UPDATE: Lead author Ben Laken responds in comments below.
I’ve reported several times at WUWT on the galactic cosmic ray theory proposed by Henrik Svensmark which suggests that changes in the sun’s magnetic field modulate the density of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) which in turn seed cloud formation on Earth, which changes the albedo/reflectivity to affect Earth’s energy balance and hence global climate.
A new paper published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics suggests that the relationship has been established.
Figure 1 below shows a correlation, read it with the top and bottom graph combined vertically.
As the authors write in the abstract:
These results provide perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR-climate relationship.
Dr. Roy Spencer has mentioned that it doesn’t take much in the way of cloud cover changes to add up to the “global warming signal” that has been observed. He writes in The Great Global Warming Blunder:
The most obvious way for warming to be caused naturally is for small, natural fluctuations in the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and ocean to result in a 1% or 2% decrease in global cloud cover. Clouds are the Earth’s sunshade, and if cloud cover changes for any reason, you have global warming — or global cooling.
Well, it seems that Laken, Kniveton, and Frogley have found just such a small effect. Here’s the abstract and select passages from the paper, along with a link to the full paper:
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 10941-10948, 2010
doi:10.5194/acp-10-10941-2010
Cosmic rays linked to rapid mid-latitude cloud changes
B. A. Laken , D. R. Kniveton, and M. R. Frogley
Abstract. The effect of the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) flux on Earth’s climate is highly uncertain. Using a novel sampling approach based around observing periods of significant cloud changes, a statistically robust relationship is identified between short-term GCR flux changes and the most rapid mid-latitude (60°–30° N/S) cloud decreases operating over daily timescales; this signal is verified in surface level air temperature (SLAT) reanalysis data. A General Circulation Model (GCM) experiment is used to test the causal relationship of the observed cloud changes to the detected SLAT anomalies. Results indicate that the anomalous cloud changes were responsible for producing the observed SLAT changes, implying that if there is a causal relationship between significant decreases in the rate of GCR flux (~0.79 GU, where GU denotes a change of 1% of the 11-year solar cycle amplitude in four days) and decreases in cloud cover (~1.9 CU, where CU denotes a change of 1% cloud cover in four days), an increase in SLAT (~0.05 KU, where KU denotes a temperature change of 1 K in four days) can be expected. The influence of GCRs is clearly distinguishable from changes in solar irradiance and the interplanetary magnetic field. However, the results of the GCM experiment are found to be somewhat limited by the ability of the model to successfully reproduce observed cloud cover. These results provide perhaps the most compelling evidence presented thus far of a GCR-climate relationship. From this analysis we conclude that a GCR-climate relationship is governed by both short-term GCR changes and internal atmospheric precursor conditions.
I found this portion interesting related to the figure above:
The composite sample shows a positive correlation between statistically significant cloud changes and variations in the short-term GCR flux (Fig. 1): increases in the GCR flux
occur around day −5 of the composite, and correspond to significant localised mid-latitude increases in cloud change. After this time, the GCR flux undergoes a statistically significant decrease (1.2 GU) centred on the key date of the composite; these changes correspond to widespread statistically significant decreases in cloud change (3.5 CU, 1.9 CU globallyaveraged) over mid-latitude regions.
and this…
The strong and statistically robust connection identified here between the most rapid cloud decreases over mid-latitude regions and short-term changes in the GCR flux is clearly distinguishable from the effects of solar irradiance and IMF variations. The observed anomalous changes show a strong latitudinal symmetry around the equator; alone, this pattern
gives a good indication of an external forcing agent, as
there is no known mode of internal climate variability at the
timescale of analysis, which could account for this distinctive
response. It is also important to note that these anomalous
changes are detected over regions where the quality of
satellite-based cloud retrievals is relatively robust; results of
past studies concerned with high-latitude anomalous cloud
changes have been subject to scrutiny due to a low confidence
in polar cloud retrievals (Laken and Kniveton, 2010;
Todd and Kniveton, 2001) but the same limitations do not
apply here.
