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
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Lubos is right, you should be more careful before you post this as evidence that Svensmark has been vindicated.
Unfortunately, even Lubos didn’t take his own advice, so it took a censored comment of mine for him to edit his own post and claim that “perhaps” Svensmark is not vindicated. Which is bull, it’s completely not vindicated.
Idiocy continues…
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.
…
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.
I have to disagree that this supports Svensmark’s theory. From the above, it seems clear that higher stratospheric temperatures lead to higher muon counts. I don’t see any implication that more mesons increase stratospheric temperatures. The “events” referred to that can have “a significant effect on the severity of winters we experience, and also on the amount of ozone over the poles” are Sudden Stratospheric Warming, not mesons or muons.
Pamela Gray (07:10:37) :
I am curious as to what causes the stratosphere to suddenly heat up? An electronic charge or magnetic event? I have a magnetic heater.
More likely induction heater.
PS: The confusion one reads into Pamela’s comment just above, for instance, is just an example of the grave mental destruction that this thread is causing in less talented minds.
No, it doesn’t mean anything about cloud formation, it only means that someone figured out a way to measure temperature in the stratosphere with muons. That’s it.
Tom is even funnier:
So which comes first, the stratospheric warming by other causes leading to greater detection of muons or lower solar flux allowing more mesons to hit the stratosphere causing the warming which then shows up as a detection of more muons?
No, goddamit! It’s the mesons that get hit by the stratosphere, which then warm it up, and then make clouds or something, and then they turn themselves as muons, and then the solar flux says “hi” and then Muons get all excited and kill all the Michael Mann’s in this world and then the world is saved and then Will Smith kisses the bride, the movie is over and you wake up.
Good question Pamela Gray….. If cosmic rays help in the nucleation of clouds…. Then a more porous atmosphere will accentuate that cloud forming.
… anyway, interesting to see else turns up.
Dear Luis, my post was edited long before I saw and moderated your comment, and a slightly incorrect sentence could have been seen on my website for 90 seconds at most.
To claim that your comment was useful is ludicrous and I rejected the comment because it was very impolite (and obsolete, at the moment of moderation), much like your comment on Anthony’s blog above ~snip~
I am afraid that I must agree with Mark and a few others from the short read of the article above. There has not been enough study to assign causation but only correlation. It does appear to be a good proxy and that is good for prediction. I can understand how meson ray being destroyed/decayed when striking the upper atmosphere could release energy raising temperature locally in the stratosphere.
My question would be would this heating (noted rapid as much as 40C or more) causing expansion and rising of the atmosphere column could cause a lowering of the pressure in the lower near surface atmosphere causing clouds and a drop in temperature. (IE expanding gas cools) Not being well educated in the properties of atmospheric physics these things are unclear to me.
I do hope my understanding and question aren’t to low tech to be addressed.
Bill Derryberry
Actually the Lockwood & Frohlich (L&F) paper had dismissed the Svensmark & Friis-Christensen (S&F) paper partly on the basis that there was no apparent correlation between temperature and cosmic rays, S&F prepared a reply – here:
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Svensmark/Reply_to%20Lockwood_et_al_2007.pdf
They argue that L&F were erroneously using the surface temperature charts as comparisons and not making appropriate corrections – such as for volcanic events. In that reply paper they produce a very good correlation based on other temperature records.
So while everyone is free to make speculative guesses about the plausible mechanisms of cause and effect nevertheless Svensmark is clearly vindicated at least on the temperature correlation and Lockwood & Frohlich’s criticism of Svensmark & Friis-Christensen is now independently verified as being misguided and hence wrong. That is important.
Dear Katherine, I agree with you that the arguably dominant causal relationship explaining this paper is the temperature’s effect on the muon production.
On the other hand, you are misled if you think that the opposite causation is not justified by scientific mechanisms. For a wide variety of forcings, the trends in the stratosphere and the troposphere are reverted – they have opposite signs.
For example, the greenhouse warming heats up the troposphere but it cools down the stratosphere: the Earth’s heat is trapped in the troposphere, near the surface, which means that a smaller amount of it can heat the stratosphere.
