From Nature blog: Sunny days for CLOUD experiment
An experiment designed to investigate the link between solar activity and the climate has its first results in the bag. At the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco today, Joachim Curtius presented data from the first runs of the CLOUD (‘cosmics leaving outdoor droplets’) experiment at CERN – the European particle physics lab outside of Geneva.
The experiment has a long and bumpy history. The idea is to test the theory that cosmic rays spur the formation of particles in the air that nucleate clouds, in turn making skies cloudier and the planet cooler. Researchers have noted a dearth of sunspots (which is linked to more cosmic rays) during the ‘little ice age’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and a peak in sunspots (linked to a drop in cosmic rays) during the late 1980s, when global cloudiness dropped by about 3% (see Nature‘s feature on the project). No one knows how big this effect might be, and the idea that it might account for a big chunk of the warming over the last century is highly controversial.
CLOUD uses a particle beam from CERN as a stand-in for cosmic rays, and fires them through an ultra-clean steel chamber filled with select atmospheric gases, to see if and how particles that could nucleate clouds are formed. Project head Jasper Kirkby proposed the experiment back in 1998. But it had a hard time getting off the ground – perhaps in part because Kirkby received bad press for emphasizing the importance of cosmic rays to climate change (see this story from the National Post). CLOUD finally got going in 2006, and they started work with the full kit in November 2009 (here’s a CERN video update about that).
The results haven’t yet been published, so Curtius declined to discuss the details. But the important thing is that the project is working – they have seen sulphuric acid and water combine to make particles when blasted by the CERN beam, for example, in a way that matches predictions of the most recent models. The data should help the team to quantify how much of an impact the Sun is having on climate within 2-3 years, Curtius says – though there are a lot more pieces of the puzzle to fill in.
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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.
This graph certainly lends credence to the theory:
Here’s a longer record of cosmic rays:
See also this WUWT story:
Something to be thankful for! At last: Cosmic rays linked to rapid mid-latitude cloud changes
When this work reaches its full fruition it may inspire fear and horror.
Firstly, we may see before us a fate we cannot escape, wrought by Nature.
Secondly, fiends may start to get ideas.
I’ve always noticed when out in the wild, fishing the Western Slope of Colorado, when the clouds form, it gets cold.
When the sun shines, it gets warm.
Hmmmmm…..
I’m not going to be thankful that cosmic rays can have that much effect but there have been three lasting cold spells in the last 400 years and they all line up perfectly with decades of low sunspot counts. In the past 50 years the number of sunspots have been higher than any time since records began.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum
If the sun has entered a quiet period we’ll at least get a test of the hypothesis. We can only hope another Little Ice Age isn’t in the making. That won’t be good.
Suppose that cosmic rays do increase cloud cover and that this increase does decrease global temperature. Take a look at the plot of cosmic rays from 1950 onwards. the cosmic ray counts fluctuate significantly, but the overall trend for the last 60 years is flat. Cosmic rays can’t be responsible for the overall increase of global temperature in the last 60 years. The low cosmic-ray-count periods of the late 1950’s and the early 1990’s were lower than the low period 2001-2004. Yet global temperature was higher in 2001-2004 than it was in the early 1990’s or in the 1950’s. No matter what their affect is on clouds, it is clear that cosmic rays aren’t the explanation for the increase of global average temperatures over the last half century.
There is more than one mechanism by which solar magnetic field changes affect planetary cloud cover. Solar wind bursts are hypothesized to remove cloud forming ions by creating a space charge differential in the ionosphere. Tinsley calls that mechanism electroscavenging. (See Tinsley’s review paper at the end of this comment for details.)
If you look at the attached graph (GCR Vs planetary cloud cover) linked to immediate below there is very close correlation of GCR levels and low level planetary cloud cover up until around 1994 at which time there is a net reduction in planetary cloud cover. The reduction in planetary cloud cover is hypothesized to have been caused by the solar wind bursts which removed the cloud forming ions. (The reduction in planetary clouds in the specific regions where the electroscavenging mechanism is predicted to be the strongest.)
GCR is currently very high, however, there continues to be solar wind bursts created by low latitude coronal holes on the sun’s surface. When the solar wind bursts abate, if Svensmark, Tinsley, Yu’s hypothesis is correct there should be an increase in low level clouds and more energy reflected into space. (Planet cools.)
