From the University of Waterloo press release.
WATERLOO, Ont. (Monday, Dec. 21, 2009) – Cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth’s ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate, a University of Waterloo scientist reports in a new peer-reviewed paper.
In his paper, Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, shows how CFCs – compounds once widely used as refrigerants – and cosmic rays – energy particles originating in outer space – are mostly to blame for climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. His paper, derived from observations of satellite, ground-based and balloon measurements as well as an innovative use of an established mechanism, was published online in the prestigious journal Physics Reports.
“My findings do not agree with the climate models that conventionally thought that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are the major culprits for the global warming seen in the late 20th century,” Lu said. “Instead, the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism for the formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming.”
His conclusions are based on observations that from 1950 up to now, the climate in the Arctic and Antarctic atmospheres has been completely controlled by CFCs and cosmic rays, with no CO2 impact.
“Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules that are well-known greenhouse gases, has decreased around 2000,” Lu said. “Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate.”
In his research, Lu discovers that while there was global warming from 1950 to 2000, there has been global cooling since 2002. The cooling trend will continue for the next 50 years, according to his new research observations.
As well, there is no solid evidence that the global warming from 1950 to 2000 was due to CO2. Instead, Lu notes, it was probably due to CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays. And from 1850 to 1950, the recorded CO2 level increased significantly because of the industrial revolution, while the global temperature kept nearly constant or only rose by about 0.1 C.
In previously published work, Lu demonstrated that an observed cyclic hole in the ozone layer provided proof of a new ozone depletion theory involving cosmic rays, which was developed by Lu and his former co-workers at Rutgers University and the Université de Sherbrooke. In the past, it was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth’s ozone layer is depleted due to the sun’s ultraviolet light-induced destruction of CFCs in the atmosphere.
The depletion theory says cosmic rays, rather than the sun’s UV light, play the dominant role in breaking down ozone-depleting molecules and then ozone. In his study, published in Physical Review Letters, Lu analyzed reliable cosmic ray and ozone data in the period of 1980-2007, which cover two full 11-year solar cycles.
In his latest paper, Lu further proves the cosmic-ray-driven ozone depletion theory by showing a large number of data from laboratory and satellite observations. One reviewer wrote: “These are very strong facts and it appears that they have largely been ignored in the past when modelling the Antarctic ozone loss.”
New observations of the effects of CFCs and cosmic rays on ozone loss and global warming/cooling could be important to the Earth and humans in the 21st century. “It certainly deserves close attention,” Lu wrote in his paper, entitled Cosmic-Ray-Driven Electron-Induced Reactions of Halogenated Molecules Adsorbed on Ice Surfaces: Implications for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change.
The paper, published Dec. 3 in Physics Reports, is available online at: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2009.12.002.
h/t to Russ Steele
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BTW, Sherbrooke, Quebec is a hockey stick manufacturing centre.
kadaka (13:44:37)
Do you then agree that even though churned and mixed, there will never be a higher concentration of a heavy gas at high altitude than at the surface? The exception being a case where the heavy molecules are CREATED at high altitudes.
Good question; How often have we heard that correlation is not causation?
And yes, nc (13:55:40), funny to hear Gavin saying the same thing!
/Mr Lynn
kadaka (13:44:37)
Addition: Of coarse there may be short lived, local occurances until enought time has passed for convective thorough mixing to occuring at least once. A case vocanic eruptions.
“The cooling trend will continue for the next 50 years, according to his new research observations.”
Yeah well just keep it quiet will ya, we don’t need a hysteria-driven political movement vowing the need to “tackle” global cooling.
Let’s see – Svensmark and Lu say the global warming is due to cosmic rays. I think that is an arrogant and insulting attitude to take to all known global warming factors such as:
– Soot
– CO2
– SO2
– Methane
– Fluorocarbons
– Ozone
– Volatile organics
– PDO
– AMO
– El Nino
– Solar variations/sunspots
– Clouds
– Water vapor
– De-forestation
– UHI
– Agricultural tillage practices
– Permafrost
– Clathrates
– Volcanoes
– Malenkovitch cycles
– Recovery from the LIA
– Defective thermometer positioning
– Rural surface stations removal
– Corrupt scientists
– Defective AGW theory
Svensmark and Lu should should offer an apology to these global warming influences immediately and accept that these influences deserve their fair share for inducing global warming.
