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
Lucy Skywalker (11:38:14) :
Great new paper from two Svensmarks – this looks set, together with another paper on solar forcing – with more undeniably good scientists supporting the power of the Sun, this looks set to start to rout the CO2 warmists.
A paper should not be judged on its capacity for routing warmists. Even if the cosmic ray hypothesis is shown to be correct, then it does nothing at all to rout the warmists, because cosmic rays at solar minimum, where they are strongest [even by only a few percent] have not changed in 60+ years. And at solar maximum, the GCR trend has not followed the temperature trends.
I have a general criticism of their paper which I would have voiced had I been a reviewer. Selecting the FDs with the largest ionization and only looking at those already introduces the possibility of selection effects. To make the paper convincing I would have suggested to the authors that they divide the FDs into three groups with equal numbers of FDs in each group. Then do the superposed epoch analysis for each group. That would have given an amplitude A for each group. Then show that the A is small for the low group, intermediate for the medium group, and large for the high group. That would have been good science, and might even have shut me up. As the paper now stands, it is just one of the many dueling analyses on this subject.
Jim Masterson (22:59:00) :
>> George E. Smith (10:22:00) :
Some people get the right answer (or nearly the right answer) for the wrong reasons. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law is a power law, so you really can’t divide by 4 when you should be taking the fourth root.
Actually you can in this case!
It’s a well known approximation that (1+a)^n≅1+na when a is significantly less than 1, which it is in this case. Those of us, like George and I who grew up in the era prior to calculators know this well.
So in this case (1+a)^4=1.001=1+4a ∴ a=0.001/4 the error is about 6 parts in a million!
“”” Jim Masterson (22:59:00) :
>> George E. Smith (10:22:00) :
. . .
Annette; that 0.1% (roughly) is correct, that is about the extent of the peak to peak change in the “Solar Constant” of about 1366 Watts per square meter; Total Solar Incidence. If that radiation fell on a quite passive “black body”, the change in temperature of that body would only be 1/4 of that 0.1% or 0.025%. That is because the energy and the temperature are related by the Stefan-Boltzmann 4th Power Law; energy (absorbed or emitted) is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature.
So for earth (which is NOT a passive black body), the mean temperature is allegedly about 15 deg C or about 288 Kelvins. 0.1% of that is 0.288 deg (C or K), and 1/4 of that is only 0.072 deg C. <<
Some people get the right answer (or nearly the right answer) for the wrong reasons. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law is a power law, so you really can’t divide by 4 when you should be taking the fourth root. """
Come now Jim; you know better than that.
(T + dT)^4 = T^4 + 4T^3dT +6T^2dT^2 + 4TdT^3 + dT^4
ergo (T+ dT ^4/T^4 = 1 + 4dT/T + 6(dT/T)^2 etc etc
And we are saying that (T + dT)^4 / T^4 =1.001
So I said that dT/T was 0.00025, making 4dT / T = 0.001 and 6 (dT/T)^2 is only 0.000000375, and the missing two terms are smaller still.
You still want to say I did it wrong ?
George
The increase in global rainfall and change in the geographical pattern could be a sign that the ocean is behaving like a capacitor. It stores energy when sun activity is high and puts energy back into the system when the sun is quiet.
Would be interesting to try and estimate the quantity of energy that changes.
“”” Micky C (16:30:37) :
George
A bit of background: I’m not that young (mid 30s) and have been a physicist for 12 years. My undergrad was physics with astrophysics; my PhD is in Material Science (thin film ferroelectrics) and for 8+ years I have for the most part been building and developing plasma thrusters for satellites. I have one flying at the moment. “””
Well I’m no spring chicken; and my mere Bachelor’s degree (1957) had Majors in Physics, Radiophysics, Mathematics (Pure and Applied), and Mathematical Physics; and I have only been a practising Physicist in Industry for 48 1/2 years, after two years in Academia (teaching Optics and Atomic Physics).