Analogously, if the cosmic rays help the creation of low-lying clouds, these clouds help to reflect the solar radiation from the troposphere and the surface, which means that more of this heat returns to the stratosphere and a part of it heats it up. According to cosmoclimatology, more mesons means a warmer stratosphere. It works in the right direction.
I think that more research is needed to see which effect is more important as an explanation of the observed link. Meanwhile, could you please tell us your story why the higher stratospheric temperature leads to an increased muon flux under the ground? Sometimes I want to hear others before myself, and at this moment, I actually understand the cosmoclimatological causation more than I understand the opposite relationship. 😉
Lubos, politeness is not the best quality of yours, and I have to say, no problems with that, I also think that politeness is completely overrated. I wrote no “bad words” and I didn’t call you any name at all.
So I fail to see anything rather than frustrated censorship on your part.
And yes, 2 minutes after I made the comment, you retracted. Sorry if I don’t believe your “ludicrousness”.
It smells a lot like Real Climate. Perhaps both extremes always touch, yes?
PS: Sorry for the extreme Off Topic on this, but as you may guess, I couldn’t have this discussion on his own blog due to censorship issues… I promise I won’t further this on.
vukcevic (07:34:46) :
Pamela Gray (07:10:37) :
I am curious as to what causes the stratosphere to suddenly heat up? An electronic charge or magnetic event? I have a magnetic heater.
More likely induction heater.
Or to give it it’s full name, electro-magnetic induction heater
😉
Double PS, but On Topic :):
The opposite causation that Lubos refers to may be possible, but stinks. It remembers me too badly of the infamous Al Gorian graph linking CO2 with temperature for the last 650ky, and the ridiculous defense of it that some put in, as in saying that perhaps the first 800 years weren’t caused by CO2, but then CO2 “kicked in definitely”.
In this one, it’s definitely a warmer stratosphere that causes more Muons, but wait, isn’t it the other way around? Perhaps its more Mesons that Cause the Stratosphere to heat up, and then more Muons are created by that!
Occam’s razor anyone?
I give you a shot though. There is a way to see if this link is as presposterous as I claim or not. If you place a Muon detector above the stratosphere, you then CAN see who’s right or not.
Until then, Occam wins. Period.
“measures muons originating high up in the atmosphere”
I would agree with anna v. and others, the write up is badly muddled and poorly edited.
Heating the Stratosphere, of itself, does not produce muons, a higher energy/mass lepton than electrons, the representative of which we are familiar.
The muons are a decay product of nuclear disintegration at the instigation of cosmic rays, either themselves nuclear particles or gamma rays. Neutrino interactions can also produce the muons.
JamesG (07:48:36) :
Do you think so James? There’s no demonstrated correlation between temperature and cosmic rays in the web report that you linked to. There are two problems with that interpretation:
1. Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (S-FC) can’t seperate the cosmic ray flux from other elements of the solar cycle. What they show in their Figure 2b is a relationship between the solar cycle and a denuded tropospheric temperature anomaly in which the warming of the last 50 years or so has been removed by linear detrending. What they may have identified is a small residual sinusoidal variation in the tropospheric temperature that cycles in response to the solar cycle. That’s fine…no one would quibble with that, and it’s been identified before. But what’s the evidence it has anything to do with cosmic rays? It’s far more likely to be due to the small cyclic variation in solar irradiance.
2. The other problem that S-FC highlight is that there has been no long term trend in the cosmic ray flux. If anything this has been in the slightly cooling direction since 1958. That’s what S-FC show pretty clearly in their Figure 2b. Take out the warming and you get left with the bit that matches the solar cycle. This (as S-FC show) is a slight cooling contribution to the earth’s temperature evolution during the last 50-odd years. Clearly according to S-FC the cosmic ray flux is a non-player in relation to the contributions to the large warming of the last 30-odd years..
It seems that S-FC have rather misunderstood Lockwood and Frolich in any case. While S-FC state that (referring to Lockwood and Frolich) ”But they argue that this historical link between the Sun and climate came to an end about 20 years ago.”, I think you’ll find that Lockwood and Frolich say no such thing. What Lockwood and Frolich demonstrate is that the solar parameters that can influence the Earth’s temperature have been in the wrong direction for warming during the last 20 years. In other words the sun is contributing a slight cooling forcing during this period. Since that’s more or less what S-FC have shown in their own paper, it seems S-FC are tilting at a windmill here….
