Here’s a surprise. The growth of trees in Britain appears to correlate to cosmic ray intensity. University of Edinburgh researchers have found that trees are growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space. This may also correlate to the Interplanetary Magnetic Field which tends to modulate Galactic Cosmic Rays. The discover lends credence to Svensmark’s work on GCR to cloud cover correlation by demonstrating yet another tangible effect.
The researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees changed over the past half a century.
Here’s the kicker: the variation in cosmic rays affected the tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation.
ABSTRACT (link)
- Here, we investigated the interannual variation in the growth rings formed by Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis) trees in northern Britain (55°N, 3°W) over the period 1961–2005 in an attempt to disentangle the influence of atmospheric variables acting at different times of year.
- Annual growth rings, measured along the north radius of freshly cut (frozen) tree discs and climatological data recorded at an adjacent site were used in the study. Correlations were based on Pearson product–moment correlation coefficients between the annual growth anomaly and these climatic and atmospheric factors.
- Rather weak correlations between these variables and growth were found. However, there was a consistent and statistically significant relationship between growth of the trees and the flux density of galactic cosmic radiation. Moreover, there was an underlying periodicity in growth, with four minima since 1961, resembling the period cycle of galactic cosmic radiation.
- We discuss the hypotheses that might explain this correlation: the tendency of galactic cosmic radiation to produce cloud condensation nuclei, which in turn increases the diffuse component of solar radiation, and thus increases the photosynthesis of the forest canopy.
The BBC also covers this in an article, here is an excerpt:
By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News
The growth of British trees appears to follow a cosmic pattern, with trees growing faster when high levels of cosmic radiation arrive from space.
Researchers made the discovery studying how growth rings of spruce trees have varied over the past half a century.
As yet, they cannot explain the pattern, but variation in cosmic rays impacted tree growth more than changes in temperature or precipitation.
The study is published in the scientific journal New Phytologist.
“We were originally interested in a different topic, the climatological factors influencing forest growth,” says Ms Sigrid Dengel a postgraduate researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Science at the University of Edinburgh.
“The relation of the rings to the solar cycle was much stronger than to any climatological factors “Sigrid Dengel University of Edinburgh
To do this, Ms Dengel and University of Edinburgh colleagues Mr Dominik Aeby and Professor John Grace obtained slices of spruce tree trunks.
These had been freshly-felled from the Forest of Ae in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, by Forest Research, the research branch of the UK’s Forestry Commission.
The trees had been planted in 1953 and felled in 2006.
The researchers froze the trunk slices, to prevent the wood shrinking, then scanned them on to a computer and used software to count the number and width of the growth rings.
As the trees aged, they showed a usual decline in growth.
However, during a number of years, the trees’ growth also particularly slowed. These years correlated with periods when a relatively low level of cosmic rays reached the Earth’s surface.
When the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface was higher, the rate of tree growth was faster.
Read the entire BBC report here
James Allison (19:51:32) “More CRs more cloud more rain wetter soil more nutrient uptake more tree growth?”
Interesting. They didn’t find good correlations with precipitation, but we should think about how cloud cover affects soil-moisture-retention (during day & night – & seasonally, etc.).
Eddie Murphy (19:40:42) :
Sorry Eddie, increased growth is likely to be due to increased light getting through the canopy now that lots of older branches have fallen off.
And we don’t get ice storms in the UK or even Scandinavia for some reason (can anyone tell me why?). My wife (from Noway) and I have found the freezing rain and ice storms in the North East of North America very unusual since we have been here.
This correlation is very interesting though. I think people killed off the global temperature relationship with tree rings a while ago (unless you are Mann et al….), but replacing it with global GCR might not be easy. Rainfall, temperature and incident light are all very localised (walk through many medium age forests and see how dominant tree species change with aspect, elevation soil etc.) so although there is good correlation here with a nice data set, it is – by its very nature – anecdotal.
Valuable is the reference to another paper noted by a Paul Vaughan (19:35:14) above. This suggests that there may actually be more of this type of carefully collected data out there from which we my be able to draw some more general conclusions.
Re: James Allison (19:51:32)
Thanks for your comments, which have caused me to study the authors’ month-by-month correlation-by-variable breakdown (figure 2) more carefully. There is something interesting happening late summer / early fall…
Re: earlier post — [Indur Goklany (19:38:36) :] — I highlighted the wrong sentence. I meant to highlight this sentence:
“Despite lower irradiance on partly cloudy and cloudy days, predicted forest canopy photosynthesis was substantially higher than on clear, sunny days, and the highest carbon uptake was achieved on the cloudiest day.”
I take it the dendroclimatologists will be revising all their conclusions then?