So yes I realize that The Wilson Cloud chamber is a highly controlled environment compared to the atmosphere; yet despite that, moist air still manages to rise to where the dew point is reached, and water droplets can form on just about any substrate they can find, including volcanic ash, microbes, charged ion tracks (remember water is a polar molecule (thanks Gaia).
And of course I realize there is a rate question. Part of the cosmic ray mechanism, is that with higher near earth magnetic fields, charged ions are trapped by the magnetic field of the earth and spiral around the field lines to strike the upper atmosphere in the vicinity of the magnetic poles which are regions of low moisture content.
Whent he magnetic fileds are weaker, the CR flux redistributes over the globe, so more reach the earth in the tropical regions where ther is plenty of water vapor to condense into clouds, so more clouds are formed in geographical regions that just happen to be high solar flux regions also, so the attenuation due to that cloud increase is greater.
And finally, no way do I expect the Svensmark CR process to explain all of global warming; or lack thereof.
I’m quite confident that the normal hydologic cycle is regulating the temperature through evaporation/cloud formation, and precipitation (negative feedback) which offsets the positive feedback warming from increased atmosperic water vapor.
ONLY water exists in the atmosphere in all three phases, out of the list of common greenhouse gases; and as a vapor it has both positive and negative feedback mechanisms (it’s a strong solar spectrum absorber too); but in the form of clouds it is always negative feedback.
And in case you missed it when I first said it, I don’t buy the high clouds at night warm the earth’s surface; and the higher the clouds, and the less water they contain, the more the surface warms. That dog don’t hunt; those high clouds at night are there BECAUSE of the warmer surface, and the warmer the surface and lowere the moisture, the higher the moist air has to rise before it can form those clouds.
Check the Physics of a gas column radiating thermal radiation essentially isotropically; having lower density cooler air (and GHG) above it, but denser, and warmer air below it; and figure out which is the easy path for that isotropic radiation to progrss through multiple absorptions and re-emissions, and which is the hard direction; and then try to convince me, that the higher and more rarified the clouds are the more they can warm the surface. Don’t forget the Wien’s displacement law, and the change in width of the CO2 resonance absorption line at 15 microns or thereabouts, with height in the atmosphere.
And yes I know gases don’t emit black body like thermal radiation; which is how we know for sure that the sun must be a solid object, and not a heated gas/plasma.
George
Way to go Phil.
I still believe in the stick, on a desert island sandy beach. You can’t Google from there, so you better be able to guesstimate.
George
George E. Smith (12:54:00) :
Way to go Phil.
I still believe in the stick, on a desert island sandy beach. You can’t Google from there, so you better be able to guesstimate.
No problem George, we old fogies from the slide rule and log table era need to stick together vs. these young whippersnappers. 😉
Estimation is a great skill, once in my lab. we had a head that screwed on about 15º out of line, so knowing the pitch of the thread I said we needed some 15 thou’ shim to straighten it. After a moment of silence the grad students told me that I was full of it, then one of them took a calculator out and several minutes later announced that I was out by 1%! Amazing how close you can get with pi≈22/7 and 1 radian≈60º.
>> George E. Smith (12:18:03) :
. . .
Come now Jim; you know better than that. <<
Apparently not.
>>
. . .
You still want to say I did it wrong ? <<
After dragging me by the nose through your calculations, no, I don’t.
Jim
>> Phil. (13:27:09) :
No problem George, we old fogies from the slide rule and log table era need to stick together vs. these young whippersnappers. 😉 <<
I take exception to that statement. Who are you calling a “young whippersnapper?” I remember slide rules and log tables and sine tables and Bessel function tables and . . . .
Jim
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Story?id=7906041&page=1
This is somewhat related, maybe. Too bad he is so secretive.
Well just yanking your chain Jim; I already figured you would catch on after you thought about it.
But as it turns out you did help reveal a gremlin in the works .
