Update on the CERN CLOUD experiment

Hope the orthodox publishers can’t delay publication very much. Ought not to be that easy with CERN-articles.
“Sun-deniers” will probably have a though time trying to ignore or explain away the results.

‘“Sun-deniers” will probably have a though time trying to ignore or explain away the results.’
I suspect the Main Stream Media will ignore it though – unless someone can really connect it up with the massive AGW expenditure versus Austerity – and put that in the context of repeatable experiments confirming that AGW is minimal.
If this experiment does indeed confirm Svensmark’s theory, then we may be in climatic trouble if we get continued low solar activity. The solar wind still seems to be low in the mean, despite an increase in sun specs. We’ve been preparing for warming at the very time we might have needed to be preparing for cooling.

A triumph for Henrik and Jasper and their teams!
Science at its best, perseverance at its best and a robust demonstration of how humankind’s knowledge of earth and space science will inexorably advance, thanks to the dedication of a committed few.
This is a tale of scientific endeavor that our kids and grandkids will read about, and learn from, many years from now…
Godt gået!

Experiments!!!! This is unsientific anti-science. What’s wrong with experiments using computer models? What is the world coming to?

I think the enormous amount of scientific horsepower that has gone into this endeavor along with hard evidence produced in a world-class, controlled environment will make the impact of this one very much more significant than the assumptions and conjecture that normally dominate both sides of the AGW debate.

I’ve been watching Dr. Svensmark’s work for about 8 years.
When one takes his own lab’s experiements, the Forebush decrease/cloud cover correllation, and then adds the CERN work, one will have to say: “What more do we need?”
I’m even a fan of the idea that “wobble” in and out of the galactic plane, might increase and decrease cosmic and account for periodic ice ages.
More on that later!
Max

Mac the Knife says:
May 14, 2011 at 10:48 am
This is very interesting! Let me see if I understand this issue correctly.
You missed one – the continual solar wind itself modulates the number of GCR reaching the atmosphere. So at times of low solar activity there are more GCR see:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum/
“But is it supposed to be this quiet? In 2008, the sun set the following records:
A 50-year low in solar wind pressure: Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft reveal a 20% drop in solar wind pressure since the mid-1990s—the lowest point since such measurements began in the 1960s. The solar wind helps keep galactic cosmic rays out of the inner solar system. With the solar wind flagging, more cosmic rays are permitted to enter, resulting in increased health hazards for astronauts. Weaker solar wind also means fewer geomagnetic storms and auroras on Earth.”

I seem to recall an Israeli geologist and an American astronomer (or perhaps vice versa), finding a 250 million year (or so) variation in climate (as deduced from rocks somehow) that correlated with Solar system passage through spiral arms of our galaxy and assumed increase in GCR. If the cloud experiments verify the seeding conjecture, we could have a major step forward in understanding really long cycle effects – and fewer straight line projections on the rising parts of sine waves in the data!

I am convinced that Svensmark is right, but his theory cannot conjure up the Water Vapour that is needed for clouds to form.
Let’s not repeat, or duplicate the CAGW people’s mistake – which is, as far as I can see, a mysterious inability to accept that there is never just “one single thing” causing changes. (In AGW science CO2 is the all mighty one.)
Like right now we have low activity as far as “Sunspots” are concerned and more Cloud should form.
Fair enough, – But is there enough Water Vapour present to support such a cloud formation?
Or, once again, – is there more than just those two factors that have to marry up before anybody’s “GRAND PLAN” can come together?

I am a simple engineer on a ship – I fix things that go wrong, and try to prevent machinery break-downs by using my senses in the first instance, and relying on other mechanical, electrical or electronic sensors to relay information, usually by an alarm of some sort.
Most failures of plant may be attributed to human activity at some stage, either resulting from stripping a machine down that did not need it, and making mistakes in the refit, or by ignoring an alarm situation – not so much an ‘activity’, but an oversight.
I have always been taught to be thorough whilst I was training, and I try to instill this aspect in the girls and boys that I have to look after from time to time. I am also aware that one has to keep ones hands clean – not easy when one has to battle to purchase strong disposable gloves at twice the price of ones that tear easily.
My point here is that no matter how clean the powers-that-be think that their little cloud chamber is going to stay spotlessly clean, I cannot agree, until, of course someone puts me right.

