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
This sentence: “Any correlation with the beginning of the hard period of global warming is mere coincidence (?)” is a joke… 🙂
Dan Evens (17:28:57) :
I can’t see how a tiny little thing like a 40C change in the
temperature of the stratosphere could have any noticeable
effect whatever on the production of muons, or mesons,
or any other many-MeV particle. The energy scales are
hopelessly wrong. The change in relative velocities of the
nuclei of air atoms that cosmic rays encounter will be
entirely negligable.
That ‘tiny’ change of 40C gives a ~20% change in density!
I suppose it is just barely possiible that the temperature
changes the local density, and that changes the particle
flux detected. But the temp effect is in the stratosphere and
the detector is underground. The total change in shielding
matter will be minute compared even to the amount of
atmosphere, never mind the ground that these particles
go through.
The change in stratospheric density changes the average altitude at which the muons are created, since they only have a lifetime of ~2.2μs that controls where they can be detected (don’t forget to allow for time dilation).
Foinavon says..
“the large warming of the last 30-odd years..”
“After all the very marked warming of the last 30-odd years”
“late 20th century and contemporary warming”
“If we’re interested in the very marked contemporary warming we obviously look elsewhere.”
I don’t know anything about CRF’s (although this and other threads may help somewhat) but if the evidence for a causal link between increased CO2 and temperatures exists in the late 20th Century (not exactly in the 21st C, so far), then what is the traditional explanation for the apparently sharper and more dramatic warming of the first half of the 20th C, when CO2 was far below present (after 1940s) levels?
Anthony,
I am an avid observer of WUWT and greatly respect it’s current objectives and it’s achievements. However I don’t wish to appear paranoid but if you look through the last few threads the “Team” are swarming all over your blogs like a rash. As I see it, as a lurker, they appear to be the equivalent of hired guns brought in to disrupt this blogsite. They are persuasive, articulate and full of information that only someone employed professionally would have time to assimilate. One as to wonder what there objective is and who sent them.
From my own perspective there is no way I could compete with their knowledge, and I think this applies to the vast majority of amateur blogers on this site. I’m sure though that what ever our qualifications or credentials most of us have the innate ability to recognise “dog dirt” when we see it. No matter how much the dog is excused, no matter how much the dog is defended, no matter how scented they try to make it, no matter where they try to sweep it, the inescapably odour is that of “dog dirt“. They live in a virtual world, indoctrinating each other with the theology, until they are cast out as missionaries to convert or subvert anybody who is not a believer.
Sorry if I appear too biblical but it all seems to fit, and no doubt the Team will be all over me, not like a rash, but more like a dog.
REPLY: I think that is a bit much. Please tone down such accusations, as they are without serious merit as far as I can tell, and I know who visits. – Anthony
Luis Dias
Relax.
Read the article again and think it through carefully. He did not say what you think he did and further you are dead wrong about the effect this may have on low level cloudiness. No one I see is saying this is proof of anything, it does appear to suggest that the idea that cosmic rays can not affect weather could be wrong.
Here’s a serious question for the many experts that roam this blog:
Establishing that there is a correlation between solar activity, sunspots, and global temperatures, I am interested in “thermal inertia” and the possibility of a delayed response when it comes to arctic sea ice levels. In particular, how long of a delay do you think there is? In other words, how many years do you think it will be before we really start seeing the effects of this solar downturn on NH sea ice levels? I know there already has been some rebound, but I think there’s still quite a ways to go.
David Porter,
You’re right of course. Especially since WUWT won the Best Science blog award, the warmists have been swarming. There’s a reason for that. Ever since it became apparent to the causal reader that beneficial carbon dioxide causes such little effect on the climate that it can be disregarded, whole belief systems have been threatened.
This explains as well as anything why those still believing that we’re headed toward climate catastrophe because CO2 is rising have become so shrill:
It’s not a matter of science any more, it’s a matter of status and personal identity.
David Porter (13:11:50) :
…if you look through the last few threads the “Team” are swarming all over your blogs like a rash. As I see it, as a lurker, they appear to be the equivalent of hired guns brought in to disrupt this blogsite. They are persuasive, articulate and full of information that only someone employed professionally would have time to assimilate. One as to wonder what there objective is and who sent them.
