehicle noise or explosions) and is of a lower time resolution compared with the ATD lightning data, but crucially its detection efficiency is not subject to the ionospheric effects which could potentially affect R_L. We compute a 'thunder day rate', R_TH, defined as the fraction of UK manned stations which reported thunder on a given day. Any stations which did not report a single instance of thunder in a given year were assumed to not be logging such information and excluded from the study. Note that R_TH will be affected by the mean altitude, and hence audibility, of thunderstorms over the UK and thus may be sensitive to somewhat different forms/intensities of thunderstorm activity than R_L."...







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