Unlike the Leopard…. the Sun will always change it’s spots..!
I travel a lot by air for my work and over the past few years i have seen a noticable difference in cloud cover… or seems that way?

Interesting observation:
Bruce May 14, 2011 at 10:20 am “I notice the list of scientists working on the project does not include any of the famous names of Climate Science.”

Leif Svalgaard says:
May 14, 2011 at 11:52 am
“WUWT had a discussion of this a while back: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/16/preliminary-results-for-the-cern-cloud-cosmic-ray-experiment/ but that seemed an example of ‘publication by press release’ which was not very satisfying.”
From the linked text:
“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.”
And the post is from DEC 2010… the CLOUD team seems to be conservative with their estimates. YMMV.

Bruce says:
May 14, 2011 at 10:20 am
Absolutely fascinating that Svensmark may be vindicated. If so it is a serious blow to the CAGW hypothesis and a great stride towards a real scientific explanation of climate phenomena, including the role of the Sun.
How did they get it funded?

Ans: with great difficulty. It was about 7 yrs. late, with much scraping and scrounging and dodging necessary.

Mac the Knife says:
May 14, 2011 at 10:48 am
..Have I grasped this correctly?
Do we know if the flux of galactic cosmic rays through our solar system has any effect on our solar activity? Stated another way, are GCRs and CMEs truly independent variables? It seems improbable that GCRs might influence old Sol’s production of CME’s…. but I guess that isn’t really any stranger than GCRs’ regulating cloud formation on our planet!
~
More like the neutrals + solar wind charge exchange= accelerated particles back up wind. Or something like that..just increase or decrease the neutral density in the background. speed density temp direction …

Talk about measuring energetic particles..IBEX was back in the news.
Mysterious ‘Ribbon’ of Energy and Particles That Wrap Around Solar System’s Heliosphere Isolated
ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2011) —
..In a paper to be published in the April 10, 2011
..Notes Schwadron, an associate professor at UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space and department of physics, “Isolating and separating the ribbon from the IBEX maps was like pulling the drapes from our window to discover the landscape at the edge of the solar system.”
Of the singular images the IBEX mission has been able to achieve, lead scientist David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) says, “These maps are very rich scientifically and are critical in helping scientists understand how our space environment is controlled by the galactic medium. They provide the first images of our solar system’s boundaries, which control the access to potentially harmful galactic cosmic rays as well as all other matter from deep space.”
The most energetic galactic cosmic rays penetrate even the powerful magnetic fields closest to Earth and eventually collide and interact with Earth’s atmosphere. The direct or indirect effects of these cosmic rays on Earth system, including our biosphere, remain poorly understood and are often highly controversial.
The IBEX team is using the maps to learn how the heliosphere is shaped and what its physical properties are. This detailed information about our solar system’s boundaries will allow scientists to better understand how galactic cosmic rays evolve in our space environment, which in turn will provide fundamental information about the radiation environment on Earth and its implications on the evolution of life.
The IBEX scientists analyzed data from the mission’s first year of observations and, after developing an effective separation method, were able to isolate and resolve the unanticipated energetic ribbon feature. The ribbon appears to be wrapped like a belt on top of the globally distributed emissions of the broader sky, and by separating it from the background emissions scientists can now see what’s underneath the ribbon.
Says Schwadron, “There are many theories about how the ribbon is created, and we don’t understand exactly what we’re seeing but it seems to be telling us something about how the local galactic magnetic field interacts with the heliosphere.”
Additional evidence for that interaction was the discovery of a “tail” of emissions in the underlying boundary landscape, which is apparently deflected in the direction of the galactic magnetic field as the ribbon seems to indicate.
“This galactic magnetic field may be a missing key to understanding how the heliosphere protects the solar system from galactic cosmic rays,” says Schwadron.
Also seen in the maps is the expected feature of the “nose” of the heliosphere. The nose represents the direction in which the solar system moves through the local part of the galaxy nearest to our Sun and that Schwadron compares to the “bow wave in front of a ship, which shows us how our motion through the galaxy compresses and deflects the material of the local galactic medium around our heliosphere.”
The IBEX maps differ so radically from what was expected prior to the mission that the scientists have been struggling to untangle the vast amount of information the maps contain. The team notes that getting emissions from the nose of the heliosphere has been an important “lamp post” towards understanding how the global heliosphere is controlled by the interaction of the Sun with the local galactic medium.
Says McComas, “Prior to IBEX, most scientists believed that the global boundaries of our solar system were controlled mainly by the motion of our solar system through the galaxy and the solar wind, an extremely fast flow of electrically charged matter that flows out from the Sun. The IBEX maps reveal the galactic magnetic field is also a critical part of the Sun’s interaction with the galaxy..”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110331114935.htm
Check out the crew on Schwadron’s et al team Leif..and the wording in the above article should be making you crazy by now .. I mean all that hinting about ISM shaped heliospheres gotta be getting the hair standing up on the back of your head..heh..
SEPARATION OF THE INTERSTELLAR BOUNDARY EXPLORER RIBBON FROM GLOBALLY DISTRIBUTED ENERGETIC NEUTRAL ATOM FLUX
N. A. Schwadron et al. 2011 ApJ 731 56 doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/731/1/56
N. A. Schwadron1,2,14, F. Allegrini2,3, M. Bzowski4, E. R. Christian5, G. B. Crew6, M. Dayeh2, R. DeMajistre7, P. Frisch8, H. O. Funsten9, S. A. Fuselier10, K. Goodrich9, M. Gruntman11, P. Janzen12, H. Kucharek1, G. Livadiotis2, D. J. McComas2,3, E. Moebius1, C. Prested13, D. Reisenfeld12, M. Reno2, E. Roelof6, J. Siegel13 and R. Vanderspek5
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/731/1/56?fromSearchPage=true&v_showaffiliations=yes