It is reasonable to presume, that the various surfaces of the planet, radiate thermal infrared radiation that if not strictly black body radiation; at least do follow a similar fourth power of temperature law; with some total emissivity, or spectral emissivity thrown in.
So if I have different places at different temperatures, they are all radiating differently, and if they are similar surface terrains; the radiative effect oughta follow some 4th power law.
So instead of averaging the suface temperatures all over the world, and then using that mean global temperature to infer some total surface radiation budget for the planet, it really would be more sensible to average the fourth power of the temperatures rather than the temperatures themselves.
The binomial expansion I gave shows that by not averaging the 4th powers, we under-estimate the total global radiation since that 4dT/T term is always positive.
So you can show that for any cyclic variation of temperature, the integral of the 4th power will always be greater than the integral of the temperature itself.
The practical difference is small but non zero for diurnal temperature cycles; but I regularly see daily min max temperature data on the news with more than 30 deg F high to low ranges.
But the annual cyclic discrepancy is far from negligible.
Which is another reason why I think the whole concept of a mean global temperature is total nonsense. Add to that, that different types of terrain see quite different thermal processes anyway; so that temperature alone is not a good metric for global radaitive cooling or heating budgeting.
So global mean temperature is just a mathematical number; like the average phone number in the Manhattan Phone directory; but it has no physical scientific purpose whatsoever (unless it happens to average out to your phone number)
Might as well count the average number of animals per hectare (bigger than a termite), and report that as a metric for the animal health of the planet. Equating elephant density in Kenya, with Locust density in Ethiopia; doesn’t make much sense either.
George
“”” Leif Svalgaard (12:12:30) :
Lucy Skywalker (11:38:14) :
Great new paper from two Svensmarks – this looks set, together with another paper on solar forcing – with more undeniably good scientists supporting the power of the Sun, this looks set to start to rout the CO2 warmists.
A paper should not be judged on its capacity for routing warmists. Even if the cosmic ray hypothesis is shown to be correct, then it does nothing at all to rout the warmists, because cosmic rays at solar minimum, where they are strongest [even by only a few percent] have not changed in 60+ years. And at solar maximum, the GCR trend has not followed the temperature trends. “””
I don’t disagree with your position Leif; since your nose is closer to the grindstone than mine is; I can afford to be a little more “romantic” than you can.
Your note that the GCRs at minima and maxima don’t change a lot is important. I think the geographical redistribution of GCRs with the vaying magnetic fields, is mor eimportant than the sheer Cr counts, since that steers ion teacks away from moist humid areas to cold dry areas where cloud formation is less likely.
And in any case, I see the effect as only being a perturbation of a basic cloud negative feedback process. But taken over the whole solar cycle behavior from the IGY to the present; I would be surprised if it turned out there was no warming effect from the historically higher sunspot counts; but I wouldn’t expect to see 11 year cycles either because the perturbation is probably small so needs decades of time to build up a temperature discrepancy.
So i’m in agreement; that Hendrik is not going to blow AGW out of the water with GCRs but I am convinced he is on to something that is significant.
I’m already satisfied that basically the water cycle is in feedback control of the system; and CO2 has very little to do with anything; it is just another small perturabtion; not unlike Svensmark et al’s GCRs.
George E. Smith (16:10:20) :
I think the geographical redistribution of GCRs with the vaying magnetic fields, is more eimportant than the sheer CR counts
Except that the geographical impact of GCRs does not vary with solar activity [or is at most a very small 2nd-order effect because it depends on the energy spectrum which is modulation dependent – but the effect is negligible]. The main driver of the CR intensity is the Earth’s magnetic field which as decreased 20% over the past three hundred years, leading to a corresponding increase of GCRs, provided the source is constant. But there are indications that the GCR flux has been slowly decreasing over time, so the two effects may almost cancel. If you take a look at http://www.leif.org/research/CosmicRays-GeoDipole.jpg you’ll see that solar effects are just minor inconsequential wiggles on the GCR intensity variation caused by the change of the Earth’s magnetic field over centuries and millennea.