You come across some articulate and informed posters who shoot half-baked ideas out of the water and rather than tackling what they say you fall back upon the ad hominem insinuation that those who disagree with you are “hired guns”.
Science is articulate, informed, and intelligent. If you really want this to be a useful science blog then I’d suggest you get used to it.
Anthony,
If you don’t see it the way I have observed then I accept that. I will mind my tongue in future.
David
Ok, Ok, hang on a second here….
So the sun has something to do with the temperature of the planet?
We need to consult with the Goracle.
“are persuasive, articulate and full of information that only someone employed professionally would have time to assimilate. ”
I would argue rather they are artless prevaricators presenting as fact or acknowledged likely conclusions drawn by those who similarly present false data and baseless surmises.
For example, Lockwood and Froelich misrepresent CRF and satellite data and use discredited temperature data to reach their ‘conclusion’.
The Silurian was the opening of the last super-continent tectonic formation which recurrently gives rise to high global temps.
Many of us simply don’t have the time to address every troll under the bridge.
gary gulrud (07:21:31)
really? Evidence please.
The point is that the putative cosmic ray flux (CRF)-climate link suggested by Shaviv and Veizer that Greg Goodnight brough to our attention[***] requires that the period under consideration (443-423MYA) was cold. The putative CRF reconstruction resulting from the passage of the solar system through the spiral arms of the galaxy is around its peak in the early Silurian (according to the rather contrived reconstruction of Shaviv and Veizer). High CRF should give cool-cold global temperature according to the CRF-temperature hypothesis.
So the data for the early Silurian is 180o opposed to the prediction of the CRF-earth temperature hypothesis. Veizer himself now considers that the warming in this period is a result of greenhouse gas forcing (specifically CO2):
R.E. Carne, J.M. Eiler, J. Veizer et al (2007) “Coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Palaeozoic era” Nature 449, 198-202
There’s nothing “sleight of hand” in any of that and it requires nothing more than an ability to read and comprehend simple logic. Veizer considers that there is a “coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 during the Paleozoic era”, and there’s a very large amount of similar data that supports this (see citations in [foinavon (07:16:38)]).
You suggest that tectonic activity may “recurrently gives rise to high global temps”. You’re right. The evidence indicates that very high global temperatures follow extreme and long-lived tectonic activity as a result of the massive release of greenhouse gasses (CO2 but also methane) into the atmosphere. Early Jurrassic global warming (and associated extinctions) is linked to the release of greenhouse gasses from sedimentary reservoirs in the Karoo Basin (South Africa)…the end-Permian mass extinction is linked with global warming resulting from massive greenhouse gas emissions (likely source the Serbian Traps)….the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) followed the massive tectonic events involved in the opening of the N Atlantic at the embryonic plate boundary between Greenland and Europe around 56 MYA and the release of CO2/methane….the end Cretaceous extinction 65 MYA had large associated global warming linked to the double whammy of the massive flood basalt events that gave rise to the Deccan Traps (in now India) and the extraterrestrial impact that slammed into limestone-rich deposits and vapourized massive amounts of carbonate back into CO2.
So yes, you’re right. Truly humungous tectonic events (these last 1000’s and even many hundreds of thousands of years as in the Deccan Traps formation) result in global warming resulting from massive greenhouse gas release.
[***] N.J. Shaviv and J. Veizer (2003) Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate? GSA Today 13, 4-10.
Foinavon… Could you manage the thermodynamics and thermal properties of CO2? Please, not based on speculations, but on experimental data. Thanks!
Nasif Nahle (12:25:07)
In what sense Nasif?
This thread is about Cosmic Rays so we shouldn’t spend too much time on the “thermodynamcs and thermal properties of CO2” probably! I only raised the evidence for relationships between CO2 and temperature in the deep past following a request to consider the Shaviv/Veizer hypothesis and the fact that Veizer himself has published recent data that are opposed to his (and Shaviv’s) hypothesis, and Veizer’s own evidence for CO2-temperature coupling.
However if you can be more specific in your request I’ll have a go..