Yet the Globe and Mail propaganda machine in Canada never sleeps: “Our findings show that the last several decades have been the most ecologically unique in 200,000 years,” said Neil Michelutti, a research scientist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and one of the members of the team that conducted the study, which is appearing this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
Yet they still mention the HCO because since it’s the end of the glaciation and the icesheets disappeared they can’t avoid it… “According to the study, the only times that summer temperatures were similar to current readings were just after the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, and also during an exceptionally warm period before the last glaciation.”
The reporter activist Martin Mittelstaed referred obviously to the Catlin expedition results (without naming it…): “The new finding is adding to the flurry of research suggesting dramatic and far reaching changes are under way in the Arctic, considered the part of the world most at risk from climate change. Last week, a team of British researchers said the Arctic Ocean is undergoing a swift melting that they predicted will leave it largely free of summertime ice in as little as 20 years.”
Clearly Thomson-Reuters press group is playing the alarmist card and thus anything emanating from their presses should be handle with care… Toxic assets these days are also printed…
Do you think the cosmic ray/tree study will make it in Canada? Any papers on IPCC bias by Pielke Sr.? An interview of Steve McIntyre?
A good discussion on tree ring growth effectors. Benifical growth conditions, moisture in air as well as in soil, warmth at night as well as day. Hot days and direct sunlight cause stress as well as do cold nights. Greater stress means less growth, narrower rings. Also less stress gives more uniform growth rings around the tree.
I am running a small lab plant growth test at present and am finding better growth in high humidity air , very near saturation, rather then in 40-50% humidity, all other factors being equal.
With over 40 years of growing field crops I can tell you that warm damp nights yield the best plant growth, with most plants night temperatures lower then 50 degrees F will negate all of the previous days growth.
I hope this helps with the evaluation of tree ring data.
Philip_B (19:23:42) : ,
I had a look at that link,they say “diffuse sunlight is often as photosynthetically active as direct sunlight. They refer to a Table 5.3 above the comment that ,but for UV,shows the opposite,that is in the most leaf absorbent light region (Blue/Green 400-500nm) gathers more light energy from direct light.
I have 80 Ha of grapes growing behind my house and I suspect that the humidity that accompanies ‘diffuse’ light is the important factor. That is I think that growth is optimal when transpiration takes place with optimum humidity otherwise the plant restricts growth to avoid water loss through the leaves.
I wonder how many times these trees were struck by ice storms?
Almost certainly never. Ice storms of the type N America experiences are very rare to non-existent in the UK.
And we don’t get ice storms in the UK or even Scandinavia for some reason (can anyone tell me why?).
N. American ice storms occur when warm rain bearing air moves over an area previously occupied by very cold air. Rain falls onto the ground which is still well below zero and often the layer of air immediately above the ground is also well below zero. So the rain arrives either as ice pellets or (the worse kind of ice storm) the rain freezes on contact with the ground and anything on the ground, forming a thick layer of ice.
The UK never gets a sufficient temperature difference between the warm and cold air. Although I recall from my childhood in the UK, slight short lived ice accumulation in the right circumstances.
Keith Minto,
I plead guilty to picking a link to illustrate my point without really reading it.
I’d add that the main effect of diffuse sunlight is that it comes from many directions and so penetrates canopy forest especially much better than direct sunlight and hence more leaves get sunlight. I’d expect a similar effect with most plants that don’t hug the ground.
It came from Outer Space!
Who would have thunk it? Put that In Your Funk and Wagnalls!
Huh, so tree rings can possibly used for studying climate change after all. Though from a different angle than previous methods.
But I’ll wait for the other shoe to drop that says they still are unreliable.
This is also my view. There have been similar tendencies in Norwegian media, if very subtle.
I hope we shall see an increasing number of MSM articles in the coming months, presenting alternative views to the IPCC doctrine.
Confirmed. The term “ice storm” is unknown here.
What effect will this have on the reliability of tree-ring/temperature proxy studies?
See Dr. Craig Loehle i A 2000-YEAR GLOBAL TEMPERATURE RECONSTRUCTION BASED ON NON-TREERING PROXIES. (Energy & Environment· Vol. 18, No. 7+8, 2007.) Page 1050:
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
“Climate histories are commonly reconstructed from a variety of sources, including ice cores, tree rings, and sediment. There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not capture long-term climate changes (100+ years) because tree size, root/shoot ratio, genetic adaptation to climate, and forest density can all shift in response to prolonged climate changes, among other reasons (Broecker, 2001; Falcon-Lang, 2005; Loehle, 2004; Moberg et al., 2005). Most seriously, typical reconstructions assume that tree ring width responds linearly to temperature, but trees can respond in an inverse parabolic manner to temperature, with ring width rising with temperature to some optimal level, and then decreasing with further temperature increases (D’Arrigo et al., 2004; Kelly et al., 1994). This response is most likely due to water limitation at higher temperatures, because higher temperatures increase evaporation rates. The result of this violation of linearity is to introduce tremendous uncertainty or bias into any econstruction, particularly for temperatures outside the calibration range…”.
