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What's the link between cosmic rays and climate change?

What the science says...

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Hypothetically, an increasing solar magnetic field could deflect galactic cosmic rays, which hypothetically seed low-level clouds, thus decreasing the Earth's reflectivity and causing global warming. However, it turns out that none of these hypotheticals are occurring in reality, and if cosmic rays were able to influence global temperatures, they would be having a cooling effect.

Climate Myth...

It's cosmic rays

"When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. ... As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then."  (Henrik Svensmark)

Henrik Svensmark has proposed that galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) could exert significant influence over global temperatures (Svensmark 1998).  The theory goes that the solar magnetic field deflects GCRs, which are capable of seeding cloud formation on Earth.  So if the solar magnetic field were to increase, fewer GCRs would reach Earth, seeding fewer low-level clouds, which are strongly reflective.  Thus an increased solar magnetic field can indirectly decrease the Earth's albedo (reflectivity), causing the planet to warm.  Therefore, in order for this theory to be plausible, all four of the following requirements must be true.

  1. Solar magnetic field must have a long-term positive trend.
  2. Galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth must have a long-term negative trend.
  3. Cosmic rays must successfully seed low-level clouds.
  4. Low-level cloud cover must have a long-term negative trend.

Fortunately we have empirical observations against which we can test these requirements.

Solar magnetic field

Solar magnetic field strength correlates strongly with other solar activity, such as solar irradiance and sunspot number.  As is the case with these other solar attributes, solar magnetic field has not changed appreciably over the past three decades (Lockwood 2001).

Figure 1: Solar Magnetic Flux from 1967 to 2009 (Vieira and Solanki 2010)

Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux

Cosmic ray flux on Earth has been monitored since the mid-20th century, and has shown no significant trend over that period.

Figure 2: Cosmic Ray Intensity (blue) and Sunspot Number (green) from 1951 to 2006 (University of New Hampshire)

In fact cosmic ray flux has lagged behind the global temperature change since approximately 1970 (Krivova 2003).

"between 1970 and 1985 the cosmic ray flux, although still behaving similarly to the temperature, in fact lags it and cannot be the cause of its rise. Thus changes in the cosmic ray flux cannot be responsible for more than 15% of the temperature increase"


Figure 3: Reconstructed cosmic radiation (solid line before 1952) and directly observed cosmic radiation (solid line after 1952) compared to global temperature (dotted line). All curves have been smoothed by an 11 year running mean (Krivova 2003).

Benestad (2013) compared cosmic ray flux to global surface temperature changes and found "there is little empirical evidence that links GCR to the recent global warming." In fact, since 1990, galactic cosmic ray flux on Earth has increased - "the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures" (Lockwood 2007).  In fact, cosmic ray on flux recently reached record levels.  According to Richard Mewaldt of Caltech, "In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years." Erlykin et al. (2013) noted (emphasis added),

"Recent measurements of the cosmic ray intensity show that a former decrease with time has been reversed. Thus, even if cosmic rays enhanced cloud production, there would be a small global cooling, not warming."

Figure 4: Record cosmic ray flux observed in 2009 by the Advanced Composition Explorer (NASA)

Despite this record high GCR flux which we would expect to increase cloud cover and cause cooling, 2009 was tied for the second-hottest year on record, and the 12-month running mean global surface temperature record was broken 3 times in 2010 (NASA GISS).

GCR vs. Temp

Figure 5: Annual average GCR counts per minute (blue - note that numbers decrease going up the left vertical axis, because lower GCRs should mean higher temperatures) from the Neutron Monitor Database vs. annual average global surface temperature (red, right vertical axis) from NOAA NCDC, both with second order polynomial fits.

GCR Cloud Seeding

In order for GCRs to successfully seed clouds, they must achieve the following three steps.

  1. GCRs must induce aerosol formation
  2. These newly-formed aerosols must grow sufficiently (through the condensation of gases in the atmosphere) to form cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN)
  3. The CCN must lead to increased cloud formation.

