Inuit See Sun Earlier and in Different Place

Didn't know where to post this so feel free to move it if required.

Some Inuit say they hope scientists coming to Nunavut for research as part of International Polar Year can help shed light on changes they're seeing in the sun — particularly, how it's been showing up more often in the usually always-dark winters.

For the past several years, residents in the High Arctic have observed that the winter dark season is ending earlier than usual, with the sun coming up at a different place than what people are used to seeing.

www.cbc.ca...

Sounds like the beginning of a pole flip, if that can even happen.

Your thoughts on what this could be?

Glaciologist Dr. Roy Koerner, with the Geological Survey of Canada, agreed, comparing it to sticking a fork into a glass of water: the fork appears to bend where it enters the water, he said.

"So you get the same effect: you get this bent effect. Except in this case, the sun, which is just below the horizon, looks as if it's above the horizon, just a bit of it," he said.
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I have little knowledge on geology and meteorology, not enough to make a sound comment.

I found the above statement interesting though, i have read that at the equator, the Sahara maybe, this "refraction of light" allows you to see the sun TWO MINUTES after it has set....just like thier "bending fork in water" analogy.

But would this effect REALLY be causing the "significant" changes that the Inuits are said to be obsearving?

Surely they wouldn't be commenting on a few minutes worth of sun light, and would not this "bending" ONLY effect the ANGLE at which the sunlight crests the horizon and NOT its position when rising and setting?

Interesting to say the least, regardless of reason..., pole flip OR global/solar warming, it certainly seems to suggest changes of an exellerated nature.

i have flaged this thread, an interesting find TheComte.

PS...woops, looks like MY post boosted your points up to 666,

[edit on 13-3-2007 by Anomic of Nihilism]

[edit on 13-3-2007 by Anomic of Nihilism]

[edit on 13-3-2007 by Anomic of Nihilism]

Now, ages ago I remember seeing in a book that the earth wobbles on it's axis, perhaps they are noticing the change due to that. Although I think it takes much longer than people could notice.

Originally posted by TheComte

Sounds like the beginning of a pole flip, if that can even happen.

Your thoughts on what this could be?

I'd agree with Apex - Most likely due to precession, the circular occilation of the earth axis. Here is a link to a wiki article about it:

en.wikipedia.org...

Regarding the pole flip, all that will actually flip will be the magnetic poles. The Earth will not flip over.

Here is a thread about it, with a link to a website by NOVA about pole reversal. You might find it interesting. Enjoy. Good find on the Inuit story.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

If the Inuit have lived in the same location for many years, would they not be familiar with the 'bent fork effect'.....and they'd see it every year wouldn't they, even if they called it something else?

The axis wobble (Chandler's Wobble) would my first thought......would it be pronounced enough to be noticed in that region? Here's a couple of pages of info on the wobble and pole migration.....seems like I'd recently read that it was a lot smaller of late.

EARTH AXIS WOBBLE:
www.michaelmandeville.com...
www.michaelmandeville.com...

I've wondered if something like this could have prompted ancient people to build those huge monuments to track the sun......more so than just the usual seasonal change?

What if the melting of artic ice is the culprit. It could be changing the look of the bent fork effect. The ice level may have changed or maybe the salinity of the water is dropping.

If the pole slip then the top layer of the earth could rotate. What they are seeing could be caused by this. Accourding to the theory, the thin top layer of the earth is like the very loose skin of an orange for example, the theory is that this would also slide when the poles shift.

Some places that were hot would be cold and I also think this would account for the changes in seasons in some places and the relationship that some places have to where the sun rises and sets.

The pole shift theory should not be over looked as a possible reason why they are seeing this.

Infact if we start to take into account all the strange little things happening on the earth across the planet, they could well be pointing to this.

When this happens it will cause a lot of things like weird weather to the exteame, earthquakes, tsunami's and other happenings. We could be in the start of it, but it could be that it starts, and then it escalates as we get closer to a full earth slipage. We could just be seeing little warnings now, but the little warnings will becoming stronger and stronger as the time get's closer. Like labour pains.

I have heard the discription in another place.

The earth's rotational pole precesses, but at a constant angle:

csep10.phys.utk.edu...

so that wouldn't effect when the sun rises.

However, I bet that the precession also wobbles. The wobble might be detectable up near the pole where the sun skirts the horizon.
I donno, though.

There is some potential for drift based on mantle flow:
www.nature.com...

But I don't know if it would be big enough to detect.

I certainly hope they are taking leap years into consideration, lol.



[edit on 14-3-2007 by Ectoterrestrial]

If it was the wobble, then I think other people would've noticed as well. Bent Fork effect caused by warmer temperatures and more water vapor in the atmosphere is more likely culprit.

It has been noticed. Its studied quite a bit.

www.cv.nrao.edu...

I don't know if it is large enough to notice though.

If the sun were defracting through additional water vapor in the atmosphere, would its color appear slightly different? Water vapor would scatter light differently than Nitrogen. I wonder if the people up there have noticed anything like a slight color change, etc?

