Schumann resonance spikes: What they mean for your energy levels
What a "spike" on a Schumann chart really is, what usually causes it, and what research does and does not say about spikes and how you feel. With the Tomsk station's own explanation of its chart.
A "spike" on a Schumann resonance chart is a short burst of stronger signal, shown as a bright or white patch. On the widely shared Tomsk chart, the station itself explains that white vertical stripes come from a local thunderstorm, and black stripes mean missing data. A spike is a change in signal strength, not a change of Earth's frequency, and we found no study showing that these chart spikes change people's energy levels.
What a spike on the chart actually is
Most “Schumann spike” screenshots come from the Tomsk station in Siberia, which publishes a colour chart of the last three days at sos70.ru. The chart shows frequency from 0 to 40 Hz on the vertical axis, with 0 at the top, and time along the bottom. Colour shows how strong the signal is. The colour bar on the right has no numbers.
The station explains how to read it (sos70.ru, in Russian):
- White vertical stripes are bursts of increased signal level caused by a local thunderstorm, meaning lightning near the station.
- Black vertical stripes mean no data was recorded.
- Thin horizontal lines are man-made: power lines, transformer stations and machinery near the station.
- Distant lightning, whose signals circle the Earth many times, is what builds the Schumann resonances themselves: the steady horizontal bands near 8, 14, 20 and 26 Hz.
So the most dramatic “spikes” you see in social media posts are, according to the people who run the instrument, a thunderstorm in the Tomsk region. They tell you about the weather in western Siberia, not about conditions where you live.
Other things that make the chart light up
Very strong lightning anywhere on Earth. Some lightning strikes carry so much charge that their signal stands out from the background. Researchers call these “Q-bursts”. They can be up to about ten times stronger than the background and arrive every ten seconds to a few minutes (Price 2016). On a three-day chart they are thin lines, not hours-long blocks.
The daily rhythm of global lightning. Thunderstorm activity peaks in the local afternoon over South East Asia, Africa and South America. Records from a station in Israel show three matching maxima of the first resonance, around 9, 14 and 20 UT (Price 2016). Daily ups and downs in brightness are normal.
The Sun. Strong solar X-ray bursts and energetic particle events disturb the ionosphere, which forms the upper wall of the resonance cavity. Measured effects are small shifts of the peak frequencies. During solar X-ray bursts in 2001, for example, the first peak rose by about 0.2 Hz while the burst lasted (Roldugin et al. 2004). That is a shift of a fraction of a hertz, not a jump of the whole chart.
A spike is a change in strength, not in frequency
This is the most common misreading. When a white column runs from the top of the chart to the bottom, it does not mean the frequency rose to 40 Hz. It means that, for a moment, the signal was strong across all frequencies the instrument records. The horizontal resonance bands stay where they are. Long term averages from Tomsk since 1997 put the first four peaks at 7.75, 14.17, 20.23 and 25.88 Hz (sos70.ru).
A related point for any number you see: if a website turns the colours of the Tomsk chart into an “amplitude” or “intensity” value, that value is a relative index read from pixels. It has no physical unit and it is not a measurement in picotesla. This site does the same for its own intensity score, and says so on the methodology page.
We have not found a published analysis showing that spikes on these charts have become more frequent over the years. Claims that they have should come with the data.
Do spikes affect your energy levels?
Here is what research can and cannot support.
What has been studied is geomagnetic activity, not chart spikes. Geomagnetic storms are measured with indices such as Kp. Palmer, Rycroft and Cermack (2006) reviewed decades of work on geomagnetic activity and health. Some studies held up under their re-analysis and others did not. They concluded that about 10 to 15 percent of people may be predisposed to adverse effects linked to geomagnetic variations, and that direct effects of the natural low frequency fields themselves “appear implausible”, while some form of resonant absorption seemed more likely to them (Palmer et al. 2006).
Small studies have found correlations. One study followed 10 people for 31 days and found correlations between their heart rate variability and several environmental measures, including solar wind speed, Kp and Schumann resonance power (McCraty et al. 2017). Ten people over one month is a starting point for research, not proof that a spike changes how you feel.
We found nothing linking Tomsk chart spikes to energy, mood or symptoms. Many people describe tiredness, restlessness, headaches or vivid dreams on days when a spike is posted. We found no study that tested those reports against the chart. And since the biggest white patches are, by the station’s own account, local thunderstorms in Siberia, a direct effect on people thousands of kilometres away would be hard to explain.
If you still feel off on “spike days”
- Check the Kp index first. If there is a real geomagnetic storm, you will see it on the Kp index and the storm scale. A white stripe on the Tomsk chart with a quiet Kp is most likely local lightning.
- Keep a simple log of how you feel next to Kp for a few weeks. Be honest about misses as well as hits. With only a few storm days, chance patterns are easy to mistake for real ones.
- Look at the ordinary causes too: sleep, stress, caffeine, illness and weather changes where you live.
- If symptoms are strong or last, talk to a doctor rather than a chart.
Frequently asked questions
What does a white stripe on the Schumann chart mean? On the Tomsk chart, the station says white vertical stripes are caused by a local thunderstorm (sos70.ru).
What does a black stripe mean? Missing data. The instrument recorded nothing for that period.
Did the Schumann resonance jump to 40 Hz? No. The chart only shows frequencies up to 40 Hz, so a stripe that fills the chart reaches that edge. Measured shifts of the resonance peaks during strong solar events are a few tenths of a hertz. Our guide to today’s Schumann reading explains this in detail.
Is a spike a sign of a spiritual shift or “ascension”? We know of no scientific evidence for that. The chart records radio signals from lightning and from nearby electrical equipment.
Where can I see the chart? The home page shows the latest Tomsk spectrogram next to the Kp index.
Sources
- Space Observing System 70, Tomsk: ELF sonogram and how to read it and history and measured frequencies (in Russian).
- Price, C. (2016). ELF Electromagnetic Waves from Lightning: The Schumann Resonances. Atmosphere 7(9), 116. doi:10.3390/atmos7090116
- Roldugin, V. C. et al. (2004). Schumann resonance frequency increase during solar X-ray bursts. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics 109(A1). doi:10.1029/2003JA010019
- Palmer, S. J., Rycroft, M. J., Cermack, M. (2006). Solar and geomagnetic activity, extremely low frequency magnetic and electric fields and human health at the Earth’s surface. Surveys in Geophysics 27, 557 to 595. doi:10.1007/s10712-006-9010-7
- McCraty, R. et al. (2017). Synchronization of Human Autonomic Nervous System Rhythms with Geomagnetic Activity in Human Subjects. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 14(7), 770. doi:10.3390/ijerph14070770