You’ve probably all heard of Svensmark and the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) to cloud cover modulation theory by now. Lot’s of warmists say it is “discredited”. However, CERN in Switzerland isn’t following that thinking, and after getting some encouraging results in the CLOUD06 experiment, they have funded a much larger and more comprehensive CLOUD09 experiment. I figure if it is “discredited”, a bunch of smart guys and gals like CERN wouldn’t be ramping up the investigation. There’s also word now of a new correlation:
I get so many tips now it is hard to choose, but this one is a gem. If you look at nothing else this month, please take the time to download the slide show from CERN’s Jasper Kirkby at the end of this article.
He does a superb job of tying it all together. I found Kirkby’s slide show quite interesting, and I’ve grabbed some slides for our WUWT readers. He proposes a GCR to cloud droplet mechanism, which to me, makes sense meteorologically. He also touches on the possibility that the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) may have been shifted due to GCR modulation during the LIA/Maunder Minimum. This ties in with Willis Eschenbach’s theories of the ITCZ being a “thermostatic mechanism” for the planet with some amplification effects. – Anthony
Norm Potter writes in Tips and Notes for WUWT with this-
The end is near for the warmists, I suspect. This month, Jasper Kirkby of CERN explained the Centre’s CLOUD experiment, which is moving forward:
“The current understanding of climate change in the industrial age is that it is predominantly caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, with relatively small natural contributions due to solar irradiance and volcanoes. However, palaeoclimatic reconstructions show that the climate has frequently varied on 100-year time scales during the Holocene (last 10 kyr) by amounts comparable to the present warming – and yet the mechanism or mechanisms are not understood. Some of these reconstructions show clear associations with solar variability, which is recorded in the light radio-isotope archives that measure past variations of cosmic ray intensity. However, despite the increasing evidence of its importance, solar-climate variability is likely to remain controversial until a physical mechanism is established.
“Estimated changes of solar irradiance on these time scales appear to be too small to account for the climate observations. This raises the question of whether cosmic rays may directly affect the climate, providing an effective indirect solar forcing mechanism. Indeed recent satellite observations – although disputed – suggest that cosmic rays may affect clouds. This talk presents an overview of the palaeoclimatic evidence for solar/cosmic ray forcing of the climate, and reviews the possible physical mechanisms. These will be investigated in the CLOUD experiment which begins to take data at the CERN PS later this year.”
I found this side on page 29 to be plausible from a meteorological standpoint:
Here is a slide showing the ITCZ shift he’s proposing:
And here is the data and some conjectures, obviously more data is needed. However what is seen so far certainly seems far from “discredited” as some warmists say.
In the conclusions of his slide show, Kirkby outlines the state of knowledge and areas of investigation:
• Climate has continually varied in the past, and the causes are not well understood – especially on the 100 year timescalerelevant for today’s climate change
• Strong evidence for solar-climate variability, but no established mechanism. A cosmic ray influence on clouds is a leading candidate
• CLOUD at CERN aims to study and quantify the cosmic raycloud mechanism in a controlled laboratory experiment
• The question of whether – and to what extent – the climate is influenced by solar/cosmic ray variability remains central to our understanding of anthropogenic climate change
More info, see: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/ – the CERN Colloquium
Download Kirkby’s Slide show (Large 7.8 MB PDF, be patient)
http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=52576
Backup Copy on WUWT server: Kirkby_CERN_slideshow09
Those gamma rays, could their tracks through clouds provide discharge paths for lightning? And does lightning provide another mechanism for nucleation?
A couple of month’s ago I visited the information center of national park Hohe Tauern in Mittelsiel Austria. In this center there was a time wheel; turning this wheel you could nicely see on a monitor the progress and withdraw of the gletschers in this national park over at least 1000 years. The last time of gletscher maximum was around 1800-1830 and the period between the maxima was roughly 200 years. To remain political correct and to assure enough funding the expectation for the coming maximum (NOW) was that all gletschers would probably disappear.
bill (13:21:28) :
The paper you reference ( http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004.pdf ) does not agree with the Eichler 10BE curve. Does this mean that 10Be is not consistent between Siberia (a rather lager location) and Greenland specific points?
I take it that the glacier in Siberia is smaller than Greenland. The point is that 10Be curves from different regions are not the same and are influenced by the local climate, so to assume that 10Be is a ‘global’ measure of solar activity or GCRs is wrong.