Paul Vaughan says:
May 14, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Nice to see a bit of example data from the November run of the CLOUD experiment in the video you’ve posted @ 45:07

Surely any future IPCC report will be bound to include these finding in their deliberations? And if the effect CGR are as large and obvious as they say, the IPCC report will have to admit that cloud cover is largely regulated by influences other than changes to the trace Co2 levels?
Doesn’t that pretty much do for the present crop of AGW models?

Bian H said:
“There are no other experimental bases for climate theory I’m aware of beyond the simplistic ancient ‘IR thru a glass container of CO2′ ones. And there’s no comparison in terms of relevance and validity.”
There is experimental evidence that increased CO2 in the atmosphere comes from human activity and that it is causing warming. Go take a look at skepticalscience.com (and if you don’t like the messenger, follow the links to the primary sources). Here are a couple of examples.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-fingerprint-in-global-warming.html
“Confirmation that rising carbon dioxide levels are due to human activity comes from analysing the types of carbon found in the air. The carbon atom has several different isotopes (eg – different number of neutrons). Carbon 12 has 6 neutrons, carbon 13 has 7 neutrons. Plants have a lower C13/C12 ratio than in the atmosphere. If rising atmospheric CO2 comes fossil fuels, the C13/C12 should be falling. Indeed this is what is occuring (Ghosh 2003) and the trend correlates with the trend in global emissions.”
And:
http: //www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm
“Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming.”
Of course that doesn’t mean it will be catastrophic, but that’s another matter.
Any self-respecting skeptic should visit skepticalscience.com if only to find out what we’re up against.

Brilliant experiment. I feel sure that Svensmark’s theory will be vindicated.

****
Max Hugoson says:
May 14, 2011 at 11:11 am
I’m even a fan of the idea that “wobble” in and out of the galactic plane, might increase and decrease cosmic and account for periodic ice ages.
****
The ice-age periodicity follows the Milankovitch changes almost exactly. That leaves little room for significant galactic-plane crossing effects, at least at the magnitude of ice-age changes.

Leif Svalgaard says:
May 15, 2011 at 6:46 am
The better strategy is not to tease at all
But why shouldn’t Kirkby tell us about some of the findings at CERN? He was invited to the conference for this purpose. What he presents is a graph from one run, not much and nothing that can interfere with a forthcoming scientific publication, but still enough to give us a hint about their progress. I find his presentation an excellent example of communicating research to the general public.