Micky C (13:38:36) “[…] 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.”
Are you suggesting a stationary lag has been claimed?
I have not run a cross-correlation analysis on this particular pair of variables, but looking at the timeplot in Kirkby (2009), I would not expect to find a stationary lag.
Cross-correlation is a statistical measure – and as such one needs to bear in mind spread as well as centre.
When someone reports a lag, they are usually reporting the centre (and they don’t always comment on spread — furthermore, any measure of spread could be misleading, depending on what assumptions went into its estimation – & lets keep in mind that we are not dealing with stationary series).
One criticism I will offer: There is no cross-correlation plot in Kirkby (2009) to help the audience assess the statistical properties of the “30 yr lag”. [A time-integrated cross-correlation color-contour plot would also have been appreciated.]
The first graph you put up there in the post says a lot about what is going on.
There is a great correlation between the temperature and what appears to be (ie is not explained clearly) the 10Be and 14C proxies for solar influence on the GCR. This correlation looks to account for a whoppingly large amount of the temperature change… all the way up until 1850.
A very similar trend has been shown in solar cycle length. Great agreement until the last 150-100 years when the temperature increasingly is less correlated with these features. Like I said it is very clear in the plot.
What do we know about what has been happening in this last 150 years… well we have certainly increased the atmospheric CO2 levels.
As for the commenters who make the statement about water vapor being a much better greenhouse gas and present in larger quantities. This is true however with a basic understanding of physics you will quickly see that the maximum level of water vapor in the atmosphere is determined by the temperature, and many of you will have experienced what happens when the water vapor reaches this level for the local temperature – it rains. So water vapor cannot drive a greenhouse effect but it will contribute to any positive feedback – since a warmer atmosphere can contain more water vapor
mc2 (20:03:58):
“So water vapor cannot drive a greenhouse effect but it will contribute to any positive feedback – since a warmer atmosphere can contain more water vapor”
Without water vapor in the atmosphere this planet would be covered in ice. As to positive feedback from water vapor, well that sounds great except for the issues of convection, albedo and a total lack of empirical data.
“Now on the catwalk, the emperor is modeling the latest creation from the red hot GCM summer collection, woven from whole cloth with positive feedback trimming. Notice how the sleeves have a generous cut to allow frantic waving of the hands.”
Konrad, as long as there exists liquid water on the planet (and even in the worst of the Ice Ages there has always been liquid water still available) there will be water vapor in the atmosphere. Liquid water and water vapor exist in an equilibrium that is effected by temperature and pressure.
What this means is that you will always have some water vapor in your atmosphere, however without re-writing the laws of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics you cannot have water vapor as a driving force for a greenhouse effect. Your example of convection further illustrates my point that water vapor cannot be the causative force.
What empirical data would you like to see – how about the plot at the top of the post, it is pretty clear that the correlation between temperature and the proxies for GCR breaks down at about 150-100 years ago.
Sorry I would like to point out the absolute folly of my water vapor leading to feedback statement. Very clearly if water vapor was able to cause a feedback on the climate we would have already gotten well past the point of no return (probably millions of years ago).
The water in the atmosphere saturates very readily and becomes rain. Thus limiting the effect that it can have to cause a runaway green house situation. This is true at current temperatures and most likely will be still be true for a warmer temperature range, just as it is so for a cooler temperature range (ie we have not seen this runaway green house behaviour due to water coming out of any previous ice age).
The point was that despite the fact that water is a good greenhouse gas it is present in relatively stable quantities in the atmosphere and is unlikely to be responsible for any warming.
It is still clear from the graph at the top and other showing similar trends with solar cycle length that the temperature no longer correlates well with these factors. Something must be causing the warming that we see. What other hypotheses do you have?
