This offers renewed hope for Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray modulation of earth’s cloud cover. Here is an interesting correlation published just yesterday in GRL.
Cosmic rays detected deep underground reveal secrets of the upper atmosphere
Watch the video animation here (MPEG video will play in your media player)
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by scientists from the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), this remarkable study shows how the number of high-energy cosmic-rays reaching a detector deep underground, closely matches temperature measurements in the upper atmosphere (known as the stratosphere). For the first time, scientists have shown how this relationship can be used to identify weather events that occur very suddenly in the stratosphere during the Northern Hemisphere winter. These events can have a significant effect on the severity of winters we experience, and also on the amount of ozone over the poles – being able to identify them and understand their frequency is crucial for informing our current climate and weather-forecasting models to improve predictions.
Working in collaboration with a major U.S.-led particle physics experiment called MINOS (managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), the scientists analysed a four-year record of cosmic-ray data detected in a disused iron-mine in the U.S. state of Minnesota. What they observed was a strikingly close relationship between the cosmic-rays and stratospheric temperature – this they could understand: the cosmic-rays, known as muons are produced following the decay of other cosmic rays, known as mesons. Increasing the temperature of the atmosphere expands the atmosphere so that fewer mesons are destroyed on impact with air, leaving more to decay naturally to muons. Consequently, if temperature increases so does the number of muons detected.
What did surprise the scientists, however, were the intermittent and sudden increases observed in the levels of muons during the winter months. These jumps in the data occurred over just a few days. On investigation, they found these changes coincided with very sudden increases in the temperature of the stratosphere (by up to 40 oC in places!). Looking more closely at supporting meteorological data, they realised they were observing a major weather event, known as a Sudden Stratospheric Warming. On average, these occur every other year and are notoriously unpredictable. This study has shown, for the first time, that cosmic-ray data can be used effectively to identify these events.
Lead scientist for the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Dr Scott Osprey said: “Up until now we have relied on weather balloons and satellite data to provide information about these major weather events. Now we can potentially use records of cosmic-ray data dating back 50 years to give us a pretty accurate idea of what was happening to the temperature in the stratosphere over this time. Looking forward, data being collected by other large underground detectors around the world, can also be used to study this phenomenon.”
Dr Giles Barr, co-author of the study from the University of Oxford added: “It’s fun sitting half a mile underground doing particle physics. It’s even better to know that from down there, we can also monitor a part of the atmosphere that is otherwise quite tricky to measure”.
Interestingly, the muon cosmic-ray dataset used in this study was collected as a by-product of the MINOS experiment, which is designed to investigate properties of neutrinos, but which also measures muons originating high up in the atmosphere, as background noise in the detector. Having access to these data has led to the production of a valuable dataset of benefit to climate researchers.
Professor Jenny Thomas, deputy spokesperson for MINOS from University College London said “The question we set out to answer at MINOS is to do with the basic properties of fundamental particles called neutrinos which is a crucial ingredient in our current model of the Universe, but as is often the way, by keeping an open mind about the data collected, the science team has been able to find another, unanticipated benefit that aids our understanding of weather and climate phenomena.”
Dr Osprey commented: “This study is a great example of what can be done through international partnerships and cross-disciplinary research. One can only guess what other secrets are waiting to be revealed.”
h/t to Ron de Haan
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Anthony, I think you are the fastest publisher on earth.
this is really a fascinating article, and worthy of follow up and more depth. thanks for getting this posted.
Great to read of some real investigative science taking place instead of the recent data manipulation claiming to show Antarctica is warming
That animation was an eye-opener! I take it the red symbolized temperature increases of 40°C?
Can’t be true, the BBC Science & Environment blog hasn’t got that story at all. The best they can manage so far is “Climate Shift Killing Trees in Western US”! They’ll let that one slip through the net for a while, then when they feel the need they’ll regurgitate it for general consumption when no one will notice, say when unemployment hits 3M, or a major scandal occurs with some half-wit celebrity somewhere, the usual technique of burying interesting science. Now that’s one for the books, not Climate Change, not Climate Chaos, not Climate Catastrophe, but Climate Shift! Anything to keep us on our toes I guess.
Personally I think it makes fascinating reading & certainly lends ever more credence to Svensmark’s theories on Galactic Cosmic Rays
I don’t see how this has anything to do with Svensmark’s theory….
Anthony, I am pretty sure you have got the causal link the wrong way round on this one. The paper is all about how stratospheric warming leads to enhanced detection of muons produced by cosmic rays.
REPLY:I understand where you are coming from, but I said nothing about a “causal link”. You did. The only thing I said is that it “gives new hope for Svenmark’s theory”, since it has been demonstrated that there is a measurable link between cosmic rays and the temperature of the upper atmosphere. This is important, because it has never been shown before. The question is, what drives the change and how is it related to mesons and is the sudden stratospheric warming related to it? Nobody knows the cause of SSW, so this provides a tantalizing clue. – Anthony
Heaven forbid, someone should find evidence that the sun affects climate/weather here on earth.
This is a fascinating story, and I will be very interested to know more. Re the CLOUD experiment at CERN, has anyone heard more about when this is scheduled to take place? 2010? I know they’ve had some problems recently at the LHC, just wondering if it has affected the timetable much.
Anthony, if you keep publishing articles about SCIENCE, you are going to ruin your reputation, as flat-earther. Maybe after this is investigated we should call ourselves deep-earthers.
Your “detector deep underground” phrase in particular caught my attention. Now I have more questions for the scientists that work at SNO (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) where I have worked for a mere 3 months. We are much deeper underground than the Minos lab; we are at the 6800 foot / 2 km level beneath the surface.