Pamela Gray, interannual terrestrial oscillations are not “noise”, nor are they independent of changes in solar activity. The misconceptions in your comment (May 15, 2011 at 7:51 am) perfectly exemplify the primary bottleneck in our discussions of climate at WUWT.

keith at hastings uk says:
May 14, 2011 at 11:51 am
I seem to recall . . .
This paper (Figure 9; page 1.23) has a diagram:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/338170/svensmark-2007cosmoclimatology

So Leif do you believe in the earth as a giant cooking pot theory and that cosmic rays (or vice versa the aa index) don’t have to keep increasing (or decreasing) for temperatures to decline? I am a cooking expert in developing countries and think there could be some profound simplicity to the earths temperature trends For example see El -borie and Al-thoyaib 2006
http://www.academicjournals.org/ijps/abstracts/abstracts/abstrats2006/Oct/El-Borie%20and%20Al-Thoyaib.htm
To me this data roughly indicates (with a lag) that if the earth is at a global temperature mean of:
-0.2: a solar wind above an aa index of 10 slowly warms it and below 10 cools it;
0.0: a solar wind above an aa index of 15 slowly warms it and below 15 cools it
0.2: a solar wind above an aa index of 18 slowly warms it and below 18 cools it
if the earth reaches the corresponding aa index and temperature stabilizes it doesn’t appreciably change from those values unless the aa index moves appreciably.
regards
roger samson

beng,
“I’m even a fan of the idea that “wobble” in and out of the galactic plane, might increase and decrease cosmic and account for periodic ice ages.
****
The ice-age periodicity follows the Milankovitch changes almost exactly. That leaves little room for significant galactic-plane crossing effects, at least at the magnitude of ice-age changes.”
I believe what is being proposed are ice epochs which have come and gone over time scales of hundreds of millions of years, rather than the periodicity of the glacial/interglacial cycles within an existing ice epoch, which as you point out, follows the Milankovitch changes. This corresponds to the roughly 250 my cycle of the solar orbit around the galaxy.

Leif Svalgaard says:
May 15, 2011 at 8:42 am
What I have a problem with is when people say that Kirkby communicating research equates to telling us the result: “would he show the graphs if the results are not positive?” If so, who needs publication
So if your problem is that people misinterpret what Kirkby says I’m with you 100%. People tend to misinterpret most everything and research results are regularly overstated. We shouldn’t blame Kirkby for that.

Lief says:
“The modulation of the Galactic Cosmic Rays is only a few percent and does not significantly present a health hazard. The dangerous cosmic rays [which we today don’t call cosmic rays anymore, but ‘Solar Energetic Particles’] do not come from the Galaxy, but from the Sun.”
I say:
Galactic cosmic rays (GCR) are accelerated in the blast waves of supernova remnants. So, Leif, how are the GCR being sourced from our sun? Is the energy of solar radiation equivalent to GCR? Here is a picture of the gamma ray all-sky survey, courtesy of Dr. Carl Fichtel and the EGRET Instrument Science Team: http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/gamma.html
“In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19 percent beyond anything we’ve seen in the past 50 years,” said Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. “The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions.” Looks like a health problem and is very significant.
What is your motivation to focus of your comments on whether something is published today or tomorrow? The point of the research is easily obtained on the internet. Individuals who are truly interested in the science of GCR and the impact of cloud formation relative global climate as revealed by Svensmark will do their own discovery through whatever sources are available.

Leif,
Le Mouel, Blanter, Shnirman, & Courtillot (2010) made a simple OBSERVATION.
There is no way to defeat that observation, short of vandalizing LOD data.

Pamela Gray, there appears to have been a misunderstanding. Your initial comment was about ENSO-timescale (i.e. interannual); you will note “interannual” in my reply. I acknowledge that you do not have access to the complex analyses that lead me to assert confidently that interannual terrestrial oscillations are not independent of solar variations (e.g. interannual [not to be confused with decadal] rate of change of solar wind speed). I will be happy to share a simplified version of the findings if WUWT will oblige. I know there will be misunderstandings – serious ones. This does not matter. What matters is that any capable few investigators start working on the problem. There are more questions than answers and careful exploration is prerequisite to sensible abstraction. The mainstream has not conducted sufficiently careful data exploration (which should be confused with neither physics nor statistical inference in these multidisciplinary endeavors). Regards.