There’s another odd thing I’ve noticed. Figure 1 (top) seems to show a “match” between the CRF and the tropospheric temperature. But this very same data (it is isn’t it?) is presented in Figure 2 (top) with different smoothing on both data sets. S-FC have already demonstrated that there isn’t a correlation between the CRF and the tropospheric temperature (this only appears when the warming trend is removed as shown in Fig 2 (bottom)). And clearly the “correlation” in Figure 2 (top) is spurious since with the smoothing removed the temperature variations precede the CRF variations.
Dear Luis,
I would like to point out that as far as we can see, there has been no lag observed in this muon-stratosphere correlation that would actually settle the question which of the mechanisms is the dominant and primary one and which of them is a subleading parasite effect similar to Gore’s bogus greenhouse effect explanation of the CO2 during the glaciation cycles.
So it would be nice if you didn’t create the analogies in the direction you find convenient before there is actually some evidence about the direction. I hope that these more explicit considerations about the mechanisms show that you were way too fast in picking one direction and humiliating the other.
I am still waiting for a plausible explanation of the “higher stratospheric temperature causes more muons” mechanism because I am sometimes getting a wrong sign here. So it is fair to say that Anthony’s original relationship – namely the mechanism that supports the statement that the MINOS paper is evidence for Svensmark et al. – is the only one that has been semi-satisfactorily explained in this thread so far.
Best wishes
Lubos
I’d have said Occam’s razor would suggest the cause of warming was the sun. It was good enough for most of our ancestors. Mesons, muons, cosmic rays and clouds are somewhat less simple explanations.
I find it interesting that whenever someone – such as Svensmark, Grey, or Wilde (in his blogs) presents an alternate theory of climate change, people who support the AGW consensus immediately swarm to strike it down. This is interesting to me for several reasons.
It used to be, back in Einstein’s day, that when someone proposed a theory, every scientist out there who had specialty in that theory tried to disprove it. It wasn’t mean-spirited, it was science. Any theories that survived 30 or so reviews and verifications were found to be “valid”. So, when a “new” theory of climate change occurs (such as those mentioned above), yes, I would expect the scientific community to try and disprove it. That’s science.
However, when it comes to the theory of CO2-induced climate change, no such attempts to disprove the theory are made. Where are the high numbers of government grants being distributed to scientists who have alternate theories that would contradict the CO2 theory, or those that would try to disprove it directly? As far as I can seen, few, if any exist. And if someone tries to challenge this theory in any way, they are a “denier”. I would think that someone who is so sure of their theory would welcome challenges to it, because surviving those challenges makes the theory stronger. I would also think, that following the “old” style of science, proponents of C02 would state categorically what evidence would disprove their theory, because this again is sound science. Instead, we seem to have a science orthodoxy that circles the wagons any time a new theory is suggested, and one that changes the rules whenever a part of their theory is disproven. See the climate models and their constant “tweaking” for evidence of how the theory is constantly changed, especially whenever observable data seem to contradict it.
We have so little understanding of the oceans, the sun, cosmic rays, magma beneath the earth’s crust, even atmospheric climate science, yet we are supposed to believe the science is “in” and the issue is “decided”? How could anyone with such an incomplete understanding of the most chaotic, complex, system man has tried to study, claim, after less than 30 or so years, to have a firm enough understanding that they would recommend public policy?
And before someone pulls that “if there’s 1% chance they are right, we need to act” argument, remember that could be used to justify going into Iran, putting missiles in space to stop meteors, moving all of the cities away from the coast out of mega-tsunami fears, etc. In order to make any objective judgment about public policy, an unbiased risk assessment needs to be done. Any complete risk assessment would need to include the benefits of a warming world (again, where are the studies on this), the economic costs to a dramatic energy paradigm shift to the West and the 3rd World, as well as the risks to us and the likelihood of those risks taking place.
