Neutral Fact Finder Offers Hard Scientific Evidence That Gigantic Solar Flares Have Caused Rapid Global Warming/Glacial Retreat Since 1970, Challenges NASA and NOAA

SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 8, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is the opinion of Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC as to why the earth's atmosphere has been warming since 1860 amidst a rapid glacial retreat starting in 1970:

President Trump, Congress, NASA, NOAA, EPA, Governor Brown and interested parties:

I am among the country's top environmental engineers and have been used extensively over the past several decades by the California Courts as a neutral fact finder who helps case special masters and litigating parties resolve legal disputes over who is liable for legacy pollution of contaminated properties without the need for a trial. Within this role, I am provided many linear feet of technical reports, pleadings, case summaries, expert witness reports, etc. I conduct a dispassionate unbiased review of the data and provide the case special masters and litigating parties with concise unbiased conclusions and recommendations that cannot be used at trial. Given all that is at stake and because it is right up my alley, I felt a moral and professional obligation to apply my experience as a neutral fact finder on scientific data to the vitally important question at hand.

This is my third press release on the subject all giving notice that when viewed objectively by a neutral fact finder, the scientific evidence is showing that the current period of rapid global warming and rapid glacial retreat that has occurred since 1970 is the predictable result of the unusually high incidence of gigantic solar flares striking the earth and shredding the ozone layer above the Arctic over this same period. I found only weak, ambiguous, circumstantial evidence in support of ardent claims that human activities including emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels are causing today's rapid climate change; this evidence would not stand up in court against what I am presenting below. This press release is intended to be more to the point and easier for the public to understand, and hopefully more convincing.

Background:

In 1984, climate scientists discovered a huge seasonal hole in the outer atmosphere's ozone layer directly above the South Pole and have been monitoring its strength and dimensions since then. In late 2003 and early 2004, NASA discovered that a second massive but less intense hole had opened over the Arctic as the direct result of gigantic solar flares striking the earth in 2003. Climate scientists have been monitoring its strength and dimensions since about 2010 and have developed a model that recreates atmospheric ozone distribution back to 1979. This model shows a large hole opening in 1991 that lasted through 1993. The earth was hit by four gargantuan X-12 ozone-depleting flares in June 1991. The ozone layer protects earth from the harmful effects of the enormous amounts of high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light arriving from the sun by reacting with it. While climate scientists have led the public to believe that these holes are caused in large part by human activity (air pollution), NASA and NOAA have evidence that the ozone holes above the poles are more likely primarily the result of an extremely high incidence of gigantic ozone-depleting solar flares striking the earth commencing with four giants in 1972, peaking with twelve giants in 2003, and continuing at high frequency through 2015.

Key Findings

There is hard scientific evidence of an extraordinarily high incidence of gigantic solar flares striking or passing near earth between 1970 and 2015, and similarly at the very end of the last ice age - Please see my attached sketch and related data summary for 1856 through 2015 showing documented X-Category (massive) solar flares striking earth plotted against ground-level temperatures using a trend graph prepared by the Hadley Centre and Climate Research Unit; it suggests an obvious cause and effect relationship. According to SpaceweatherLive.com and/or NASA data there were four giants in 1972, two in 1978, three in 1982, two in 1984, two in 1986, seven in 1989, one in 1990, four in 1991, two in 1997, two in 1998, three in 2000, one in 2001, and twelve in 2003 ending with a colossal X-28, the largest ever measured. They kept coming; there were two in 2004, three in 2005, four in 2006, one in 2011, two in 2012, four in 2013, five in 2014, and one in 2015. An X-20 flare is 20 times more powerful than an X-1.

In a paper titled, Unusual Activity of the Sun during Recent Decades Compared to the Previous 11,000 years, S. K. Solanki, et al, have reached the following conclusions from data obtained from high-precision 14C analyses on decadal samples of mid-latitude tree-ring chronologies: "According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago [and also at the very end of the last Ice Age 11,100 to 11,000 years ago]. We find that during the past 11,400 years the sun spent only in the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode." NATURE, vol 431, Oct 28, 2004, www.nature.com/nature.

Assuming what Solanki et al are saying in their extremely important study is statistically correct, the current period of rapid-climate-warming stemming from high sun-spot activity is very likely either already over or will be ending soon.

What's more, the Solanki, et al investigations provided hard scientific data showing a conspicuous period of extremely high sun-spot activity 11,100 to 11,000 years ago at the very end of the last ice age, and another at the beginning of the Holocene Climate Optimal 8,000 year ago. This is of the utmost significance in putting the current climate trend in proper historical perspective.

There is hard scientific evidence that these gigantic solar flares shred the protective ozone layer over the Arctic and that the effects can last for at least five months – Quoting NASA, September 30, 2005: "The large solar storms in October–November 2003 produced enormous solar proton events (SPEs) where high energetic particles reached the Earth and penetrated into the middle atmosphere in the polar regions. . . . Arctic lower mesospheric (upper stratospheric) ozone is reduced by 50–70% (30–40%) for about two weeks after the SPEs. . . Significant ozone depletion was observed inside the polar vortex in a wide altitude range during this period. . . . In-vortex ozone was observed to significantly decline in the mid-February to late March period." H. Jackman, et al, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Observation of NOx enhancement and ozone depletion in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres after the October–November 2003 solar proton events.