Re: G. Karst May 15, 2011 at 11:47 am
Kirkby CLEARLY & CONFIDENTLY announced SOME of his results at SFU recently. (See the video to which I linked above. You will see NO DOUBT.)

Yessir, Misser Paul. Don want no complicated stuff. Kain’t unnerstan it. I’s jes a country hic.

Leif Svalgaard May 15, 2011 at 1:26 pm
regarding Le Mouel, Blanter, Shnirman, & Courtillot (2010):
“no, they claim a correlation between OBSERVED LOD and vandalized cosmic ray data.”
The correlation observed is NOT with LOD. You continue to either misrepresent &/or misunderstand their observation. Absolutely unacceptable Leif; the community needs more from you.

****
Vince Causey says:
May 15, 2011 at 10:14 am
I believe what is being proposed are ice epochs which have come and gone over time scales of hundreds of millions of years, rather than the periodicity of the glacial/interglacial cycles within an existing ice epoch, which as you point out, follows the Milankovitch changes. This corresponds to the roughly 250 my cycle of the solar orbit around the galaxy.
****
OK, but isn’t the argument that passing into the plane exposes the earth to increased cosmic rays (and more cloudiness) due to the proximity of closer CR sources (like supernova remnants)? We’re in an ice-age right now, and we’re not (relatively speaking) in the galactic plane. The similar argument for ice-ages caused by passing thru galactic spiral arms can also be questioned — we’re out of an arm now, but experiencing an ice-age.

Leif, at 99% pure junk, you have no compulsion to use the internet to back up your statements. What you say?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/16/preliminary-results-for-the-cern-cloud-cosmic-ray-experiment/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/16/preliminary-results-for-the-cern-cloud-cosmic-ray-experiment/
http://www.leif.org/EOS/JA074i016p04157.pdf
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum/
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/cosmic_rays.html
http://www.leif.org/research/thule-cosmic-rays.png
http://www.puk.ac.za/opencms/export/PUK/html/fakulteite/natuur/nm_data/data/SRU_Graph.jpg
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP06/Event/52074
http://www.leif.org/research/ast10867.pdf

Paul Vaughan:
“Kirkby CLEARLY & CONFIDENTLY announced SOME of his results at SFU recently. (See the video to which I linked above. You will see NO DOUBT.)”
Yes, very exciting, very interesting, very convincing presentation… however… what does this have to do with healthy skeptical argument?? At this early stage, it is even more important to examine all counter arguments before forming opinion regarding conclusions. But gosh-darn, it IS high on the goosebump scale. I look forward to reading ALL arguments, when the paper is published and Kirkby’s confidence/data is community tested. GK

Leif Svalgaard says:
May 15, 2011 at 9:25 pm
…
Try to google ‘evolution is wrong’, you’ll get about 78,800,000 results. More than 99% of those are junk. Now, if only 1% is NOT junk, that still leaves millions of pages with good information. The problem is to know which is which.

Remedial Math:
1% of 78 million = <1 million, not "millions".