Although mid-latitude cloud detections are more robust
than those over high latitudes, Sun and Bradley (2002) identified
a distinctive pattern of high significance between GCRs
and the ISCCP dataset over the Atlantic Ocean that corresponded
to the METEOSAT footprint. This bias does not
appear to influence the results presented in this work: Fig. 6 shows the rates of anomalous IR-detected cloud change occurring over Atlantic, Pacific and land regions of the midlatitudes during the composite period, and a comparable pattern of cloud change is observed over all regions, indicating no significant bias is present.
Conclusions
This work has demonstrated the presence of a small but statistically significant influence of GCRs on Earth’s atmosphere over mid-latitude regions. This effect is present in
both ISCCP satellite data and NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data for at least the last 20 years suggesting that small fluctuations in solar activity may be linked to changes in the Earth’s atmosphere via a relationship between the GCR flux and cloud cover; such a connection may amplify small changes in solar activity. In addition, a GCR – cloud relationship may also act in conjunction with other likely solar – terrestrial relationships concerning variations in solar UV (Haigh, 1996) and total solar irradiance (Meehl et al., 2009). The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records (e.g.,Bond et al., 2001; Neff et al., 2001; Mauas et al., 2008).
Further detailed investigation is required to better understand GCR – atmosphere relationships. Specifically, the use of both ground-based and satellite-based cloud/atmospheric monitoring over high-resolution timescales for extended periods of time is required. In addition, information regarding potentially important microphysical properties such as aerosols, cloud droplet size, and atmospheric electricity must also be considered. Through such monitoring efforts, in addition to both computational modelling (such as that of Zhou and Tinsley, 2010) and experimental efforts (such as that of Duplissy et al., 2010) we may hope to better understand the effects described here.
It seems they have found the signal. This is a compelling finding because it now opens a pathway and roadmap on where and how to look. Expect more to come.
The full paper is here: Final Revised Paper (PDF, 2.2 MB)
h/t to The Hockey Schtick
To me, people have been bolding the wrong statement:
“…The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate prior to the onset of anthropogenic warming, accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records…”
So they’re saying that the signal was there in the past, and that this solar – terrestrial link may have been a main driver in the past.
If the signal existed then, it should still be there now.
That line is attempting to say that this NATURAL variation is being swamped by CAGW.
To see that, remove it from the statement:
“…The climatic forcings resulting from such solar – terrestrial links may have had a significant impact on climate…accounting for the presence of solar cycle relationships detectable in palaeoclimatic records…”
Trying to run an experiment now, with the current CO2 levels, cannot be verified without a comparable experiment being run at a previous lower CO2 level.
By National Post February 23, 2007
Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician. In 1998, anticipating he’d be leading a path-breaking experiment into the sun’s role in global warming, he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.” Global warming, he theorized, may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature.
Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming. Stories in the media disparaged Dr. Kirkby by citing scientists who feared oil-industry lobbyists would use his statements to discredit the greenhouse effect. And the funding approval for Dr. Kirkby’s path-breaking experiment — seemingly a sure thing when he first announced his proposal– was put on ice.
Dr. Kirkby was stunned, and not just because the experiment he was about to run had support within his scientific institute, and was widely expected to have profound significance. Dr. Kirkby was also stunned because his institute is CERN, and science performed at CERN had never before seemed so vulnerable to whims of government funders.
CERN is no fringe laboratory pursuing crackpot theories at some remote backwater. CERN, based in Geneva, is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a 50-yearold institution, originally founded by 12 countries and now counting 20 country-members. It services 6,500 particle physicists — half of the world’s total — in 500 institutes and universities around the world. It is building the $2.4-billion Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. And it is home to Jasper Kirkby’s long-languished CLOUD project, among the most significant scientific experiments to be proposed in our time. Finally, almost a decade after Dr. Kirkby’s proposal first saw the light of day, the funding is in place and the work has begun in earnest.
The CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) laboratory experiment, CERN believes, will show the mechanisms through which the sun and cosmic rays can influence the formation of clouds and thus the climate. The CLOUD project will use a high-energy particle beam from an accelerator to closely duplicate cosmic rays found in the atmosphere. This will be the first time this technology will be brought to bear on global warming, the most controversial scientific question of the day.
Also for the first time, very basic answers about the drivers of climate change may surface to dispel the general paucity of data on the subject. “By studying the micro-physical processes at work when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, we can begin to understand more fully the connection between cosmic rays and cloud cover,” CERN explains. “Clouds exert a strong influence on the Earth’s energy balance, and changes of only a few per cent have an important effect on the climate.”
To accomplish all this, Dr. Kirkby has assembled a dream team of atmospheric physicists, solar physicists, and cosmic ray and particle physicists from 18 institutes around the world, including the California Institute of Technology and Germany’s Max-Planck Institutes, with preliminary data expected to arrive this coming summer. The world of particle physics is awaiting these results with much anticipation because they promise to unlock mysteries that can tell us much about climate change, as well as other phenomena. The world of climate science, in contrast, is all but ignoring the breakthroughs in climate knowledge that CERN is about to reveal.
In May, just months before the first CERN results are in, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the agency organizing most of the world’s climate-change studies, will be releasing its much-anticipated report on the state of climate science. Oddly, the IPCC report — now circulating in draft form — has in effect decided not to wait for CERN’s findings.
The IPCC draft report ranks the sun as an all-but-irrelevant factor in climate change. More oddly, it has come to this conclusion although it states that there is no consensus among solar scientists, meaning the IPCC admits it has no hard evidence to go on. Even more oddly, given the excitement and the anticipation that the CLOUD experiment is generating among the 6,500 particle physicists in CERN’s community, the IPCC has decided to diminish the sun’s estimated contribution to climate change by more than half, from its previously small contribution to one that is yet smaller.
Meanwhile, scientists who tout the manmade theory of global warming to the exclusion of others continue to disparage the CLOUD experiment. “This link is not properly established for the moment,” said Dr. Urs Neu of the Swiss Forum for Climate and Global Change, a prominent critic. “The cosmic ray theory has been used by people who want to deny human influence on global warming.”
Dr. Kirkby, in contrast, now 10 years older and wiser, has changed. In the past, he would unguardedly say: “There is certainly a greenhouse effect. The question is whether it is responsible for all the 0.6C warming in the past century, or two-thirds or a fifth — or what?” Now, to head off attacks, and controversies that might once again derail the CLOUD product, he hides his hopes and downplays the significance of what CLOUD may find: “If there really is an effect, then it would simply be part of the climate-change cocktail,” a perhaps less naive, more politic Dr. Kirkby now states.
Lawrence Solomon@nextcity.com
– Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
steven mosher-Actually NCEP does not use the surface data, I believe you are thinking of ERA. Nevertheless, you are right that NCEP, and all reanalyses, use uncertain and sometimes problematic data (in this case mostly radiosondes, as I understand it) as inputs to models of weather that are themselves imperfect. So one should not be un-skeptical of the data, but one should not reject it out of hand without good reason. Ryan seems to think there are good reasons to reject the reanalysis out of hand, you don’t. I would like to see him explain his particular issues with the reanalysis data, it would be enlightening.
Following Pat Frank’s observation (missed it seems by the two reviewers that submitted referee comments) that the 95% confidence interval bands in Fig. 4 become zero when the data is zero (similarly for Fig. 5), I hope that the authors, in support of this potentially important result, will review all their statistical work, perhaps in consultation with other colleagues.
Figures 1 & 2 illustrate the main result of the paper (if correct) , the connection between GCRs and cloud-cover. The result, unlike Figs. 4 & 5, is not based on use of a GCM or the NCEP reanalysis SLAT data.
