NASA held a live Q&A this afternoon. I asked some Qs. I like to start simple and work my way up:
"What are the "wild particles" trapped by the magnetic fields of that region? Where do they come from? Does the region become overcharged at times? If so, how does the system handle it? How would it be handled differently with a weaker magnetosphere? How would the influence of a generally weaker heliosphere effect the system? Would it become more readily overcharged in the case of a weaker magnetosphere/heliosphere?"
https://www.facebook.com/NASASunScience/
NASA Sun Science: These are all fantastic questions! Some of them are among most highly debated topics at the forefront of the scientific research. We could spend a full day discussing them, and would only barely scratch the surface.
Very briefly - we are talking about charged particles (mostly electrons and protons) that have very high energy, such than they travel at speeds very close to the speed of light. Radiation belt particles are trapped by Earth’s magnetic field in a doughnut-like cavity encircling the planet. The most remarkable fact is that most of these particles are energized in near-Earth space, which works as a giant particle accelerator! The intensity of particle radiation in the belts is highly sensitive to what is happening with the Sun - in response to the solar-energy driving it can vary dramatically: completely disappear or increase by many orders of magnitude!
All planets with magnetic fields in our solar system — and probably across the universe — have radiation belts, which makes Earth’s belts a natural laboratory where we can study how particles are accelerated in space. The intensity of the belts does depend on how strong the planetary magnetic field is. But it also depend on many other processes that contribute to particle acceleration. Here is a short EOS articles that outline the Van Allen Probes mission and discusses the complexity of physical mechanisms that sculpt the belts:
Down the rabbit hole of their answer: They left me this link:
https://eos.org/project-updates/radiati ... olar-cycle "Radiation Belt Processes in a Declining Solar Cycle"
Which was a good read. But that link led me to this link:
https://eos.org/editors-vox/electric-cu ... n-the-show "Electric Currents in Outer Space Run the Show"
Which was a better read. But that link led me to this link:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 017-0412-2 "Space Weather Effects Produced by the Ring Current Particles"
Now we're getting somewhere...an excellent read. But that link led me to this link: "Radiation belt electron precipitation due to geomagnetic storms: Significance to middle atmosphere ozone chemistry"
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 10JA015599
Long story short - from my reading of all the above:
Greater influence from coronal hole streams (which are more predominant during solar minimums and weak sunspot cycles in general) is the biggest cooling factor on Earth. With the waning magnetosphere due to the magnetic pole excursion/migration/reversal/flip, that influence will be greatly magnified. Shit's gonna get REAL cold and the polar vortex is gonna get REAL busy during the coming Winters. It's not just cloud nucleation from increased cosmic rays. The pole shift will pump up the cold WELL beyond expected GSM consequences.