移动的地球磁极会引起致命的超级风暴吗？

移动的地球磁极会引起致命的超级风暴吗？

 

人类对于北极光的猜测与人们对于自然的恐惧心理...

Will the Earth's Wandering Magnetic Poles Cause Deadly Superstorms?
By Jeremy A. Kaplan

移动的地球磁极会引发致命的超级风暴吗？

Jeremy A. Kaplan 撰写

Published February 12, 2011 FoxNews.com

发布于02-12-2011 FoxNews.com

Will the wandering magnetic North Pole create crazy superstorms?

地磁北极会发生令人难以置信的超级风暴吗？

The eye-popping connection between the planet's weather and its magnetic field has caught hold among scaremongers recently, ever since scientists described the potential of devastating "superstorms" -- storms caused, scientists say, by flowing gushers of water in the sky known as atmospheric rivers. Some worriers say that these tubocharged tsunamis will soon be widespread, thanks to the increased movement of the Earth's magnetic field.

自从科学家们指出了毁灭性“超级风暴”的可能性之后，全球气候与地球磁极之间本已引人注目的联系最近抓住了散布谣言人士的眼球。科学家们称， “超级风暴”的起因来自于大气流，即，天空中流动的水喷。 一些焦虑者声称这些管状的的海啸会快速蔓延开，多亏了地球磁场的加速移动才避免如此。

  And that when the field shifts, the story goes, anything can happen. All hell will break loose, they say, arguing that the shift has a greater effect on the world's weather than even the carbon-based influences scientists have been carefully monitoring.

当磁场移动时，一切就开始了，任何事情都有可能发生。 他们声称所有糟糕的情况都会发生，他们辩证的理由是地球磁场的移动对全球气候的影响要远大于科学家们一直检测的二氧化碳的影响。

  

Poppycock, say the best scientific minds in the Northern Hemisphere.

北半球著名的科学家们称，这些全部都是胡说。

"Trying to link all of these things together is kind of preposterous," said Dr. Carol Raymond, principal scientist and a geophysicist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, which operates a fleet of satellites that closely monitor the planet and leads the charge in Earth Science research.

卡罗.雷蒙德教授指出“把所有这些事联系在一起是在颠倒是非。” 卡罗.雷蒙德教授是美国国家航天局喷气推进实验室的首席科学家和地理学家，负责操控一组人造卫星严密监控地球的情况， 是地球科学研究的领军人物。

The website for Canada's national earth science arm also draws no conclusions whatsoever between the fields and the weather. Nor does Russia's magnetic pole watchers at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics in frosty Siberia.

加拿大国家地球科学研究团队的网站也未得出任何关于地球磁场与全球气候之间有什么联系的评论。同样，位于俄国寒冷的西伯利亚日地物理学机构里的磁极观察员也没有得出任何关于此的结论。

In fact, there's simply no established scientific connection between the concept of superstorms -- and weather in general -- and the Earth's magnetic fields, agreed the scientists FoxNews.com spoke with. And don't let the aurora borealis fool you.

事实上，在定义“超级风暴”， 全球气候与地球磁场之间并不存在确定的科学联系，科学家们赞同FoxNews.com提出的这个看法。所以不要被北极光给蒙蔽了双眼。

The beautiful and ghostly phenomenon seen in Northern climates is in fact connected to the magnetic fields, Raymond explained, adding yet another cosmic phenomenon to the mixing pot: She said that the sun's particles, carried by the solar wind pouring off the sun, are closely linked to the earth's magnetic field.

在北极气象当中出现的即美丽又神秘的现象北极光才真的与地球磁场有关，雷蒙德解释道。同样他还指出了另外一个与此相似的宇宙现象，声称被太阳风带出太阳表面的太阳粒子就与地球的磁场密切相关。

"The earth's magnetic field is the mediator of those particles --  it's basically a shield protecting the Earth from the solar wind, the source of these particles." And that interaction causes events such as the aurora borealis -- an ionospheric event, in the outer atmosphere, she's quick to point out, not something that happens in the inner atmosphere, where our weather occurs.

“地球的磁场是这些粒子的传递者---是防止地球受到太阳风伤害的屏障，同样也是这些粒子的来源。”地球磁场与这些粒子直接的相互作用引起各种现象，比如北极光。北极光是电离层当中的一种现象，处于外大气层。她很快指出大气层内部是不会发生如此现象的，而大气层内部才会有气候现象。

"There's been research over the past few decades trying to isolate a clear cause and effect relationship between charged particles entering the Earth's atmosphere and the weather," Raymond said. But nothing has been proven.

雷蒙德讲“在过去的几十年当中我们一直在试图找出一个进入地球大气的带电粒子与气候之间的起因与现象之间的清晰联系”， 但是没有任何进展。

Discover's resident "bad astronomer" Phil Plait agrees that the article is a tad sensational.

发现杂志的常驻“坏天文学家”普莱特赞同这样的文章是少数耸人听闻的文章。

"I’ll be up front right away: this claim is baloney. Garbage. Nonsense," he blogged at Discovermagazine.com.