Incidentally, there hasn’t been much “speculation” on my part on this thread! I’ve addressed non-speculatively “data” brought to our attention concerning the Svensmark-Friis-Christensen speculation, the Shaviv-Veizer speculation and the odd paleotemperature-paleoCO2 sketch that was linked to. Everyone else can address this stuff as well as I can, and so I’m rather surprised at the angst my posts have induced. If this threads about the Cosmic ray Flux, one may as well discuss this!
Foinavon… In this sense, precisely: “I only raised the evidence for relationships between CO2 and temperature in the deep past following a request…” How could it be a relationship between CO2 and temperature if the CO2 has not the thermal properties to cause a warming of that kind?
On the other hand, we positively have experimental and observational data which demonstrates that CR are able to cause changes on Earth’s climate because any production of muons releases energy which is absorbed by the atmosphere, as well as the effect of IC nuclides on terrestrial systems:
http://www.uap.co.jp/uap/Publication/SERIES/DATA/00081/index.html
Nasil,
That’s a statement of illogic based on a false premise unfortunately. It’s not about the “thermal properties” of CO2. It’s very well understood that the greenhouse properties of CO2 (and water vapour and methane and chlorofluorocarbons etc) are a consequence of their absorption of long wave infra red electromagnetic radiation (LWIR) emitted from the earth’s surface. Thus greenhouse gasses intercept LWIR that would otherwise escape to space, and either re-irradiate this (to be “captured” by other LWIR-absorbing molecules largely) or pass on the energy to other molecules in the atmosphere via molecular collisions.
CO2 and water vapour absorb LWIR because they have bond vibrational modes that involve a molecular dipole displacement. The vastly abundant atmospheric gasses (O2 and N2) are symmetrical diatomic molecules that cannot undergo asymmetric bond vibrations and thus cannot absorb LWIR. It is the small amount of greenhouse gas concentrations that result in the very large warming of the earth above it’s black body temperature that was calculated even in the 1860’s to be around 260ish oC. In other words without a greenhouse atmosphere the earth would be extremely chilly, with no liquid water on its surface.
The absorptive properties of CO2 and the other greenhouse gasses are extremely well-characterised spectroscopically.
The addition of excess greenhouse gas into the atmosphere enhances the greenhouse effect. Since the earth must tend towards thermal equilibrium between incoming and exciting solar radiation, LWIR is emitted from the earths surface and is eventually dissipated into space. Enhancing the greenhouse gas concentration results in temporary trapping of some of this “energy” in the atmosphere. At any particular level in the atmosphere less IR is radiated into space and so the loss of IR on average occurs at a higher level as the CO2 concentration increases. Since the efficiency of emission of IR decreases with temperature (and because the temperature falls the higher one goes in the atmosphere), the layers of the atmosphere down to the earth’s surface must warm in order to re-establish radiative equilibrium.
The enhanced atmospheric warming resulting from enhanced CO2 concentrations results in a water vapour feedback which has been well-characterised in the real world by direct measurement. The water content of the atmosphere is dependent on the atmospheric temperature (and pressure)…a warmer atmosphere has a higher saturation point for water vapour compared to a cooler one. Thus the primary warming of the atmosphere (from enhanced CO2 concentrations, or enhanced solar irradiance) results in a positive feedback. This is readily observable in the real world…in fact there is a tendency for the atmosphere to maintain a close to constant relative humidity; in other words the absolute humidity rises as the temperature rises. More water vapour means a bit more warming as a feedback.
And so on…I’m not sure how much detail you want, or if you would like references describing these very well characterised phenomena (whenever I cite references, some of the posters here become a little annoyed!).
On the other hand, we positively have experimental and observational data which demonstrates that CR are able to cause changes on Earth’s climate because any production of muons releases energy which is absorbed by the atmosphere, as well as the effect of IC nuclides on terrestrial systems:
http://www.uap.co.jp/uap/Publication/SERIES/DATA/00081/index.html
No we don’t Nasil. You’ve cited a conference proceedings about cosmic rays. That long list of conference topics doesn’t say anything about CRF-climate links (possibly the Forbush event topic might conceivably? what do you think?). We all know that CRF’s exist and can be detected and so on!