Of course, nobody said it was gonna be easy divvying up 1.0 Deg. F. global warming in 150 years between 25 global warming wannabe’s. That’s 1/40th of one degree per century per influence. Okay, that’s not a lot to lay claim to. But who said life is fair?
Glenn wrote:
But if you look again to NOAA you’ll find that the annual mean growth rate is increasing.
Lu seems to assume that CO2 levels have been increasing since the start of the Industrial Revolution. This comes from ice cores, but the ice core measurements don’t seem to be accurate, according to:
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202008/Z_J_Climate_Report.pdf
Chemists between 1816 and now measured CO2 levels and found that they were higher in 1816 than they are now, and almost as high in 1940 as they are now
The argument regarding CFCs versus Chlorine, seems to be that chlorine is so reactive, that it can’t get from the oceans or your swimming pool to the upper atmosphere, without reacting with something that removes it in precipitation.
CFCs on the other hand, being Fluorine compounds tend to be extremely stable; which is not surprising since fluorine about leads the pack in eating anything else.
So CFCs are the carrier pigeon that gets the Chlorine into the right place in the upper atmosphere. I always assumed that solar UV broke up the CFCs, but maybe their photon energies aren’t high enough Cosmetic rays would certainly have the punch to do it.
But then you get into issues that Leif has raised before in regard to Svensmark’s process. Is the CR flux enough to create enough clouds or bust up enough CFCs.
I’ve always assumed that ozone holes like the polar regions since the sun goes out every six months or so, so you don’t get the short UV to break down the O2, but then you don’t get the other photons that tend to destroy ozone. Some cosmic rays or solar charged particles can be steered to teh (magnetic) polar regions since they are charged particles.
It certainly is something else to look at. I can’t totally dismiss CO2, because I believe the LWIR capture mechanism is quite real; but so too is the same process in H2O. I just happen to thing that H2O via clouds simply negates any effect CO2 might have.
I agree with Leif that variations in the solar TSI just don”t explain anything much in the way of temperature change; but I happen to believe that the sun has much bigger effects via the magnetic fields and other soalr phenomenon. The TSI is just one of the energy links with earth.
I’m not so sure that Svensmark’s mechanism completely explains all of the global warming, via the CRs, but I certainly believe it is a significant interraction.
I don’t yet understand quite what Lu’s process really is; as others have said they wrote a lot of paragraphs with very little mechanics.
But there were less cosmic rays from 1950 to 2000 due to the historically very active sun.
How then could cosmic rays be the cause of either the warming or the increase in size of the ozone hole ?
Or have I missed something ?
” wayne (14:07:45) :
Do you then agree that even though churned and mixed, there will never be a higher concentration of a heavy gas at high altitude than at the surface?”
Wayne, with the greatest of respect, you are backing the wrong horse here. CFC’s and many halogenated hydrocarbons can destroy ozone as that can catalyze is destruction via the radical/oxy-radical cycle. Long lived, chemically inert, water insoluble, CFC’s were only thought to be destroyed by hard uv and that only exists in the upper atmosphere. The amount of CFC is low, the higher up you go, but as pointed out it is there, in fact the distribution is first order with respect to altitude. These molecule are moving up and down.
The radical chemistry of ozone destruction is good, the maths is correct, the lab experiments are all in agreement, atmospheric sampling shows where they are.
the olny major disagreement is the rate at which they are destroyed and the rate at which chain breakers like HCl are generated.
This paper shows that CR increase the rate that CFC’s shed halogens as radicals, which may explain why CFC’s are disappearing faster than was first though (a good thing), but in doing so destroy ozone (which is bad) and also addresses what happens to the incoming ‘heat’ through the ‘ozone holes’. The data suggests that CR increase ozone loss and cause the formation of a differential temperature gradient, high cooling and lower heating.
This last part represents a “Popparian” falsifiable test for the hypothesis and you can be sure that people will be examining the recorded temperature differentials, CR and if they are lucky, ozone levels over the past few decades.
So please do not confuse the science behind the role of CFC’s in ozone depletion with CO2 driven AGW or the Montreal Protocol with Copenhagen.
CFC’s=bad is about a true as it can be.
phlogiston (13:03:11)
I’ve previously conceded that the cosmic ray idea is plausible and might be a contributory factor in favourable circumnstances but I still have to put the oceans and the speed of the hydrological cycle in control.
