Interplanetary Magnetic Field
As you can see, today the Earth is crossing between sectors where the magnetic polarity in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF shown by red and blue field lines) reverses. It’s very gusty and windy here too, how is it in everyone elses part of the world?
Just for fun and interest, please would everyone who visits leave a report of their approx location and the wind conditions yesterday and today, plus any observations of unusual weather in the last few days. This request includes the many people who watch this blog but don’t usually post a comment. 🙂
Come on, it’ll only take a minute.
Thanks.
H/T to Ulric Lyons.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Leeds, Yorkshire, UK. Very gusty today. Strong random direction breezes and gusts at times yesterday. Sudden downpour and thunderstorm on wednesday evening after a long period of calm warm weather.
Planetary K-Index
Wet and windy here in Oxfordshire after several weeks of hot weather. Interesting article on space weather here, collapse of the Thermosphere.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/15jul_thermosphere/
Very windy, as usual, in Sintra, Portugal.
Intense fog and rain, a bit unusual for mid July, but not an “unprecendent event”.
Here you go TB, the weather for Sunny Sussex:-
JULY TMP WD DIR RAIN
DAY (°C) SPD (mm)
(m/s)
—————————–
12 22.8 6.4 SW 2.9
13 20.1 9.8 SE 3.4
14 19.7 9.4 SE 1.2
15 18.7 8.5 S 4.9
16 17.0 13.1 S NIL
Yes Rog, wet and windy in many places in the N.Hemisphere. It is not to do with the SBC though.
You’re the expert with short term space weather Ulric. Tell us more please. 🙂
SBC is ‘sector boundary crossing’ for anyone who is wondering.
Location: Orkney Isles, Scotland.
yesterday: Calm & foggy.
Today: High winds, rain.
Hi OL, thanks for the mention on Delingpole’s blog yesterday.
tallbloke says:
July 16, 2010 at 12:07 pm
You’re the expert with short term space weather Ulric. Tell us more please.
SBC is ‘sector boundary crossing’ for anyone who is wondering.
…………………………………………………………………………………..
The SBC`s are not the solar triggers for daily weather events, I can`t go into the details of what is just now, as it would mean revealing some of Piers`s IP.
Ulric, understood, I won’t press you on the matter any more. Plenty of fun to be had forming our own ideas here anyway. 😉
Lima, Peru, South America. As from the weather channel:
Cloudy
Feels Like:15 °C
Barometer:1,015.92 mb and rising
Humidity:88 %
Visibility:6 km
Dewpoint:13 °C
Wind:W
Sunrise:6:29 AM
Sunset:5:59 PM
Wind: Too slow to be felt Completely covered sky.
Here’s part of the solar summary from here:-
http://www.solen.info/solar/
Recent Solar Activity
The geomagnetic field was quiet to active on July 15. Solar wind speed ranged between 401 and 501 km/s under the influence of a high speed stream from CH413.
Solar flux measured at 20h UTC on 2.8 GHz was 75.9. The planetary A index was 10 (STAR Ap – based on the mean of three hour interval ap indices: 10.3). Three hour interval K indices: 43122212 (planetary), 53232222 (Boulder).
The background x-ray flux is at the class A8 level.
At midnight there was 1 spotted region on the visible solar disk. Region 11087 was mostly unchanged and quiet.
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs)
July 13-15: No obviously Earth directed CMEs were seen in LASCO or STEREO images.
Coronal holes
Coronal holes
No obvious coronal holes are expected to rotate into an Earth facing position over the next few days.
Thanks Tenuc. I guess we can take a closer look at coronal holes next. The weather calmed down here around 11am BST (GMT+1)
Here in So MD, USA it has been hot and not too windy. Peak of 8 MPH today, and mostly clear and hot.
Yesterday was a transition day between fronts which passed Wed. Also not too windy and not quite as hot as today. Included a lite shower here and there as the atmosphere dried.
So, no evidence here! Typical July weather for US Mid Atlantic.
Thanks guest,
The Earth is passed by the magnetic boundaries 4 (sometimes 8.) times a month anyway so we’re not expecting any exciting results. Just interested to hear from people about their local conditions at the moment.
tallbloke 12:40 pm :
A pleasure.
