

Evidence for solar wind modulation of lightning  - netman21
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/5/055004/article
What if solar wind does more than &quot;modulate&quot;? What if it powers lightning?
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hga
" _Arrival of the high speed stream at Earth also coincides with a small (~1%)
but rapid decrease in galactic cosmic ray flux...._ "

Wow, I guess that means a sufficiently increased density of protons from the
sun such that 1% of the "cosmic rays" (very energetic protons and atomic
nuclei) collide with them.

~~~
superkuh
It's the magnetic field in the solar wind deflecting the charged cosmic rays.
It is not a scattering effect from increased density.

What is talked about here is the arrival of the high speed stream, but it is
not the high speed stream itself. What is important is the momentum transfer
from the high speed stream to the slow stream out in front of it. This builds
up to a genuine shockwave by Mar's orbit but at earth it is just a smooth
increase in dynamic pressure. There's a pile up of the "frozen-in" magnetic
field at this co-rotating interaction region and that field's intensity
deflects the cosmic rays (and other charged particles) from certain directions
at certain distances.

This is the pretty much the same mechanism as the Forbush decrease associated
with coronal mass ejections.