@vukcevic says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:04 am
“There is a strong correlation between the Arctic temperature and the Earth magnetic field. However the correlation is negative, weaker field higher temperature. If the Svensmark’s effect is at work it is in reverse; weaker magnetic field, more GCR, more clouds above the Arctic, higher temperature. More clouds in the Arctic (for 6 months of the year) acting as a ‘GH’ gas prevent excessive cooling, a well known effect in the middle and northern latitudes during winter months.”
And the opposite of that in summer months, except it is the summer temperature drop that is increasing cloud cover, and not the increase in GCR`s.
In winter, higher temperatures increase cloud cover and precipitation.
So what is driving the temperature changes and the changes in cloud cover, is the inverse proxy for the GCR`s, that can only be one thing.
This is why WUWT is so valuable. A full and frank exchange of views, Scientific enquiry, scepticism, arguement and even an additional contribution from one of the original authors. Top stuff!
To Bob of Castlemane and Ralph and the others who by their ignorant comments only show that a little intelligence is dangerous (try reading the whole thing before popping off, why don’t you) as Anthony also points out. You people who only read what you want
are half the problem of AGW!
Alex the skeptic says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:21 pm
CERN is no fringe laboratory pursuing crackpot theories at some remote backwater. CERN, based in Geneva, is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a 50-yearold institution, originally founded by 12 countries and now counting 20 country-members.
CERN is not running the CLOUD project. They only lend some unused facility to the project which is funded and run by non-CERN agencies.
Very interesting….. I love stuff that makes the establishment think….. If they are willing or able to. Of course.
Ben Laken says
“we speculate that little (0.088 C/decade) systematic change in temperature at mid-latitudes has occurred over the last 50 years”
Ben can you just clarify this point, please? IPCC’s AR4 says the warming trend since 1950 has been 0.13°C/decade. You’re suggesting to me that GCR may be responsible for 0.088°C/decade. That would be 67% of the total warming trend, which in my book is far from ‘little.’ Is there some mistake here with what I’m saying?
Ben says:
“it should not be interpreted to cast doubt on recent anthropogenic warming.”
I think many reasonable people here would just like to see this aspect of the climate system taken seriously by the IPCC. The criticism is often that the IPCC document is better descirbed as a document about CO2 rather than climate. The acid test may be if the next IPCC document goes some way to acknowledge the work of you, Harrison and others.
Finally to those arguing over correlations, I think the author acknowledges that this correlation is a product of their new methodology. I think a discussion of the merits of the methodology might help to shed light.
eadler says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:43 am
There is no overall increasing trend in Cosmic Rays to match the trend of increasing temperatures.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/TheChillingStars.jpg
Could the non-trending GCR just be at some overall low non-equilibrium level, effecting a relatively low albedo, a surplus incoming SW at, say, 0.85 Wm-2 🙂 and thus the warming?
Riskaverse says:
November 25, 2010 at 1:57 pm
“Robuk says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:00 am
“eadler says:
November 25, 2010 at 8:43 am
“There is no overall increasing trend in Cosmic Rays to match the trend of increasing temperatures.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/TheChillingStars.jpg”
Probably the blue line on the graph is due to the UHI effect.”
Can’t find this graph in my copy of Chilling Stars”
I was joking about the chilling starsThe . The url is from RealClimate as the url indicates. The Neutron Data originates from here:
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/Misc/neutron2.html
There is no real upward trend in neutron flux between 1950 and 2006. Of course “The Chilling Stars” wouldn’t contain that information.
Brent Hargreaves says:
November 25, 2010 at 9:17 am
“LazyTeenager says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:19 am
So every time we find some new thing that affects climate that somehow it proves everything else is excluded; like CO2. Errr no.