The first step is not controversial, and is being investigated by the CERN CLOUD experiment.  A recent study by Enghoff et al. (2011) also demonstrated some success in inducing aerosol formation under laboratory conditions, although they have yet to test the process under atmospheric conditions.

However, the second step is often glossed over by those espousing the GCR warming theory.  Freshly nucleated particles must grow by approximately a factor of 100,000 in mass before they can effectively scatter solar radiation or be activated into a cloud droplet (Verheggen 2009). Pierce and Adams (2009) investigated this second step by using a a general circulation model with online aerosol microphysics in order to evaluate the growth rate of aerosols from changes in cosmic ray flux, and found that they are far too small to play a significant role in cloud formation or climate change.

"In our simulations, changes in CCN from changes in cosmic rays during a solar cycle are two orders of magnitude too small to account for the observed changes in cloud properties; consequently, we conclude that the hypothesized effect is too small to play a significant role in current climate change."

Numerous studies have also investigated the effectiveness of GCRs in cloud formation (the third step).  Kazil et al. (2006) found:

"the variation of ionization by galactic cosmic rays over the decadal solar cycle does not entail a response...that would explain observed variations in global cloud cover."

Sloan and Wolfendale (2008) found:

"we estimate that less than 23%, at the 95% confidence level, of the 11-year cycle changes in the globally averaged cloud cover observed in solar cycle 22 is due to the change in the rate of ionization from the solar modulation of cosmic rays."

Kristjansson et al. (2008) found:

"no statistically significant correlations were found between any of the four cloud parameters and GCR"

Calogovic et al. (2010) found:

"no response of global cloud cover to Forbush decreases at any altitude and latitude."

Kulmala et al. (2010) found

"galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation events, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well."

Laken et al. (2013) found

"there is no robust evidence of a widespread link between the cosmic ray flux and clouds."

Krissansen-Totton & Davies (2013) found

"no statistically significant correlations between cosmic rays and global albedo or globally averaged cloud height, and no evidence for any regional or lagged correlations"

In the CERN CLOUD experiments, Almeida et al. (2013) found

"ionising radiation such as the cosmic radiation that bombards the atmosphere from space has negligible influence on the formation rates of these particular aerosols [that form clouds]"

Although there was a correlation between GCRs and low-level cloud cover until about 1991, after that point the correlation broke down (Laut 2003) and cloud cover began to lag GCR trends by over 6 months, while cloud formation should occur within several days (Yu 2000).


Figure 6: Low cloud cover (blue line) versus cosmic ray intensity (red line) (Laut 2003).

Low-Level Cloud Cover

Unfortunately observational low-level cloud cover data is somewhat lacking and even yields contradictory results.  Norris (2007) found

"Global mean time series of surface- and satellite-observed low-level and total cloud cover exhibit very large discrepancies, however, implying that artifacts exist in one or both data sets....The surface-observed low-level cloud cover time series averaged over the global ocean appears suspicious because it reports a very large 5%-sky-cover increase between 1952 and 1997. Unless low-level cloud albedo substantially decreased during this time period, the reduced solar absorption caused by the reported enhancement of cloud cover would have resulted in cooling of the climate system that is inconsistent with the observed temperature record."

So the jury is still out regarding whether or not there's a long-term trend in low-level cloud cover.

Lack of evidence for significant historical climate impacts

Sloan & Wolfendale (2013) examined the influence of cosmic rays on the climate over the past billion years. They found that changes in the galactic cosmic ray intensity are too small to account for significant climate changes on Earth. This was also the conclusion of Feng & Bailer-Jones (2013).

Inability to explain other observations

In addition to these multiple lines of empirical evidence which contradict the GCR warming theory, the galactic cosmic ray theory cannot easily explain a number of observed fingerprints of the increased greenhouse effect, such as the cooling of the upper atmosphere and greater warming at night than day.

Additionally, because cosmic radiation shows greater variation in high latitudes, we expect larger changes in cloud cover in polar regions if GCRs are succesfully influencing cloud cover.  This is not observed.  Furthermore, examining the nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl, ionization from the radioactivity would be expected to have produced an increase in cloud cover.  There is no evident increase in cloud cover following the accident (Sloan & Wolfendale 2007).

Galactic cosmic rays can't explain global warming

In summary, studies have shown that GCRs exert a minor influence over low-level cloud cover, solar magnetic field has not increased in recent decades, nor has GCR flux on Earth decreased.  In fact, if GCRs did have a significant impact on global temperatures, they would have had a net cooling effect over the past 50 years, especially over the past 50 years when global warming was strongest.  Sloan & Wolfendale (2013) found that the contribution of solar activity and galactic cosmic rays (combined) to global warming is "less than 10% of the warming seen in the twentieth century."

Last updated on 14 October 2016 by dana1981. View Archives

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Further reading

A team of scientists from 17 countries have found the most likely origin of galactic cosmic rays - the centres of distant galaxies (Active Galactic Nuclei) powered by supermassive black holes. This discovery is not particularly pertinent to the global warming debate but it is cool :-)

Further viewing

This video published on Nov. 17, 2019 by "Have a think" provides some more and current explanations of why GCRs do not play a role in current global warming.

 

Comments

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Comments 1 to 25 out of 122:

