Tides
We who live or have lived near an ocean or a gulf witness two high tides per day and two low tides per day. High and low tides occur twice daily due to the earth’s rotation. The time between high or low tides.
“Tides occur mainly due to the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and, to a lesser extent, the sun, on the surface of the Earth’s oceans. In most coastal areas around the world, there are two tidal cycles (meaning 2 low tides and 2 high tides) over the course of what is called a lunar day (24 h and 50 min), creating a gap of approximately 6 hours and 12 minutes between each low tide and high tide.” — TidesChart.com
Click on the tides table for Palacios, Texas, to view current data.
You will learn in the section titled Matter in Motion: Earth’s Changing Gravity tides continuously change the gravity over the oceans.
According to NASA, “The secular change in the planet’s rotation is a classical topic in geophysics. It goes back some 300 years to when Sir Edmond Halley first hypothesized that the moon was accelerating in its orbit. Most of Halley’s lunar acceleration was only apparent. It was actually the earth’s rotation slowing down, making the moon appear to accelerate. The moon does accelerate (strictly, it decelerates), but the larger effect is the earth’s rotational braking. This braking is caused by tidal friction. Throughout the earth’s history, tidal braking has played and will continue to play, a dominant role in the rotation. Currently, the secular change in the rotation rate increases the length of day by some 2.3 milliseconds per day per century.”
The Lunar Month
A lunar month is about 29.5 days and is the time it takes the Moon to pass through all of the Moon phases. The exact length varies because the orbit of the Moon is an elliptical (or oval) shape. — TimeAndDate.com
Exploring the Ripples of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere: Waves and Tides
“Earth’s upper atmosphere is a region of great activity and change. Some of this activity comes from above, from the Sun, and some of the activity comes from below, driven by the weather near Earth’s surface. But in the upper atmosphere, the activity from below and above mix, creating extraordinary variables in the ‘weather’ experienced by this region.” —
Magnetic Fields and Cosmic Rays
“The Earth’s magnetic field affects the upper atmosphere in various ways: It influences the conductivity in the ionosphere and ionospheric plasma transport processes, controls the geographic locations of the magnetic equator and auroral zones, and guides the coupling of the ionosphere-thermosphere system with the solar wind and magnetosphere.” Cnossen, I., Liu, H., & Lu, H. (2016). The whole atmosphere response to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field from 1900 to 2000: An example of “top-down” vertical coupling. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 121(13), 7781-7800. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JD024890
COPENHAGEN (AFP) — The earth’s climate has been significantly affected by the planet’s magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming.
“Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth’s magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics,” one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal.
He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a reconstruction of the prehistoric magnetic field 5,000 years ago based on data drawn from stalagmites and stalactites found in China and Oman.
ViewZone.com The earth’s magnetic field impacts climate: Danish study
Earth’s Magnetosphere
The magnetosphere is the region of space surrounding Earth where the dominant magnetic field is the magnetic field of Earth rather than the magnetic field of interplanetary space. The magnetosphere is formed by the interaction of the solar wind with Earth’s magnetic field. This figure illustrates the shape and size of Earth’s magnetic field, which is continually changing as it is buffeted by the solar wind.
It has been several thousand years since the Chinese discovered that certain magnetic minerals, called lodestones, would align in roughly the north-south direction. The reason for this effect wasn’t understood, though, until 1600, when William Gilbert published De Magnete and demonstrated that our Earth behaved like a giant magnet and loadstones were aligning with Earth’s magnetic field.
After several more centuries of investigation, it is now known that Earth’s magnetic field is quite complex, but still, to a great extent, can be viewed as a dipole, with north and south poles like a simple bar magnet. Earth’s magnetic axis, the dipole, is inclined at about 11 degrees to Earth’s spin axis. If space were a vacuum, Earth’s magnetic field would extend to infinity, getting weaker with distance, but in 1951, while studying why comet tails always point away from the sun, Ludwig Biermann discovered that the sun emits what we now call the solar wind. This continuous flow of plasma, comprised mostly of electrons and protons, with an embedded magnetic field, interacts with Earth and other objects in the solar system.
The pressure of the solar wind on Earth’s magnetic field compresses the field on the dayside of Earth and stretches the field into a long tail on the night side. The shape of the resulting distorted field has been compared to the appearance of water flowing around a rock in a stream. On the dayside of Earth, rather than extending to infinity, the magnetic field is confined to within about 10 Earth radii from the center of Earth, and on the nightside, the field is stretched out to hundreds of Earth radii, well beyond the orbit of the moon at 60 Earth radii.