“我将直言讲：这样的说法简直是无稽之谈，纯粹胡扯。”他在Discovermagazine.com发表博客称。

Plait goes on to note that, for the record, the Earth’s magnetic poles are distinct from its axis. The movement of the magnetic poles is unrelated to the location of the North Pole, for example. "The Earth’s magnetic field is roughly like that of a bar magnet, with two opposite poles. The field is generated in the Earth’s core as it spins, creating a dynamo," and the magnetic poles don’t line up with the Earth’s physical poles.

普莱特还讲到根据记录地球的磁极与他的轴线之间有一段距离。比如， 磁极的移动与北极的地点无关。地球的磁场大致就像是一块拥有两个磁极的磁铁。磁场产生于地球快速旋转的中心，并产生发电。”而且磁极与地球的物理两级并不在一条直线上。

So Salem-News.com's connection between the weather and the climate and the magnetic field and the solar wind?

那么Salem-News.com所提出的天气与气候和磁场之间，以及太阳风之间的联系是否真的是无稽之谈呢？

"I have to say it's really very inconclusive," Raymond said.

“我不得不说这真的无法确定”雷蒙德教授讲。

The story does have some facts in it, however. For example, the magnetic poles are indeed moving.

但是故事本身存在一些事实依据。 例如，磁极确实在移动。

The Geological Survey of Canada, which conducts out periodic surveys to monitor magnetic north, says it is slowly drifting across the Canadian Arctic. The most recent survey, completed in May, 2001, determined an updated position for the Pole and established that it is moving approximately northwest at 40 km per year. By 2050, they believe it could have drifted across the earth and into Siberia.

加拿大为了监测磁北而进行的周期性的地理调查显示磁极正在缓慢的漂过加拿大的北极圈。最近一次进行的调查是在2001年5月，这次调查确定了最新的磁极的位置并且确定磁极大致正在以每年40公里的速度向西北方向移动。他们认为，到2050年磁极可能漂过大陆到达西伯利亚。

"We've always known that the Earth's magnetic field is variable, constantly evolving in time," Raymond said.

“众所周知地球的磁场是变化的，无时无刻不在变化”雷蒙德教授说。

  

And those massive superstorms themselves? They're definitely a possibility, albeit not connected to the magnetic pole ideas. In fact, one such event struck California in 1861, said Dr. Marty Ralph, Chief of the Water Cycle Branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory.

那些大型的超级风暴呢？ 即使与地球磁极没有任何联系， 这样的超级风暴也当然有可能发生。事实上，这样的事件就曾在1861年冲击过加利福尼亚，马丁拉尔夫博士如是说。马丁拉尔夫教授是国家海洋和大气治理署地球系统研究实验室水循环办事处的主任。

"Local observers called it a 300-mile-long inland sea," Ralph told FoxNews.com. The event occurred, he believes, when a series of phenomena called atmospheric rivers stalled over California. These rivers -- narrow regions of the atmosphere that move the lion's share of the world's water vapor through the atmosphere -- are quite real, and they're quite astounding.

”当地的观察员说事情发生在一个长达300英里的内海（咸水湖）“拉尔夫告诉FoxNews.com称。他认为这样的事件发生时一系列现象恰好也发生了，即大气流在加利福尼亚停止了。这些气流虽然只是大气的一小部分但是却移动了地球水气的大部分，这是真的，简直让人无法相信。

They can stretch thousands of miles, for one thing, and move vast amounts of water, sometimes with winds of hurricane force, but focused a few thousand feet above the earth’s surface. "A typical river carries five-to-ten times the amount of water vapor than the Mississippi river carries as liquid, on average," and a big one can carry fifty times, he added. "Most flooding events in the major rivers on the West Coast are a result of atmospheric rivers creating copious rainfall," Ralph said.

他们可以延伸成千上万公里，这是其一，同时他们也能移动如此大量的水分，虽然有时候通过飓风的力量确实可以如此，但是在几千尺高的空中简直令人无法想象。“那就像是一条河流承载着相当于密西西比河平时所承载的五到十倍的水量，而一个更大的超级风暴能够承载50倍的水量，她补充道。在西海岸大部分主要河流发生的洪水事件都是由于大气流的因素引发的大量降雨所致，拉尔夫教授称。

Using two real storms that struck California in 1969 and 1986, a team of scientists created a computer model of what would happen were a series of atmospheric rivers to stall over the West Coast over a several week period. The results were presented on January 13 at the ARKStorm Summit.

基于1969年与1986年发生在加利福尼亚州的两次风暴，一对科学家制造了一个电脑模型来模拟一系列大气流停止在了西海岸长达几周的时间，看看会发生什么。 实验的结果在一月13号的ARK 风暴峰会上公布。

"The conclusion: $400+ billion worth of damage. So it's raised some alarm bells," he told FoxNews.com. "I can say as a scientist involved in defining what real weather conditions could come together to create this, it's plausible."
  

“结论是：这造成了4万亿的损失。所以由此给我们敲响了警钟，我敢断定参与其中的科学家会断定真实的天气状况能够共同造成这样的结果，这貌似是可信的。”拉尔夫教授告知FoxNews.com.