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.
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Quoted: layne Blanchard (05:52:41) :
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
But NG still holds tight to the AGW theory, as stated on page 1 of that article:
Even if the current solar lull is the beginning of a prolonged quiet, the scientists say, the star’s effects on climate will pale in contrast with the influence of human-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2).
I used to think that NG followed the scientific theory.
From latest NSIDC News Release 8/4/09
“Clear skies favor melt in the Beaufort Sea
In 2007, unusually sunny skies throughout the summer melt season were one of the factors that helped lead to the record low ice extent. The clear skies allowed more of the sun’s energy to reach the surface, melting the ice and warming the ocean. This year, cloud fields provided by Jennifer Kay at the National Center for Atmospheric Research show fewer clouds over the Beaufort Sea than in 2007, leading to strong melt in that region. However, over the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas, the Arctic sky has been cloudier than 2007.”
”
So clouds are important to heating of the water and ice, who’d a thunk it. But cloud cover reduces this effect. I thought that clouds only provide a positive feedback!
IPCC refers to clouds routinely but cannot model them correctly so they don’t. Yet the NSIDC says there is a direct relationship between clouds and ice melt.
I’m so confused!
sylvain (02:06:43) :
Thank you for posting Nir Shaviv’s reply!
layne Blanchard (05:52:41) :
I see the National Geographic is still staunchly pro-AGW.
So why is there a several day delay between the Forbush event and the decrease in clouds when clouds only live for a few hours?
Talking about he sun… take a look at this blog entry from the Sydney Observatory: http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog/?p=2260
They try to explain what those big white diffuse area we have seen on the sun every now and then and might be related to the disparition of sunspots earlier than expected.
NASA showing the way to a cooler Earth.
———————————————————–
Nasa aims to move Earth
Scientists’ answer to global warming: nudge the planet farther from Sun
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2001/jun/10/globalwarming.climatechange/print
This point by Richard Jones (02:08:20) : is absolutely key
This is great because it makes a prediction that can be observed (or not) in nature. If, when we get some Forbrush Decreases in the future, we do see corresponding decreases in cloudiness with a weeks lag then it implies that most of the rest of this theory is accurate. (And if we don’t then the reverse).
So far it seems to me that very few CO2 based GW papers have come up with a decent testable theory apart from the TTT hotspot one and we know that’s not panned out in the observations of the real world.
As a layman there has always for me been something aesthetically pleasing about the cosmic ray cloud hypothesis. The image of the Earth bathed in stuff of cosmic origin and proportions, stuff which can vary with the sun’s activity and with our passage through the galaxy, operating at every instant and over cosmic timescales—-one set of mechanisms which nonetheless have action on our climate at all time scales.
I find it much more elegant than the notion of a tiny trace gas accumulating in a significant way only since the industrial revolution, ignoring lags in ice cores which appear to reverse the causality, and whose action is at once catastrophic but nevertheless can remain masked by aerosols (but only some of the time), and whose heat energy can remain hidden deep in the ocean pipeline, ready to jump us one dark night in the far future, a future we can only discern using ever more complex computer models which never seem to improve in accuracy despite numerous iterations and increasing resources, a theory who’s predictions are barely at the edge of detectability, never quite appearing in this time scale but always in some future longer “climate” scale, which is itself subject to revised definition (10, 20, 30, 50 years…)
In short, AGW is just a messy theory.
dorlomin (04:32:46) “And why were the 50s not the warmest decade of the 20th centuary”
Why is mid afternoon hottest when the sun is strongest at noon? Why are July and August so hot when the peak of solar energy arrives in June (Northern Hemishere)? There is always a lag because the energy is cummulative, not instantaneous. But there is much more…
There are internal climate oscillations that have a greater (decadal) impact on global temperatures than fuctuations in solar activity. If the GCR theory is correct, it would indicate that we had less low cloudiness in the 50s, resulting in more sunlight reaching the surface. Sunlight does not heat the atmosphere directly, but is absorped by the surface, most of which is ocean. The Pacific Ocean went into its cool phase (PDO) in the 40s and remained there until the mid 1970s. The net result was a slight atmospheric cooling, overriding the solar influence (as well as the CO2 influence). The GCR theory, coupled with an understanding of internal climate variations (ocean cycles) fits the observations. The PDO may have cooled the world more in the 50s and 60s if not for the solar influence. When the PDO shifted to its warm phase in 77/78, it was likely warmer than it would have been if the sun was not so active in the preceding decades.
