Space Junk, Satellites, Weird Weather Patterns and Global Warming

[LaurieAG]

With the northern Hemisphere suffering snow storms in winter, flooding rains in summer and the southern hemisphere suffers heat waves and flooding rains surely there is a possibility that something else man made might be actively contributing to the Global Warming phenomena?

 

Here's a couple of interesting observations:-

 

(1) About 2 weeks ago in Queensland we had a Cyclone cross our northern coast and continue in a southerly direction spreading widespread flooding and storms to well past our southern border. Normally cyclones turn into rain depressions but they don't usually continue travelling once they cross the land. In the past week we've had storms and constant rain from the north east, South east, north west and south west, in my local area, all 4 angles of the compass.

 

(2) The last time we had many cyclones in Queensland (up to 9 per season) was in the late 60's and early seventies. We then didn't have any for about 15 years and have only had a couple since. This morning the local paper reported many sightings of what people thought were emergency flares out in the ocean around 9:30pm and it also said that the Brisbane Airport officials reported seeing Space Junk burning up around that time.

 

(3) The spawning zone for Typhoons appears to be a roughly 1000 square mile area off the Phillipines while the spawning ground for Caribbean Hurricanes is on the opposite side of the world in a similar zone a similar distance above the equator. The spawning ground for our southern 'eastern lows' (dry cyclones) is a similar size and distance from the equator as the one that produces the same atmospheric phenomena off the east coast of Brazil (which there scientists have no explanation for). These 'eastern lows' are interesting as they tend to pick up rain bearing clouds and throw them with mighty force onto our coastline. All 4 zones together create a neat quatropole of spawning zones spanning the equator and the globe.

 

(4) Around 4-5 years ago we had a huge storm that created cyclonic wind conditions (I was driving west and straight ahead the clouds were heading south, I turned south and the clouds straight ahead were heading east) that culminated in a massive lightning strike that rattled the foundations of the house I was in at the time of the strike. The next day it was reported that we had a 2.3 magnitude earthquake 200km directly off our east coast.

 

Has anybody done any reasearch about the impacts of dumping space junk (and third stages of the Apollo program) in the pacific, the impacts of both polar and geostationary satellites (Hmm El Nino/La Nina), not to mention incoming rogue satellites (and the occasional space shuttle) on our global weather patterns?

 

Pardon me for being an ignorant small town banana bender (whose small hometown had municipal street lighting within 8 years of the major european capitals) who lives in the arsehole of the earth (as stated by ex PM Paul Keating) and lies under the incoming flight path of the dumping ground for all kinds of space junk, please don't come the raw prawn with us as it bloody well stinks.

[Buffy]

It's an interesting set of random facts!

 

But you'll need to fill out a few more that were left out that start to disrupt some of the coincidences:

• Cyclones/Hurricanes are the product of both being in the warm equatorial region along with the proper currents required to concentrate the air pressure and stir it up. These are pretty massive forces when you do the math, and comparatively speaking, crashing space junk is, uh, spit in the ocean.
  
• You've left out a couple of other places where Cyclones/Hurricanes are generated: the central Indian Ocean where they regularly crash into of all places that can't afford it, Bangladesh, and the eastern Pacific off southern Mexico which go plowing either into Baja or head over to Hawaii.
  
• Space junk does indeed fall mostly in the equatorial regions because orbits tend to span that space: few satellites are put in polar orbit. But as to favoring Oz? I know you guys lucked out on Skylab and Mir, but everyone forgets all the ones that just burn up....although the Lost island is supposed to be near you guys and its a massive magnetic anomaly... :naughty:
  

 

Who knows though, you may be on to something...

 

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery, :singer:

Buffy

[Moontanman]

I think I'll have to go with Buffy on this one, I can see no connection what so ever with weather and falling space junk or orbiting satellites.

 

The idea of a connection between lightning and earth quakes isn't very far fetched. There is evidence of massive electrical discharges during earth quakes.

 

We get hurricanes here with some irregular regularity, a few years ago we had three in one summer, two about a month apart. Talking about digging out! one was a category three the others were strong category 1 storms. then we went several years without one. No really strong ones for several years now. We get northeasters in the winter, like cold weather hurricanes, sometimes in a bad year they turn to blizzards but most of the time it's too warm in the winter for snow to fall much less last.