Any that have a better correlation than the increase in CO2 and temperature in the last 150 years?
mc2 (21:48:53)
I have seen no empirical data for positive feedback from water vapor in response to increases in CO2. The only data I have seen suggests a weak negative feedback, however this data is too poor o be relied on. It is well acepted by most realists, including myself, that CO2 does cause some warming, but there is only so much longwave IR to be temporarily delayed in its journey away from the earth. Doubling CO2 does not double it’s effects. The AGW case for dangerous warming hangs on positive feedback from water vapor modeled in GCMs. I have seen no empirical data to support this claim. The IPCC have been looking for 20 years with nothing to show other than GIGO computer models.
As to why those looking at the GCR theory would use a temperature reconstruction that shows a lack of correlation in recent years, you should look at the funding proposal for the experiment. In the current political environment it would be unwise to suggest that any more than “some” of recent climate variations are due to GCR flux. As I indicated before on this thread concerning this issue “No b……t, no bucks.”
Two intriguing items for me
1. Seeing the “Possible Mechanism” chart with cosmic rays, it reminded me of the charts presented the mechanism with ozone/ultraviolet light/ chlorohydrocarbons. I don’t remember cosmic rays being in discussion with chlorohydrocarbons. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t investigated, but I don’t remember. I wonder if higher cosmic ray rate has any influence on ozone, etc.
2. On page 14 it states “possible influence of geomagnetic field on Asian monsoon”. It would be a strange new world if geomagnetic fields are monitored to predict the weather patterns!
I’ll note that GCRs don’t have to have a significant effect on climate to account for (most of) the supposed warming.
The reason is the chosen AGW metric, pre-satellite, is the mean of Tmin and Tmax. If GCRs, through clouds, influence Tmin by increasing early morning sunshine then most of the warming is explained, as well as the large discrepancy between the surface measurements (O.17C/decade) and the satellite measurements (0.06C/decade – UAH)
A factor of 3 difference.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2007/ann/msu2007-pg.gif
Note, data to 2007. Recent data shows an even smaller satellite troposphere trend.
>> George E. Smith (15:53:31) :
. . .
So global mean temperature is just a mathematical number; like the average phone number in the Manhattan Phone directory; but it has no physical scientific purpose whatsoever (unless it happens to average out to your phone number) <<
I agree. The idea of an average temperature is nonsense. But this idea is not exactly new. See ”Does a Global Temperature Exist?” The authors are Christopher Essex, Ross McKitrick (yes, that McKitrick), and Bjarne Andresen. Dr. Essex often uses the “average numbers in a phonebook” example to criticize temperature averaging.
Jim
ohioholic (15:50:53) :
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Story?id=7906041&page=1
This is somewhat related, maybe. Too bad he is so secretive.
I note Piers Corbyn says more will be revealed on Oct 28th because the world needs to know.
He will time it for maximum effect on Copenhagen.
mc2 (22:10:14) :
It is still clear from the graph at the top and other showing similar trends with solar cycle length that the temperature no longer correlates well with these factors. Something must be causing the warming that we see. What other hypotheses do you have?
You need to acqauint yourself with the monkeying which has been going on with the surface temperature record.
I suggest someone, not Anthony for obvious reasons, produces a temperature graphs with the ‘corrections’ corrected, to overlay on the graph. Start with a good station and remove the published ‘correction’, then scale to an average of several worldwide representative stations.
Orland springs to mind…
Konrad (22:22:14) :
It is well acepted by most realists, including myself, that CO2 does cause some warming, but there is only so much longwave IR to be temporarily delayed in its journey away from the earth.
It should be noted the ocean air energy budget comes up 30W/m^2 short. I think Willis Eschenbach is right with his hypothesis, and much more heat is escaping from the sea via the ‘atmospheric window’. This means a lot of any co2 effect is simply being bypassed by heat updraughting through high cumulonimbus cloudtops.