There appears to be some other phenomena at work related to the current solar cycle change, as the ionosphere height has fallen to the lowest ever measured.
Solar cycle 24 is an anomalous cycle. It appears that has been an interruption to the mechanism that creates the magnetic ropes that form sunspots. The magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots are becoming less and less. If the trend continues the sun will no longer be able to create new sunspots, as the magnetic ropes require a minimum field strength to avoid being torn apart as they float up from the tachocline (where it is hypothesized that they are formed) through the turbulent convection zone to the sun surface.
http://www.probeinternational.org/Livingston-penn-2010.pdf
When the Maunder solar magnetic cycle minimum occurred there was a delay of roughly 12 years before the cooling occurred. The cooling this time around should be larger, as the change is from a low level of planetary clouds to a high level of planetary clouds.
There is evidence that a high number of ions affects planetary temperature in another manner. It is hypothesized that a high number of ions causes a reduction in the lifetime of cirrus clouds at high latitudes during the winter which causes very low temperatures. The mechanism is the ions causes larger ice particles to form which then causes the cirrus ice particles to fall reducing the life time of the cirrus cloud. (The wispy high altitude cirrus clouds warm due to the greenhouse effect.)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RecordCosmicRays.jpg
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming.htm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/16/earths-ionosphere-drops-to-a-new-low/
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JA014342.shtml
“If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing? A comparison of two solar minimum intervals.”
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..969G.pdf
“Once again about global warming and solar activity K. Georgieva, C. Bianchi, and B. Kirov
We show that the index commonly used for quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity and using this index leads to the underestimation of the role of solar activity in the global warming in the recent decades. A more suitable index is the geomagnetic activity which reflects all solar activity, and it is highly correlated to global temperature variations in the whole period for which we have data.
In Figure 6 the long-term variations in global temperature are compared to the long-term variations in geomagnetic activity as expressed by the ak-index (Nevanlinna and Kataja 2003). The correlation between the two quantities is 0.85 with p<0.01 for the whole period studied.It could therefore be concluded that both the decreasing correlation between sunspot number and geomagnetic activity, and the deviation of the global temperature long-term trend from solar activity as expressed by sunspot index are due to the increased number of high-speed streams of
solar wind on the declining phase and in the minimum of sunspot cycle in the last decades."
See section 5a) Modulation of the global circuit in this review paper, by solar wind burst and the process electroscavenging where by increases in the global electric circuit remove cloud forming ions.
The same review paper summarizes the data that does show correlation between low level clouds and GCR.
http://www.utdallas.edu/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
It should be noted there is smoking gun evidence that links GCR changes to a series of cooling events in the paleo record. The question is not if but how the solar changes cause the cooling.
http://www.essc.psu.edu/essc_web/seminars/spring2006/Mar1/Bond%20et%20al%202001.pdf
Excerpt from the above linked paper:
“A solar influence on climate of the magnitude and consistency implied by our evidence could not have been confined to the North Atlantic. Indeed, pervious studies have tied increases in the C14 in tree rings, and hence reduced solar irradiance, to Holocene glacial advances in Scandinavia, expansions of the Holocene Polar Atmosphere circulation in Greenland; and abrupt cooling in the Netherlands about 2700 years ago…Well dated, high resolution measurements of O18 in stalagmite from Oman document five periods of reduced rainfall centered at times of strong solar minima at 6300, 7400, 8300, 9000, and 9500 years ago.”
Jeff T says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:54 pm
What’s the inconsistency there? Cosmic rays are in an inverse relationship with solar activity.
The whole thing with Cloud is the physics being hammered out, so if things don’t go precisely according to GCR counts, then there are other factors being involved. The good news would be that GCR’s are much easier to measure than global cloud cover.
We still have to wait for the physics to determine if GCR/cloud formation turns on a dime. It may not be so (hystersis levels involved). Also, who’s to say that the relationship has to be linear?
Stephen Wilde wrote:
“I prefer the alternative explanation of latitudinally shifting jets”
Stephen, could you please post references to this theory? I am very interested.
TIA,
– Alexi
It was this time last year that the Sun came out of its minimum and it looked as though it might ramp up like a normal cycle. I remember those getting on the bandwagon denouncing all those that were expecting a grand minimum to start with SC24. 12 months later what do we have….a cycle that died off mid year and now has risen back to the early figures but reducing in output for the last few months. In essence the cycle is not ramping up, it is flat.
