Svensmark has a new paper and it is a doozy: Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds (full text PDF).
The major conclusion: “A link between the Sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale…”
This paper confirms 13 years of discoveries that suggest a key role for cosmic rays in climate change. It links observable variations in the world’s cloudiness to laboratory experiments in Copenhagen showing how cosmic rays help generate atmospheric aerosols.
This is important, because it confirms the existence of a sun-earth atmospheric modulation mechanism for clouds and aerosols. It is seen in an event called a Forbush Decrease, which A Forbush decrease is a rapid decrease in the observed galactic cosmic raycoronal mass ejection (CME). It occurs due to the magnetic field of the plasma solar wind sweeping some of the galactic cosmic rays away from Earth. Here is what the Oulu Neutron Monitor plot looked like during such and event on May15th, 2005:
When the CME hit Earth, the magnetic field of the CME deflects the Galactic Cosmic Rays and the secondary particle flux (Neutrons) decreases. In this graph there is also another Forbush decrease visible, which was caused by another, not that powerful flare, which CME passed Earth a few days before this event.
See more from CosmicRays.org Now at last, a linkage has been established on earth showing such events affect cloud cover and aerosols. Luboš Motl gives a good summary ina post from a few days ago, shown below.
Forbush decreases confirm cosmoclimatology
By Luboš Motl
Recall that cosmoclimatology of Henrik Svensmark and others postulates that the galactic cosmic rays are able to create “seeds” of low-lying clouds that may cool the Earth’s surface. A higher number of cosmic rays can therefore decrease the temperature. The creation of the cloud nuclei is caused by ionization and resembles the processes in a cloud chamber.
The fluctuations of the cosmic ray flux may occur due to the variable galactic environment as well as the solar activity: a more active Sun protects us from a part of the cosmic rays. It means that a more active Sun decreases the amounts of low-lying clouds, which means that it warms the Earth.
Because the low-lying clouds remove 30 Watts per squared meter in average (over time and the Earth) or so, one has to be very careful not only about the very existence of the clouds but also about the variations of cloudiness by 5% or so which translates to a degree of temperature change.
A systematic effect on the clouds – e.g. one of the cosmic origin – is a nightmare for the champions of the silly CO2 toy model of climatology because the cloud variations easily beat any effect of CO2. Two alarmists, Sloan and Wolfendale, wanted to rule out Svensmark’s theory by looking at the Forbush decreases, specific events of a solar origin named after Scott Forbush who studied them 6 decades ago, involving the plasma. However, their paper was incorrect.
In April 2008, this blog (The Reference Frame) published the following relevant article:
Sloan and Wolfendale complained that no cosmoclimatological signal could have been seen during the Forbush decreases, i.e. short episodes when the activity of our beloved star decreases the amount of cosmic rays reaching Earth. However, Nir Shaviv explained that it should be expected that such a signal is not seen in the averaged monthly data they had used.
In order to see the “tiger in the jungle”, using Svensmark’s words from a press release
that will be published tomorrow (I am allowed to read it now because my uncle lives in Melbourne which already has August), and in order to separate these clean effects from the huge meteorological noise, one needs to increase the temporal resolution to several days and also cover the whole globe to dilute the effects of local weather.
Newest paper
Tomorrow, on August 1st, 2009, Geophysical Research Letters will publish a new paper by Henrik Svensmark, Torsten Bondo, and Jacob Svensmark:
The People’s Voice (summary of the paper)
Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds (full text).
When you click the second link above and obtain an error message, press alt/d and enter to reload the URL: without a direct external link, the PDF file will be displayed correctly. Or open the Google cache as PDF-like HTML.
Svensmark and his collaborators have looked at 26 Forbush events since 1987 (those that were strong according to their impact on the spectrum seen in the low troposphere where it matters): most of them occur close to the solar maxima (in the middle of the 11-year cycles). The observations with a much better temporal resolution imply that the mass of water stored in clouds decreases by 4-7%, with the minimum reached after a nearly 1-week delay needed for the cloud nuclei to get mature. Roughly three billions of tons of water droplets suddenly disappear from the atmosphere (they remain there as vapor, which is more likely to warm the air than to cool it down).
An independent set of measurements has also shown that the amount of aerosols, i.e. potential nuclei of the new clouds, also decreases. All these “strength vs decrease” graphs display a lot of noise but the negative slopes are almost always significant at the 95% level (with one dataset being an exception, at 92%, which is still higher than the official IPCC confidence level that climate change is mostly man-made).
Each Forbush decrease can therefore warm up the Earth by the same temperature change as the effect of all carbon dioxide emitted by the mankind since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. While you might think that such an effect is temporary and lasts a few weeks only, it is important to notice that similar variations in the solar activity, the solar magnetic field, and the galactic cosmic rays take place at many different conceivable frequencies, so there are almost certainly many effects whose impact on the temperature – through the clouds – is at least equal to the whole effect of man-made carbon dioxide.
