A Forbush decrease is a rapid decrease in the observed galactic cosmic ray intensity following a coronal 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.
Well we have that going on in a dramatic way right now, it’s been going on since late yesterday. See the Oulu neutron monitor (a proxy for cosmic rays) graph:
That’s a screencap, you can monitor it live on the WUWT solar page here.
The term Forbush decrease was named after the American physicist Scott E. Forbush, who studied cosmic rays in the 1930s and 1940s.
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How is cloud formation?
Global Temps should go up? (as middle height tropical clouds do not form droplets see svensmark). Interesting to record the time it takes…
Can’t wait to see how the layman’s count pans out over the next few months if activity stays at normal mid-cycle levels.
Robert of Ottawa says on February 19, 2011 at 9:23 am
And it is a pity we do not have any data on cosmic ray levels back during that huge flooding in CA in the 1800’s …
Sean Houlihane says:
February 19, 2011 at 9:38 am
Can’t wait to see how the layman’s count pans out over the next few months if activity stays at normal mid-cycle levels.
“Normal mid-cycle levels”… for a grand minimum ;-).
Richard Sharpe says: February 19, 2011 at 9:38 am
And it is a pity we do not have any data on cosmic ray levels back during that huge flooding in CA in the 1800′s …
You can try this, but I wouldn’t guaranty its accuracy.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/10Be.htm
How is the neutron count a proxy for cosmic rays which are 90% protons? Not dismissing the info, only asking due to lack of deeper knowledge.
Thanks,
Jim
A great natural experiment in tropical ocean cloud cover is underway. I can’t wait for the results.
Was wondering too if someone is in the position to track the correlation between cosmic rays/clouds/temps, since we have a sudden and notable change in a variable.
How long does a Forbush typically last?
Jim G says: February 19, 2011 at 10:45 am
…………
http://www.williamson-labs.com/images/muon_diag_a_for_web.jpg
Sorry for this in snow cover their fields will not be good??
Means it is time to turn your fields the good radiation will help kill the bact in the soil for spring planting
Catherine
Get ready for a early winter
vukcevic says: February 19, 2011 at 11:10 amJim G says: February 19, 2011 at 10:45 am
…………
http://www.williamson-labs.com/images/muon_diag_a_for_web.jpg
Thanks, should have figured that one out. I assume that other neutrons not generated by atmosphere collisions are considered constant or of lower energy and therefore the good proxy?
Recommend the following:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/svensmark-forebush.pdf
Looks like we’ve got 5 days to see the clouds decrease for a week.
What category of science does this come under if Svensmark’s “prediction” comes through?
Max
Jim G
I’m no expert, but the solar wind is mainly protons (hydrogen plasma: hydrogen with the electron stripped off by the high temperature) and the cosmic rays are neutrons from neutron stars. The former stream from the sun and prevent the latter, from deep space, from helping to seed cloud formation.
Albedo should decrease due to decrease in cloud cover?
Outside the nucleus, free neutrons are unstable and have a mean lifetime of 14 minutes and 46 seconds. This is why we don’t have a build up of neutrons at the center of planets, as would be the case if natural radioactive decay generated neutrons.
Max Hugoson says: “…What category of science does this come under if Svensmark’s “prediction” comes through?”
data?
DocMartyn says:
February 19, 2011 at 12:22 pm
“Outside the nucleus, free neutrons are unstable and have a mean lifetime of 14 minutes and 46 seconds. This is why we don’t have a build up of neutrons at the center of planets, as would be the case if natural radioactive decay generated neutrons.”
Read somewhere that there is a solar neutron component to Earth’s received solar wind which it would seem would take more than 14 min to get here as they do have mass. I was not aware that neutrons “decayed”, into what, quarks? Thought those things were glued together better than that. If I recall, it takes several feet of concrete to absorb/stop neutrons from a nuclear blast so I would figure they would not “build up” from radioactive decay deep in the Earth but would be absorbed by the surrounding material creating isotopes. Don’t know enough in this area to be authoritative but long ago in the stone age when I took physics natural radioactive decay did produce neutrons which is why there is such a thing as critical mass for atomic fission.
You guys realize that the cloud data (amount of cloud cover) DEPENDS upon radiative transfer equations. That is, the raw sensor inputs are ‘transformed’ by a physics model of radiative transfer. the same physics that gets used in GCMs.
Makes for an interesting epistemological quandry.
steven mosher says: February 19, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Makes for an interesting epistemological quandry.
( ? ! )
Primary sources of the Cosmic rays isotopes deposition data are not sufficiently reliable to be taken as a dependable metric. In addition the cloud coverage varies only by about + – 1.5 – 2% at its extremes, so the effect on albedo changes is indeterminable.
Svensmark’s hypothesis and the Livingston & Pen effect are elegant but misleading concepts, sooner the sceptic blogs community realises that the better, since neither is going to produce the expected results .
Will Dr. Svendsmark’s theory be vindicated if there is a rise in Earth’s temperature because, if there are fewer cosmic rays penetrating the atmosphere, maybe fewer clouds are being seeded?
neutrons decay into electrons, protons and electron antineutrino
Wiki has the very nice Feynman diagram here
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Beta_Negative_Decay.svg
the W boson was unambiguous viewed in January 1983 during a series of experiments conducted by Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer, Rubbia and van der Meer were promptly awarded the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics; a bit of a record for Physics, paper and Nobel prize in a year.
Steve Mosher, I don’t understand what you are saying. I would very much like you to explain how the “cloud cover” data is transformed, or point to a link.
Personally, I would have thought that one simply had to count the white pixels in a geostationary satellite view of the planet. The only major adjustment would be to make an additional allowance for semi-translucent clouds, which would be a multiplication by some T factor. These could be detected by a “paleness” wrt adjacent, clear, areas.
RoO;
Yeah, there’s also the lunar reflectance measures (Earthshine–albedo), etc.
vuk;
a 1-2% change in cloud cover has more thermal impact than even the outlier estimates of CO2 GHG effects.
SVENSMARK ET AL provide a mechanism for falsification which is generally missing in a mainstream climate science. If they are wrong, at least we have a means to confirm they are wrong. We don’t end up with the BS we are hearing right now, that more CO2 leads to warming, cooling, less snow, more snow. Good spot Max.
Max Hugoson says:
February 19, 2011 at 11:31 am
Recommend the following:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/svensmark-forebush.pdf
X – 2 SVENSMARK ET AL.: COSMIC RAY VARIATIONS AFFECT THE EARTHS AEROSOLS
Close passages of coronal mass ejections from the sun are signaled at the
Earth’s surface by Forbush decreases in cosmic ray counts. We find that low
clouds contain less liquid water following Forbush decreases, and for the most
influential events the liquid water in the oceanic atmosphere can diminish
by as much as 7%. Cloud water content as gauged by the Special Sensor Mi-
crowave/Imager (SSM/I) reaches a minimum ¼7 days after the Forbush min-
imum in cosmic rays, and so does the fraction of low clouds seen by the Mod-
erate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and in the Interna-
tional Satellite Cloud Climate Project (ISCCP). Parallel observations by the
aerosol robotic network AERONET reveal falls in the relative abundance of
fine aerosol particles which, in normal circumstances, could have evolved into
cloud condensation nuclei. Thus a link between the sun, cosmic rays, aerosols,
and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale.