Svensmark has a new paper and it is a doozy: Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds (full text PDF).
The major conclusion: “A link between the Sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale…”
This paper confirms 13 years of discoveries that suggest a key role for cosmic rays in climate change. It links observable variations in the world’s cloudiness to laboratory experiments in Copenhagen showing how cosmic rays help generate atmospheric aerosols.
This is important, because it confirms the existence of a sun-earth atmospheric modulation mechanism for clouds and aerosols. It is seen in an event called a Forbush Decrease, which A Forbush decrease is a rapid decrease in the observed galactic cosmic raycoronal mass ejection (CME). It occurs due to the magnetic field of the plasma solar wind sweeping some of the galactic cosmic rays away from Earth. Here is what the Oulu Neutron Monitor plot looked like during such and event on May15th, 2005:
When the CME hit Earth, the magnetic field of the CME deflects the Galactic Cosmic Rays and the secondary particle flux (Neutrons) decreases. In this graph there is also another Forbush decrease visible, which was caused by another, not that powerful flare, which CME passed Earth a few days before this event.
See more from CosmicRays.org Now at last, a linkage has been established on earth showing such events affect cloud cover and aerosols. Luboš Motl gives a good summary ina post from a few days ago, shown below.
Forbush decreases confirm cosmoclimatology
By Luboš Motl
Recall that cosmoclimatology of Henrik Svensmark and others postulates that the galactic cosmic rays are able to create “seeds” of low-lying clouds that may cool the Earth’s surface. A higher number of cosmic rays can therefore decrease the temperature. The creation of the cloud nuclei is caused by ionization and resembles the processes in a cloud chamber.
The fluctuations of the cosmic ray flux may occur due to the variable galactic environment as well as the solar activity: a more active Sun protects us from a part of the cosmic rays. It means that a more active Sun decreases the amounts of low-lying clouds, which means that it warms the Earth.
Because the low-lying clouds remove 30 Watts per squared meter in average (over time and the Earth) or so, one has to be very careful not only about the very existence of the clouds but also about the variations of cloudiness by 5% or so which translates to a degree of temperature change.
A systematic effect on the clouds – e.g. one of the cosmic origin – is a nightmare for the champions of the silly CO2 toy model of climatology because the cloud variations easily beat any effect of CO2. Two alarmists, Sloan and Wolfendale, wanted to rule out Svensmark’s theory by looking at the Forbush decreases, specific events of a solar origin named after Scott Forbush who studied them 6 decades ago, involving the plasma. However, their paper was incorrect.
In April 2008, this blog (The Reference Frame) published the following relevant article:
Sloan and Wolfendale complained that no cosmoclimatological signal could have been seen during the Forbush decreases, i.e. short episodes when the activity of our beloved star decreases the amount of cosmic rays reaching Earth. However, Nir Shaviv explained that it should be expected that such a signal is not seen in the averaged monthly data they had used.
In order to see the “tiger in the jungle”, using Svensmark’s words from a press release
that will be published tomorrow (I am allowed to read it now because my uncle lives in Melbourne which already has August), and in order to separate these clean effects from the huge meteorological noise, one needs to increase the temporal resolution to several days and also cover the whole globe to dilute the effects of local weather.
Newest paper
Tomorrow, on August 1st, 2009, Geophysical Research Letters will publish a new paper by Henrik Svensmark, Torsten Bondo, and Jacob Svensmark:
The People’s Voice (summary of the paper)
Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds (full text).
When you click the second link above and obtain an error message, press alt/d and enter to reload the URL: without a direct external link, the PDF file will be displayed correctly. Or open the Google cache as PDF-like HTML.
Svensmark and his collaborators have looked at 26 Forbush events since 1987 (those that were strong according to their impact on the spectrum seen in the low troposphere where it matters): most of them occur close to the solar maxima (in the middle of the 11-year cycles). The observations with a much better temporal resolution imply that the mass of water stored in clouds decreases by 4-7%, with the minimum reached after a nearly 1-week delay needed for the cloud nuclei to get mature. Roughly three billions of tons of water droplets suddenly disappear from the atmosphere (they remain there as vapor, which is more likely to warm the air than to cool it down).
An independent set of measurements has also shown that the amount of aerosols, i.e. potential nuclei of the new clouds, also decreases. All these “strength vs decrease” graphs display a lot of noise but the negative slopes are almost always significant at the 95% level (with one dataset being an exception, at 92%, which is still higher than the official IPCC confidence level that climate change is mostly man-made).