Tucker (13:30:26) :
Leif Svalgaard (11:25:32) :
Leif – I respect you greatly, but you’re going out of your way to be obtuse here. If I had a dollar for every time you have said that correlation do not equal causation, I’d be rich. Yet, here you are pointing out a correlation must be causation argument from the paper and using that to belittle the “deniers”. You’re better than that. One statement from a long paper does not refute the “end is near” comment.
the one statement is not just any statement, it is their conclusion or summary [full disclosure dictates that it be said that they think it is half and half]. And the correlation/not causation works both ways. If it doesn’t hold for the CO2 and temps, then why does it hold for solar and temps? They are equally suspect, so ‘the end is near’ is not supported nor refuted by the paper, and must be seen for what it is: wishful thinking. Wishful thinking can turn out right, but we have to recognize it for what it is.
I sense that there is a desire (from some) and an opposing desire from others to somehow find Hendrik Svensmark et al’s hypothes isia sufficient explanation for the entirety of recent global warming and climate change; and presumably the recent negative global warming.
I don’t quite see the point of that. I think CERN’s CLOUD experiemnts are going to show that solar/GCRs can cause cloud modulation (seems irrefutable to me since the Wilson Cloud Chamber does work). Those experiments will likely obtain some rate data as well, so the extent of cloud formation from energetic charged ions, can be determined.
But I don’t expect that they will be able to prove that the entire climate variability in terms of recent short (30 year) warming episodes, is due solely to cosmic rays.
I still think the whole system is chaotic, and unpredictable; and I still think that the water cycle is in complete control of the earth temperature, and GCRs are just one of many perturbing phenomena that add to the natural variability; and the whole Arrhenius thesis of CO2 and the concept of “climate sensitivity”, is just silly nonsense.
The radiative “forcing” (evil word) due to CO2 absorption of 15 micron region long wave IR from the earth’s surface, is not a Universal constant; its value varies by more than an order of magnitude from place to place; and all at the same time, all over the world; so there is no set value for “climate sensitivity”
When was the last time you saw a global map of the “climate sensitivity” plotted from pole to pole similar to the temperature anomaly plots. Where are the ground measuring stations that measure the local value of climate sensitivity, just as temperature anolmaly data is gathered.
If there are any, the compliance of the sampling regimen to the usual laws of sampled data systems is laughable. So who is going to believe any globally averaged value for climate sensitivity; when there isn’t even any local monitoring going on.
Try telling any climate research scientist that the purchasing power of his taxpayer funded salary and research grant money varies by a factor of 12 from place to place all over the world, depending on where he wants to gather data; and that ; sorry; we aren;’t too sure just what it is at any one place.
I would recommend to any climate scientist to try and find a copy of the British Admiralty Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy published around 1938.
In there you will find a wonderful model of the copper atom with 63 Protons in the middle of a plum pudding, with about 34 electrons embedded in the surface of the pudding leaving an excess of 29 electrons to rotate around the pudding. That was the atomic model being taught to Royal Navy Candidates in those days. That plum pudding concept is somewhat contemporary with the climatologists favorite theory of CO2 caused global warming, and climate sensitivity.
Luckily we now know about neutrons; it’s time for climatologists to learn about clouds, and other forms of water.
George
Anthony and Leif: Regarding ocean lags due to thermal inertia, consider this. Those analyses attempt to determine the lag of global climate by first removing the ENSO and volcanic aerosol noise from the global temperature record. This might be possible for volcanic aerosols. But as we’ve illustrated in posts here, significant El Nino events result in heat transport toward the poles, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. And the heat from those El Nino events can linger for multiple years. I would have to think that part of the lingering heat from El Nino events is being mistaken for the lagged responses to TSI.
Here’s one of the RSS MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plots that I’d marked up:
http://i44.tinypic.com/16leq39.jpg
It’s easier for me to find links to the versions at my website, so here’s a link to the post that contains that graph:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html
From Wiki
Because beryllium tends to exist in solutions below about pH 5.5 (and rainwater above many industrialized areas can have a pH less than 5), it will dissolve and be transported to the Earth’s surface via rainwater. As the precipitation quickly becomes more alkaline, beryllium drops out of solution. Cosmogenic 10Be thereby accumulates at the soil surface, where its relatively long half-life (1.51 million years) permits a long residence time before decaying to 10B. 10Be and its daughter product have been used to examine soil erosion, soil formation from regolith, the development of lateritic soils and the age of ice cores. It is also formed in nuclear explosions by a reaction of fast neutrons with 13C in the carbon dioxide in air, and is one of the historical indicators of past activity at nuclear test sites.
