And so we begin...

Beginning a blog is a bit difficult, as finding something to say other than "I am starting a blog, and here it is" is hard.  So, let us simply get down to the good stuff:  earth science!

Some of the coolest news I have seen lately came from heliophysics and space weather.  The sun is heading into the most active part of its cycle next year, and the solar atmosphere is raging.  A specifically active sunspot, Region 1515, just gave off a M-class flare yesterday on July 5th.  Specifically, a M6.1.  There was a M5.3 on the 4th, and a M5.6 on the 2nd.

Let me explain a bit about the classifications of flares.  Flares are sudden, intense bright bursts from the sun, releasing a lot of energy, and are sometimes associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs, which can also occur just on their lonesome).  They can do quite a bit to disrupt our lives by the energy's interaction with our satellites and our geomagnetic field.  There are five main classes for categorization: A, B, C, M, and X.  A-, B-, and C-classes, the lowest, does not generally affect our day-to-day life.  M-class can be disruptive.  X-class are destructive.  These classes are further broken down into a logarithmic scale.  So, you start at A1 and go out to C9.9, then jump to M1 through M9.9.  Once, you get to X-class, though, there is nothing higher than that.  So you can go from X1 to X9.9 and then continue out beyond X10.  The highest number we have reached on our scale from measurements was a X45 (best guess from indirect methods, as it swamped the instruments recording it by the time it started to go above X28) back on November 4th, 2003.  However, the strongest one we have witnessed in historical records was the Carrington Event, named after the gentleman scientist who observed and recorded it.  Based on isotopes in ice cores and Carrington's records, we are relatively sure that flare was stronger than the 2003 flare and was an event that statistically occurs once every 500 years.

Flares add significant pulses to the solar wind, the stream of particles getting ejected out into space from the sun's atmosphere.  The solar wind courses through the solar system, reaching out to the edge of the sun's influence.  We call the entire area where the solar wind blows the heliosheath.  The sun protects our solar system from cosmic rays through its influence, so we should be very happy to be within that heliosheath.  The edge of the heliosheath is called the heliopause.  That is out where Voyagers 1 and 2 are, looking for the heliopause beyond the termination shock (where the solar wind slows).  Therefore, it affects the weather near us in space.  So, a significant flare will not only cause aurorae well below or above polar regions, it also can disrupt satellite communications, GPS, and space-faring humans.  Hence, it is something well worth studying.

A heat wave has been in force for the past week or more here in the United States and has been making headlines everywhere.  The weather here in Kansas City is, like much of the United States, extremely hot and uncomfortable.  Luckily, it should break at the beginning of this next week.  The full analysis of the weather will have to wait, as I think the heat is causing me to think longingly of the ice cream sitting in our freezer!

In other news, I got in the latest GSA (Geological Society of America) Bulletin and Geology yesterday.  Still reading through them; hopefully, I will have some thoughts on the contents by the end of the weekend.  I have not gotten out the latest BAMS (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society) yet, nor the latest Physics Today.  Maybe once I get that ice cream...

Keep cool (or warm, if you are in the Southern Hemisphere winter)!