Thursday, December 13, 2012

Monitoring the Geomagnetic Field

With only 8 days now remaining until December 21, 2012, I've begun to monitor the earth's geomagnetic field on a daily basis using the Space Weather Canada web site. The plot above represents the data for today. Note that the plot uses Universal Time (GMT), so today is already over, and that virtually no fluctuations can be seen. Click on the image to see the full resolution.

In my post "Validating December 21, 2012" from earlier this year, I had mentioned that I expect the fluctuations seen on December 21st to greatly exceed those of March 13, 1989 when the last major geomagnetic storm occurred near Ottawa. This remains my criteria for deciding whether the Founders' prediction for December 21st has been validated or not.

Since it is also possible that the internet goes down on that day making it impossible to access the Space Weather Canada web site, I also have a backup plan. This includes using the Android app Ulysse Gizmos, as well as a regular orienteering compass as seen in the image below.

However, I've discovered that these sources are easily influenced by computers, TVs, power lines and any other electromagnetic source they are near, so they are far less reliable than the Space Weather Canada data. So hopefully, the internet either stays up, or the Space Weather Canada data becomes available once internet connectivity is restored.

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