If the airbourne 10Be requires rain to reach earth will this not affect concentration more than the quantity produced by GCRs?
All this talk of 30 years to show up on the temperature record of course blows curent thoughts that the cycle 23-24 minima is causing the current low temperatures. So what is causing the cold WEATHER (well above average for the last 6 weeks in dear old Gloucestershire!!! Over 30C today and pos tomorrow)
Pamela Gray (13:34:42) :
Leif, I am curious about your comment that climate affects these cosmic ray measures on a regional basis. How so?
The 10Be [and similar comments apply to 14C] concentration at a given location is the result of balance between production [cosmic rays] and deposition [climate]. The 10Be is created high in the atmosphere all over the globe and eventually reaches the surface by being ‘rained’ [or snowed] out, so winds and rainfall patterns and general circulation come in here. The atoms also attach to aerosols and fall to the surface with them, so volcanoes [or even man] also have an effect on the deposition. Whatever the cause are, what is being recognized more and more is that there are large regional differences in the 10Be [and 14C] concentrations, so the notion that a single core is representative for the globe is rubbish. Differences may be due to different climates thus creating a circular argument. These notes of caution have been voiced by the researchers form the beginning, but are routinely ignored by agenda people, that cherry pick what they like.
Leif Svalgaard (13:37:25) :
so it sounds like the amount of modulation is a probability game based on the the level of turbulence induced in solar winds by the state of solar activity (high or low, and where a “corotating region” might happen to form)?
BTW, Thank you very much Dr. Svalgaard, there are not many accessible sources for this kind of explanation and we certainly don’t get it the general media.
Here is a recent paper which claims that galactic motion and climate change are not correlated. To quote from physicsworld.com: “the researchers found that the distance and therefore time between successive intersections of the solar system with (galactic) spiral arms was not constant, and that there was therefore no correlation with ice ages on Earth. ”
Described at:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39593
PDF link:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0906/0906.2777.pdf
“”” Micky C (13:38:36) :
I agree with Leif. At the moment the GCR theory has no defined mechanism and process which suppossedly will come from the CLOUD experiment. If GCR modulates temperature in some fashion (creates more clouds) then for this to show up 30 years later would mean that the inherent oscillations would not be destoyed. The ocean acts like a filter, meaning it turns short term high frequency into longer term low frequency. It would take an intriguing process to maintain coherence of a 30 year old signal. To be honest I can’t see this as a viable option, even just applying Occam’s Razor.
GCR may perturb the thunderstorm process though, lowering the threshold for heat to bypass the troposphere via the creation of heat pipes (following Willis’ logic). “””
I don’t know where you have been looking for a “Defined process and mechanism” Have you thought of googling “wilson cloud chamber” to see what defined process and mechanism they associate with that ?
Maybe you are just not old enough to know about that well understood tool for viewing charged particle, including Cosmic Ray events.
You have to stop thinking about that cloud coming and going right in front of your eyes as you watch, and start to think of continued and on going global variations in the earth’s total cloud cover (which is around 50% of total surface cover on average), that can result form changes in cosmic ray flux, and distribution over the earth. Then couple that with the knowledge that since the maxi solar maximum of 1957/58, the sunspot counts at solar maxima, have been historically high ever since at least up and through cycle 22 (don’t know what cycle 23 peak was), and it is reasonable to argue that the average CR flux on earth has been lower on average, over that time frame compared to earlier history, when the earth was also cooler.
Couple that with the fact that temperature anomalies as depicted in GISStemp do not reflect actual earth temperatures, of the kind that planet earth constantly monitors and integrates continuously, and why would you expect to see an eleven year signal, if the thermal heat sink of the oceans is low pass filtering those long term changes in clud cover.
At least we don’t have to deal with the absurdity of AlGore’s “correlation” between changes in atmospheric CO2, and the temperature changes that preceeded that by 800 years.
I would suggest less playing around with statistical mathematics, and a little more study of basic physics.
