Sunday, July 1, 2018

Effects on the Biosphere of Earth while a Geomagnetic Reversal Takes place

Some of the effects we are already observing. 

1. The magnetic north and south are moving more quickly. When I was young the magnetic north for example, was in Hudson Bay Canada. Now it is heading quite quickly towards Siberia which is why GPS satellites had to be set up around the planet so jets wouldn't run into each other because magnetic north and south locations could no longer be trusted on a daily basis.

2. Starting around 2000 holes and cracks were found in the Magnetosphere above the Polar circles (north and south) and through these holes comes a lot of cosmic rays which are mutating life forms in the Polar circles already. This could be one of the causes (beyond ice loss) extincting slowly or quickly polar bears for example. If polar bears survive likely they will mutate to become Grolar Bears or interbreed with Grizzies and will live more on landed areas.

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Effects on biosphere

Effects on biosphere[edit]

Shortly after the first geomagnetic polarity time scales were produced, scientists began exploring the possibility that reversals could be linked to extinctions. Most such proposals rest on the assumption that the Earth's magnetic field would be much weaker during reversals. Possibly the first such hypothesis was that high energy particles trapped in the Van Allen radiation belt could be liberated and bombard the Earth.[37][38] Detailed calculations confirm that if the Earth's dipole field disappeared entirely (leaving the quadrupole and higher components), most of the atmosphere would become accessible to high energy particles, but would act as a barrier to them, and cosmic ray collisions would produce secondary radiation of beryllium-10 or chlorine-36. An increase of beryllium-10 was noted in a 2012 German study showing a peak of beryllium-10 in Greenland ice cores during a brief complete reversal 41,000 years ago which led to the magnetic field strength dropping to an estimated 5% of normal during the reversal.[2] There is evidence that this occurs both during secular variation[39][40] and during reversals.[41][42]
Another hypothesis by McCormac and Evans assumes that the Earth's field disappears entirely during reversals.[43] They argue that the atmosphere of Mars may have been eroded away by the solar wind because it had no magnetic field to protect it. They predict that ions would be stripped away from Earth's atmosphere above 100 km. However, paleointensity measurements show that the magnetic field has not disappeared during reversals. Based on paleointensity data for the last 800,000 years,[44] the magnetopause is still estimated to have been at about 3 Earth radii during the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal.[37] Even if the internal magnetic field did disappear, the solar wind can induce a magnetic field in the Earth's ionosphere sufficient to shield the surface from energetic particles.[45]
Hypotheses have also advanced toward linking reversals to mass extinctions.[46] Many such arguments were based on an apparent periodicity in the rate of reversals, but more careful analyses show that the reversal record is not periodic.[16] It may be, however, that the ends of superchrons have caused vigorous convection leading to widespread volcanism, and that the subsequent airborne ash caused extinctions.[47]
Tests of correlations between extinctions and reversals are difficult for a number of reasons. Larger animals are too scarce in the fossil record for good statistics, so paleontologists have analyzed microfossil extinctions. Even microfossil data can be unreliable if there are hiatuses in the fossil record. It can appear that the extinction occurs at the end of a polarity interval when the rest of that polarity interval was simply eroded away.[21] Statistical analysis shows no evidence for a correlation between reversals and extinctions.[48][37]

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