Just for you, Lazy, the argument is: Nobody doubts that the atmosphere, including its CO2, keeps us warm. Some of us doubt that variations in CO2 PPM, undeniably rising steadily for many decades, was the main driver of the 1975-1998 uptick.(Had that uptick continued to 2010 we’d have become less sceptical about Carbon Monomania.)
My phrase “all this nonsense about CO2″ was shorthand for “the dumb assertation that burning fossil fuels takes us closer to a tipping point beyond which a positive feedback will be triggered, leading to Thermageddon, when in fact the climate is an imperfectly-understood complex adaptive system with a multi-billion year track record of supporting life.””
In fact we know that El Nino also affects the annual global temperature, and 1998 had one of the most powerful El Nino’s on record.
In fact the last 12 months have been the warmest on the temperature record, despite the fact that solar output is at a low point.
So maybe you should be less skeptical this year.
Bill Illis says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:02 pm (Edit)
Regarding the NCEP Reanalysis data.
The issue is logical consistency. If you are willing to accept that observations are good enough to drive the models, then we have no argument. But one cannot on one hand claim the observations are junk and on the other hand accept the outputs of NCEP.
Logical consistency is my main point.
Also dont forget that the cloud observations depend upon RTE. So, one cannot logically deny that C02 has a warming effect (as RTE predict) and simultaneously accept as fact cloud observations that rely on RTE. Again, logical consistency.
timetochooseagain says:
November 25, 2010 at 4:25 pm (Edit)
steven mosher-Actually NCEP does not use the surface data, I believe you are thinking of ERA.
Radiosones for certain, which is why upper air temperature is a class A variable. And as we know many criticized this data source in discussing Santer’s paper. Looking more closely at the data sources in NCEP ( working from memory), I could of course make the observation that if you accept SLAT from NCEP and surface temps from surface stations are inline with SLAT then SLAT confirms the reliability of surface stations. either way, I’m saying that people have to be logically consistent.
I’m just starting looking at NCEP winds so will have more definitive comments in due course. Maybe Ryan will chime in
tonyb
Not possible means just that no matter that you seem to want to stand on your head and play with words. Instead of telling me to step up my game how about if we both play the same one in the real world not some virtual reality one?
Well, given my training when I say not possible I mean, logically impossible.
If the IPCC means hat it is logically impossible to predict the climate over the long term then they are wrong. “I predict the temperature will never change” there I just made a prediction. What I think they mean, however, is that the predictions over the long term ( how long is long) are not very reliable. So, we can model the climate, those models have a measurable reliability, that reliablity or skill is lower than the skill we see in other physics. So, depending upon how you interpret their words (the word possible) I either disagree with them or not. Since, I don’t think they meant logically impossible ( as opposed to physically highly improbable) I think we agree.
psst: no politician would talk about logical impossibility
Logical consistency is indeed very important. For my part I am neither one of those who criticized radiosondes during the discussion of Santer’s paper, nor someone who uncritically believes or disbelieves in any particular dataset, without good reasons. NCEP is one I am agnostic on. But I could easily be persuaded one way or the other by arguments.
Pamela Gray says: at 6:42 am
Oops. Sorry folks I don’t know how to add italics and my egg nog coffee has addled my brain.
As it has been blistering cold in the PNW, I understand the egg nog coffee.
It will warm up this weekend and when you have thawed a bit – try this:
Scroll to the top of the WUWT page. Look on the right hand side. Next scroll down until you see a blue rectangle with Ric Werme’s guide to WUWT. Go there. Scroll down to a grey area below a long green region. The grey area is titled “Formatting in comments” and the second explanation will show how to do italics.
Happy Thanksgiving!
eadler :
http://ulysses.sr.unh.edu/NeutronMonitor/Misc/neutron2.html
There is no real upward trend in neutron flux between 1950 and 2006. Of course “The Chilling Stars” wouldn’t contain that information.
Hold your horses. It is not the peak trends that will produce clouds or not. It is the integrated area below the curves in the link, assuming the observation from this paper establishes that condensation is proportional to the impinging radiation .