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And here’s a link to the RC dismissal of this paper.
RC dismisses everything that is not theirs, so this is a good sign.
…after a nearly 1-week delay needed for the cloud nuclei to get mature. Roughly three billions of tons of water droplets suddenly disappear from the atmosphere…
Take that and put it in your Funkin-Wagnall!
I guess using averaged monthly data wasn’t such a good idea, huh.
RC
RealWho?
RC is the real climate website, which is pro AGW
Reads like Svensmark’s Cosmic Rays theory has traction.
Maybe, just maybe, science is beginning to re-discover the more important changes in this planet’s climate are all due to natural processes.
Not before time!
I think I’ve never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
==================
RC knee jerk (and unlike the CO2 cult / climate link, which is of course settled science)
Well, the RC knee jerk tells me that the paper has some considerable value. Just my “non-expert” view of course.
FOR SALE : second hand CO2 sensor and an assortment of thermometers. Best offer secures.
RC accuse Svensmark of cherry-picking, but fail to support it. Not that RC would stoop to cherry-picking themselves. That’s beyond them. Rather they stick to revisionism, adjustment and suppression. But that isn’t working either, as every climate indicator is now trending contrary to what their models predict.
1. global atmospheric temps are declining,
2. ocean temps are declining,
3. record lows are being set globally,
4. ice caps are expanding, .
5. dissent in the scientific community is soaring, etc.
Now, even German scientists are abandoning the AGW fantasy in droves:
http://www.climatedepot.com/
Isn’t this affect to frequently and is too short lived to account for long term climate change? It’s an interesting hypothesis but I don’t see how it can account for long term climate change and in fact the article doesn’t even pretend to do this.
Interesting idea none the less, not really convinced about it myself, I’d imagine there are plenty of nucleation sites already in the atmosphere and this is unlikely to be the limiting step for cloud formation.
Gene Nemetz (23:59:24) :
RC
RealWho?
Righteous Carbonists?
Nice one Svensmarks et al. You can’t keep a good theory down.
I’ve contacted Nir Shaviv about the paper that RC introduce at the end of the post:
Here is what he said:
—–Message d’origine—–
De : Nir Shaviv
Envoyé : 4 août 2009 01:52
À : Sylvain
Objet : Re: New paper promoted by realclimate
Hi Sylvain,
Here is what I think of melott et al.: (I will add it to sciencebits at some point…)
Cheers,
— Nir
1 – Melott assumes only one pattern speed for the spiral structure, and therefore do not consider the dynamics which shows that it is a pattern composed of 2 spiral arms with one pattern speed + 4 arms with another. It so happens that they coincide at this point in time. e.g., look at this paper: http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/%7Eshaviv/articles/NaozShaviv.pdf (full ref: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007NewA…12..410N ) It also happens that the 2-armed structure is almost co-rotating with the solar system.
In fact, assuming that the milky way has a very complicated pattern (different number of arms, very antisymmetric, etc., and assuming that it can rotate like a rigid pattern with one pattern speed, for many 10^8 years, is unrealistic.
2 – The Melott analysis is not consistent with the Spitzer reconstruction, nor it is consistent with the CRF variations observed in Iron meteorites. (Spitzer: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009PASP..121..213C Iron meteorites: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003NewA….8…39S )
3 – The Melott analysis is based on the spiral arm reconstruction of Englmaier et al. However, there are a few critical problems with the way they do it. In particular, they assume there is an arm in a region in which they see no arm in the density plot, and they ignore an arm passage through a region where the gas map shows a clear elongated concentration. This can be seen in the attached figure (it is composed of the original density plot + arms denoted by Englmaier et al., plus the solar system trajectory according to Melott et al.. Note the location of the solar system is not exactly the same!!! The yellow dots denote passages according to Melott et al., including a passage through something which was dented as an arm but without the density concentration to support it. The red dot denotes a passage through an arm like condensation but not denoted by Melott.
4 – Melott et al. don’t inlcude additional effects on the trajectory, that the potential is not cylindrically symmetric (the arms introduce something of order a 10% correction. They also don’t include the effect of orbital parameter diffusion.
The main RC criticism of the paper is that no “robust” (?) mechanism is proposed for why there is a time lag between the decrease in cosmic ray flux and the decrease in water cloudiness. Seems like sour grapes as the RC team clearly don’t like the implications of what is essentially an observation, not a model. That aside the very interesting thing is that next time there is a sierious Forbush Decrease the cloud scanners will be alerted and the Svensmark hypothesis suggests that 5-9 days later there will a decrease in cloudiness. An actual testable hypothesis! Hooray!
The speed of RC’s dismissal of Svensmark’s paper suggests panic to me.
[snip]
Try again when you have something constructive to contribute. ~ charles the moderator
BTW, RSS is out for July.
