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Earth Changes Data Graphs #4: Solar and Geomagnetic Activity
See 2011 and 2012 Newsletters for updates and additional discussion.
Posted April 2009; minor text revision to introductory note July 2021
Note: I am reproducing here portions of Chapter 5 which was never completed for publication. This was originally written based on analysis of data through 2005 at which time the geomagnetic storm data showed no clear trends when an upward trend wouldt be expected based on the increase in extreme solar activity. When the data were updated through 2008 strong downward trends became evident, which was quite a surprise to me, since only the lack of an upward trend was required to confirm the hypotheses. When I fine time, complete reference citations will be added to this page.
5.4 Unusual Solar/Geomagnetic Activity.
Various higher dimensional sources indicate that the Solar Logos is the overarching consciousness for the evolution of planets and life in our solar system (Ra, 1984; Starre, 2000:37). Certainly terrestrial and aquatic life depends on the sun's warmth to keep the Earth from turning into a ball of ice and as a source of energy for photosynthesis of plants upon which the web of life largely depends. If consciousness and magnetic fields are linked, as discussed in Section5.6, then it make sense that the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) that is created by the solar winds and other high energy emissions from the sun may be providing support for a shift of human consciousness on Earth. Various New Age sources identify unusual solar activity as an indicator of the Great Shift (Melchizedek, 2000; Icke 2000:484). Washta of the Sirian Council speaks of shifts that were made in 1987 and 1998 in the polarity of the subtle body of the sun in preparation for entering the Photon Belt (Essene and Nidle, 1994:34). Readers familiar with the higher dimensional and New Age literature will recognize the term "Photon Belt." I have chosen not say anything more about it here because the information I have found (and I have found many sources that refer to it) is simply too contradictory for me to say anything useful about it at this time. However, when I first read Drunvalo Melchizedek's account of the August 1972 Sirian Experiment (Section 7.5.3), my curiosity was aroused about what mainstream science might have to say about anything unusual that happened in that month (quite a bit as we will see later).
Unusual solar activity may be reflected in one or more solar phenomena, such as sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), solar windstorms (technically called solar proton events--SPEs--or solar energetic particle events--SEPEs), and geomagnetic storms on the Earth in response to solar windstorms and high-speed solar wind. An example of unusual sunspot behavior is the cycle that peaked in 1969 well below the usual number of sunspots (Eddy, 1977). Here I will focus on unusual CMEs, because they seem to be the main source of major solar storms (Reames, 2003). Solar windstorms consist of high energy particles, mostly protons, but also include electrons and Helium atoms. Before examining some testable hypotheses about unusual solar activity I will provide some information about two unusual solar events of the last 50 years, the "Great Solar Proton Event" of August 1972, and the extreme solar events that occurred in October and November of 2003.
5.4.1 The Great Solar Proton Event (Solar Windstorm) of 1972.
When I first began looking in the mainstreams scientific literature for anything unusual that may have happened in August 1972 I was intrigued to find a reference to the "Great Solar Proton Event" (GSPE) of 1972 (ECSS, 2000:5). The GSPE of August 4, 1972 was one the largest events seen since measurements in space have been available (Reames, 2003). King (1974) analyzed major SPEs with energy > 10 MeV (10 million electron volts) during the active years of solar sunspot cycle 19 (1966-1972). There were 25 SPEs >10 MeV during this period and the GSPE accounted for about 70% of the total energy flow of all the events combined. King classified it as an "anomalously large" event. The "extreme solar activity events" in August 1972 created four interplanetary shocks following a series of four solar flares which reached a maximum velocity around 1700 km/s--3.8 million mph (Valsberg, 2004). Cliver et al. (1990) indicated that the shock wave of the event caused the solar wind to accelerate to 2,000 km/s (4.3 million mph), and Pomerantz and Duggal (1974) estimated maximum speeds of 2850 km/s (6.3 million mph) associated with the event. Usual solar winds have speeds less than 400 km/s--890,000 mph (Bothmer, 1998).
The "famous" August 1972 SPE and its associated geomagnetic storm caused widespread power outages in Canada and the U.S. (Gabriel, 1998). Kallenrode and Cliver (2001) characterize the 1972 GSPE as the most intense of "rogue" events, SPEs with unusually large amplitudes. An interesting geophysical effect of the GSPE was a large surge in microearthquakes (Singh 1979). Press (2002) noted that the August 1972 GSPE happened at a time that was supposed to be a solar minimum and it was a matter of luck that it occurred between Apollo missions 16 and 17 because if manned spacecraft had been in space at the time the astronauts could have received lethal doses of radiation.