George E. Smith (14:07:53) :……………I still think the whole system is chaotic, and unpredictable; ”
George, I assume you mean chaotic in the mathematical (non-linear dynamical system ) sense? Not that I disagree with you, I don’t; but finding that it can be mathematically demonstrated would be rather interesting, I think.
I think I’ve never heard so LOUD
The cosmic messages from CLOUD.
======================
Leif is quite right here but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander (I’m thinking about Steig et al and a thousand other AGW papers uncritically accepted over the years). A lot of us visit this site because we find the AGW hypothesis (CO2 based at least), implausible. Some have political affiliations (more so if you’re from the US, where this issue seems to be a dividing line between Republicans and Democrats) and some are interested in the Science itself. If you have a choice between no hypothesis and an implausible hypothesis, do you support the latter, or admit you just don’t know? Admitting you just don’t know doesn’t pay the bills. Supporting the paradigm, scary prognosis and all, very defnitely does.
Now on the presentation above, you have to admit that the evidence that Svensmark’s hypothesis is correct is tentative. The great thing about it is that parts of it can be tested in the lab (the generation of CCN’s from high energy particles). If this is established (as it seemed to be in Svensmark’s prevous work) and various bounds and parameters are known (as they can be with controlled experiments like this), then the process of hypothesising about its possible affect on the atmosphere can be determined.
I assume I don’t need to point out that a recent paper shows that CR’s have a very big impact on the Ozone Layer (over the Antarctic). It doesn’t seem such a big intellectual jump to me to question whether they are significant in other areas too. Of course if you uncritically accept AGW (CO2 based), then you are much less likely to donate your thinking time to other, completely different ideas.
I can’t think of a reason that you can’t have it both ways. There could be a short term and a long term correlation. Particularly so if you have a mechanism with a long thermal delay, to split the effect, such as the oceanic oscillations.
============================================
“The ocean acts like a filter, meaning it turns short term high frequency into longer term low frequency.” – MickyC (13:38:36)
Your comment struck a note in my very limited understanding of the thermal dynamics of climate. I’m picturing the oceans as a large capacitor where the relationship between insolation and heat stored and emitted by the ocean might be expressed as h=V(Di/Dt) where h is the total heat stored, V is the reactive volume of the ocean, and Di is the rate of change of insolation over time (Dt).
I realize that the whole matter of heat storage and transfer is far more complicated but in a general sense this analogy helps me visualize the lag between instantaneous changes of insolation, the longer term cycles, plus accommodates the higher frequency components that affect instantaneous changes in insolation.
Anyone feel free to help me better visualize the concept.
Shaviv believes that clouds should lead CRF:
Over the solar cycle, the LCC will therefore include (at least) two component. The primary is variations in sync with the cosmic ray flux. Solar maximum implies less CRF and less clouds and a higher radiative forcing. The temperature lags the solar activity by a 1/8 cycle. This will introduce a positive cloud component lagging behind the CRF and radiative forcing. When adding them together we obtain that the clouds should lead the CRF.
http://www.sciencebits.com/SloanAndWolfendale
Robinson (14:44:50) :
If you have a choice between no hypothesis and an implausible hypothesis, do you support the latter
You shouldn’t support the latter.
Steve in SC (11:09:47) :
I wonder why the AGW crowd says it is mans activities then tries to pin the blame on an innocent little trace gas. What they discount and seemingly everybody else as well is the direct emmissions as a result of mans activities in the form of BTUs. Being that life itself is a combustion process and that all of mans activities involve combustion processes of some sort and none of these combustion processes is anywhere near 100% efficient, that leaves us with an enormous amout of loose BTUs available to heat up the earth and its atmosphere. I just wonder why no one has ever addressed this?