See more: http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
I first read this story on slashdot and someone there has a theory which sounds not unreasonable:
“This is an easy mystery to solve. When a cosmic ray hits the atmosphere, it creates a shower of ionizing radiation, each of the secondary particles are enough to ionizing oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere, forming nitrogen oxides, these react ready with water forming nitric acid, which will precipitate in dilute form in the rain. Only lightning and cosmic rays can form nitrogen oxide, and lightning is relatively rare, so the amount of available free nitrates in the soil, depends very much on the amount cosmic rays hitting the earth.
Plants of course need nitrogen to grow, the trouble is they can’t absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere (except for Legumes (pea, and beans and similar plants)). So for the majority of plants and trees, not feed by human fertilizers, the amount of fertilizing nitrate available to them, is directly proportional the cosmic ray flux.
Mystery Solved. ”
The real significance would be that trees are better pluviometers than thermometers. That surely throws into question the calibration methods used in certain dendroclimatology studies.
Papers such as this ask more questions then they answer,and for that reason they are important.as they allow one to look for definitive mechanisms on a number of levels ie from the macro to the molecular level.
For example is it metrological with changes in diffuse radiaiton.
Or alternatively as it is a plantation forest,is it an interaction with silviculture ie weeding etc eg.
Abstract Pinus radiata D. Don trees were grown in the presence and absence of the woody weed broom (Cytisus scoparius L.) on a dryland site for 2 years to determine the effects of competition from weeds on wood properties in juvenile trees. Wood property measurements made on cross-sections from the bark to the pith were scaled to convert results from distance to a time basis using sigmoidal equations fitted to monthly measurements of tree diameter. When averaged across the 2 years, the presence of the weeds significantly increased wood density (+11%), wall thickness (+6%) and modulus of elasticity (MOESS, +93%), and significantly reduced microfibril angle (MFA, –21%) and radial diameter (–8%). Radial growth rate was significantly correlated to wood density, and this relationship held across both treatment and age. At the seasonal scale, there was close correspondence between changes in MFA and growth rate. Ring width was significantly related to both MFA and MOESS at the annual scale. Although both of these relationships held across treatments, year significantly influenced the value of coefficients in the relationships. The results highlight the direct effects of the presence of weeds on wood properties and the need to consider silvicultural treatments appropriate for balancing gains in productivity with losses in wood quality for timber production
Or is it at the molecular interface where energy selection is very specific 0:40 ev per molecule pair.Then the description will become mre complex. eg
Many chemical and physical systems can occur in two forms distinguished solely by being mirror images of each other. This phenomenon, known as chirality, is important in biochemistry, where reactions involving chiral molecules often require the participation of one specific enantiomer (mirror image) of the two possible ones. In fact, terrestrial life utilizes only the L enantiomers of amino acids, a pattern that is known as the ‘homochirality of life’ and which has stimulated long-standing efforts to understand its origin1. Reactions can proceed enantioselectively if chiral reactants or catalysts are involved, or if some external chiral influence is present2. But because chiral reactants and catalysts themselves require an enantioselective production process, efforts to understand the homochirality of life have focused on external chiral influences. One such external influence is circularly polarized light, which can influence the chirality of photochemical reaction products2, 13, 14. Because natural optical activity, which occurs exclusively in media lacking mirror symmetry, and magnetic optical activity, which can occur in all media and is induced by longitudinal magnetic fields, both cause polarization rotation of light, the potential for magnetically induced enantioselectivity in chemical reactions has been investigated, but no convincing demonstrations of such an effect have been found2, 3, 4. Here we show experimentally that magnetochiral anisotropy—an effect linking chirality and magnetism5, 6, 7—can give rise to an enantiomeric excess in a photochemical reaction driven by unpolarized light in a parallel magnetic field, which suggests that this effect may have played a role in the origin of the homochirality of life.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6789/abs/405932a0.html
John (18:12:16) :
“Perhaps the difference is that if we had 70 years of very low solar activity, perhaps trees might grow well at the beginning of the cycle, when things were still relatively warm, but if a cooler sun really meant a genuinely cooler world with less heat and shorter growing seasons, then even with the kind of connection demonstrated in this article, you would still get less growth with less cosmic rays.”
A short term temperature drop in a warm summer causes a jump in rainfall. Extended cooler conditions of a year or more will produce drought. The forcing factor is the solar wind variations driving the temperature changes, CR`s are merely a proxy for this.