With the Arctic ozone layer in this weakened state, there were intermittent M-Category flares through October 2004 followed by barrages of gigantic X-Category flares in November 2004 (X-2 and X2.5) and January 2005 (X-1.2, X-3, and X-7).

There is hard scientific evidence that even relatively small X-Category or M-Category solar flares sometimes if not always create large cracks, holes and/or weak spots in the earth's protective magnetic fields particularly over the Arctic and that the holes stay open for at least a few days – Quoting NASA, April 10, 2017: "Solar storms often include an eruption on the sun called a coronal mass ejection or CME. . . . The 2014 geomagnetic storm was a result of two powerful Earth-directed CMEs [the largest solar flare in 2014 was in December at X-1.8]. The storm initially produced patches of extra electrons in the ionosphere over northern Greenland, as usual. But just south of these patches, the scientists were surprised to find broad areas extending 300 to 600 miles (500 to 1,000 kilometers) where the electrons were 'almost vacuumed out,'. . . . These areas [called X-Spots or Reconnection Sites] remained depleted of electrons for several days." https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/solar-storms-can-drain-electrical-charge-above-earth. 

"Now, a new study suggests that one such "coronal mass ejection" in 2015 [June 21, 2015, M-3] temporarily weakened Earth's protective magnetic field, allowing solar plasma and radiation from the same storm to more easily reach the atmosphere and be detected on earth the next day," http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/solar-storms-can-weaken-earth-s-magnetic-field.

We can only guess at how much disruption to the magnetic field M and  X-Category flares have wreaked collectively since 1970. The amount of thermal energy that has entered via this just recently discovered pathway is potentially huge.

There is compelling circumstantial evidence for the period 1970 through 2016 that an unusually high influx of solar and cosmic radiation entered the troposphere within the Arctic polar vortex – Quoting from one of many reliable sources: "The Arctic is a region in transformation. Warming in the region has been amplified . . . with the rate of warming observed to be 0.60 . deg C  per decade in the Arctic (above 64 degrees North) compared to 0.17 deg C per decade globally during the last three decades. . . . The Greenland ice sheet has been losing mass at the rate of >34.0 billion tons per year . . . during the period from 1992 to 2011, but for the period 2002–2011, a higher rate of mass loss of >215 billion tons per year has been observed. . . . and a thinning of seasonally frozen ground has also been reported." J. C. Comiso and D. K. Hall, Climate Trends in the Arctic as Observed From Space, WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:389–409.

Please note that the spurt of rapid glacial retreat from 2002-11 comes in the immediate aftermath of the dozen gigantic solar flares that arrived in 2003 climaxing with the X-28  (see above and attached). Despite this close correlation and the known ozone-depleting, magnetic-shield-shattering effects these flares produce, NASA and NOAA have been virtually driving the band wagon of politically correct thinking on climate change.

Recommendations – All things considered, NASA and NOAA should not be allowing unproven claims on atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effects to drive important U.S. government and state decision-making on climate change without further investigations. Instead, to more fully understand what's happening at the heart of the problem, I strongly recommend that NASA/NOAA build a climate model that is focused just on climate change within the Arctic polar vortex. To keep things simple, this model should take 1970 as the baseline and then input the solar and cosmic irradiance increases that have occurred since then as the earth was regularly bombarded with the same type of ozone-depleting, magnetic-field-cracking M and X-Category solar flares that appear to have ended the last ice age 11,000 years ago. The only CO2 increases that need to be factored in are the feedback effects of ground-level greenhouse-gas generation along Arctic melt areas. Forget the global CO2 increases in the atmosphere because there is no evidence they are causing any significant warming in the Arctic. To see evidence of the regional greenhouse gas effect, please watch this NASA video showing CO2 off-gassing from the Arctic Ocean and its land masses from late February 2015 through May 2015 which according to NSIDC and other sources correlates with the early onset of seasonal sea ice and permafrost melting at abnormally high rates: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/eye-popping-view-of-co2-critical-step-for-carbon-cycle-science. In watching this video, please bear in mind that in the Arctic summer (June through September), blooms of plankton and land vegetation sequester CO2, and that the earth was hit by X-Category solar flares on September 10, 2014 (X-1.6), November 7, 2014 (X-1.6), December 19, 2014 (X-1.8) and March 11, 2015 (X-2.2).

NASA, NOAA, and EPA should have their key scientists carefully review these findings and in the aftermath make appropriate recommendations to those in charge of the relevant programs. This supersedes my prior recommendations.

I warrant that I have conducted my investigations impartially and believe my conclusions are sufficiently supported by valid scientific evidence to stand up in a court of law.

Disclaimer – This press release contains the personal opinions of an American citizen based on his understanding of technical data and his experience as a neutral court consultant. Despite my professional standing, I am not claiming to be a professional engineer nor a consulting engineer given where I reside. California, unlike the rest of the country, does not grant licenses to environmental engineers given a long-standing preference by its licensing board to rely primarily on state-registered geologists to protect the state's lands, indoor air and waters. 

Sincerely,

Brian T Kelleher
Principal, Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt, LLC
San Jose, CA 95121
[email protected]
408-677-3307

Related Files

Solar flare v temp sketch 1856 to 2015.PDF

Solar Flare data summary 1859 to 2016.PDF

SOURCE Kelleher & Associates Environmental Mgmt LLC