Today is again spotless and the general mood of the Sun is weak, if we have another 6 months of low activity it will get very interesting.
The Sun is weak and the northern hemisphere is bracing itself for a massive winter, we have already seen temps in the UK not experienced since the LIA. But we are told there is no link between the Sun and climate??
Jeff T says:
December 16, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Take a look at the plot of cosmic rays from 1950 onwards. the cosmic ray counts fluctuate significantly, but the overall trend for the last 60 years is flat. Cosmic rays can’t be responsible for the overall increase of global temperature in the last 60 years.
I am not a believer also….it may be a player, but not the major contributor. I can’t see a trend that would influence ocean and atmospheric cycles that follow the temp record.
The Cosmic Ray / Cloud correlation is interesting. It is also only accounts for a small variation. It is really hard to separate out the ocean cycles from the cosmic ray effect. The fact that the Atlantic and Pacific both react in similar ways at the same time is very curious.
It is possible that much of the sawtooth in the temperatures is caused by a combination of cosmic rays and ocean oscillations. The variation of less than 1C isn’t as interesting as the long term trends.
At least the skeptics are trying to figure out the factors that drive the climate instead of just show that CO2 is causing the end of everything.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
William says:
December 16, 2010 at 7:22 pm
If you look at the attached graph (GCR Vs planetary cloud cover) linked to immediate below there is very close correlation of GCR levels and low level planetary cloud cover up until around 1994 at which time there is a net reduction in planetary cloud cover.
I am not sure we have the ability to measure low level clouds accurately??
Solar cycle 24 is an anomalous cycle. It appears that has been an interruption to the mechanism that creates the magnetic ropes that form sunspots. The magnetic field strength of newly formed sunspots are becoming less and less. If the trend continues the sun will no longer be able to create new sunspots, as the magnetic ropes require a minimum field strength to avoid being torn apart as they float up from the tachocline
It’s called a grand minimum, don’t be swayed by bad science, solar magnetic strength has been increasing as SC24 progresses, this is normal heading towards cycle max (however weak)
In some preliminary work based on a belief that the 1998 temperature anomaly is information rich, and while trying to preserve the reality of seasons, I subtracted days in 1997 from corresponding dates in 1998. Here is a graph which shows some results for latitude bands from UAH data, first over the oceans:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/uahocean.jpg
then over land:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/uahland-1.jpg
Apart from the loss of pattern from sparse polar sampling, there seemed to be a cyclicity of about 3 months max to max. This also happens at individual station level, sometimes, but more often than not, eg Meekatharra from Australia being rather nice:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii14/sherro_2008/MeekaJ.jpg
I have not done enough work to draw any conclusions. It would be interesting to do more subtractions, be they annual or near to that, to see if this cyclicity appears commonly or rarely. If it is common, it might be starting to propose a mechanism, for example, that a build-up then decay of cloud cover over a large region takes around three months (and might or might not be synchronised with seasons). There are better mathematical ways to look at this, but I thought these simple first few diagrams held some promise.
This all seems rather unnecessary. We have known for a century that ionizing radiation will cause water droplets to form in a H2O-saturated gas. Charles Wilson got the Nobel prize for Physics in 1927, not for discovering the effect, but for inventing the Cloud Chamber that is based upon it. This now apparently controversial effect was then used for a generation as the prime method of detecting and studying elementary particles. Several more Nobel Prizes were awarded for work based on a principle that now apparently has to be proven all over again.
Dave Springer says:
December 16, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Alex the skeptic says:
December 16, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Fossils fuels are abundant and cheap but they’re not unlimited and not free. (1)
IMO photovoltaics, which are just another form of solid state electronics, will soon reach a point where it’s cheaper to turn sunlight into electricity than it is to generate it with a natural gas fired turbine (the current cheapest way to generate electricity). (2)
Dave, re your point (1): I never said that these are free. That these are limited or unlimited is highly debatable, however it seems that ‘we are awash in energy’. Abiotic oil theory is catching up.
Point (2) on photovoltaics. When these become cheaper than gas/oil/coal and available on demand without fail just like we have had from HC’s and nuclear power stations, then I will be the happiest man on earth, but until then……..
