reply to post by FelixFelicis
I'd say that is a very good way to put it....coincidences.
HAARP is designed solely to excite the ionosphere. The ionosphere is simply not connected with weather all the way down here (over 50 miles below
that level, down here on the surface). About 99% of all weather occurs in the troposphere....from the ground up to 7 or 8 to 11 or 12 miles (roughly)
depending on season and latitude above the Equator.
All the weather occurs down here because the vast majority of water vapor in the atmosphere is down here.
The "top" of the troposphere is a boundary layer, in between it and the stratosphere.....this boundary is called the tropopause. Literally, it is
defined as the point where adiabatic lapse rate cooling stops...where temperature no longer drops with increase in height....for a while, then the
lapse trend reverses in the stratosphere.
To be absolutely precise, in Wiki they quote from the "World Meteorological Organization"
Wiki - Tropopause
The boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere, where an abrupt change in lapse rate usually occurs. It is defined as the lowest level
at which the lapse rate decreases to 2 °C/km or less, provided that the average lapse rate between this level and all higher levels within 2 km does
not exceed 2 °C/km.
Note that in the troposphere the "standard" lapse rate is 2° C per 1,000 feet. Also note that one kilometer (km) is about 3,280 feet. So,
normally in a vertical rise of one km, with a standard lapse rate in the troposphere, the temperature would decrease by about 6° C.
So the tropopause is a "lag zone" in essence.
OK, the point of all that was background to explain that when it comes to the ionosphere, it is not what we (who live here where we can breathe) would
consider "atmosphere" by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, at the point (roughly ~50 miles/80 km) where the ionosphere begins, it is defined
by NASA as the "beginning" of space. For NASA, they will grant a person Astronaut status for achieving flight to that height.
The International Aviation Organization considers the "beginning" of space to be at 100 km (62 miles). So, there is a quibble there.....
....but not pertinent. Just mentioned to differentiate our atmosphere, and our weather, from the ionosphere....which is really a layer of charged free
electrons. Very tenuous, but not quite a vacuum. Almost, though.
HAARP can only affect this region, the ionosphere. HAARP's power output isn't really all that strong, and there is attenuation at the distance the EM
radiation (radio waves, basically) must travel....they weaken by the time they arrive.
Although there are some papers online that I've found mentioning studies showing that the tropopause may seem to have a minor effect on the
Ionosphere, the reverse is not the case....I've found no papers suggesting this.
The papers mentioned above about the ionosphere reacting to the lower portions of the atmosphere are recent, and I think they are still
Here is more reading about the atmosphere make-up
from University at Albany, NY.
(Was one that showed up in a recent web search....there are many more similar sources).
edit on Thu 8 March 2012 by ProudBird because: (no reason given)