I have been mentioning this as the primary influence of Man on climate for some time as well. In between the 6 billion heaters that are walking arround the planet, they do produce heat in many other ways (including combusting petrolium products), but instead of worring about the raw heat, the concentration is on a trace gas. Why? The answer that I come up with is longevety. If it were simply a case of turn off your car and the warming would go away since it would not take long to shed the heat. Also in the case of heat, the only way to reduce what we generate is to increase the efficiency of what we use or stop using it (of course reducing population would do the trick too). However if we blame it on the CO2, now there is something that can be controled and held onto for years to come. See how evil your grandparents were for putting you in this mess (you know owing a lifetimes salary to the government before they are born). So the only reasoning for hitting up CO2 is control. The hard part is as also mentioned above, the efforts are all going in to reducing global temperature, there is no plan in place for dealing with things should we infact be entering a Maunder like time with temp’s dropping and growing seasons being reduced. Hmm, they may just get that reduction in population they wanted…
As for thermal delay’s and the 20th century, the very simple solution is that the solar cycle’s were coming fast and heavy in the latter half of the 20th century. Minimum’s were shorter and peaks faster and higher (in general), there was some of this in the 1800’s as well. Couple that with a large water body that will tend to retain the trends much like a capacitor would in electronics and you have a system that is full of feedback loops, a large capacitor for holding stored energy (note that it works both ways, it will store heat and cold depending on if it is being charged or discharged).
Strangely, on the basis of this throw away comment by Leif Svalgaard some here seem to now accept AGW has some merit:
Leif says: “If I didn’t know any better, I would say that the red curve since 1900 is significantly above the GCR curves thus clearly indicating that fossil fuels [or man’s activities] are responsible for the extra warming…”
Firstly, the divergence between the red curve (temp) and the GCR lines begins mid/late 1800s.
Secondly, C02 levels did not begin to rise materially until after the Second World War.
Finally, while the C02 output has accelerated over the last 10 years, temps have flat-lined and/or decreased (the above graph stops at 2000).
I think some people are falling into the same trap the warmers fall into. That is, drawing sweeping conclusions on causality based on transient correlations.
Flanagan (13:41:52) :
You missed the point entirely.
125 years ago people were alarmed at the climate change they were observing.
They didn’t go off the deep end scaring everyone 24/7 for the sole purpose of making Feudal Lords out of the energy market, or using the change as an excuse to turn the population into peasantry.
They were rightly concerned about their existence.
Nothing has changed but climate, and people are still as concerned with the weather as they have always been.
Climate is complex. So what. Doesn’t mean there is one and only cause, or that man is responsible for it, or that it is taboo to try and find the causes because looking displeases the status quo.
The complexity of climate is not a monster hiding in the closet, either.
The bottom line is this:
Climate has changed repeatedly, and it will change again.
Don’t get left behind.
Oh, and btw… this is the place. And in case you haven’t noticed, writing climate related rebuttals to the source is no longer tolerated or allowed.
This IS the place.
Flanagan (08:45:51) :
“Si although it is only 0.0028% of the atmosphere, it is responsible for almost 10% of the greenhouse effect.”
Is that figure correct? Here’s a scientist:
“Over the last hundred years the concentration has grown from 0.03% to about 0.04%.”
http://www.aroundtheamericas.org/story/Ocean+Acidification
I’m not an expert in the Philosophy of Science but I do know that words like “support” and “belief” are concerned with positions you may take when presented with the evidence or lack of. I’m not talking about support or belief concerning the facts, insofar as they cannot be debated (temperature has almomst certainly increased; this may be a fact, for example).
If there are two competing hypothesis an independant thinker will make a choice between them, or remain neutral until convinced by a weight of evidence which may include many factors (including the motives of those collecting the evidence). I think when political considerations come into play however, it’s difficult to stay neutral.
Here’s Prof Ian Plimer’s address to the Sydney Institute.
it’s a 31 meg Mp3
http://tinyurl.com/l74fo7
Flannagan – please listen to it – it will set you straight.
Jack Mosevich (14:30:00) :
Pohl points out that, strictly speaking, this research only rules out a correlation between climate and spiral-arm passages, and that there has been speculation that the motion of the Sun in and out of the galactic plane could have effects on Earth.
Sigh, another model of the Galaxy that doesn’t take into account the complexity of the observed high-latitude clouds of gas, dust , molecular clouds.
How many layers are there? Where are they?
The Galaxy is no more simple than Climate is.
Just have a look at some prominent edge-on spiral galaxies. Then look at the complex forms of the face-on spiral galaxies.
Last person to put forth a Galaxy Classification scheme was Hubble in 1936.
There isn’t even agreement on where the Milky Way sit in Hubble’s Tuning Fork.
Is it barred? Is it symmetric? Do the arms lie all in plane? Does is resemble Andromeda, or is it like the barred spiral M109 ?
I’m sure Spitzer did some mighty fine work, but don’t think that’s the end of the story.
There’s plenty more in the Galaxy to discover.