 

We do get massive electrical storms year round, even in an ocean effect blizzard once (we seem to be in that pattern for tomorrow night too, it should be interesting to see if we get lightning and snow at once again) It's been several years since we had any snow or even really cold weather, this year has been very cold for here, two weeks of cold weather, in 37 years living here I've not seen even a five days of that cold before much less 15 days or more.

 

We have had so much rain of late we are flooding, the river can't seem to dump it in the ocean fast enough. Weather is always unexpected and yet expected. here you can tell long term residents from newbies in the way they look at the weather, if some comments on what weird weather we are having it's a good guess they haven't lived here long, from 80 degrees in the winter, tornadoes and hurricanes that strike more than once at the same point of land we pretty much have it here sooner or later. Sounds like you live in the southern image of what we get.

 

Oh yeah, hurricanes often form less than 100 miles from us, normally they start out off africa and have to travel thousands of mile to get here but the Gulf Stream can spawn them all on it's own. last summer one formed less than 100 miles offshore.

[LaurieAG]

Hi Buffy,

 

But you'll need to fill out a few more that were left out that start to disrupt some of the coincidences:

 

Thats why I was asking if anybody had done any research.

 

About as much research has been done on potential reasons for the current Global Temperature Imbalance as there has been on the political benefits of having state governors (not to mention Heads of State) as rubber stamps for parliament in constitutional monarchies such as Australia!

 

If you google 'Australia act 1986' you get thousands of breakdowns and analysis 'research' about what it was supposed to do but blind freddy can read the words for him/herself and realise that our politicians stitched us up by making our state governors rubber stamps. And complete silence from you yanks, who hold their own system as the pinnacle of democracy, who'd all go running for their guns if their pollies tried the same stunt on them.

 

http://hypography.com/forums/political-sciences/11764-australia-68.html

 

The silence is deafening.

 

But I forget Australian Politicians just know what causes global warming already so there's no need to look for any other possible reasons, it might spoil a good story (or a GBF tax). Just wait till you yanks get boiled slowly like a frog in a pot by your politicians. The Greek Public servants go on strike because of 20% tax on tobacco and fuel, ha I was talking to a tobacconist last week, how much % tax is $6.50 Tax and excise on a $13 (retail price) pack of cigarettes? 100% or 50%. If our fuel was $1.00 per liter (approx $4 per gallon and its around $1.30 per L) we'd pay around 95% in tax and excise.

 

And I'm not a climate change sceptic, I just have a healthy distaste for our politicians methods and really suspect them when they spruke 'science'.

[Buffy]

And complete silence from you yanks, who hold their own system as the pinnacle of democracy, who'd all go running for their guns if their pollies tried the same stunt on them.

Oh I don't know about that. We got the tea partiers claiming that Obama is the second coming of Hitler, and the libtards telling the Democrats to change the Senate rules because they're for some strange reason dissatisfied with the Republicans new found strategy of shutting down government completely, and the media covering it like a sporting event, he-said-she-said style where finding truth among the massive lies "isn't their job."

But I forget Australian Politicians just know what causes global warming already so there's no need to look for any other possible reasons, it might spoil a good story (or a GBF tax).

I think there's plenty of money being spent on trying to find other causes: the industry players who (at least think) they have so much to lose because they'd rather not change their business models are spending oodles of dollars on the effort. The reason you don't hear more about it is that not much that passes the smell test has been found in terms of showing any proof that climate change isn't heavily influenced by man-made factors that have already been talked to death.

 

There are plenty of theories kind of like the one's you proposed above, like warming being caused by space debris, that are so easily dismissed as not even logical, but that's the problem: they're not logical--not even in the realm of possibility--so no, you don't read about any of them in the papers (whether those papers are biased or not).

 

Just wait till you yanks get boiled slowly like a frog in a pot by your politicians.

Most of us aren't waiting. What was amazingly funny this week was watching the morons on Faux News endlessly pointing to the snowstorm this week in Washington DC as "proof" that there's no warming going on, leading to really fun responses like this:

 

YouTube - Rachel Maddow Interviews Scientist Bill Nye On Climate Change - 02/10/10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvk1OtI0H0

 

If you can't trust Bill Nye the Science Guy, who can you trust?