George E Smith
What we can do is measure the “earthshine” reflected from the income sunlight incident on the Earth to the Moon and back to see if there is any trend in the albedo of the Earth. This is being done and has been used as a proxy for cloud cover. The warmists positively hate this approach because it supplies actual numbers and they tend to vilify researchers like Phil Goode by the usual methods.
George E. Smith says:
December 16, 2010 at 4:06 pm.
Absolutely agree.
Further, I think you presented an excellent overview in your earlier post:
And WARM SURFACE conditions PRECEDE HIGH CLOUD conditions; not FOLLOW them.
In reply to Geoff Sharp:
December 16th 7:22 pm.
The paleo climatic record shows cycles of warming followed by abrupt cooling which requires an explanation. (Cosmogenic isotopes changes correlate with the cycle so the question is not if but how the sun causes what is observed.) Livingston and Penn’s observations provides support for the assertion that the solar tachocline has been interrupted. The seeds for the next solar cycle are hypothesized to be the sunspots from the previous cycle that move down to the tachocline where the interact in some manner in the tachocline to form the new magnetic ropes which rise through the convection zone to form new sunspots. If the magnetic field of newly created individual sunspots continues to decrease the cycle 24 old sunspots will not survive their trip back through the turbulent convection zone to the tachocline. When the sunspot mechanism restarts it appears there are massive CMEs which change the inclination of the geomagnetic field. (Archeomagnetic jerks with a periodicity of roughly 300 years are observed and geomagnetic excursions with a periodicity of around 6000 year to 8000 years are observed which correlate with small and large abrupt climate change. There is a geomagnetic excursion for example that correlates with the Younger Dryas and the termination of the last interglacial.)
The inclination changes in the geomagnetic field (archeomagnetic jerks) changes the latitude at which the GCR affects clouds, moving the effect down to lower latitudes where it has a greater affect.
As some noted above, David Suzuki had a recent Nature special called when “North goes South” that discusses the extraordinary recent rapid movement of the north geomagnetic field pole. 80 km/year. The same affect (what is cause the North geomagnetic pole to move) is creating the Southern Atlantic geomagnetic anomaly. (The southern geomagnetic pole is trying to reverse in the Southern location.)
Back to clouds and GCR.
Palle’s analysis supports Svensmark GCR modulation of planetary cloud cover, Tinsley’s electroscavenging mechanism, and Lindzen’s cloud Iris theory.
As I noted there is more than one mechanism by which the solar magnetic cycle changes modulation planetary clouds. (See Palle’s comment concerning the mechanism electroscavenging which is Tinsley’s name for the mechanism where solar wind bursts remove cloud forming ions.)
There is an observed net reduction in planetary cloud cover that correlates with the 20th century warming that is currently attributed to GWG by the AGW fan club. If you check my last link, which is the global sea surface anomaly, the clouds appear to have come back, the earth’s oceans have started to cool.
“The possible connection between ionization in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and low level clouds”
http://star.arm.ac.uk/preprints/433.pdf
“The second process, considered by Tinsley and Yu (2003), namely electroscavenging, depends on the action of the global electrical circuit (see review by Rycroft et al. (2000)). The transport of charge by rapidly rising convective currents in the tropics and over continental land masses leads to an approx. 200 kV positive charge of the ionosphere compared to Earth. This large voltage difference, in turn, necessitates a return current which must pass through the regions of the atmosphere where clouds are formed. As cosmic rays are the principal agent of ionization in the atmosphere above 1 km altitude, any modulation of the GCR flux due to solar activity is likely to affect the transport of charge to complete the global electrical circuit. Tinsley and Yu (2003) discuss how the build up of electrostatic charge at the tops and bottoms of clouds could affect the scavenging of ice forming nuclei (IFN) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) by droplets, and how this can lead to greater rates of precipitation and a reduction in cloud cover. They find that the electroscavenging process is likely to be more important over oceanic rather than continental regions and that it leads to a positive correlation between clouds and cosmic rays at higher latitudes and a negative correlation at low latitudes. Thus the electroscavenging process can explain several of the most striking features of Fig. 5, namely: (1) the peak in significant positive correlations at latitudes around 50 degrees North and South (Fig. 5a); (2) the tendency for a less significant but nonetheless evident trend to negative correlation coefficients at low latitudes (Fig. 5a); and (3) the location of the peak in correlation over one of the principal oceans, namely over the North and South Atlantic (Fig. 5c).”
