Link between Cosmic Ray Flux and Global Temperature found

As usual, the concept of “secular trend” is left largely ill-defined.

The most interesting part of the paper to me was the use of a new method (apparently developed largely by Sugihara at Scripps in the 90s) of detecting causality for nonlinear systems. I would love to see the method applied to the temperature and CO2 time series from the ice core over the last 400,000 years. Would it find CO2 causes temperatures to rise 800 years earlier?
They could then move on and apply the method to CO2 and temperature in the last 100 years. I doubt that they could get the funding for that, however.

“it seems to me that they set out to prove that CR’s aren’t affecting trend”
Not sure what indicates that. Tsonis/Swanson are not famous for climate orthodoxy.
Interesting appearance of Baron May of Oxford. A local lad from here who became president of the Royal Society.

Svensmark et al, claimed they was no LAAAAAAAAGGGGGG: http://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.5027

Theoretical analysis is very limited (can never converge on the truth, goes in circles) if there are multiple fundamental errors in the models/mechanisms/theory.
For example if the sun is fundamental different than assumed (there are more than 100 cosmological observations to support the assertion that the sun and stars are ‘different’ than assumed), it would be quite difficult (impossible) to solve the theoretical/mechanisms puzzle: How does the sun modulate planetary temperature and what will happen next to both the sun and to planetary temperature.
We know that planetary temperature has cyclically warmed and cooled in the past at a 1400 year period cycle with beats of plus or minus 400 years. We know solar ‘changes’ correlate with the period of time of the cyclic warming and cooling of the planet.
We know atmospheric CO2 did not change during or after the 1400 year with beats of plus or minus 400 years cyclic warming and cooling of the planet and hence cannot be the cause of what is observed. We know that the same cyclic warming and cooling occurs in both the northern and southern hemisphere. We know the pattern/regions that warm and then cool (mechanism reverses) are the same as the regions that have warmed in the last 150 years.
We know that roughly every 8000 to 10,000 years there is an abrupt cooling change to planetary climate which it appears is the reason why the interglacial periods end abruptly.
All of the above comments, are believed to be observational facts from the analysis of multiple proxies in hundreds and hundreds of peer reviewed papers published over the last two decades, not a theory. We also know there must be a physical explanation for what happened in the past. There are no magic wands.
We know the sun is almost spotless which is anomalous as it appears there will be a very sharp drop in sunspot number (The sharp drop in sunspot number has started and was predicted by Livingston and Penn to occur in 2015 based on a simple extrapolation of the fact that the magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots was decaying linearly and there are no sunspots on the surface of the sun that have a magnetic field strength less than around 1500 gauss), Due to weaken of the solar magnetic cycle, GCR is currently the highest ever recorded at a solar maximum, and we know the solar heliosphere density has declined 40% which is reducing the effect of solar wind bursts on the modulation of planetary clouds in high latitude regions and in the tropics.
The solar large scale magnetic field is the lowest ever recorded for this period of a solar cycle. The intensity of the solar large scale magnetic field is one of the best predictors of the strength of the next solar magnetic cycle. Based on current observations of solar cycle 24 it is almost certain that cycle 25 will be a very, very weak cycle, if it occurs at all.
http://www.solen.info/solar/polarfields/polar.html
http://www.solen.info/solar/
We know in the past when there was a sudden increase in solar cycle length there was a delay in cooling in high latitude Arctic regions of roughly one solar cycle, 11 years.
Observational evidence that climate forcing changes are underway, is patterns of planetary temperature change that have never occurred in the recorded past. The new patterns developing appear to support the assertion that there will be global cooling rather than global warming. As atmospheric CO2 has not as yet declined, we know changes in atmospheric CO2 cannot be the cause of the observed start of what appears to be planetary cooling.
Significant unabashed global cooling would be both a climate war and theoretical game changer. It appears we will be able to resolve the question how much of the warming in the last 150 years was due to increases in atmospheric CO2 and how much was due to solar changes (more complicate than just solar magnetic cycle changes if I understand the mechanisms.), by observations.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
Ocean surface temperature January 1, 2015
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.1.1.2015.gif
Current Ocean surface temperature March 9, 2015
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.3.9.2015.gif

“But the flux of cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere is affected by the solar wind and Earth’s own magnetic field. The solar wind, particularly at the region between the sun’s termination shock and the heliopause, acts as a barrier to cosmic rays and decreases the flux of low-energy cosmic radiation. Earth’s magnetic field deflects cosmic rays toward the poles, which produces the aurorae observed at certain latitudes. Therefore, researchers have theorized that the extent to which cosmic rays affect the Earth’s climate depends on this combination of factors.”
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-cosmic-fluctuations-global-temperatures-doesnt.html