  1. I always thought this hypothesis seemed unlikely, but... What about the last 10 years of global not warming? Why does CO2 get an 800 year wrong direction lag and the sun has to be exactly in step to be a viable hypothesis?
    Response: The point is that because the sun has correlated so closely with temperature in the past, when the correlation ended in the 1970's, it's reasonable to conclude some other forcing imposed itself on the climate. Re the CO2 lag, the ice core records actually confirm the amplifying effect of atmospheric CO2. As for the last 10 years of global not warming, you'll find the warming rate is the same over the last 10 years as over the last 30 years.
  2. First, the Harrison paper of 2006 state "...Furthermore, during sudden transient reductions in cosmic rays (e.g. Forbush events), simultaneous decreases occur in the diffuse fraction, showing that the diffuse radiation changes are unambiguously due to cosmic rays." http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/07661/EGU06-J-07661.pdf Hence, it is pointless to argue that cosmic rays do not affect cloudiness. The correlation is there on a timescale of hours to decades, and as others have shown, on centennial to billion of years. The mechanism might not be what Svensmark has proposed but it doesn't change the basic fact if he is wrong about that. Secondly, your argument is nonsensical, as what Svensmark and other argue is not that cosmic rays can account for all climate influences. But if he is right - and evidence is piling up that he is - two things follows. 1) the parametrisation in current GCMs are wrong as they fit past temperatures without taking this effect in consideration. Hence they are not reliable as tools for forecasts. 2) climate sensitivity is overestimated by earlier attempts such as Hansens, as one major forcing was not considered when calculating those sensitivity values. What "sceptics" such as me claim is that there is precious little evidence to support the higher estimates on future temperatures as presented by UN (IPCC). And quite a bit of evidence against it. Emission scenarios is, well, rather extravagant, as they include projections of emissions many times higher than todays in year 2100 in spite of our likelhood to develop good alternatives to the ever more pricier fossile fuel (current trends are cutting the cost of renewables at half each decade). Climate scenarios based on these extravagant emission scenarios is then calculated with GCMs that are likely overestimating the response to a particular forcing. In general I would say sceptics accept that the climate warms when we add CO2 to the atmosphere, but we believe its effect will be muted by the climate systems rather than enhanced. I also want to add that I recognise all other environmental (and geopolitical) problems associated with burning fossile fuel and find that a compelling reason to put higher efforts in developing alternatives.
  3. Sir, you state that "The point is that because the sun has correlated so closely with temperature in the past, when the correlation ended in the 1970's, it's reasonable to conclude some other forcing imposed itself on the climate. Re the CO2 lag, the ice core records actually confirm the amplifying effect of atmospheric CO2. As for the last 10 years of global not warming, you'll find the warming rate is the same over the last 10 years as over the last 30 years." For sure, neither the sun nor CO2 nor the two together make up for the only climate forcing. So your argument is a bit weak by itself, but even if we assume that all the unexplained difference is due to CO2, that doesn't give as much room for IPCCs +6°C forecast that you seem to imply. If all the difference from Krivova et al graph is attributed to CO2 that means that burning half of our known reserves of oil and gas has yielded us less than 0,3°C in temperature change. Some may be in the pipeline but several degrees? The climatic response time would need to be many hundreds of years for that to be possible, which clearly is not the case with TSI & cosmic ray forcings. I would also think that the discussion would be less confusing if we started to define what kind of cosmic rays we are discussing. If I remember correctly Laut is using low energy CR but what Svensmark and others claim is that it is cosmic rays of a certain energy (around 10 GeV) that makes the difference: only these energies create the secondary particles needed for the ionisation over low altitudes far from land. Sometimes the CR of high and low energies follow eachother, other times they won't; hence we should clearly state what kind of cosmic rays we are refering to.
  4. Here are a few new studies in favor of the climate-GCR link: http://aps.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0803/0803.2765.pdf http://aps.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0803/0803.2766.pdf GCRs are certainly a fascinating aspect of climate.
