PDF- may I say 'excellent' point and thanks for the links!
***allow me to add to this...
Earth’s Ionosphere drops to a new low
...December 16, 2008...
...Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth’s upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force’s Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16, 2008...
...University of Texas at Dallas...
...CINDI and C/NOFS were designed to study disturbances in Earth’s ionosphere that can result in a disruption of navigation and communication signals. The ionosphere is a gaseous envelope of electrically charged particles that surrounds our planet and it is important because Radar, radio waves, and global positioning system signals can be disrupted by ionospheric disturbances...
...CINDI’s first discovery was, however, that the ionosphere was not where it had been expected to be. During the first months of CINDI operations the transition between the ionosphere and space was found to be at about 260 miles (420 km) altitude during the nighttime, barely rising above 500 miles (800 km) during the day. These altitudes were extraordinarily low compared with the more typical values of 400 miles (640 km) during the nighttime and 600 miles (960 km) during the day...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/16/earths-ionosphere-drops-to-a-new-low/-
Anomalies on the Earth's Ionosphere and Magnetosphere. Biology Cabinet
...17 Dec 2008...
http://www.biocab.org/Anomalies_Ionosphere_Magnetosphere.html...Last Tuesday, we received a memorandum from NASA in which solar physicists informed us of the discovery of shrinkage to "extraordinarily low levels" of the Earth’s transitional layer of terrestrial atmosphere and the deep space where the radiation, emitted by the Sun, hits directly onto our atmosphere...
...The anomaly had been observed previously, but not with the magnitude now observed...
...The altitude and thickness of the ionosphere depends upon the ultraviolet radiation incoming from the Sun, which affects the upper limits of the atmospheric layer in question; hence, my logical deduction was that the amount of ultraviolet radiation incoming from the Sun has diminished considerably. Immediately, I associated the anomaly with the lassitude of the Sun whilst entering its activity cycle-24, having not yet settled down, when it should have done so more than a year ago...
...Hardly had I begun to unravel the note on the ionosphere shrinkage, when I received another official NASA note, on the discovery of a great breach in the Earth magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field is "a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth" which shields us from the energetic particles of the solar wind (plasma)...
...NASA’s scientists have said that they have never observed so great a failure or breach in the magnetosphere caused by a fluctuation of a solar magnetosphere pointing North. The solar magnetic field is fluctuating, or changing, and the event is affecting all the bodies of the Solar System, Earth amongst them...
http://www.biocab.org/Anomalies_Ionosphere_Magnetosphere.html.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cindi/cindi_feature.html-
As globe warms, atmosphere may shrink
...26 Sept 1998...
...The atmospheric physicists used radar installations in the !Falkland Islands! and along the Antarctic coast to PROBE the thermosphere...
...Researchers have previously detected decreases in ionospheric height over Finland and Germany. The Southern Hemisphere data "show that it's a global phenomenon, not just over Europe,"...
...The British researchers say that although their measurements are consistent with greenhouse warming predictions, there could be other factors causing the thermosphere to contract...
...Another recent study, in fact, failed to find a consistent trend in ionospheric height. When Indian scientists analyzed records from 31 stations around the world, they found the ionosphere rising in some regions and falling in others...
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/As+globe+warms,+atmosphere+may+shrink.-a021227591-
...Dec. 16, 2008...
...NASA's five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth's magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to "load up" the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics...
..."At first I didn't believe it," "This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction."...
..."The opening was huge—four times wider than Earth itself," "1027 particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere—that's a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible."...
...Northern IMF events don't actually trigger geomagnetic storms, but they do set the stage for storms by loading the magnetosphere with plasma. A loaded magnetosphere is primed for auroras, power outages, and other disturbances that can result when, say, a CME (coronal mass ejection) hits...
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/16dec_giantbreach/
