People in the High Arctic say their 24-hour darkness isn't as dark as it used to be, and a weather researcher says it's because of the warming climate.
"We still have a daylight and there's still blue, green, red down there — there's sun sign still," said Zipporah Ootooq Aronsen, who lives in Resolute Bay, Nunavut. "It's not usually like that."
People in Resolute Bay now sometimes see a distant island that in the past was only visible during daylight hours.
"It never happened like that before," Aronsen said. "Now we can see it once in a while, when it's a clear day."
Wayne Davidson, a weather researcher in Resolute Bay, said warmer thermal layers over cold dense polar air cause light to bend and travel farther.
"If there's a huge contrast between colder and warmer air, there's longer travel of light from any locations," he said.
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Originally posted by getreadyalready
reply to post by Human_Alien
I think this change might be from the Earth's Axis Wobble. Astronomers could explain better than me, but as the axis tilts closer to the sun, perhaps it allows more light to the North Pole during winter. With everything centered around 2012, maybe that is the date that the axis is most tilted toward the sun and then will slowly work farther away?
You would think the Inuits would have some mythology or history similar to Mayans and Native Americans that would recount this occurence in their history.
Originally posted by an0maly33
reply to post by snowspirit
Find a globe, put a flashlight on one side of it. Put your finger on the northern hemisphere on the dark side if the globe. THAT's why it's brighter when you look north. =) Get up high enough and your darkest night becomes dusk/twilight over the northern horizon, especially in the northern summer.
edit on 29-12-2010 by an0maly33 because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by Human_Alien
Okay, I admit I am not a scientist but how would global warming produce light????
Originally posted by mc_squared
Originally posted by Human_Alien
Okay, I admit I am not a scientist but how would global warming produce light????
It's not producing light, it's just bending it.
This is the same reason why you see a mirage coming off the pavement on a hot day: refraction.
Air has a different index of refraction in different temperatures - and this effect is more and more pronounced when there is a higher contrast between them. Cold air should actually bend light more than warm air, so you can almost think of it as a mirror.
What I think is happening in this case is that because temperatures near the surface are warmer, this creates a bigger contrast between surface temperatures and colder ones further up in the atmosphere. This means that the mirror is stronger and higher in the sky basically. If the mirror is higher in the sky this means the Sun can be lower below the horizon.
So light is bending more and farther North than it normally would be.
)
reply to post by Human_Alien
I dunno. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I think the Earth is getting ready for a (physical) pole shift!