+0.39, 3rd warmest in 31 years…
I’m sure Leif is trying to think this one through! Who knows he may agree at last that there may be some link. I tend to agree with his point of view though. Any messiness with the sun would really exterminate us quite quickly it needs to be extremely stable to support life on earth? (philosophy again.. sorry)
Pretty exciting stuff. Hopefully this will convince hardcore AGW’ers of the need to let go of the old paradigm and get on with science rather than using fear to wrench funding out of the government.
Also, it seems RC is getting a bit nervous. 🙂
from RC …
The paper is based on a small selection of events and specific choice of events and bandwidths. The paper doesn’t provide any proof that GCR affect the low clouds– at best -, but can at most only give support to this hypothesis. There are still a lot of hurdles that remain before one can call it a proof.
That had me rolling. Funny that RC should even mention proof of any variety as they don’t require it of themselves.
Thanks to Anthony and all who are fighting the good fight to bring sanity to climate science.
But caveat: Small changes in sun activity (ALL, TSI, magnetic etc..) may after all slightly change climate on this planet ie ice ages warming periods etc…
Solar wind is a measurement. GCR’s are a measurement. Sunspot area is a measurement.
Climate models are not measurements, they are computer code invented by programmers to serve a purpose. They can only process the data from measurements in the way in which the programmer specifically designs the model to do.
When you compare measurements to measurements, you get results.
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/DeepSolarMin6.htm
Even whole spot to US temp 1880-1999 is a fair fit, rough as it is.
On the Junk Science Forum, I have posted a compendium of charts of current Cosmic Ray activity from Neutron Monitoring Stations that provide real-time or near real-time graphics. Some of the stations suggest that we may have reached cosmic ray maximum in May 2009 but the signal is not that strong or not at all convincing just yet; also, several of the stations which showed slight dips in the last few months may be headed upward again as the Sun goes back to sleep. The Oulu and Moscow stations are now reporting cosmic ray activity at historic highs for the respective stations.
http://forum.junkscience.com/index.php?topic=397.0
The graphics will link to the original websites and Oulu and Moscow displays can be adjusted by the viewer. As I find new stations with useful displays, I will update the JSF post. The graphics will update as the sponsoring website updates their data, so you can check back periodically to follow current Cosmic Ray activity.
Michael Ronayne
Nutley, NJ
Pierre Gosselin (02:38:04) :
BTW, RSS is out for July.
+0.39, 3rd warmest in 31 years…
Must be that darned Siberia flaring up again.
Or is it that there’s an ‘historic’ vote on climate legislation pending?
RSS wouldn’t fudge the numbers for a cheap headline (well cheap is the wrong word if cap and trade gets passed) , would they?
“One requirement for successful scientific progress in general, is that new explanations or proposed mechanisms must fit within the big picture(….) It’s typical of non-experts not to place their ideas in the context of the bigger picture.”
Errr …. no! The requirement for successful scientific progress is that the big picture MUST include all the mechanisms – proposed, proven OR unknown – to reflect reality. Scientific progress is only achieved when the “big picture” is altered to fit the discovery of new mechanisms (e.g. the discovery that the earth revolves around the sun not vice versa – which totally altered the “big picture” of the universe).
Scientific progress is actually denied when the “big picture” takes precedence over newly discovered mechanisms. That statement from RC is the alarmist equivalent of the Catholic Church’s denial of Copernicanism.
RC = Roman Carbonist, possibly.
RC ==> Gavin Schmidt. Is this the same Gavin Schmidt who work is so ‘robustly flawed’: See Scaffeta’s debunking of Schmidt on WUWT.
“Isn’t this affect to frequently and is too short lived to account for long term climate change?”
A Forbush event is just a tool to confirm the hypothesis. It is not being offered as an engine for global temperature changes. Svensmark has hypothesised that during grand solar minimums, the increase in GCR influx will lead to a few percentage points increase of low level clouds. The time span of such minima as Dalton certainly are certainly long enough to effect climate on a multi decadal time scale. The flip side to the reasoning is that high solar activity has the opposite effect and could account for a significant part of the post 1980 global warming.
“Interesting idea none the less, not really convinced about it myself, I’d imagine there are plenty of nucleation sites already in the atmosphere and this is unlikely to be the limiting step for cloud formation.”
This was RC’s original complaint a few years ago. However, they have offered no evidence for this assertion. How do you measure saturation of cloud condensation nucleii? What level equates to saturated? I don’t think there is any data on this. Yet, as Svensmark is putting forward GCR’s as a model then it is encumbent upon him to deal with these questions. Just like the AGW crowd do – not.
My simple physical model indicated historical temperature data could be “explained” by sunspot data from the 1700s to now (with a delay and smoothing caused by the physics of the situation). I found that the sun could account for all but about 0.2C of the temperature change since circa 1850.
Problem was, I had/have no mechanism for the change in energy received by the earth. I figured it would be something other than the raw solar energy changes which seem to small.
Hence, I am very interested in potentially credible studies that propose other mechanisms and provide supporting observational and experimental data.