But your notion of the relationship between CRF and the Earth’s temperature is back to front anyway. Any evidence for a CRF-temperature link is in the direction “enhanced CRF —> reduced global temperature” since cosmic rays are propoed to seed cloud formation. That’s proposed to cool the earth. In any case we’ve already seen (didn’t you read the paper that’s the subject of this thread?!) that the production of muons occurs in the stratosphere, and in any case it’s the temperature of the stratosphere that relates to the ability of muons to penetrate the atmosphere and be detected deep underground by troglodytes with sophisticated detectors….
“Evidence please”
Presumably Mr. Porter can enter ‘Lockwood Frolich’ into Google and begin with the first listing. He can eventually turn to Warwick Hughes and repeat.
Or he can simply observe that the geomagnetic field and solar magnetic fields are at historic lows, that at solar minimum coronal holes are routinely earth-facing, that cloud chambers were devised to observe charged particles nucleate droplets, that the earth’s albedo has been rising since 1998, etc., and ignore contrarian sophistry. I would.
Citizens of science,
I dont think these reoprts verify a relationship between COSMIC rays & the stratosphere.
Energetic muons etc also come from extreme solar (eg flare) events and it has recently been observed that a long range predicted (by our WeatherAction Solar Weather Technique) solar-originated extreme weather period ‘around 22/23 Jan’ coincided with
(i) an excepionally deep icelandic low of 937mb
(ii) hurricane force 107mph winds – 15 deaths in SW france / N Spain.
(iii) A major Sudden Stratospheric Warming (Temp rise from minus 80C to minus 40C).
This narrow time window 22/23 Jan (+/- a day) was and still is the most extreme wind-wise (and pressure contrast-wise) of all our 60 plus weather periods of the winter dec-feb inc.
For pdfs & fuller reports and discussion please see links below
Thank you Piers Corbyn
Dramatic Forecast breakthrough: Sudden warming of stratosphere …
Very significantly it is now reported that the extreme winds (and low pressures) we correctly predicted in our WeatherAction long range forecast would occur ‘(around) 22/23 Jan’ were also associated – pretty precisely – with a Major …
CO2sceptics News Blog –
http://co2sceptics.com/news.php
RE: Cosmic ray scientist Sir Arnold Wolfendale: No relation between global warming and cosmic rays – A reply from Piers Corbyn · Dramatic Forecast breakthrough: Sudden warming of stratosphere linked to Hurricane winds predicted by …
CO2sceptics News Blog – http://co2sceptics.com/news.php
Foinavon… You say: “That’s a statement of illogic based on a false premise unfortunately. It’s not about the “thermal properties” of CO2.” Then all thermodynamics and thermal science is futil and useless. In brief, ideas are valid and physics invalid? The latter explanation in your post is no other thing but thermodynamics. Unfortunately, that explanation is not based on real data, but on speculation. The problem doesn’t resides in methane and water vapor and CFCs, but on an exaggerated thermal attributions to carbon dioxide. If one applies the real thermal attributes of carbon dioxide, one find that it is not possible that the carbon dioxide causes an anomaly as the one observed in 1998.
On the other hand, although it seems that you have not read the papers related to the conference, the mechanism on the relationship between ICR and SCR is exposed in the paper included by Anthony Watts at the begining of this thread. It’s not simply a correlation shown in graphs, but by real data obtained from nature.
Pierce Corbyn… I agree with you. I’m not saying that cosmic rays are only of extra-solar nature. Even, there is radiation incoming from Jupiter. I know your work and I must admit that it is creditable. The correlation between the Solar Climate and the Terrestrial Climate is undeniable. Nevertheless, at this moment we have run into with those tips of the ICR that from the standpoint of astrophysics are anomalous and which have relation with the increase of the stratospheric temperature. In my analysis I could not explain the mechanism by means of which the stratosphere was heated up by the increases of interstellar cosmic radiation. These scientists from MINOS have explained the mechanism in a concise way. As far as the relationship that you found and the form by means of which you make amazing predictions I do not have anything to say because I know that the relationship exists. Our problem is that many people dedicate their life to eliminate each revealing investigation by means of syllogisms that in science are known like false logic, without arguments supported by observation and experimentation; for example, Mann’s insistence on erasing the medieval global warming out.