Each Forbush decrease can therefore warm up the Earth by the same temperature change as the effect of all carbon dioxide emitted by the mankind since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. While you might think that such an effect is temporary and lasts a few weeks only, it is important to notice that similar variations in the solar activity, the solar magnetic field, and the galactic cosmic rays take place at many different conceivable frequencies, so there are almost certainly many effects whose impact on the temperature – through the clouds – is at least equal to the whole effect of man-made carbon dioxide.
|
18 votes
|
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Indeed, all of the criticisms RC levelled at Svensmark’s paper can also be levelled at any number of AGW papers, including those written by GS himself. It seems to me that there is no validity in his criticisms either, because Svensmark is not demonstrating a full, complete model but simply adding incrementally to our understanding some facts that are consistent with his general hypothesis. This is in contrast to the Warmists, who rather too frequently dismiss facts that don’t fit their hypothesis. If the question is, “why does it take 5 – 9 days for the clouds to appear”, then the answer is further investigation, not outright dismissal.
RC’s response demonstrates just how anti-science these commentators have become.
So where is the heat hiding?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/04/a-simple-analogy-on-climate-modeling-looking-for-the-red-spot/
And why were the 50s not the warmest decade of the 20th centuary
http://kickthemallout.com/images/Misc/SunSpotActivityChart.jpg
Oh wait sorry my bad. We only ask question about the CO2. Everything else is real science. 😉
I don´t usually post OTs but I think this is a must read.
From The treehugger The best way you can go green is to have fewer children.
No comments needed.
I can’t comment on the theory because I don’t have the scientific nous. However, I can appreaciate the fall-out at RC. I really love to see them twitch…
Pierre Gosselin (01:42:28) :
Thankyou for drawing attention to the German item of news.
The letter to Angela Merkel is powerful stuff, signed by 67 leading scientists and 189 concerned active citizens – many of these latter also indicate scientific training and affiliations.
It’s a good read.
I’m glad to see this getting some attention. This has been an interesting hypothesis for me since Svensmark had a documentary on Discovery channel circa ~2000.
Speaking of solar influences on climate and cloud formation, does anyone know what happened to the SOHO page? It hasn’t updated since 7/28. I was unable to find any notes under the Operations page about what might be going on.
It’s been very rainy and cloudy from last winter here in Southern Europe where we usually have clear skies almost all the time.
“Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized: In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher, 1788-1860)
Third stage coming soon.
James (01:48:50) wrote: quote Interesting idea none the less, not really convinced about it myself, I’d imagine there are plenty of nucleation sites already in the atmosphere and this is unlikely to be the limiting step for cloud formation. unquote
Google NASA ship tracks and see. The limit on oceanic stratocu seems to be CCN numbers which means that various influences can modulate the cloud cover — remember that less than 5% reduction in this cover equals or exceeds CO2 forcing including the proposed water vapour amplification.
I will spare you the swivelly-eyed oil/surfactant pollution theory of global warming, but just wait, its time is coming….
JF
Urederra (04:35:09) : From The treehugger The best way you can go green is to have fewer children.
Simplistic thinking applied to complex systems, methinks. Just saw an article in the papers about how China is now facing a demographics bomb as all the single children grow old before China has been able to develop enough to support them. They’ve acquired a First world problem without the First world wealth to deal with it.
I’m starting to believe that nature itself controls the reproductive urge and tunes it to suit the material conditions it is living in. Trying to deliberately control and engineering this with laws may seem like the obvious right thing to do if you’re a greenie, but we’re about to see how that’s worked out for China.
Greenies really don’t as a whole understand complexity.
It is interesting that RC apply this criterion to other explanations but not to AGW supporting papers. tic
“One requirement for successful scientific progress in general, is that new explanations or proposed mechanisms must fit within the big picture, as well as being consistent with other observations. They must also be able to explain other relevant aspects.”
My comment (below) is waiting on moderation but I’m not holding my breath for it any time before Hansen’s 250ft sea level rise happens. ( the last comment before I posted was #95)
Is this why the AGW alarmist bandwagon in Australia led by Minister Penny W(r)ong keep changing their story???? Because the furphy that they sold us to accept the CPRS isn’t consistent with the observations.
Pierre Gosselin (02:38:04) :
BTW, RSS is out for July.
+0.39, 3rd warmest in 31 years…
Tell that to the stunted crops out in the field. This has been the coldest summer around here in a long long time. I think we maybe hit 31C once this summer. We routinely hit 38-40C at least for a few days each summer here. Not this year.
The downside to cold weather is that commodity prices are going to go up (laws of supply and demand) which is not good when the US is going through a recession.
We need the sun to wake up, and blow some of the clouds away to help warm things up. Svensmark’s theories are showing how true that metaphor really is.