So seems to me there is a sequence of fat, lean, fat, lean plots. Between 1980 and 1990 there is half the area than between 1990 and 2000, and in addition the minimum is smaller, thus the area larger. The observation that from 1995 there is stasis in temperature would agree with the integral being larger since then.
Looking at backward times the ice age scare fell in a fat region.
I do not believe that there is one to one correspondence with any factor entering in producing the weather and climate we observe. It is a dynamical system with many inputs and most probably chaotic, but one can observe threads of influences, and this GCR seems to me valid as a contributor, and certainly cannot be thrown out by looking cursorily at peak trends.
I’m trying to understand what they did. The paper states “Thus, the units of GCR changes used here are given as “GU”, defined as a change of 1% of the 11-year solar cycle amplitude in four days.”. At Thule the GCR solar cycle amplitude in neutron monitor counts per hour is ~600 out of a total of ~4300. The change happens over 5 years = 5*365 = 1825 days. In four days the GCRs change thus 600/1825*4 = 1.3 counts. 1% of that is 0.013 count. This sounds silly on its face as there is a regular daily variation of 10 counts or 770 times as large. So, I need some clarification on this.
Anyway, Knieveton and Tinsley analysed the Wilcox effect [ http://www.utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/tin_dcgcc.pdf ] using superposed epoch analysis around ‘sector boundaries’ [crossings of the Heliospheric Current Sheet]. I have just done an analysis of the hourly GCR flux at Thule for the 1470 crossings during 1957-2010. The result is here: http://www.leif.org/research/Cosmic-Rays-Thule-SB.png
The right-hand side shows the variation for every hour within 40 days on either side of the Sector Boundaries [which were nominally always taken to pass at 0:00h UT]. You see several things:
1) the 10 count daily variation [we know why: we are overtaking GCRs during half of the day and running into them during the other half due to Earth’s rotation]
2) A clear enhancement [larger than the daily variation] right at the boundary [and the day before and after]
3) The enhancements sjow up 27 days before and 27 days after, because the sector boundaries often recur every 27 days. This proves the reality of the effect as noise would not this behavior.
The power spectrum to the left shows the daily peak and the 27-day peak (“1”) and several of its harmonics [“2″,”3”, etc].
It is one thing that clouds are formed from humidity and no doubt GCR play a role in this. The other factor is that clouds and water droplets usually have a charges – hence we have so much lightning here in South Africa. So there must be an influence from magnetism that may push the clouds (once they exist) more towards the equator or more towards the poles, depending how the sun’s magnetic field influences that of earth’s. Obviously if they move more towards the equator a larger surface area is covered leading to a higher albedo….
Let me know if somebody figured that one out.
BTW
it’s never been entirely clear to me as to why clouds do get charged – is it the friction when they move against air?
anna v says:
November 25, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Hold your horses. It is not the peak trends that will produce clouds or not. It is the integrated area below the curves in the link, assuming the observation from this paper establishes that condensation is proportional to the impinging radiation.
So one should integrate all the way down to the zero-count line: http://www.leif.org/research/Neutron-Monitor-Thule-Newark.png
Between 1980 and 1990 there is half the area than between 1990 and 2000, and in addition the minimum is smaller, thus the area larger.
This is clearly not the case. The areas are almost the same.
HenryP says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:05 pm
it’s never been entirely clear to me as to why clouds do get charged – is it the friction when they move against air?
Falling raindrops rubbing against each other…
Leif Svalgaard says:
November 25, 2010 at 11:08 pm
and in addition the minimum is smaller, thus the area larger.
Dyslectic in my old age 🙁 . Of course I meant larger.
I was not going down to 0 but to an imaginary x line through the lowest values. OK call it an anomaly, though I hate the concept.
The point is that one cannot be talking of trends for the peaks when discussing integrated luminosity phenomena.