[edit on 14-3-2007 by Ectoterrestrial]

[edit on 14-3-2007 by Ectoterrestrial]

If it was just the precession, then I think that this would be a non-story. They wouldn't need the scientists to tell them what is wrong and I don't think they would print an article without mentioning that's what it was.

could planet X be arriving? It is said that it has caused major earth changes every 2000 years as its orbit nears earth. It is suppossed to look red in colour at first. Shifts in the earths axis will cause extreme weather and mass destruction as in the dinosaur era and Noah's ark. They say the polar regions will notice it first and by the time we see it, it will be too late... to prepare...apparently governments are aware of this planet discovered in the 80's and are preparing to calm public fear by having us used to the fact that even sunny days are hazed over by chemicals left by special aircraft.... we won't see what's eventually going to be behind the haze... we won't even notice the haze as it has been there for years. Check out chemtrails and googl it.

reply to post by TheComte


You beat me to the punch.

I watched the CBC news tonight and apparently the documentary will be released tomorrow.

Also the elders are saying that the moon and the stars are different.

I agree as I have watched the moon for years and I believe it is different. For example you can see the moon during the day every day when as a kid you could not see it during the day every day.

This is from 2004.

December 17, 2004
Scientists see global warming in bright twilight

Inuit hunters first to spot strange light in darkening Arctic sky

JANE GEORGE
CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
In a photo taken on Feb, 9, 2001, Wayne Davidson holds up a clock to show that the sun appears to be up above the horizon before the sunrise was supposed to occur. (PHOTO COURTESY OF WAYNE DAVIDSON)
Wayne Davidson

When warm air and light hit frigid air, strange effects are possible: the sun appears to play all kinds of tricks and assume many different shapes.

But these spectacular shows are not just a fancy display in the sky.

New evidence shows the way cold, heat and light meet in the High Arctic reveal global warming is having an impact - and, although this isn't good news for the region, how traditional environmental knowledge worked hand-in-hand with science is a success story of its own.

For years, hunters kept on telling the Environment Canada weather station agent in Resolute Bay that there was a new kind of light in the dark, winter sky.

"When Inuit say something they mean it. They're not kidding. And they see it together, and say 'wow this is happening' and don't backtrack and don't let scientists say it's not happening," said Wayne Davidson in a telephone interview from the weather station outside Resolute.

Inuit in Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord observed growing light along the horizon during the dark months of the year, like a rainbow or "city lights," according to one Grise Fiord resident.

"The monitors for this are the hunters. I'm a guy who goes to work at the weather station. I'm a darkness man. I honestly cannot see the difference because I don't depend on it. I see the brightness, but there's a difference between me and them. I go to work from the village to the station," said Davidson, who has manned the weather station in Resolute Bay for nearly 20 years.

"Hunters, they're out on the ice, and they depend on this twilight for a point of reference, for seeing. They would know. They're the first ones to know what's going on, and it contradicts what I was thinking at first."

Davidson thought the cold Arctic air was responsible for the presence of more light in the winter. He started looking closely at the results that come from the weather balloons he sends up every day that record air temperature. He also began taking even more photos of the sky, with a digital camera, that he posted on a Web site.

Physicists from abroad as well as various amateur observers logged on, and a scientific explanation for the increasingly bright twilight during the dark season emerged: the new polar light is a kind of mirage created by reflected light from two pools of cold and warm air.

"Extremely high horizon refraction" is an exaggerated version of what always happens when light bends as it travels through different mediums - like when you put a pencil in a glass of water and the underwater part looks bent. Try it, suggests Davidson. The same thing, he says, occurs in the High Arctic, when light comes through the atmosphere, is magnified by the hot air, then hits cold air.

Davidson has called this effect the "Y V Ulluq Q" phenomenon to honor scientists and Inuit, "the great people of the High Arctic."

The initials in this name are for his scientist colleagues, Andrew Young and Siebren Van der Werf, and for Inuit through the word ulluq, "daytime" in Inuktitut. The "Q" that stands for "Qausuittuq," the Inuktitut word for Resolute, which means "the place where tomorrow never comes."

The Y V Ulluq Q produces bright light during twilight, as light is refracted, or bent, by the cold and warm air layers. It's happening because of the increasingly warm air in the Arctic.

Some 200 to 1000 metres above the ground, there's a layer of warm air. For the past 10 years or so, the main effect of this warm air above the High Arctic has been to produce a bright twilight - but it might not stay that way.

Davidson is convinced the Y V Ulluq Q is a powerful warning signal that global warming is having a visible and growing impact even as far north as the High Arctic.

"You have to think of the thing as a struggle between warm and cold air. As long as this warm air is at its present state, it won't warm up the surface, but when it's strong enough, big enough and powerful enough, then it would start warming up everything. Things are changing."

Davidson says the science backs up what Inuit were saying all along.

In April 2001, scientists gathered at the Arctic Science Summit were skeptical when Olayuk Akesuk, who was then Nunavut's minister of sustainable development, told the gathering that one sign of climate change in Nunavut is that the sun is not rising in the same place it used to, but this observation could also be due to a mirage effect caused by the changing balance of cold and heat.

Davidson says he's drawn to mysteries, being the kind of person who says "maybe" when others say "no."

These days he's looking at stars, and tracking a star that disappears when there is too much ozone in the atmosphere.

www.nunatsiaq.com...