One of the problems with the cosmic ray theory is the lack of correlation with the PDO phase shifts.
I can’t see anything that happens in the air as capable of pushing the oceans around.
R Taylor (10:43:21) :
Icarus (10:10:01)
The satellite record shows a warming of 0.13 C per decade from 1979 to 2009…
RSS gives 0.16C per decade:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2009/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2009/trend
… and so does GISTEMP:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:2009/plot/gistemp/from:1979/to:2009/trend
(click on the ‘raw data’ link for the numbers).
Comparing different trends using the GISTEMP series we get:
15 year trend to 2009 = 0.17C per decade
20 year trend to 2009 = 0.19C per decade
30 year trend to 2009 = 0.16C per decade
Naturally it’s pointless to calculate a trend less than 15 years, for reasons which should be obvious. So, the world is currently warming by something in the region of 0.16 – 0.19C per decade. That is significant.
JerryM (14:32:57) : One lacking item in your list: “Me”
A Wod (14:36:06) :
Glenn wrote:
But if you look again to NOAA you’ll find that the annual mean growth rate is increasing
Do you mean their income?
“”” Mooloo (13:01:37) :
Those of you who dispute the nature of the ozone hole should come to my place (NZ) for a day or so. A hour outside in summer on an overcast day and you might think again.
See, that’s one huge difference between the Ozone hole issue and global warming. I can’ t see any difference in temperatures or climate since my childhood. But there is a HUGE difference in the amount of time people can stay outside unprotected since I was a kid. The UV rays we get here are ridiculous (and dangerous) now.
The ozone hole is very, very real and very, very new. If you are in denial (hee, hee) about it, then it is easily tested, as I say. Take trip to NZ in summer and get yourself good and burnt “proving” how wrong we are. “””
Well not so fast there Mooloo. I agree you can get a good sunburn there. I got a bit of one while out fishing in the BOI in March 2004.
But I also got plenty of the same, when I was growing up there as a kid over 60 years ago. So i don’t buy the claim that donut holes are new. Maybe some French guy in 1957/58 during the IGY said; I think I’ll look for ozone holes; well what he said went right by me , cause he said it in French; which is Greek to me.
But plenty of 1940/50/60 research gives indications that ozone holes have always been with us. The ground level UV which shifts both seasonally, and eratically over longer time scales, manifests itself in a change in the observed color temperature of the sun (at sea level), and that was long ascribed to changes in the UV part of the solar air mass one spectrum.
You Kiwi down there also do happen to have extremely clean air, in case nobody has noticed; that too can get you a good sunburn.
I do remember in 2004, when I got that shiny face; it hit me. OOoops, I fogot the sun block; anf that was a reaction to child hood memories; not some recent warning.
Well, well, all this stuff is really about the “end of the world”, but you know, we´ll witness the end of “your world” soon…Wait! I am not meddling in your local politics…I just mean that yesterday you had one more day to live and you lost it! and now, today, you are 24 hours closer, nearer to your personal armaggedon, so don´t care about those “serious things”, just live and let us live!
Icarus (14:56:35) SAID :
“Naturally it’s pointless to calculate a trend less than 15 years, for reasons which should be obvious. So, the world is currently warming by something in the region of 0.16 – 0.19C per decade. That is significant.”
Icarus, your posts are polite, but you do play numbers games in the guise of criticizing people for cherry picking data. The UAH does show a measurable trend of increased temps since 1979, but the bulk of of that trend is 1979-1998, with temps bouncing and possible slightly declining since 2002. The UAH data if anything invalidates most of the 1980s/1990s GISS and IPCC models. If you want to be fair as well as polite you should note that in your posts. But more importantly, what people like me are more interested in is what is the cause of the measurable increase since 1979? and how will temps behave in the future. Those are the relevant questions, and as of now, the GISS, CRU/UEA and IPCC models are bogus in explaining and predicting world temps. Skeptics like me will keep watching UAH, will keep demanding that GISS and UAE disclose their raw data and adjustment methodology. If you keep doing the same, I’d welcome your analysis, but you’ve got to quit leaving out data that is contrary to your opinions. To persuade people you’ve got to account for inconvenient data.
All the best.
Who’s smarter Medical Doctors or Climate Scientists?