While the sun was beyond its peak, it remained very active through the 20th century, so when the PDO turned positive, the warming was significant. Of course, you might blame CO2 for that, as both theories supported the observed warming. Now, however, we may have the opportunity to see which effect is stronger. The sun is getting quite, while CO2 is still increasing.
We appear to be going into the cool phase of the PDO again, which means that global cooling is on the way, regardless of the other factors, just like the 50s and 60s. This time, however, CO2 will not have the help of the sun to counter the cooling of the PDO (and its propensity to produce La Ninas). If the cooling is similar to the 50s and 60s, then the GCR theory is weak. If the cooling is greater, than it supports the GCR theory, provided the sun stays quiet.
It should be noted that no matter what, CO2 is not as significant to climate change as the IPCC insists, because they ignore the ocean cycles in their calculations, which are clearly dominant in the temperature record of the 20th Century. The warming of the 80s and 90s was primarily natural and associated with ocean cycles, as was the warming of the early 20th century, before CO2 became significant. It is illogical to proclaim that there is no way to explain the late 20th century warming without CO2 as the main cause, when we had a similar warming early in the century without significant CO2 increases. (The illogic of the IPCC and all who adhere to it astounds me on this point.)
Finally, while the ocean cycles produce warming and cooling trends on multi-decadal time scales, they can not explain net changes over the course of several hundred years. The GCR theory explains the general warming of the last 200 years far better than CO2, since CO2 has only been increasing significantly since WWII.
Greg (07:29:59) : I used to think that NG followed the scientific theory.
I gave up on it 15+ years ago when they started editorializing science. They still have nice photography.
This paper has many limits. The biggest being few data points and all within the same geographic area (South Pole). The second major limit is that cosmic rays find a very difficult path to low level clouds of the kind that can cool the Earth around its belt and up to the 45th parallels. In terms of the equatorial belt centered area of Earth, I still stand by the Coriolis affect, trade winds, ENSO, and jet stream behavior being the major source of storm tracts and low level clouds cooling the Earth. The paper just doesn’t convince me to change my mind. That is not to say it is not interesting in understanding some of the weather over Antarctica.
In order to refute Svensmark, you simply need to say your AGW incantations….
The science is settled, So says the models,
The science is settled, So says the Gore,
The science is settled, All others are deniers,
Hail the mighty models,
Hail the mighty Gore,
Amen.
I think that NASA report is a hoax.
Kevin Kilty (07:10:57)
Good point. You’re correct in your description of how a cloud chamber (or bubble chamber) is operated. The gases are (super)saturated so that you can see the tracks immediately. Now take a look at the second graph above of the Forbush events. Notice that on March 7-8 there is a smaller decrease and it persists for 7 days. There would be a continuous creation of extra nucleation particles during this time that would lead to increased cloud formation. The longer time makes up for the lack of saturation.
It would be good if we could see the lower plot extended to the end of May to see if the decrease in the flux persists there as well. That would tell us a lot. Anthony?
Leif: Are Forbush events spikes or step functions that slowly tail off?
In case you missed it in another thread, there is a “fall” major storm tract and track (NOAA’s word, not mine) heading to the Northwest states that will likely bring lotsa clouds, heavy rain, and record low daytime temps. It’s source is of course the ocean. Currently, we are in El Nino neutral territory for the month. Which to me means cold and wet, not warm and wet (El Nino condition), and not cold and dry (La Nina condition).
Bret (07:42:23) :
So why is there a several day delay between the Forbush event and the decrease in clouds when clouds only live for a few hours?
That is a very intriguing part of this story. I’ve read nothing yet from anyone. However, the ionization left by the passage cosmic rays must somehow leave condensation nuclei in a state where they can coalecse to a larger size and eventually become cloud condensation nuclei. Here is a thought…perhaps the aerosol particles are charged to begin with and this gives them a propensity to avoid one another. The ionization trails left behind by cosmic rays discharge the aerosol and allow the particles to interact mechanically. I worked in electronic materials industry for a long time and this is exactly how we controlled stray static charges in factories. What this mean is as follows:
1) The aerosol tend to carry one sign of charge (negative probably).