Foinavon… You say: “That’s a statement of illogic based on a false premise unfortunately. It’s not about the “thermal properties” of CO2.” Then all thermodynamics and thermal science is futil and useless. In brief, ideas are valid and physics invalid? The latter explanation in your post is no other thing but thermodynamics. Unfortunately, that explanation is not based on real data, but on speculation. The problem doesn’t resides in methane and water vapor and CFCs, but on an exaggerated thermal attributions to carbon dioxide. If one applies the real thermal attributes of carbon dioxide, one find that it is not possible that the carbon dioxide causes an anomaly as the one observed in 1998.
That’s a little confused I think. I briefly described the physical chemistry/physics of the absorptive properties of CO2 with respect to long wave infra red and the atmospheric physics in relation to the greenhouse effect. But the notion of “thermal attributes of CO2” doesn’t have much meaning. CO2 doesn’t “heat up” for example or provide a source of heat other than indirectly. It absorbs and emits radiation of appropriate frequencies involving stimulation of bond vibrational modes as characterised spectroscopically, and can transmit vibrational and reorientational energy to other molecules in the atmosphere by molecular collisions. That’s pretty basic and well-understood physics…..
CO2 was partly responsible for the “anomaly as the one observed in 1998”. The Earth’s global temperature has been responding to enhanced greenhouse forcing for decades and so the variations in the climate system (and the efects of volcanos and man-made aerosols and so on) that change the temperature anomaly up or down from year to year are superimposed on a rising temperature trend. The specific cause of the large and transient jump in the temperature anomaly in 1998 was a result of an extremely strong El Nino that year. Likewise the temperature of 2008 was suppressed relative to the greenhouse-induced rising trend by a combination of a substantial La Nina, the fact that the sun as smack at the bottom of its solar cycle, and I believe we had a bit of negative PDO too. Despite all of that 2008 was still in the top 10 warm years on record. No doubt the next significant El Nino will give us the next “warmest year on record”.
So one has to be careful to consider all of the contributions to the temperature anomaly that pertains in any particular period.
Yes, but what is the “real data”? What does it show? It shows that the stratospheric temperature affects the formation of muons from cosmic rays and the ability to detect muons on Earth. It doesn’t have anything to say about any putative effect of cosmic rays on the Earth’s tropospheric temperature…
The emissivity of snow, 0.84, that of CO2 at STP? 9.3 * 10^-4. It would appear low temperature, low pressure gasses only heat the surface by conduction, when they are warmer.
I believe ‘well understood’ is an ambiguous comparative.
Foinavon… The problem is with numbers and constants which have been “adjusted” for giving the desired results; for example, emisivity, absorbency, absorptivity, Cp, Cv, emittancy, etc. Your description is thermodynamics, and you have wrote in a previous post that it has nothing to do with thermodynamics or heat science (which includes heat transfer).
Dear All… Regarding the production of muons, we could say that muons are the track of the incoming of CR nuclides to the atmosphere. The measurements of the load of muons produced when the energetic matter particles hit Earth’s atmosphere shows that CR is increasing. The origin of that increase of CR has been detected by V-I and V-II. And as we talk on thermodynamics, as cosmic rays consist of electrons and heavier nuclei of all elements which are highly energized, it is evident that their energy is absorbed by the matter particles of the atmosphere. The mechanism by which it happens is described in the paper posted at the beginning of this thread. It’s nothing complicated and there is no need of complicating it with speculating arguments. Then again, I should have say before that the carbon dioxide is not a source of heat, but a conveyor of heat. If the molecules of carbon dioxide acquire energy and in consequence a ∆U occurs, then the carbon dioxide is being heated up. There is something forgotten by AGW proponents… The exiguous partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, which influences absolutely in their poor thermal properties.
Nasif Nahle (08:44:08)
really? examples please Nasif.
Pay attention please. I said nothing of the sort. I said it’s not about “the thermal properties of CO2” (your phrase in brackets), which is a meaningless concept).