Here’s a blurb from the manufacturers of Luvox CR, a medication for treating OCD (Obessive Compulsive Disorder)…
“How does Once-A-Day LUVOX CR work?
LUVOX CR is a medicine known as an SSRI. That stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. The exact mechanism by which SSRIs work is unknown. SSRIs are thought to help restore the chemical balance of serotonin in the body. This is believed to help people by allowing the brain to send and receive messages better. In turn, this may reduce the symptoms that you experience.”
Notice the words “unknown” and “believed to.”
What!? Don’t these guys know? People are putting this stuff in their bodies and the best they can do is say “we think…
And yet some client scientists tell us about the absolutes of AGW. Perhaps I should see a climate scientist the next time I don’t feel well.
DocMartyn (14:49:38)
Thanks for the reply. No offence taken. I enjoy talking science always, whether correct or not (then I learn, trying to stay humble always).
I was not taking a side on CFCs. My point was, and you have to somewhat read behind my lines, that in the future, 10-30 years down the road, if mankind has clamped CFCs sufficient to continue their decline and the sun goes through another hyper magnetic state, it could come to pass that the ozone hole reappears without CFCs this time. The ozone hole was discovered during a period when both CFC were increasing and solar activity was maintaining its high level of activity. Could it not be feasible that we might find that it was the sun creating the hole, not CFCs? Getting rid of them is fine but feasibly may no be found (far future) to be the real cause. To me the answer is possibly.
I read many, many articles since the 70’s and following astronomy (and solar) closely since I’ve always seen this possibility.
First, several years back, while listening to a radio program, some guy called in and said that he had seen a NASA magazine wherein they had fired up a rocket and discovered a hole in the ozone layer. This was a 1938 issue, CFC’s where not invented till the 1950’s or used till the early 60’s. If this si true, CFS’s may havew little or nothing to do with an ozone hole that has been there since earth has, a hole largly or completly caused by sulfer compounds realeased by volcanoes which form a ring around the poles and eat up the ozone. Perhaps if someone out there can access any 1938 editions of NASA magazine you can confirm this. I wouldn’t be suprised if NASA learns of that they may “lose” that edition.
Second, 1850 was the end of the “Little Ice Age’, and 1979 was the end of the media “ice age scare”, so warming starting from those time frames may have nothing to do with ozone, CO2, or anything like that. Thus linking ozone with these events may be a cause and effect arror.
Note also that the above warming trend from 1979 may also simply be a natural phenominon having nothing to do with any gasses, and which being such a shrt period of time does not make a trend, since before that there was the ice age scare, and before that a warm period warmer than now, etc, in 2-3 decades long periods.
It’s worth looking at Lu’s abstract. The title of the paper is
“Cosmic-ray-driven electron-induced reactions of halogenated molecules adsorbed on ice surfaces: Implications for atmospheric ozone depletion”
And that’s what the abstract is about, until you get to the last sentence:
“Finally, new observation of the effects of CFCs and cosmic-ray driven ozone depletion on global climate change is also presented and discussed.”
That’s the paper Physics Reports thinks they’re publishing; AGW disproof is just an afterthought. But of course in the press release, it gets beaten up into a major finding.
theirs no hole in the ozone layer only a thining.
So according to Lu, global warming DID have an anthropogenic cause ! CFCs, not CO2.
Good to know that if the world starts getting too cold again, we can just go back to using lotsa CFCs and warm the place up.
Kinda ironic that to “save the world” from cooling, certain smelly loonie lefty “back to nature” greenie types would have to start using aerosol underarm deodorants churned out in the millions by greedy capitalist corporations. 🙂
regarDS
Nick Stokes (15:43:22) :
I am not sure what your point is, could you elaborate?
I can’t believe anyone is buying this CFC stuff. That was a scam from way back. CFC’s lifetime in the atmosphere & its supposed effect on ozone is all done by extrapolation of a few experiments into a global ozone model. My impression of the literature was that it was all playstation physics. I have never seen anything approaching causality from the CFC-Ozone hole crowd. Please point out any recent papers if I have missed something.
The newly discovered ozone connection looks to me like a typical fallback position. Well… let’s see… AGW is no longer credible, so, let’s jump back to our original proposal that industrialization is bad because of the CFC/Ozone relationship. You see, the answer is always austerity as the cure for the plague of humans. IT may be that the argument that justifies that opinion is about to change.