Variation in planetary albedo is large
– Observed Albedo change of the planet is 7 W/m2 ; GHG up to now is 2.4 W/m2 for a doubling of CO2
– Equivalent to 2% increase in solar irradiance, a factor 20 more than typical maxima to minima variations
– Reversibility suggests natural variations.
– GCM (General Circulation Models, General Climate Models) do not show such variations
Changes in Earth’s Reflectance over the Past Two Decades
“We correlate an overlapping period of earthshine measurements of Earth’s reflectance (from 1999 through mid-2001) with satellite observations of global cloud properties to construct from the latter a proxy measure of Earth’s global shortwave reflectance. This proxy shows a steady decrease in Earth’s reflectance from 1984 to 2000, with a strong climatologically significant drop after 1995. From 2001 to 2003, only earthshine data are available, and they indicate a complete reversal of the decline. Understanding how the causes of these decadal changes are apportioned between natural variability, direct forcing, and feedbacks is fundamental to confidently assessing and predicting climate change.”
http://www.iac.es/galeria/epalle/reprints/Palle_etal_Science_2004.pdf
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.12.16.2010.gif
The Earth as a chaotic system has two points of stability in climate, the one we enjoy now and the other for 90% of the time colder. This shows our non linear system has two strange attractors. Svensmark may show the cause of the change between the two attractors. No one else in climatology seems to be wondering at all why our normal Earth climate is an ice age. They seem to be fixated on warming.
Warming never was a problem, cold is always a problem, severe cold is a disaster.
William says:
December 17, 2010 at 2:58 am
…………..
I would not trust implicitly latest CR data from any of the stations near the Arctic. Reason is that geomagnetic field changes there are not in sink with the geo-dipole.
If you look at Moscow station you can see that in the recent years CR count was on par with 1965 if not slightly lower.
http://cr0.izmiran.rssi.ru/mosc/main.htm
I wouldn’t bet on Livingston and Penn’s observations either:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/L&P1.htm
Latest data not included here are pointing to a recovery of both, magnetic field and contrast.
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
L&P effect may prove a bit of a disappointment. From personal point of view I would have favoured L&P, since their predictions were in tune with my formula
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC14.htm
but I do not think conclusions from their observations based on less than one cycle are significant.
Who does not love Cosmic Rays? Who does not feel bliss when thinking of experimenting with them? Who does not wish they had a Cosmic Ray of their very own?
Today, Nikola Tesla tweeted this:
“I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.”
http://twitter.com/#!/JamesonLewis3rd/status/15743987868504064
“Al Tekhasski says:
December 16, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Stephen Wilde wrote:
“I prefer the alternative explanation of latitudinally shifting jets”
Stephen, could you please post references to this theory? I am very interested.
TIA,
– Alexi”
Hi Alexi, here you go:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6645
“How The Sun Could Control Earth’s Temperature”.
I see a what appears to be an annual cycle in cloud cover. When is the peak. To the eye it appears to be in January or Feb, but these eyes are old. Any info on this is appreciated.
There’s plenty more particulate chemistry going on besides DMS, but still, it’s a good place to start I suppose, and at least it’s real experimental science targeting uncertainty. It should produce some interesting results.
I’m probably being stupid here, but surely to find a link between surface temperature and cloud we’d need to take all those thermometers out of their shady Stevenson screens and start collecting 1Hz data? Fast radiometer data shows a massive reduction in incoming radiation when clouds pass overhead so I find it hard to believe that doesn’t feed into temperature, but you’re not going to see that when you are averaging up to minutes or longer.
And isn’t that the nub of much of the AGW scare? We aren’t really doing the right experiments (and then compound the problem by trying to model it!).
wayne Job says:
December 17, 2010 at 3:27 am
“The Earth as a chaotic system has two points of stability in climate, the one we enjoy now and the other for 90% of the time colder.”
That depends on the temporal length of your samples. The current ice age is about 3 million years old. Ninety percent of the time during the past 500 million years the earth was virtually ice free and green from pole to pole. We are in an ice age today. These brief retreats of the glaciers that last 10,000 years or so are nothing like the planet’s normal stable state.