I post “Essay # 1 – Solar & Planetary Tidal Pumping – The Real Cause for Changes in Weather (Original Issue Dec. 18, 2023, Revised May 23, 2024 – Richard Cronin)” because I believe he has made interesting concepts regarding natural forces and weather.
An invisible force permeates the Universe. You don’t even think about it. Gravity and the ever-changing distances between major celestial bodies and Earth, causing Tidal Pumping which drives tectonics, volcanism, and changes to weather and climate.
It is very well known that Jupiter’s massive gravity field heats the moons Io, Ganymede, and Europa to drive extensive volcanism as they proceed through their elliptical orbits. Io is the most volcanic celestial body in the solar system. In fact, per recent NASA observations, these moons pump one another. This phenomenon is called Tidal Pumping or Tidal Heating. The Earth is affected in just such a manner by all major celestial bodies from the Sun out to Jupiter (Kent & Olsen, 2018).
Observe the animation of our Solar System with the gravity fields of the Sun and major planets flinging the Earth around in a helical or corkscrewing action. Neither Newton, Kepler, nor Einstein had any awareness of this motion and how it imposes stresses on the Earth’s crust, opening up Earth’s tectonic plates to spill immeasurable seismic heat into the South Pacific. This is the source of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). See video, Key word search: Helical Solar System.
). See video, Key word search: Helical Solar System.
Gravitational effects within the Solar System drive Tidal Pumping for the short term El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Orbiting the Milky Way and passing close to other massive stellar systems drives much greater Tidal Pumping effects and Ice Ages.
Completely unappreciated in the energy balance of the Earth and gravitational force are at least five (5) phenomena. Perhaps just as important is that these effects are not uniformly distributed. There are about 40 to 50 “hot spots” globally. Hawaii, Iceland, Samoa, Yellowstone, Campi Flegrei (Naples), the Gulf of Guinea off Africa, and the Gulf of Maine. Due to the El Niño initiated in 2023 the Gulf Stream and the Gulf of Maine were quite warm and had the adherents of Anthropogenic Climate Change alarmed. In past epochs the Gulf of Maine was quite volcanic, like Yellowstone. In fact, Hawaii and Iceland “co-pulsate”. (Mjelde, Faleide 2009)
The variances in gravitational forces from the Sun and even out to Jupiter exert Tidal Pumping forces on Earth’s crust, which is quite thin and fragile, thus spilling seismic heat into the South Pacific and drive the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Jupiter and Venus exaggerate the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit on a 405,000 year cycle (Kent, Olsen, et al 2018 Rutgers). Think of squeezing and re-squeezing a hard rubber ball and it heats up. This is what stirs seismic activity. The interior of the planet is not rigid and unyielding. It is ductile and elastic with large reservoirs molten silicates and carbonates in the Upper Mantle as well as the molten Iron/Nickel Outer Core. The molten carbonates decompose by sulfur-based acids percolating up from the Lower Mantle. From penetrating radar observations it has been identified that lying 350 km below Yellowstone is a reservoir of molten carbonates measuring 25 km to 70 km thick and covers the area of Mexico. Researchers from the University of London estimate that if just 1 % of this reservoir were to decompose, it would be equivalent to burning 2.3 million barrels of oil. The EPA now estimates that the Upper Mantle contains 100 trillion million metric tons of carbon in the Upper Mantle locked in carbonate minerals, which is decomposing under acidic attack. Moreover, it is now known that the core of the planet is not solid. It is the consistency of mushy butter, comprised of “superionic Iron” in constant motion. This is the real source of the Earth’s magnetic field (Butler & Tsuboi, 2021 / Sun & Kim, 2022 / He & Lin, 2023)
As the Solar System orbits the Milky Way, the Earth is flung about between the Sun and Jupiter the tail of a kite. The Earth is like a strip of cloth tied onto the tail. Tremendous stresses on Earth’s crust. Neither Newton, Kepler, nor Einstein were aware of this phenomenon.
The Sun’s gravity field pumps the Earth as we proceed through the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice (the Southern Hemisphere swings closest to the Sun) and, two weeks later, the Perihelion (the Earth’s closest approach to the Sun). These combined events rip and tear open the Trenches of the Ring of Fire to inject quantities immeasurable quantities of seismic heat into the waters of the South Pacific to drive the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The key stress points are the two terminal points of the Ring of Fire, the Tonga Trench. In addition to the Tonga Trench, the New Hebrides Trench and New Britain Trench drive the La Niña and the Peru/Chile trench drives the El Niño.
The line of latitude of the deepest point of the Tonga Trench, the Horizon Deep, lies at 23.3 degrees South latitude. The deepest point of the Peru/Chile Trench, the Richards Deep, lies at approx. 23.2 degrees South latitude. Earth’s current Obliquity, the angle of inclination is about 23.4 degrees. The Osbourne Trough associated with the Tonga Trench lies at 25.5 degrees South latitude This is nominally the line of maximum, maximum Tidal Pumping stresses across the South Pacific.