  5. It is suggested that high level cloud formation is not affected because of the differences between ice crystals (high level)and vapour ( low level). There is a strong correlation between CR's and low level cloud referred to in this paper... http://www.solarstorms.org/CloudCover.html cosmic ray/low cloud cover. "The correlation of low cloud factor and cosmic ray flux is unexpected as the maximum degree of ionization by cosmic rays occurs in the altitude range 12-15km, i.e. close to or above the tropopause. The altitude ranges covered by clouds of different type are: 0-3.2 km for the low clouds, 3.2-6.5 km for the mid-level clouds and 6.5-16 km for the high clouds. Thus any cosmic ray induced cloud effect would be expected to be stronger for high rather than low cloud layers (Kernthaler et al. 1999; Jorgensen and Hansen, 2000). An explanation may lie in the fact that, as the neutron detectors are located at ground level, the measured flux is more representative of lower than higher regions of the atmosphere. Also, we suspect that the physical state of the cloud droplets may play a significant role in the cosmic ray-cloud interaction. It has been pointed out before that the physics of ice and liquid clouds may differ (Gierens and Ponater, 1999). By analysing different low cloud types separately we found that clouds in a liquid phase account for almost all the variability during the observed period, leaving the ice clouds constant in time, except at the poles where a slight increasing trend for some of the ice cloud types is found. Thus the greater sensitivity of low cloud to cosmic rays may result from the preponderance of liquid phase cloud types at lower altitudes (less than 6-7 km). "
  6. A thought: cosmic rays are essentially protons, alpha and beta particles (90%,9%,1%) and since it is well known that both alpha and beta particles cause condensation trails in cloud chambers thro' ionisation, does it not follow that in appropriate atmospheric conditions they would cause condensation nuclei to form? And that the extent of such formation would depend on the quantity and energy levels of these particles? Also, is the ratio of particles always the same or is there variation which would allow for increased/decreased cloud formation regardless of the overall level of CR's?
  7. More recent studies: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217075138.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090511122425.htm
  8. The point is how much heat arrives on the surface of the earth for what duration. If you leave water in a pot on the stove, and do with the the heat control a mock-up of the suns behaviour over the past 1100 years, the water will get hottest when you turn the heat up and leave it up. The water will not get hot hot when you give irregular bursts of heat, then turn it down again, or no heat. That temperatures continue to rise when sunspots level off is analogous to the water continuing to heat when you leave the stove turned on. Perhaps a pig on a spit might be a sizzling analogy for some. Until our planet reaches the temperature of the surface of the sun as it would be at this solar radius, we are going to continue heating up. Hopefully, sunspots will drop off before then. The 'exact' set interacting mechanisms of cloud formation would be interesting to know, and must affect the amount of the suns energy arriving at what the oil-well-country-occupying military types refer to as 'ground zero', eh?
  9. I am sure the global warming denialists are going to climb onto the bandwagon that cosmic rays are found to influence tree ring growth - http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8311000/8311373.stm - and then try to tie that to proof that cosmic rays are responsible for climate change. What really amuses me about climate change denialists is the fact that they postulate all of these other reasons for climate change, like cosmic rays, water in the atmosphere, and so on, and then state that there is no climate change, or at least that it is not anthropogenic. What a great cop out so that life can continue as normal. And so it goes........
  10. "The bottom line is even if these difficulties can be resolved and the causality link between cosmic rays and cloud formation is proven, all they'll find is the cloud formation 50 years ago is similar to now and has had little to no impact on the last 30 years of long term global warming." Not so; as I posted somewhere else on this site there are 2 factors here - cosmic radiation and water vapour. If CR remains essentially the same you can still increase cloud formation if WV concentration increases. Temperature rises from CO2 increases are 'amplified' by increased WV according to AGW hypothesis - which is confirmed to be ocurring in the lower troposhere by direct measurement. Work by the Danes has shown that CR's act more like a catalyst in that single particles can cause many nucleation events, so the effect becomes SO2/WV dependant if CR level is constant. There is a link to the website of the Danish Technical University on the page "Do cosmic rays cause clouds?" (#40) "Set loose by cosmic rays passing through the atmosphere, the electrons attach themselves to fragile clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules. Their electric charges stabilize the clusters while more molecules join them. When the molecular clusters are big enough, the electrons can leave them in a stable state, and go off to encourage other clusters to grow. In other words, the electrons act as catalysts, which promote chemical action while remaining unchanged themselves. A single electron can make many attempts to grow clusters, even though it will fail if it leaves too soon. "
  11. Recently I watched a lecture by Dr. Richard Alley, at the AGU (link below). He mentions a "Muschler et al. 2005" paper, with a very neat graph showing a distinct spike in cosmic rays during the Laschamp event some 40 thousand years ago, with no corresponding change in temperature at the same time. I could not find the paper, though. Could anyone help? (relevant part at 42:10 min) http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