The boundary between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field is called the magnetopause. The boundary is constantly in motion as Earth is buffeted by the ever-changing solar wind. While the magnetopause shields us to some extent from the solar wind, it is far from impenetrable, and energy, mass, and momentum are transferred from the solar wind to regions inside Earth’s magnetosphere. The interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field, and the influence of the underlying atmosphere and ionosphere, creates various regions of fields, plasmas, and currents inside the magnetosphere, such as the plasmasphere, the ring current, and radiation belts. The consequence is that conditions inside the magnetosphere are highly dynamic and create what we call “space weather” that can affect technological systems and human activities. For example, the radiation belts can have impacts on the operations of satellites, and particles and currents from the magnetosphere can heat the upper atmosphere and result in satellite drag that can affect the orbits of low-altitude Earth-orbiting satellites. Influences from the magnetosphere on the ionosphere can also affect communication and navigation systems. All of these effects are discussed elsewhere in more detail.
NOAA: EARTH’S MAGNETOSPHER
Volcanic Weather Effects
Volcanoes can impact climate change. During major explosive eruptions huge amounts of volcanic gas, aerosol droplets, and ash are injected into the stratosphere. Injected ash falls rapidly from the stratosphere — most of it is removed within several days to weeks — and has little impact on climate change. But volcanic gases like sulfur dioxide can cause global cooling, while volcanic carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, has the potential to promote global warming.
The most significant climate impacts from volcanic injections into the stratosphere come from the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid, which condenses rapidly in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols. The aerosols increase the reflection of radiation from the Sun back into space, cooling the Earth’s lower atmosphere or troposphere.
USGS: Volcanoes Can Affect Climate
In 536 CE, European observers documented a mysterious cloud which dimmed the sun’s light for at least a year and presumably longer. For a long time, scientists speculated as to the cause of this dust veil. Finally, it seems the culprits have been identified.
Volcanic activity in and around 536 CE led to severe cold and famine, which continued until AD 660. Speculatively, this set of events has been linked to large-scale societal crises around the globe. Using a coupled aerosol-climate model, with eruption parameters constrained by recently re-dated ice core records and historical observations of the aerosol cloud, scientists recently reconstructed the radiative forcing resulting from a sequence of two massive volcanic eruptions in 536 and 540 CE.
Based on this, they have estimated that the decadal-scale Northern Hemisphere (NH) extra-tropical radiative forcing from this volcanic “double event” was more significant than others identified and reconstructed in the last 1200 years.
Medieval Histories: The Double Volcanic Event in AD 536 and AD 540
Matter in Motion: Earth’s Changing Gravity
GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) relies on two identical satellites, each about the size of a car. As the satellites fly approximately 220 kilometers (137 miles) apart, one following the other, a microwave ranging system monitors the distance between them to within a micron — smaller than a red blood cell. Scientists can map gravity anywhere on the Earth’s surface by measuring tiny changes in distance between the two satellites as each of them speeds up and slows down in response to gravitational force.
Because scientists can’t see, feel, or directly observe gravitational forces, they map the Earth’s gravity using a mathematical model that describes an imaginary spherical surface called the geoid. The geoid represents oceans as smooth, continuous surfaces unaffected by tides, winds, or currents. It creates a locally horizontal surface against which scientists can measure the downward pull of gravity.
Gravity is determined by how much mass a given material has, so the more mass an object has, the stronger its gravitational pull. For example, granite is a very dense material with a high level of mass, so it will exert a greater pull than the same volume of a less dense material, such as water. Earth’s mass is distributed between various landforms and features — such as mountain ranges, oceans, and deep sea trenches — that all have different mass, which creates an uneven gravity field.
Excerpts from NASA Earth Data | Matter in Motion: Earth’s Changing Gravity
Milankovitch Cycles
Dare I introduce scientific causes for the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? You were probably taught about the gravity constant. Will learning about the variability of gravity on Earth offend you?
Summary
Human nature craves simple solutions to complex problems. Today’s self-appointed climate experts settle on anthropogenic climate change/global warming, an unscientific belief system based solely on atmospheric CO2.
The creation of the universe did not pose a challenge to our Creator. Until recent years, notable scientists subscribed to a mythical Big Bang and evolution. In my own lifetime, astronomers believed the Milky Way Galaxy was the sum of all creation. Day by day, a growing number of scientists confess that their observations and research bring them to conclude all the universe proves the facts of intelligent design.
On the subject of CO2, I recommend subscribing to The CO2 Coalition of Scientists imminently qualified to discuss this atmospheric gas that is essential to all life on Earth.
- Discovery Institute: Scientists Speak Out About Evidence of Intelligent Design in Nature
- Discovery Institute: What Is the Science Behind Intelligent Design?
- Flag & Cross: Famous Atheist Richard Dawkins’ Former ‘Right-Hand Man’ Converts to Christianity After Realizing the Truth About Jesus
Two additional scientific websites by Professor David Dilley I recommend:
All of the above is within my point of view.
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 