2) Cosmic rays produce ion trails with both charge signs.
3) One charge sign from the ion trails, postive probably, discharges the aerosol.
4) This leaves behind the other sign preferentially which has to be conducted to earth. A negative charge flow into the earth–i.e. a positive current upward.
The process has a characteristic time of several days, presumably–seems reasonable from the size scale. It would be instructive to observe the current density flow to earth associated with this process.
Note, however, that the process is near the noise level as the minima are just out of the one-sigma band, maybe a little beyond the two sigma band in a couple of cases. Something else instructive would be to see individual time series in addition to those in the paper that result from averaging a dozen or more.
Pamela Gray (08:06:02)
The tremendous heating of the tropics by the sun — the blackbody temperature at high noon is about 100C — causes the formation of clouds and afternoon thunderstorms. This overwhelms any signal from cosmic ray induced cloud formation. The strongest signal is going to be far from the tropics where this mechanism is not active.
I have an old paper by Lindzen that points out that one of the mysteries of global warming or cooling is why the tropics have such constant temperatures and most of the signal is seen at high latitudes.
“Any messiness with the sun would really exterminate us quite quickly it needs to be extremely stable to support life on earth?” -VG
Or, possibly, the Earth has a complex set of feedback mechanisms within the climate system which smooth out variations. Just saying.
Patagon (06:10:02) :
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.
Which would seem to undermine the whole thing. It is pretty well established that glaciations are mainly caused by orbital/precessional changes and not solar activity. GCR proxies are sensitive to temperature changes so perhaps the correlation is just climate vs. climate.
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My main criticism of of the paper is the cherry picking of Forbush Decreases, namely selecting only those that had a large effect. What I would have done would be to split the data into three groups [no more, because then the number in each group would be too small], with small, medium, and large ionization and then show that the weather [not climate as these things take place in the matter of days] effects would also have been small, medium, and large, neatly following the FD effect. That would have been convincing; as it stands now, this paper is yet another contradicting paper on FDs. That they didn’t do the separation into three groups may be telling… Perhaps it didn’t pan out. Scientists rarely publish negative tests of their own theories.
Paul Linsay (08:14:31) :
Are Forbush events spikes or step functions that slowly tail off?
The latter.
Concerning RSS for July.
+0.39, 3rd warmest in 31 years,
I’d say due to the current yet moderate El Nino, which does seem to be waning now.
I wonder if they’ll attribute this to “natural variability”.
Paul, I agree about the Sun’s heat causing a fairly consistent pattern of afternoon thunderstorms. Note that I think both of us do not consider the Sun to be causing variations in this pattern. The presence of warm or cool oceans at the belt brings variation to this pattern, as do the strength of the trade winds. You are also correct that beyond the equatorial belt it gets a bit more complicated (okay, a lot more complicated). I monitor the infrared satellite animations to watch how the equatorial clouds roil from East to West (and the temperature of the ocean there makes a big difference) and then split when they hit the Eastern shores of the Pacific to continue North and South in a broad oval pattern in the Pacific back towards the Northern and Southern Western shores of the Americas. You can then follow these infrared cloud patterns as they continue on shore and into the interiors. S’plains a lot! But also reminds me of its simplistic nature as described in any 5th grade science textbook.
To check Svensmark theory we can do it by analyzing what happened before the 97-98 big El Nino, back in 1988-1992 period, when there was a deep low in GCR, the same epoch as said by Nicola Scafetta when something hapenned with TSI which obliged some to “adjust” that “jump” in TSI (of 0.86 watts, according to Scafetta).
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Pamela Gray (08:06:02) :
“The second major limit is that cosmic rays find a very difficult path to low level clouds of the kind that can cool the Earth around its belt and up to the 45th parallels. ”
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Cosmic rays penetrate the Earth to the point they can be detected in mines.
http://www.ep.ph.bham.ac.uk/general/outreach/SparkChamber/text2h.html
“The blackbody temperature at noon …causes the formation of clouds and afternoon thunderstorms. This overwhelms any signal from cosmic ray induced cloud formation.” – Paul Linsay
Not to mention, that any CO2 warming will increase the convection, short cutting the “blanket” effect by carrying the latent heat directly to the top of the troposphere to be radiated away.
I know that studies have been done of old landscape paintings for climate clues. One clue might be how much convection is seen in the clouds.