Best,
OL
Here in northeast Sacramento Valley foothills, clear, very hot! ( 7f over average) light breezes. pg
I think UK weather has the Arctic factor built in:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Arctic-factor.htm
I predicted a warming spurt from around July 15th (+/- 1d). This (N.H.) will reduce rainfall quantity in many areas straight away, other areas will take a few days longer due to circulation factors. Clearer areas should have felt an intensification of heat since yesterday.
@Vuk says:
July 16, 2010 at 7:35 pm
I think UK weather has the Arctic factor built in:
…………………………………………………………………………………….
We do get incursions of Arctic air, more some winters than others. You never know, this subtropic/arctic air-share in colder winters could be stalling the onset of regular glaciation!
I can easilly tell the difference between a cold or a warm UK winter from heliocentric configurations, so maybe you are losing the detail in your smoothed yearly GMF, and the GMF is not a directly proportional proxy either.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this article in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. de Jager and Duhau – some interesting stuff.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2010/05/26/solar-story-update/
“The authors state that there are indices of activity nearer the Sun’s polar regions and things like “polar faculae” and “bright points” are related to the poloidal component of the Sun’s magnetic field. They used a multiple regression approach to link the temperature of the Earth to both the toroidal and poloidal components of solar activity. They find that “next to the equatorial component, the polar component also influences tropospheric temperature. Its contribution is about 30% of that of the equatorial component.”
http://www.tutiempo.net/en/
http://www.weathercharts.org/
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~floods/Currentt.htm
(my most recent flood episode forecast (N.H.) was for 11th/12th July)
Hamburg and Braunschweig, Northern Germany, (i travelled today) pretty hot, 32 deg C , slightly windy. 16th of July, time zone GMT+1. Wind turbines were turning but not too fast. When we have a REALLY hot day like we did a few days ago with temps up to 36 deg C, we usually have no wind at all, but this wasn’t the case today.
Oh, and sunny and no clouds the entire day. Really boring.
Dangit, tallbloke, Leif has never mentioned that these sector boundaries exist or i missed it but he’s tracking them.
http://wso.stanford.edu/SB/SB.Svalgaard.html
@Tenuc says:
July 16, 2010 at 8:53 pm
de Jager and Duhau should have done a google, there are written records of flood and drought years in China going back that far.
Tempe, Arizona (Southeast of Phoenix)
108 deg F
wind SW at 8 mph
Humidity 16%
Typical Arizona weather for this time of year; but we are in a monsoon condition so we could get some wind and rain anytime.
Denver CO
100F ( 37.7 C ) ,
very light breeze (less than 5 mph)
some high clouds.
Very typical mid July weather.
Dirk H, good spot!
tallbloke, this night brought a weather change in Northern Germany. We had two weeks of heatwaves and little to no wind and no precipitation. I was looking in vain for cumulus clouds to evolve into thunderstorms but to no avail.
Today it’s all cloudy and rains a little, like somebody has flipped a switch. The thing i’ve been waiting for. Now, it looks to me like the potential for cloud formation has been building up for two weeks and needed only some external trigger to initiate the action…
All speculation and it might all be a coincidence with the sector boundary crossing, or maybe there’s a connection….
BUT, OTOH, the SST here:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
shows that the large red lump of hot anomaly that hovered west of Europe over the past weeks has vanished suddenly, and that could be a more conventional explanation for the clouds i observe. I leave it to you to make sense of these tidbits…
Hobart Tasmania.
Not windy here on the 16th.
But we’re upside down here!
Ramsgate Natal, alt 100ft. 30.49S 30.22E
Midday temps 16/7/10 14.00 High s.e. wind
17/7/10 16.00 Fairly high s.e. wind
18/7/10 19.00 moderate breeze
19/7/10 22.00 still air – spring arrived today.
“I leave it to you to make sense of these tidbits…”
I’ll try. 🙂
Thanks to everyone for their reports. It’s very exciting to me that I get contributors from all over the world. The stats for the blg have been rising very fast over the last week!
By the way, anyone who wants to keep an eye on the data for themselves can find the IMF graphs kept up to date here: http://gse.gi.alaska.edu/recent/ecimf.html
Today Edinbugh Scotland Wind from SW at about 10mph