5.4.2 The Solar Extreme Events of 2003.
In a 20-day period from October to November 2003 more than a dozen solar storms erupted from the sun, with speeds reaching 5 million miles per hour (2,200 km/s) (New York Times, July 9, 2004). Minimal damage was caused on Earth partly because some of the most powerful blasts were not aimed directly at the planet. On October 28 and 29 and November 2 during this period three solar flares and associated CMEs and SPEs set a number of records. The October 28 flare was the fourth largest on record and the November 11 flare was the most powerful ever recorded (Suplee, 2004). More than ninety scientific papers were presented at a Conference on the "solar extreme events" of 2003 held at Moscow State University in July 2004. The energy of October-November 2003 event exceeded 1 GeV (one trillion electron volts), a level that has been observed only 5 times during 50 years of cosmic ray observations (Filipov and Timoveev, 2004). The October SPE events were among the most powerful in the period 1956-2003 for which direct observations from spacecraft have been made (Pereyaslova, 2004). An unusual effect of the solar storms was that the associated intense October-November geomagnetic superstorms on the Earth resulted in the formation of a new radiation belt (Shprits et al, 2004).
Both the 1972 and 2003 events qualify as "unusual" solar activity. If there is connection between the Earth's magnetic field and evolving human consciousness, and this process is accelerating as suggested later in Section 5.6.3, then we might expect that the sun would support this process by increasing the energy available for magnetic field adjustments in the form of increased number and intensity of solar proton events. Since the geomagnetic storms associated with such events may have a disruptive effect of human brain functioning as discussed below, I also postulated that the effect of increasing energy from the sun might be moderated in some way so as to minimize geomagnetic disturbances.
5.4.3 Solar Hypotheses.
I have chosen solar windstorms (solar proton events--SPEs) as the best astrophysical indicator of increased contribution of solar energy to the Earth.
Solar Hypothesis (1): Since 1950 there the number of solar proton events will show an increasing trend.
Solar proton events (SPEs) are most effectively measured in space using satellites, but they can also be measured or inferred from atmospheric and ground level measurements on the Earth. Satellite data that provide information about SPEs go back to the late 1950s, but due to different measurement instrumentation, a continuous, directly comparable record is not available. The best systematic information comes from the GEOS satellite which has a geosynchronous orbit around Earth, and has been measuring solar radiation since 1976 to the present. The NOAA Space Environment Service Center provides a listing of major SPEs and the associated flux of protons with energies >10 Mev (http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/SEP/seps.html). SPEs with this energy are at least 10,000 times stronger than proton fluxes associated with the normal solar wind, which run around 1 keV (Gabriel, 1998). These data provided the starting point for my SPE frequency and intensity analysis.
Figure 5-11 shows a continuous record of the number of major SPEs from 1976 through 2008. King (1974) identified a total of 25 events >10 Mev from 1966 to 1972 and I have arbitrarily distributed these 25 events with a peak in 1969. The plot of actual data in Figure 5-11 (identified as squares) suggests that after the 1987 minimum the maximum number of SPEs doubled in the following two solar cycles. I think a doubling in the number of solar proton events during the last two sunspot cycles qualifies as unusual solar activity. It is interesting that the maximum number of major events occurred in 1989, the year the Christ Consciousness grid was completed (Section 7.6.1). This is also the year that Kryon began his adjustments to the Earth's magnetic grid. The low point at the beginning of this cycle occurred in 1987, the year of the Harmonic Convergence (Section 7.5.4).
I could find no systematic comparable SPE event data for the period 1950 to 1965 and 1973 to 1975 when I initially created Figure 5-11. However, while looking at various data sources I noticed that the relationship between the peaks of the 1966-1972 SPE event cycle (which corresponds to solar sunspot cycle 20) and 1976-1987 SPE event cycle (which corresponds to solar cycle 21) was similar to that of the peaks in the sunspot cycles, with solar cycle 20 having about two-thirds the maximum number of sunspots. I then wondered if it would be possible to estimate the number of SPE events in a year based on the ratio of SPEs to the yearly mean American sunspot numbers. I first focused on the "normal" SPE events cycles in solar cycles 20 and 21 (1966-1987) and found that multiplying the sunspot number in a year times 7.5% provided a reasonable match with the plotted SPE event numbers. I then used this same percentage to develop an estimate of the number of SPE events from 1950 to 1965 and an estimate of the number of SPE events that would have been expected from 1987 to 2003 under "normal" circumstances.
A close look at the SPE event cycles from 1950 to 2003 based on the SPE/sunspot ratios provides additional confirmation of the hypothesis. From 1950 to 1987 SPE peaks ranged from 8 to 14, after 1987 peaks jumped to around 22 events, whereas the predicted numbers ranged from 9 to 12 events.
Solar Hypothesis (2): Since 1950 the maximum intensity of solar proton events will show an increasing trend.
Figure 5-12 shows a dramatic increase in the intensity of solar proton events since 1987. The intensity of an SPE is measured in solar proton flux units (pfu), and Figure 5-12 graphs the maximum flux measured for an individual SPE during the year. The maximum flux from 1976 to 1988 was generally less than 1000 pfu. It jumped to 40,000 in 1989 and four other years had fluxes greater than 20,000 pfu. Figure 5-12 also shows the proton flux for the Great Solar Proton Event of 1972 (estimated from Figure 1 in Reames, 2003). At about 65,000 pfu it was about 1.5 time more intense that the big proton events in 1989 and 1991, and about twice the maximum flux associated with the solar extreme events in 2003.