 

The more you find out about the world, the more opportunities there are to laugh at it,

Buffy

[Moontanman]

I saw a calculation that 1,000,000,000 space shuttle reentries would raise the temps of the earth 1 degree, it seems unlikely enough space debris could reenter the earths atmosphere and not destroy everything if they raised the earths temps significantly.

[Buffy]

I saw a calculation that 1,000,000,000 space shuttle reentries would raise the temps of the earth 1 degree, it seems unlikely enough space debris could reenter the earths atmosphere and not destroy everything if they raised the earths temps significantly.

 

This was as of 2003, but it's useful:

The grand total number of working payloads and useless pieces of debris sent to orbit during the entire Space Age since 1957 is 25,976. Of those, 8,733 are still in orbit and 17,243 have fallen from orbit.

That's at best 0.000017 degrees so far, and since most of these are little satellites that produce a lot less heat on re-entry, well, we're gonna really have to work fast to get to 1 billion...and with the NASA budget being cut...

 

Do not expose your LaserWriter to fire or intense heat,

Buffy

[LaurieAG]

Hi Buffy,

 

Oh I don't know about that. We got the tea partiers claiming that Obama is the second coming of Hitler, and the libtards telling the Democrats to change the Senate rules because they're for some strange reason dissatisfied with the Republicans new found strategy of shutting down government completely, and the media covering it like a sporting event, he-said-she-said style where finding truth among the massive lies

 

Talking about massive lies, hasn't Hillary Clinton heard of the US Military Industrial Complex, the one immune from budget cuts (but is probably the major cause why the US will struggle to recover economically). Thats the problem politicians are the worst scientists ever and politicised science isn't really science.

 

I think there's plenty of money being spent on trying to find other causes: the industry players who (at least think) they have so much to lose because they'd rather not change their business models are spending oodles of dollars on the effort.

...

There are plenty of theories kind of like the one's you proposed above, like warming being caused by space debris, that are so easily dismissed as not even logical, but that's the problem: they're not logical--not even in the realm of possibility--so no, you don't read about any of them in the papers (whether those papers are biased or not).

...

What was amazingly funny this week was watching the morons on Faux News endlessly pointing to the snowstorm this week in Washington DC as "proof" that there's no warming going on.

 

While I've read about research on sprites (electrical charges from the top of thunderstorms up into the upper atmosphere) I haven't really heard about any other research about the cause of those humungeous land cyclones (and dry lows over the oceans) like the ones dumping snow on the US and have been dumping heaps of rain on Australia. Usually, because the land is totally different to the ocean, they just dump and peter out, not continue as nothing has hapenned. Lows that usually form over the ocean usually are not dry so something is seriously topsy turvey about the two phenomena I have described. To me both seem to be due to some external influence (and not aliens, who incidentally have probably had more govt research money spent).

 

I agree that space junk is not the cause of global warming but it is a large factor in Climate Change and particularly the wierd weather patterns. One thing, all that rain will mean heaps of new vegetation growing and storing carbon, I bet our politicians never factored the billions of new plants sprouting in central Australia in their (tax) equations.

 

Who do you think bought up a huge no of commercial satellites, including many rogue ones (about 35 rogues are up there according to New Scientist a couple of years ago when they had an article on how the rogues came bouncing in after being wonked out of their parking orbit by the moon, they probably bounce many times in some sort of progression (close to their previous bounce) before they get a good reentry angle and came in, Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm), the major shareholder of the parent company that owns Faux News (he rolled his family company QNP (Queensland Newspapers) into the parent company), isn't that a coincidence that deserves further scientific consideration.

 

BTW, Happy birthday Buffy.

[Turtle]

While I've read about research on sprites (electrical charges from the top of thunderstorms up into the upper atmosphere) I haven't really heard about any other research about the cause of those humungeous land cyclones (and dry lows over the oceans) like the ones dumping snow on the US and have been dumping heaps of rain on Australia. Usually, because the land is totally different to the ocean, they just dump and peter out, not continue as nothing has hapenned. Lows that usually form over the ocean usually are not dry so something is seriously topsy turvey about the two phenomena I have described. To me both seem to be due to some external influence (and not aliens, who incidentally have probably had more govt research money spent).

 

it is el niño causing the extreme weather in the us. while the midwest & east are freezing, we here in the pacific northwest are having record "unseasonably" warm weather. i've seen only one night temp at or below freezing in 6 weeks. it's barely 7 am here and it's 54º F. :lol:

:steering: :hyper:

NOAA El Niño: Research, Forecasts and Observations

El Niño is a disruption of the ocean-atmosphere system in the Tropical Pacific having important consequences for weather and climate around the globe.