I would like to join the chorus and reiterate Dr Giles Barr’s words in that it is indeed fun to sit far underground doing particle physics. I am not a scientist. I am in the operations group, but I enjoy what I have been learning about various topics while at SNO.
Thanks for posting an article in terms that I can understand.
John M Reynolds
Anthony, there have been a number of interesting press releases in the last few weeks concerning the workings of the Upper Atmosphere. I was only highlighting the two below the other day on another site.
Very interesting indeed. A coherent forcing mechanism seems just around the corner:
Earth Atomsphere “Breathing” due to UV: http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/32abc3f111047d1a5ec153cc27e63d5d.html
Also, Infrared waves due to gaseous molecule radiation from NASAs Langley research:
http://www.livescience.com/space/081216-agu-breathing-atmosphere.html
“The changes in heating that cause the breathing can also impact climate, by triggering the upper atmosphere’s “thermostat,” as study team member Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., put it. The added UV radiation heats up the atmosphere, in turn causing gaseous molecules to radiate that heat away in the form of infrared radiation.”
It’s good to see real science without any political undertone.
Hi,
i’m not sure I really understand how these (very interesting) results corroborate Svensmar’s theory about cloud formation?
REPLY: I didn’t say it corroborated, you did, I said it provides “new hope for Svensmark’s theory” because it shows a measurable connection between cosmic rays and the upper atmosphere, something that has not been demonstrated before. The question is, what drives the change and how is it related to mesons and is the sudden stratospheric warming related to it?- Anthony
Wait for the alarmists to scream that correlation is not proof and it is not causality either. It is the only way that they can get there 800 year lag in CO2 increases from temperature increases to look like CO2 is driving climate change to our impending doooooooooom.
Sure this needs to be looked at further by other teams and independently verified as befits real and proper science, but it is a very good and exciting start and instinctively (rather than scientifically) makes much more sense to me than CO2 being the driver of climate change.
From the article:
“What they observed was a strikingly close relationship between the cosmic-rays and stratospheric temperature – this they could understand: the cosmic-rays, known as muons are produced following the decay of other cosmic rays, known as mesons. Increasing the temperature of the atmosphere expands the atmosphere so that fewer mesons are destroyed on impact with air, leaving more to decay naturally to muons. Consequently, if temperature increases so does the number of muons detected.”
Hmmmm… another proxy for temperature. What I make of it is that it will be a more accurate proxy than tree rings (I know, I know. One’s a proxy for troposphere and the other for stratosphere temps – apples and oranges).
Unfortunately, unless I misunderstood, we have data of this sort that only goes as far back as when people started digging holes in the ground and started looking for neutrinos – that’s 50 years – but it seems to be good data.
wow, what a beautiful piece of work and what beautiful timing. It starts to look as if cosmic rays might affect not only low-cloud formation but also the temperature direct as well as the ozone concentration. Great that this has come through the mainstream where I hope they will look further at the solar wind correlation.
Very interesting article – thanks Anthony. So this would basically imply that Sudden Stratospheric Warmings (SSW) should be more frequent during solar minimums (since low solar flux allows an increase in the cosmic radiation recieved at Earth)
It is generally accepted that the Artic Oscillation and/or North Atlantic Oscillation tend to shift negative up to 10 to 20 days following these SSW events – i.e. in meteorological terms SSWs tend to lead to high-latitude “blocking” – patterns which tend to generate intense cold surface high pressure systems near the poles and displace them southwards into the mid-latitudes. i.e. they typically lead to strong cold outbreaks into the mid-latitudes.
This is interesting since we appear to be undergoing a significant SSW as we write…
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/temperature/10mb9065.gif
Interesting Article….!
Are there any ideas thrown forward which might explain the sudden increase in the cosmic rays? I noticed an article published by NASA recently mentioning holes in the earths magnetic field being caused by CME’s. Not sure if these events could cause cosmic rays to suddenly stream into our atmosphere ?
Will look forward to further updates on this topic !
Anthony – thanks for this – its really useful to have you as a monitor of breaking science. I would love to know how this stratospheric heating ties in with UV heating and the shift of the jetstream studied by Drew Shindell at NASA – he had a paper in 2001 I think that found a correlation with UV heating, southerly shift of the jetstream and the Maunder Minimum – maybe this effect also contributed.
Dr. Scott Osprey commented.
“one can only guess what other secrets are waiting to be revealed”
Unlike Nero (fiddling) or Gore/Hansen this is not a ‘done’ scientist, well done Scott.
How is this a “renewed hope for Svensmark’s theory of cosmic rays”?
Have they found a correlation between stratospheric temp and weather in lower troposphere?
Now there’s some data I’d like to get my hands on… yummy.
The explanation of the video featuring sudden stratospheric warming occurring in the southern hemisphere states that ‘This is the only such event recorded in the southern hemisphere (they normally occur in the northern hemisphere).’
Well, that’s pretty interesting. Wonder if that has anything to do with Antarctica’s relative ice stability as compared to the Arctic.
based on this: ““What they observed was a strikingly close relationship between the cosmic-rays and stratospheric temperature – this they could understand: the cosmic-rays, known as muons are produced following the decay of other cosmic rays, known as mesons. Increasing the temperature of the atmosphere expands the atmosphere so that fewer mesons are destroyed on impact with air, leaving more to decay naturally to muons. Consequently, if temperature increases so does the number of muons detected.”
it sounds to me like jonathan was correct. what am i missing? it sounds like this is saying that WHEN the stratosphere warms, more mesons get through…..wouldn’t this be almost the opposite of what is being suggested on here? not being argumentative….i agree with most of what i read on here, but i am having difficulty understanding this one….