Predicting Weather By The Moon - Xavier University Libraries

Tides
sharply as the ground radiates its heat energy unhindered
into space. In a shorter atmosphere, when a cloud obscures
the sun, the temperature on the ground may suddenly turn
cold. This occurs when the moon is between Full and Last
Quarter.
The Moon acts too, to monitor the solar wind. Consider
the Sun’s role. The Sun is the major source of energy
available to the Earth. At the Earth-Sun distance of
93,200,000 miles (150,000,000 km) about one two-billionth
of the Sun’s outpouring of energy, mostly in the visible-light
range of the spectrum, is intercepted by us. Most
of this is absorbed by the atmosphere and the solid Earth,
giving rise to heating of the gases of the atmosphere and
the rock and water of the surface. Although the sun irradiates
the atmosphere between the Sun and the Earth, at the
time of the New Moon and the 1st Quarter the Moon gets
in the way and so there is a lower frequency of magnetic
disturbance than between Full Moon and Last Quarter of
the month. As more work has been done on the Moon’s
effect on the magnetic field, it has been realised that the
Moon shields the Earth from the solar wind at New Moon,
and that this magnetism decreases four days before Full
Moon and increases again four days after the Full Moon.
The cause is instability or disturbance in the magnetosphere
tail, caused by the entry of the Moon to the Earth’s magnetic
tail, known to extend out beyond the orbit of the
Moon.
It is this geometry of the tail and the Moon’s orbital
velocity that ensures the disturbance of the neutral sheet
the day before the Full Moon.(1969 Fraser-Smith)
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