 

Mr. MIKE HALPERT (Deputy Director, Climate Prediction Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): Ocean temperatures across the equatorial and tropical Pacific Ocean are somewhere upwards of two degrees Celsius above average, so we've had what we would characterize as a strong El Nino.

 

JOYCE: That's Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 

Scientists at the center say this is the strongest El Nino since the 1997-98 winter.

...

JOYCE: Halpert also points out that scientists don't know yet whether climate change is influencing the frequency or strength of El Ninos.

 

Scientists say El Nino will likely persist another month or two. That usually means drier than usual weather in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley, wetter in the west and southwest, and colder in the southeast. ...

Behind The Weather: Strongest El Nino In A Decade

[LaurieAG]

Hi Turtle,

 

it is el niño causing the extreme weather in the us. while the midwest & east are freezing, we here in the pacific northwest are having record "unseasonably" warm weather. i've seen only one night temp at or below freezing in 6 weeks. it's barely 7 am here and it's 54º F. :shrug:[/url]

 

But whats causing El Nino/La Nina?

 

Note how the long term trends show an almost complete barrier of slightly warmer air around the equatorial region. Could this have something to do with equatorial geostationary satellites? I believe that there's not many slots left. Could this have something to do with the failure of the long term data to show any consistent ocean heat transfers between the hemispheres?

[Turtle]

Hi Turtle,

 

But whats causing El Nino/La Nina?

 

Note how the long term trends show an almost complete barrier of slightly warmer air around the equatorial region. Could this have something to do with equatorial geostationary satellites? I believe that there's not many slots left. Could this have something to do with the failure of the long term data to show any consistent ocean heat transfers between the hemispheres?

 

the cause(s) remain under investigation per the scientific method. also per that method, i see no plausible mechanism wherby such a small mass (or small masses if you will) would have the influence you suggest. i haven't any specifics on the records of el niño, having only now come to a need of some ;), but i suspect el niño has been going on long before we had artificial satellites. :hihi:

 

 

here's a summary article with links to other sources. >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o-Southern_Oscillationtp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o-Southern_Oscillation

[LaurieAG]

Hi Turtle,

 

the cause(s) remain under investigation per the scientific method. also per that method, i see no plausible mechanism wherby such a small mass (or small masses if you will) would have the influence you suggest.

 

How long do you think it would take to get a bucket of water spinning with a piece of thin wire?

 

Try it on a smaller scale with a straightened paperclip and a cup of coffee first. Keep the paperclip about 1/4 of an inch away from the outer edge (and 1/4 of an inch in the coffee, you might need to drink a couple of cups first) and rotate it whichever way you like at a constant speed.

 

Have Newtons laws of motion been repealed?

[Moontanman]

Laurie, 3000 tons of meteorites rain down on the Earth every year, a 10 megaton explosion occurs in the upper atmosphere every day on average from impacts of debris of natural origin. This dwarfs the amount of satellites we have put in orbit much less the amounts of man made objects falling from orbit. I don't see how you can conclude falling man made debris could have any realistic impact on the weather.

 

 

There is also this, weather releases an enormous amount of energy, falling space debris is like a fart in a wind storm.

 

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html

 

Now for a more rigorous scientific explanation of why this would not be an effective hurricane modification technique. The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the amount of energy required. A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x1013 watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind. The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes. According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.

[LaurieAG]

Hi Moontanman,

 

If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and we can't get anywhere near a perfect vacuum, how can you be so absolutely certain that there is no perceptible cumulative impact on our weather systems?

 

Have you spun your coffee yet? It doesn't take very long.

[freeztar]

Have you spun your coffee yet? It doesn't take very long.

 

I think a better example might be using a strand of hair and holding it several inches above the water. :shrug:

[Turtle]

...

Has anybody done any reasearch about the impacts of dumping space junk (and third stages of the Apollo program) in the pacific, the impacts of both polar and geostationary satellites (Hmm El Nino/La Nina), not to mention incoming rogue satellites (and the occasional space shuttle) on our global weather patterns?...