  12. Mizimi, it doesn’t matter what the purported mechanism of GCRs’ effect is--water vapor, cloud formation, or anything else. Once the changes in GCR level stopped (i.e., GCR level became constant), the resulting energy imbalance of the Earth must “immediately” have started to shrink as the Earth “immediately” started to heat and therefore radiate more to match the new, now constant, level of GCR--regardless of whether the GCR effect occurs via some additional mechanisms involving water vapor, and regardless of whether the higher level of GCR amplifies the effect of increased water vapor. But the Earth’s energy imbalance has not been shrinking. It has continued to grow, which means the cause of the imbalance has continued to grow, which means the cause cannot still be GCR, because GCR has been constant for half a century. It is impossible for the effect to lag this long. This is the same reason the effect of solar radiance’s increase up to the 1950s cannot lag this long. The same argument applies to any factor once it stops changing.
  13. Possible error in this article... I try always to verify quotes from original sources in order to eliminate the possibility of misattribution. In this article, there is a quote referenced from a Max Planck article here: http://www.mps.mpg.de/dokumente/publikationen/solanki/r47.pdf (Krivova 2003). The quote is "between 1970 and 1985 the cosmic ray flux, although still behaving similarly to the temperature, in fact lags it and cannot be the cause of its rise. Thus changes in the cosmic ray flux cannot be responsible for more than 15% of the temperature increase". The above referenced .pdf file is a scan and is therefore not searchable for this quote. I have attempted to read the entire article (a daunting task for a non-scientist like myself) and cannot locate the referenced quote. A Google search finds only additional references to this .pdf and this article. Is the above quote actually in the referenced article? If so, I'm blind and didn't see it. If not, where does this quote come from?
    Response: The quote is on page 281 of that paper, beneath the graph I reference above.
  14. Thanks! I now see the quote (and will have my eyes checked).
  15. Here's the graph I mentioned above about the Laschamp event: http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/images/galactic-cosmic-rays/LaschampAnomaly.jpg/view I presume it comes from this paper: Muscheler et al. 2005 "Geomagnetic field intensity during the last 60,000 years based on 10Be and 36Cl from the Summit ice cores and 14C" [Muscheler 2005] The graph looks pretty strinking to me. John, do you think it would be worth adding this to a future update on this argument?
    Response: [RH] Hot linked Musch paper.
  16. BTW hope you don't mind me asking here, but someone claims that the Twomey effect is wrong for dealing with clouds and that "Mie scattering" is more appropriate. Anyone know anything about this?
  17. Turboblocke, there's something missing in the claim you're reporting. Twomey effect and Mie scattering are two different things.
  18. Riccardo, this is what he says,"Reportedly, the models significantly over-predict temperature rise for a given level of CO2 and have to be corrected by an assumed aerosol cooling from the 'Twomey Effect': the apparently greater brightness ['diffuse albedo'] of clouds with smaller droplets. Twomey's explanation, greater surface area gives greater 'reflectivity', is wrong physics but plausible: I saw it recently in NASA literature so it appears to be taught in climate science as if it were a fact. The correct physics is 'Mie scattering'. Smaller droplets do lead to earlier onset of diffuse radiation. However, unless the measurement is done exactly coaxially with the sun's illumination, the backscattered contribution to the energy loss to space is not quantified. ... So, the satellites don't measure true albedo. The physicists know all about Mie scattering. One paper points out that there is no 'albedo' difference between southern and northern hemispheres when it is known that the aerosol concentration is much higher in the north." It isn't a subject I'm competent in, so I don't know if what he says makes sense.
  19. Turboblocke, you friend is making some confusion between Mie scattering and Twomey Effect. The latter appears to be interpreted as the explanation of the dependece of clouds albedo on droplet size. I assume this is correct. Twomey (e.g. Twomey 1977, J. Atmos. Sci. 54, 1149) did infact apply Mie scattering (with some aproximations) to clouds and not what your friend said ("greater surface area gives greater 'reflectivity'". What your friend appears to be missing is that as far as clouds are concerned one need to consider that: 1) the total mass of water is kept constant, so smaller drops means larger concentration. 2) in real clouds the droplet size is much larger than the wavelength of light (several microns and more vs rougly half a micron) 3) most of the clouds (low and medium level clouds) are optically thick and therefore single scattering aproximation breaks down. This means that the polar distribution of the scattered intensity varies only slowly, almost flat indeed. This contradicts the claim that "satellites don't measure true albedo". I'd like to add a few other comments on his claims. "models significantly over-predict temperature rise for a given level of CO2 and have to be corrected by an assumed aerosol cooling". Yes, if you give incorrect input to the models you'll get garbage for sure. Indeed, no one denies (i hope) that pollution from aerosol (sulfides in particular) has increased till roughly the '60s. Why the models should not consider this given that they do have an effect on climate? "One paper points out that there is no 'albedo' difference between southern and northern hemispheres when it is known that the aerosol concentration is much higher in the north." This is really a miopic point of view. Is albedo determined just by aerosol? No for sure. You have clouds, oceans, ice and several types of land. It is surprisingly enough that the mean albedo turns out to be almost equal in the two emisphere.
