Monitoring Geophysical Phenomena

Fun with Geophysics

This page is dedicated to a number of interesting projects I have run over the years. They all concern various geophysical phenomena including Atmospheric Electricty: Fair Weather, Atmospheric Electricty: Lightning, Geomagnetism, and Telluric Currents. Basically these are monitoring/logging projects that can be conducted with a minimum of investment from the comfort of my home. All these projects are interrelated to some extent and the measurement and analysis techniques bleed into one another. Atmospheric Electricty looks at the Earth Electrical system while Geomgnetism probes the Sun/Earth connection. Telluric currents cross both domains. My interest in telluric currents by the way is strictly scientific, if you are interested in new-age witchcraft please look elsewhere.

As a professional geologist I have worked with geophysical tools most of my career. Still, that work was on a most practical level in petroleum exploration. Even so, I always found the techniques interesting from a purely scientific standpoint. The sun-earth connections especially interest me and geophysical monitoring provides a way one can, from the surface of the earth, to reach up and feel the breeze of the solar wind.

Enjoy..

kjs 2017

The projects described below were conducted some time past and I do not always recall the details of the experimental setups. Nor were they always successful in demonstrating what I sought. I never saw geomagnetic pulsations and my telluric currents were hoh-hum. This is possibly due in part to a lack of good equipment. As I am not much of an engineer, my sensors were very primitive, its a wonder I measured anything at all. So, bear with me and enjoy the project ideas. If your engineering skills exceed my own, quite probably, then you should be able, with superior implementation to get interesting results. As it is, my results did provide plenty to ponder upon. never a wasted effort!

ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICTY.. Measuring the Fair Weather Field of the Global Electric Circuit..

LIGHTNING.. Taking huge risks with lightning rods during violent thunderstorms..

GEOMAGNETISM.. Geomagnetism and the Solar/Earth connection..

EARTH ELECTRICTY.. Probing Telluric currents..



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