Instead, I seem to see fear-mongering, with no real determination to have a real discussion about the science, its certainty, or the public policy that should result. The more people wish to say “hold it, let’s talk”, the more “scientific” studies seem to come out that predict doom if we do not act yesterday. Aren’t you pro-AGW folk in the least bit concerned about the rush to action and the relative level of distrustful / fraudulent activity (e.g. Mann’s “hockey stick”) on the part of those who are pushing so forcefully in one direction? Aren’t you at all concerned that when someone brings up legitimate issues they are labeled a “quack” or “denialist” or “industry puppet”? When people are so arrogant, so full of themselves, so concerned with being right and not with being correct, doesn’t your skepticism get tweaked at all? Didn’t many use this same logic with regards to Bush going into Iraq, that intelligence was “biased”, that criticism was squashed, that there was hysteria to move quickly? Why does the same logic not apply to climate change?
Lockwood & Fro[e]hlich (note the umlaut) have problems with their interpretation of satellite data for a start. Doug Hoyt fisked their paper at Warwick Hughes late 2007 or thereabouts.
Lubos, read the original article:
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.
Seems a reasonable explanation.
This article says to me: record of cosmic rays incident on earth can be correlated to changes in weather/climate on earth, Unlike carbon dioxide.
Lubos Motl (08:32:49) :
That’s an odd statement Lubos! First of all the “plausible explanation” has been given already as a direct quote from the paper at least one [se.g. ee foinavon (07:01:13); reproduced below (***)]
Secondly, it’s completely obvious that the paper describes the increased ability to detect muons as a result of warming of the stratosphere, and there is zero causality in the other direction. If you think that the observations support the CRF-cloud hypothesis as a significant driver of the Earth’s climate then why not illustrate how this might occur? Or if you feel this has already been demonstrated on this thread, point us to the relevant post(s)!
here’s what the authors state with respect to the means by which enhanced stratospheric temperature facilitiates the detection of muons by troglodytes:
There are two mechanisms by which the condition of the atmosphere affects the muon rate. Firstly, an increase in temperature causes the atmosphere to expand so muons are produced higher up and therefore have a larger probability to decay before being detected. Secondly, the mesons may interact (and thereby be lost) as well as decay. As the temperature increases, the probability of interaction becomes smaller because the local atmospheric density decreases, so more mesons decay, causing an increase in the muon rate. In deep underground detectors where muons with a high surface energy are measured, the second effect dominates and this causes a positive correlation between temperature and muon rate
Nobody knows the cause of SSW, so this provides a tantalizing clue. – Anthony
So do you discount the explaination given by wikipedia I quoted above Anthony? Namely, ascending Rossby waves, and the surface gravity waves associated with the QBO. The QBO has the right sort of periodicity to coincide with these SSW events.
http://www.jisao.washington.edu/data_sets/qbo/index.my_page.html
Luis and all who are interested:
Cosmic rays with enough energy to create particles are stable particles, protons, ions, electrons,gammas and neutrinos. The unstable ones have decayed on the way from the galaxy into either gammas or electrons/positrons or neutrinos or protons.
These stable particles hit molecules in the stratosphere and by E=mc**2 create unstable particles of all kinds, mesons and baryons. These decay and one of the intermediate decay products are muons, which decay weakly into an electron, a mu-neutrino and an electron-neutrino. The muons live something like 10**-8 seconds.
There is no way that muons from the air can penetrate the ground and reach the Minos detector. The reason it is underground is for this, to avoid the muons which are something like 1 per cm**2 per second on the surface. Any muons seen in the detector are the result of muon-neutrino scattering and turning into a muon +.., a radiation or so length in the ground above the detector.
Actually I suspect that it is the muon-neutrinos and electron-neutrinos from muon decays in the atmosphere that are detected in Minos and are a background to the neutrino oscillation experiment, which expects neutrinos coming from the direction of Fermi lab.
I suspect a monte carlo has been used to decipher all this.
One has to read the paper.
BTW, if anyone is interested in the most logical case I have ever read for skepticism regarding the so-called scientific consensus on AGW, this is it:
http://commentlog.org/bid/4409/The-Case-for-Global-Warming-Skepticism
Tricky Stefan Ramstorf (video in English).
http://klimakatastrophe.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/wie-stefan-rahmstorf-an-den-klimadaten-%e2%80%9edreht%e2%80%9c/