From 1989 to 2018, the pattern of Richter 5+ earthquakes has migrated from the New Hebrides Trench towards the Tonga Trench and from the Central American Trench towards the Peru-Chile Trench. (Chen & Tang, 2022).
Focus on Mid-Oceanic Ridge (MOR) systems is inappropriate. Seismic heat injection from plate fractures and hydrothermal vents along ridge systems or on the abyssal plain is readily diluted and the heat is dissipated. Arising from the trenches the column of warm waters remains relatively intact and is carried east to west as it approaches the surface. There is a subsurface plume effect. This is observed in the elevated sea surface temperatures, with the Torres Strait and Bismarck Sea show the greatest warming. See records of maximum sea surface temperatures in these regions, Sept. 2022.
As opposed to Mid-Oceanic Ridge systems, Trench systems cutting through continental shelves are particularly noteworthy. The continental shelves were the beaches formed during the Ice Ages. They are nearly a uniform 140 meters below current sea level, relatively shallow. The Peru-Chile Trench cuts through the continental shelf of South America at depth of 145 meters below current sea level.
The onset of the El Niño is signaled by a cold water upwelling along the coast of Peru and Chile. This is due the melting of methane clathrates beneath the ocean floor from the opening of the Peru/Chile Trench (J. Kamis – “Plate Climatology”). Frozen methane clathrates exist between 100 to 1000 meters below the ocean floor. This cold upwelling brings up deep water fish from the Humboldt Current. Due to the east-to-west plume effect, the surface waters of the central Pacific warm first, then spread eastward as the clathrate melting diminishes.
In 2021/2022, the Winter Solstice was DE. 21,2021. The Perihelion was Jan.4 2022.
On Jan. 15, 2022 the Tidal Pumping stresses which had accumulated over a rather lengthy La Niña ripped loose in the Tonga Trench in the southwest Pacific. The largest submarine volcano ever observed spewed an estimated 50 to 150 million tons of water vapor into the atmosphere. The Pacific continued to warm throughout 2022, aided by Jupiter’s closest approach to the Earth in 59 years which occurred on Sept. 26, 2022. A giant hand turned up the steam vaporizer to the maximum setting so 2023 was deemed to be the “Hottest Year on Record”.
With the stresses relieved in the southwest Pacific, the Tidal Pumping stresses shifted to the Eastern Pacific, opening up the Peru/Chile Trench and other seismically active regions off South America to drive the 2023 El Niño. Typical of an El Niño there were no hurricane landfalls on the U.S. East Coast in 2023 tropical storms were steered out into the North Atlantic, although Tropical Storm Ophelia flooded New York City in Sept. 2023. That moisture still affects us as we proceeded into early 2024, with ample rain and mudslides in California, record snows at ski resorts around the world during the winter of 2023/2024and a cool rainy spring in Delaware.
It is bewildering how Svente Arrhenius (1896), Gilbert Plass (1956), and continuing through today’s pseudo-scientists have ignored or misunderstood water in their analyses, especially phase change and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Doesn’t anybody understand the cooling effects of the water cycle ? Arrhenius held the global absolute humidity at a fixed 10 grams per cubic meter. Plass entirely ignored the radiative effects Long Wave Infrared Radiation (LWIR) from cloud tops due to phase change. Condensation to rain and freezing to snow. The Earth’s surface temperature is controlled by low clouds (Kauppinen & Malmi, 2019). The Earth is the Water Planet. If you heat up on the planet’s surface, for whatever reason, you evaporate more water to provide more cooling via the water cycle. Such is the case of the 50 to 150 million tons of water vapor spewed out of the largest submarine volcano ever observed in the Tonga Trench on January 15, 2022. The steam reached the stratosphere. These waters continued to warm through 2022, aided by Jupiter’s closest approach to Earth in 59 years on Sept, 26, 2022 followed by precipitation and cooling in the winter of 2023/2024
An entirely separate discussion is necessary regarding the heat producing (exothermic) geochemical reactions inside the planet which are entirely ignored in the current heat balance of the Earth. Logically, Tidal Pumping should impart mixing for multiple exothermic geochemical reactions, such as decomposition of carbonates, serpenization to generate Hydrogen, plus Fischer-Tropsh and Sabatier reactions to generate hydrocarbons. There are really only two (2) “fossil fuels” – lignite coal produced from peat bogs and wetlands plus Kerogens produced by algae and phytoplankton wedged into shales. Indeed, the internal heat of the Earth resolves the Faint Young Sun Paradox, wherein photosynthetic life emerged approx. 3.5 billion years ago when the Earth should have been frozen solid, with no liquid water on the surface. At that time, the Sun was only 70 % of its current luminosity.
Further reading: “The Chthonian Planet – Why Life Exists on Earth (Human Activity in No Way Affects the Weather nor Climate – Issue Date March 17, 2023)”
Key word search: Chthonian Planet Cronin SSRN
Richard F. Cronin, BChE, MBA, P.E. (retired), 30 years E.I. DuPont de Nemours
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Climate Change Sanity 