This paper from Svensmark is another brick in their hypothesis – an observation of cause and effect. RC attacks it for not providing enough of a mechanism of action. Isn’t that the way real scientists do things? First they observe, then they hypothesize, then they test that hypothesis with experiment and more observation. Svensmark made brilliant observations – that galactic cosmic rays affect cloud formation. Critics of the observation said there wasn’t a strong enough signal in the observed data. Now he’s answered the critics with these new observations using strong events that show clear atmospheric responses to variations in the GCR flux. This isn’t cherry picking – this is pulling a strong signal out of the noise to prove there is correlation. Now it’s up to Svensmark, or someone else more expert in the field to show why there is a 5-7 day lag in the response – the actual mechanism of action – to put another brick in the wall.
Exciting times – we’re living in them.
Clouds rule and Svensmark and Eschenbach have the most natural theories. I hope they’re both proven right and a bigger picture emerges and exposes the true aerosols in all this.
We are at the start of a process that will eventually establish a Natural Theory of Climate Change, one that will overwhelm the AGW hypothesis and see it eventually dumped in the scientific trash.
dorlomin (04:32:46): “And why were the 50s not the warmest decade of the 20th centuary… Oh wait sorry my bad. We only ask question about the CO2. Everything else is real science. 😉
Svensmark isn’t claiming a complete theory with settled scientific consensus that explains everything. He reports what he has observed.
He’s doing science the way it is supposed to be done. Observations. Theories. Discussion. More observations. More theories. Repeat as necessary.
A search on changes in ultraviolet and solar minima turned this up: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090504-sun-global-cooling_2.html
James (01:48:50) :
Svensmark gave an excellent talk at my university recently. They showed a long term study, comprising at least the two last glaciations. There was an excellent correlation between GCR and global temperature on those time scales. it should be published, may be a google scholar search will show it.
Soon the AGW theory will reside next to the ice is coming of the 70s.
It’s like the AGwers never heard of Occam’s Razor, but then they can’t tax the universe, can they?.
Stan (03:48:27) :
Scientific progress is actually denied when the “big picture” takes precedence over newly discovered mechanisms. That statement from RC is the alarmist equivalent of the Catholic Church’s denial of Copernicanism.
It is exactly like that. Climate Alarmism have managed to recreate an anthropocentric climate system, where climate responds to the virtues and sins of man, and earth will be punished for his sins.
More sober and skeptical scientist are trying to return climate to its heliocentric orbit, which is where it belongs.
Here is an excellent and much wider analysis of the first position by J. Brignell
For those unfamiliar with UK jargon, as put forth by UK skeptic, the word ‘nous’ possibly should have an ‘e’ on the end and is pronounced to rhyme with ‘house’. It means ‘smarts’.
From the article:
Could you rewrite that sentence please, it makes no sense to me.
Certainly intiguing. With all due respect, though, Luboš Motl isn’t quite right when he suggests that this “…resembles the processes in a cloud chamber.” In fact, this is probably how the folks at RC are thinking, and why they immediately pointed to the five day delay as significant.
In a cloud chamber the condensible gases are saturated or even supersaturated. The ionization tracks from cosmic rays and other particles act as condensation nuclei themselves and the result is an almost instantaneous condensation into a visible track. The five or more days delay in the effect here becomes suspicious immediately if one thinks of the cloud chamber analog. In fact, here the mechanism is more complex. The aerosols in mind are sulfur compounds also possibly sea salts neither of which are near saturation.
**************************
Vincent (03:57:57) :
RC = Roman Carbonist, possibly.
RC ==> Gavin Schmidt. Is this the same Gavin Schmidt who work is so ‘robustly flawed’: See Scaffeta’s debunking of Schmidt on WUWT.
“Interesting idea none the less, not really convinced about it myself, I’d imagine there are plenty of nucleation sites already in the atmosphere and this is unlikely to be the limiting step for cloud formation.”
How do you measure saturation of cloud condensation nucleii? What level equates to saturated? I don’t think there is any data on this. ********************************
I know instruments exist to measure microscopic particle size and can estimate concentration. Shouldn’t aerosols show up in the scattered spectrum of sunlight? Could there be way to measure them from space??
***************
Charlie (05:49:59) :
Svensmark isn’t claiming a complete theory with settled scientific consensus that explains everything. He reports what he has observed.
He’s doing science the way it is supposed to be done. Observations. Theories. Discussion. More observations. More theories. Repeat as necessary.
***********************
I agree with you 100% on that. The Real Climate article on this was so lame it was comical. They demanded that it have a 100% complete physical theory and also that the paper explained to the T how it fit into the “big picture.” They need to look at their own papers IMO. What a bunch of clowns.
Paul R (05:22:52) :
Well said Sir!