Any increase in GCR in Oulu (winter) above 6200 contributes to slowdown of the polar vortex.
http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/query.cgi?startday=13&startmonth=12&startyear=2014&starttime=00%3A00&endday=23&endmonth=12&endyear=2014&endtime=00%3A00&resolution=Automatic+choice&picture=on

New research suggests that the sun’s magnetic field controls the large-scale shape of the heliosphere “much more than had been previously thought,” says Merav Opher, associate professor of astronomy and director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University (BU). In the new model, the magnetic field squeezes the solar wind along the sun’s North and South axes, producing two jets that are then dragged downstream by the flow of the interstellar medium through which the heliosphere moves.
The model indicates that the heliospheric tail doesn’t extend to large distances but is split into two by the two jets, and that the format of the jets is similar to that of astrophysical jets observed in many other stars and around black holes.
“Most researchers don’t believe in the importance of the solar magnetic field, because the magnetic pressure on the solar wind’s particles is far lower than the thermal pressure of the particles,” says Opher, lead author on a paper appearing today in Astrophysical Journal Letters. However, the model shows that tension of the magnetic field controls what happens to the solar wind in the tail.
Picture a tube of toothpaste with rubber bands wrapped around it, suggests co-author James Drake, professor of physics and director of the Joint Space-Science Institute at the University of Maryland. In this case, the toothpaste is the jet’s plasma, and the rubber bands are the rings of the solar magnetic field. “Magnetic fields have tension just like rubber bands, and these rings squeeze in,” he says. “So imagine you wrap your toothpaste tube very tightly with a lot of rubber bands, and they will squeeze the toothpaste out the end of your tube.”
“Jets are really important in astrophysics,” Drake adds. “And from what we can tell, the mechanism that’s driving these heliospheric jets is basically the same as it is in, for example, the Crab Nebula. Yet this is really close by. If we’re right about all of this, it gives us a local test bed for exploring some very important physics.”
“It’s also exciting that these jets are very turbulent, and will be very good particle accelerators,” says Opher. The jets might, for example, play a role in the acceleration of so-called anomalous cosmic rays “We don’t know where these particles are accelerated; it’s a bit of a puzzle,” she says.
Solving such puzzles will be important for space travel. The heliosphere acts as “a cocoon to protect us, by filtering galactic cosmic rays,” she says. “Understanding the physical phenomena that govern the shape of the heliosphere will help us understand the filter.”
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-view-solar-astrophysical-jets-driven.html

From the paper:
“..the reduction in flux in CR in times of high solar activity is hypothesized to result in less cloud nucleation and fewer cloud condensation nuclei, and consequently, reduced low-level cloud amounts. This, in turn, leads to a higher solar radiation flux at the Earth’s surface, and warmer temperatures.”
I suggest that faster solar wind will increase positive NAO/AO states giving a more northerly atmospheric circulation pattern, but will also increase La Nina conditions and cool the AMO, e.g. as in the mid 1970’s. Both the inter-annual and even the inter-decadal divergence between the aa index and the global mean surface T can be accounted for by better understanding of oceanic negative feedbacks. Of course this would imply a direct forcing from the solar wind and not from the GCR’s, which don’t follow the aa index well anyway.

“Remember a few weeks ago when the weather on Mars was making the news? At the time, parts of the Red Planet was experiencing temperatures that were actually warmer than parts of the US. Naturally, there were quite a few skeptics. How could a planet with barely any atmosphere which is farther from the Sun actually be warmer than Earth?
Well, according to recent data obtained by the Curiosity rover, temperatures in the Gale Crater reached a daytime high of -8 °C (17.6 °F) while cities like Chicago and Buffalo were experiencing lows of -16 to -20 °C (2 to -4 °F). As it turns out, this is due to a number of interesting quirks that allow for significant temperature variability on Mars, which at times allow some regions to get warmer than places here on Earth.
It’s no secret that this past winter, we here in North America have been experiencing a bit of a record-breaking cold front. This was due to surges of cold air pushing in from Siberia and the North Pole into Canada, the Northern Plains and the Midwest. This resulted in many cities experiencing January-like weather conditions in November, and several cities hitting record-lows not seen in decades or longer.
For instance, the morning of November 18th, 2014, was the coldest since 1976, with a national average temperature of -7 °C (19.4 °F). That same day, Detroit tied a record it had set in 1880, with a record low of -12 °C (11 °F).”
http://phys.org/news/2015-02-mars-warmer-earth.html