Until recently the trends shown in Figures 5-11 and 5-12 would not have fit easily into the framework of mainstream science, in part because the time period for which observations of SPEs is too short to identify long-term trends. It turns out that SPEs have left a record in the polar ice caps as variations in nitrate concentrations. When an SPE hits the Earth's atmosphere the charged particles tend to be funneled towards the poles by the Earth's magnetic field, where they interact with nitrogen in the atmosphere to form nitrates. The nitrates precipitate with snow and become part of the accumulating polar ice. The amount of nitrate produced is related to the intensity of the SPE so variations in polar ice cores can be used to estimate the intensity and frequency of major proton events.
Using the nitrate technique McCracken et al. (2001a) have developed a more than 400-year record of major SPEs >30 MeV going back to 1561. It confirms that the Great Proton Event of 1972 was the most intense in the twentieth century, but was the third most intense since 1561. The largest event occurred in 1859 and was four time that of the 1972 event. McCracken et al. (2001b) also analyzed the periodicity of SPEs in relation to solar sunspot cycles and found that SPE activity in the last fifty years has been unusually low. In this respect the recent increase in the number and intensity of SPEs is "normal" in the context of the 400 year record. It is interesting to me that the mega SPE of 1859 roughly coincides with the beginning of the accelerated changes accompanying the industrial revolution.
5.4.4 Geomagnetic Storm Hypotheses
Solar proton events are the main cause of intense geomagnetic storms on Earth, such as the March 1989 solar windstorm which caused the electrical grid in Quebec to collapse within a matter of minutes (Bothmer, 1998). Geomagnetic storms that develop in response to high-energy solar storms can also have an adverse effect on human brain functioning. For example, Babaev and Allahverdiyeva (2004) studied the effect of the major magnetic storms that developed during the extreme solar events of October and November 2004 (see above) on adult women. In addition to reporting a higher frequency of physical symptoms such a indisposition, weakness, indistinct localized headaches, a detailed analysis of their EEGs found a slowing down of overall brain-wave frequencies (from greater to lesser states of awareness) and a complex of nonspecific shifts in the EEGs reflected disorganization of functional activity of the cortex of the large hemispheres of the brain.
Since solar windstorms are the primary cause of strong geomagnetic storms, it is logical that the increase in solar activity since 1987 would have the effect of increasing the disturbances associated with geomagnetic storms. I really felt like I was going out on a limb when I formulated the two hypotheses that follow because they run counter to the logic of mainstream science. Nevertheless, this particular situation seemed like an especially good test of my thesis that since 1987 human consciousness been able to modify geophysical events so as to minimize harm.
Geomagnetic Storm Hypothesis (1): Since 1987, despite increased frequency of solar proton events, the frequency of strong geomagnetic storms has remained stable
The National Geographic Data Center (NGDC) of NOAA maintains a list of major magnetic storms going back to 1932 based on something called the Ap* (ApStar) index: ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/GEOMAGNETIC_DATA/APSTAR/apstar.lst.v2. The details of how this is calculated are not important, but it provides a numerical measure of the maximum 24-hour intensities of geomagnetic storms on the Earth with a major storm being defined as Ap* >40 (Allen, 2004). The highest value that has been calculated for a storm since 1932 is 312 for a storm on September 17, 1949.
Figure 5-13 shows the number of major geomagnetic storms (Ap* 40 or more) from 1950 to 2008. As with all solar-related data, the annual numbers show a large fluctuation, generally related to the 11-year sunspot cycle, but there is no evidence of an increase in frequency after 1987 resulting from the increase in the frequency and intensity of SPEs. In fact, the best fit linear regression line suggests a downward trend during the entire 50 years. The data are consistent with the hypothesis.
Geomagnetic Storm Hypothesis (2): Since 1987, despite increased intensity of solar proton events, the average intensity of strong geomagnetic storms has remained stable.
Figure 5-14 shows the average Ap* index (calculated by totaling the AP* value for each storm and dividing by the number of storms that year) as a measure of the intensity of geomagnetic storms. The best fit linear regression line is flat, indicating no change in intensity despite the tremendous increase in the intensity of solar proton events shown in Figure 5-12, Again, the data are consistent with the hypothesis.
In the case of moderation of the effect of geomagnetic storms, humanity is receiving substantial assistance from higher dimensional extraterrestrials. For example, according to a higher dimensional source, a crop circle near Alton Barnes, Wiltshire UK reported on June 16, 2004 is an image of an Arcturian energy device that has been placed in alignment with the Earth's orbital field to deflect any harmful effects from the radiation of intense solar flares (Laiolin and the Crop Circle Makers/Judith Moore, Sedona Journal of Emergence, February 2005:80).