 

i started thinking about how saturn's rings & moons might be known to affect its climate, but found little and anyway we scarcely know as much about saturn climate as we do our own rock. but, as many of such searches are wont to do, this start led me off onto a similar scenario for earth. in this case it turns out to be a study by my old friend mark boslough, renowned impact physicist at sandia national labs. hi mark!

 

now rather than the heating effect you question laurie, he has looked at the cooling effect of the shading from an orbiting debris cloud following a large impact event. if i may remind you, mark uses Red Sky* for his modeling. fascinating! :shrug: :shrug:

 

Abstract

The effect of time-dependent incoming solar radiation (insolation) losses due to the shadow of an opaque orbiting ring around the Earth is addressed using a modified version of the atmospheric general circulation model GENESIS. Twelve simulations were run using three different sets of orbital parameters; three without rings, and nine with two different ring models. One set of simulations was performed using two different initializations as a stability and convergence check. The three sets of orbital parameters were chosen to simulate glaciation-favoring and glaciation-inhibiting conditions in the northern hemisphere, as well as current conditions. The objective was to address the question of whether a impact-generated ring could amplify or diminish certain Milankovich periods in a way that might be evident in the geologic record. ...

IMPACT-INDUCED CLIMATE CHANGE DUE TO AN ORBITING DEBRIS RING

 

*

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – There’s a new high-performance computer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories, and it stands on the shoulders of giants. Red Sky is located in the space where legendary system ASCI Red once stood, ready to provide computing might for a variety of Sandia projects, and to assist the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in solving the nation’s pressing energy challenges. Red Sky is listed by Top500 Supercomputer Sites as the 10th fastest computer in the world. ...

Red Sky at night, Sandia’s new computing might – Sandia News Releases

[CraigD]

Laurie, 3000 tons of meteorites rain down on the Earth every year, a 10 megaton explosion occurs in the upper atmosphere every day on average from impacts of debris of natural origin. This dwarfs the amount of satellites we have put in orbit much less the amounts of man made objects falling from orbit. I don't see how you can conclude falling man made debris could have any realistic impact on the weather.

:thumbs_up I think you’re on the right track, MTM, making order-of-magnitude comparisons of the rate of with which meteoroids fall on the Earth with that with which artificial debris falls on it. However, checking a couple of sources, I believe your 3000 ton/year number is about a factor of 10 understated. :Exclamati

 

meteorites – objects that strike the surface – rather than the majority of meteoroids, meteors, which disintegrate completely in the atmosphere, are very uncommon According to Curious About Astronomy: How many meteorites hit Earth each year?, 2,900 to 7,300 kg strike the Earth’s surface each year. On the order of 10,000 times that about, 37,000,000 to 78,000,000 kg of material, enter and burn up in the atmosphere.

 

According to Space debris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, about 8,500,000 kg of artificial objects have been launched into Earth orbit, of which about 3,000,000 kg have fallen to Earth. Using 30 years as a rough time period, then, the rate of artificial material entering and burning up in the atmosphere, and rarely, striking its surface, 100,000 kg/year.

 

From this, we can conclude that between 0.1 to 0.3 % of material falling to Earth is artificial “space junk” – rather a larger fraction than “a fart in a wind storm”, but still very small.

If every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and we can't get anywhere near a perfect vacuum, how can you be so absolutely certain that there is no perceptible cumulative impact on our weather systems?

From the above approximate numbers, we can conclude that artificial material falling to Earth is on the order of 1/1000th its total, so is much less significant than natural matter in the form of meteors.

 

Assuming the highest value of a natural or artificial meteor converting all of its energy to heat or atmospheric motion at nearly the Earth’s surface, its total power is about 73 to 150 MW ([imath]1.5 \times 10^8 \,\mbox{W}[/imath]), of which about 0.2 mW is from space junk. The greatest source of power the Earth receives is about 174 PW ([imath]1.74 \times 10^{17} \,\mbox{W}[/imath]). Compared to this, infalling matter of all kinds is a very insignificant about 0.00000001%.

 

Though this gives the clear conclusion that we shouldn’t worry about space junk affecting climate, it’s not to say that we shouldn’t worry about space junk. Increasingly, we depend on functioning satellites for many important functions, primarily navigation, communication, observation, and weather forecasting. Space junk threatens these satellites operation. The “doomsday scenario” of space junk damaging important space vehicles, in which damaged and destroyed vehicles dramatically increase the amount of space junk in a chain reaction, in known as Kessler Syndrome.