Great link Bruce, ta
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/11/tree-leaf-temperature.html
Yarmy,
That was a good comment on slashdot. Here’s the slashdot story & comments link:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/10/19/2314242/Cosmic-Radiation-Makes-Trees-Grow-Faster?from=rss
Wow, because we measured more GCRs tree growth is enhanced… or could it be that less UV is arriving presently, or more light diffusion which favors plant growth because all the crap in the air from coal and biofuel burning? But I give you that, the plants in my garden must have been waiting for those GCR’s during this solar minimum for they blossomed like never before, and presently even a second time this autumn… when it’s not so hot now.
We had a tornado last week. Never seen one hitting land, but now it did. Several heavy and (we thought) healthy oaks keeled over the road, but it being a virtual dead end, barely traffic. Took a tree-ring sample. Rings indicating stagnation. Yes, soon I’m a dendroblogchronoloscientist too, with an plucked out of the air opinion. See I told you so… GCR’s promoting treegrowth… yeah right.
Yarmy,
“Mystery Solved. ”
The mystery is certainly not solved. In the first place plants get their nitrogen from nitrates that are produced by nitrogen fixing bacteria, not from nitric acid. In the second place, the number of cosmic rays reaching the lower atmosphere is too small to produce anything like enough nitric acid, assuming even that it could be used by plants.
The increased cloud cover hypothesis sounds better, since it is already known that cloudy ambient light is better for tree growth than direct sunlight, and we already have a hypothesis describing cloud seeding by cosmic rays.
Firstly, the Edinburgh University are to be commended for thinking outside the AGW box, and checking growth patterns with GCR, and then publishing their findings, even though they challenge the established orthodoxy, and possibly risk future funding.
My second thought was have the researchers ensured that the trees were not fertilised at any time – which does happen occasionally in commercial spruuce forest plantations – usually by then use of helicopters to spray large areas.
The Scottish climate does have a little variability, but there are never sustained periods of drought which could lead to water stress in trees, and likewise sunlight and temperatures don’t vary that much considering our close proximity to the Atlantic where 80% of our weather comes from. So to me, assuming that there was no use of artifiical fertilisers, the Slashdot explanation highglighted by Yarmy (02:05:49) does make a lot of sense. Also, just to confrim that ice storms events are extremely rare in Scotland, and nothing like the severity of those experienced in North America or the European Alps.
Dr. Svalgaard has on numerous occasions pointed that TSI variability is negligible, and since correlation is stronger with CR than with any other pointer a new process has to be considered for increase in the photosynthesis.
PS is a function of osmosis process in living cells. CR and Solar radiation may (through change of electrical conductivity within cells) affect concentration of minerals and osmosis process, reflected in the growth.
Alternatively it may be something as simple as the small increase in UV putting a brake on proliferation of the leaf fungus.
About CR & clouds please see the following new study:
Kulmala, Markku, Riipinen, I., Nieminen, T., Hulkkonen, M., Sogacheva, L., Manninen, H. E., Paasonen, P., Petäjä, T., Dal Maso, M., Aalto, P. P., Viljanen, A., Usoskin, I., Vainio, R., Mirme, S., Mirme, A., Minikin, A., Petzold, A., Hõrrak, U., Plaß-Dülmer, C., Birmili, W., and Kerminen, V.-M., 2009. Atmospheric data over a solar cycle: no connection between galactic cosmic rays and new particle formation. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions Vol. 9, No 5, pp. 21525-21560, October 13, 2009, online http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/21525/2009/acpd-9-21525-2009.pdf (3,5 MB)
Abstract.
Aerosol particles affect the Earth’s radiative balance by directly scattering and absorbing solar radiation and, indirectly, through their activation into cloud droplets. Both effects are known with considerable uncertainty only, and translate into even bigger uncertainties in future climate predictions. More than a decade ago, variations in galactic cosmic rays were suggested to closely correlate with variations in atmospheric cloud cover and therefore constitute a driving force behind aerosol-cloud-climate interactions. Later, the enhancement of atmospheric aerosol particle formation by ions generated from cosmic rays was proposed as a physical mechanism explaining this correlation. Here, we report unique observations on atmospheric aerosol formation based on measurements at the SMEAR II station, Finland, over a solar cycle (years 1996–2008) that shed new light on these presumed relationships. Our analysis shows that none of the quantities related to aerosol formation correlates with the cosmic ray-induced ionisation intensity (CRII). We also examined the contribution of ions to new particle formation on the basis of novel ground-based and airborne observations. A consistent result is that ion-induced formation contributes typically less than 10% to the number of new particles, which would explain the missing correlation between CRII and aerosol formation. Our main conclusion is that galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well.
Apologies if someone has mentioned this already (didn’t have time to read through al the comments this morning) but it seems to me that another aspect of more cosmic radiation would be fertilization. If the cosmic radiation ionizes N2O (given off naturally by nitrification and denitrification in soils) and forms nitrites/nitrates then the higher cloudiness leading to more rainfall would deliver this fertilizer to the trees.