  20. Thanks Riccardo. BTW he's not a friend, just another blog scientist.
  21. I'm brand new to this forum and a bit intimidated by some very good-looking and well-researched science in these posts. I've been involved in cosmic ray research for several years and have followed the recent cosmic rays-cause-climate-change brouhaha with some skepticism. Perhaps I can clear up a few subtleties of the argument that seem important to this thread. First of all, its best to define terms: nearly all cosmic rays (CRs) detected at the surface of the earth are of solar origin, the result of collisions between primary particles (mostly protons in the solar wind) and nuclei in the upper atmosphere. The energy of these collisions throw off a chain of secondary particle interactions; what we routinely see are the muons and neutrons. On the other hand, the primary particles of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) are protons and heavier nuclei (up to Fe) from distant stars. Now then: At #3, there's a mention of CR energies and that only CRs of 10GeV or more produce secondary particles. Here is the standard chart of the CR energy spectrum, presented as measured particle flux vs. energy. Note that there are lots of 10 GeV CRs; what excites CR researchers these days are events around the "knee" -- 10^6 GeV or more. But it is well known that secondary particles (mostly muons) are generated by lower energy primary particles. We can even stop these muons with appropriate detectors. At #6, alpha particles don't get that far. As the decay scheme suggests, if any of these secondary particles are potential cloud-formers, betas (aka e- and e+) are the most likely culprits. At #12 there's a mention of GCR flux and the statement that GCR flux is now constant. This is where it gets complicated: during low periods in the solar cycle, we observe more GCRs. GCR flux is hardly constant. NASA recently found the GCR level to be 19% higher than previous records. This article proposes several mechanisms for this apparent paradox, not the least of which is the weakened solar magnetic field. The 10Be ice core data is mentioned in #15: for the last 500 years shown here, there seems to be about a 100 year cycle to 10Be peaks. Some of these peaks are coincident with low sunspot numbers (which is true of the 2009 GCR high-sunspot low). Problem is those peaks aren't very wide, so it seems that concluding much about causality or a 6 month lag or lead at this scale is a bit chicken and egg. Here's another science thread on this topic from last year. Finally, CERN's CLOUD project would be a controlled study of cloud formation by ionizing particles. No data yet.
  22. There's a new paper out Kulmala et al (Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 1885–1898, 2010), it's available on line here: http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/1885/2010/acp-10-1885-2010.pdf The telling part in the conclusions is: "Our results do not support the idea that the ions produced by galactic cosmic rays would be a major factor behind secondary aerosol production and the related aerosol-cloud interactions."
  23. Regarding Duplissy et al. 2010 Results from the CERN pilot CLOUD experiment on their preliminary results, please see this comment on a different thread and make any subsequent comments here.
    Response: Thanks for helping keep the threads organized!
  24. Continued from the thread mentioned above: HR, the word would be laughable but, really, what is there to hang on in the Duplissy paper itself? What paper since Duplissy has been published using CLOUD data? References? Anything yielding more conclusive results? The point was not to reveal problems in the experimental design, but the problems were uncovered nevertheless. If those ultra clean walls can release vapors susceptible of corrupting the results, I don't even want to begin imagine what happens in the real atmosphere, where CCN are already present by the hundreds per cubic cm.
  25. Continuing from a comment on the Cloudy outlook thread. "high degree of blocking from local stratospheric warming from GCR spikes." I know a lot of people who are actively monitoring cosmic ray air showers of the type associated with GCRs; I don't see lots of evidence coming forth. These 'GCR spikes' do not last more than a few fractions of a second at most. And they do not necessarily come in 'swarms.' Big events can be years apart. Here, however, is evidence from a rather old study on the impact of GCRs on the earth's electric field: Data have been obtained which suggest that changes in the Earth's electric field of 10–20 V/m occur close to the cores of extensive air showers initiated by primary particles of energy greater-than or equivalent to 10^17 eV. The earth's fair weather electric field is nominally 100-150 V/m near the surface, so this might be variation on the order of 10%. However, as one E field meter company states, "foul weather electric fields can reach values of well over 10,000 volts per meter at the ground". So why is anyone chasing cosmic rays? Climate change must be caused by lighting!

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