@Mtk..
Not that knowledgable bout the Solar cosmic rays/energetic particles, ACR anomalous cosmic rays, GCR galactic cosmic rays or IGCR Intergalactic cosmic rays.
GCR TeV and ACR MeV..population..good luck..lot of it there though..are they H or He or some other growing population..endless..
My question for this week, the distrubution role, that the Van Allen Cosmic Raydiation belts play..
What role do the ACRs have on the GCR within the belt..those and ICWs coupled with all that solar stuff..
Cosmic Rays hit spaceage high. Van Allen Cosmic Radiation Belts expand and Earth’s atmosphere lowers..
I guess the Canandian ORBITAL and NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes RBSP, are late..
but better late than never..
Vuks I thought GCR/ACR entry was most often in the weaker areas of Earth’s magnetic field..maybe thats one of my clues this weeks lesson always subject to a rapid change..
Almost forgot Vuks..Is this something you might have interest..
Resonance zones for electron interaction with plasma waves in the Earth’s dipole magnetosphere. II. Evaluation for oblique chorus, hiss, electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves, and magnetosonic waves
Binbin Ni1 and Danny Summers2
Resonance zones in the Earth’s dipole magnetosphere are determined for electron cyclotron resonance with obliquely propagating very-low-frequency chorus, extremely-low-frequency hiss, electromagnetic ion cyclotron, and magnetosonic waves. The resonance zones, which are presented in (L,λ) space, where L is magnetic shell and λ is magnetic latitude, depend on the assumed particle density distributions inside and outside the plasmasphere, the specified wave bands, and the electron kinetic energy. This work is a companion paper of Ni and Summers [Phys. Plasmas 17, 042902 (2010)] , which considers strictly field-aligned wave propagation. Inclusion of the wave normal angle parameter adds an extra degree of freedom to the calculations, and emphasizes the need for global observational data on the wave spectral properties. Comparison of resonance zones with global wave distributions is a useful aid in the modeling of radiation belt electron dynamics. Resonance zones are also of potential use in the interpretation of observational data on particles and waves at given points in space.
http://pop.aip.org/resource/1/phpaen/v17/i4/p042903_s1?isAuthorized=no
Leif, thanks for the link again to that 69 Schatten & Wilcox paper. Pperhaps it is now time to read it.
Cosmic Rays hit spaceage high. Van Allen Cosmic Radiation Belts expand and Earth’s atmosphere lowers..
I guess the Canandian ORBITAL and NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes RBSP, are late..
but better late than never..

The CLOUD results just might make you worry a little bit about what may happen (or, may start happening) in 2012.
Forget all the hype about instantaneous cataclysm. Long term subtle main effects are what cause real pain.

I’m not so sure why anyone thinks it’s been an inordinate amount of time for CLOUD’s first results to be published. The CLOUD chamber arrived at CERN less than two years ago as can be seen in this post on Lubos Motl’s blog:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/06/cern-cloud-on-cloud-number-nine.html
Meanwhile, the results of another experiment (in which Svensmark has been involved), have been published:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047036.shtml
It looks to me like things are moving along fine.

Truly exciting research. Very interesting universe we live in. The irony is that the same ‘green’ folk who are living in the little CO2 box are also at least superficially aware of how ecosystems work yet choose not to see our planet as part of the solar system and impacted by it. It is almost classic doublethink.
Look forward to seeing the results.
In terms of religious potential, sun worship has CO2

GN Mode/”want wont to attach to” /GN Mode
And about 80% of household dust is floating skin flakes. So that contribution is very personal!

1992 solar min. dominate species of Cosmic Rays were Anomalous Cosmic Rays..
Anomalous cosmic rays are singly charged..what does this do to the global electric potential..like does it stall weather systems..like we have been seeing lately..does it prevent the jetstream from moving north..does it create those humpy looking jetstreams??
..SAMPEX — major discoveries published in refereed journals
Anomalous Cosmic Rays
Discovery of the precise location of trapped anomalous cosmic rays in the magnetosphere.
Measurement of the elemental composition of trapped ACR, including C, N, 0, and Ne.
“Early” return of the anomalous cosmic ray component in the 1992 solar minimum period, well before the relativistic ions. LI>Discovery that trapped anomalous cosmic rays are the dominant component of high energy (>10 MeV/nuc) ions heavier than He in the magnetosphere.
.. Magnetospheric Physics
Discovery that magnetospheric electrons are globally accelerated in association with the impact of high speed solar wind streams.
.. SAMPEX–major discoveries reported at scientific meetings but not yet published in refereed journals
.. Anomalous Cosmic Rays
Determination that ACR nitrogen, oxygen, and neon are singly charged.
Determination that the upper limit of ACR O2+ is less than 10% of the total ACR oxygen, thus limiting acceleration time scales in the heliosphere.
Discovery that the interplanetary spectrum of anomalous oxygen extends to at least 100 MeV/nucleon, implying that the ACR acceleration mechanism (termination shock?) accelerates particles to at least 1.6 GeV..
http://sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov/smex/sampex/mission/
Time-variability in the Interstellar Boundary Conditions
of the Heliosphere: Effect of the Solar Journey on the
Galactic Cosmic Ray Flux at Earth
Priscilla C. Frisch • Hans-Reinhard Mueller
rev. 3 Feb. 2011
“””The interpretation of the geological record of cosmogenic isotopes relies on accurate
models of the cosmic ray spectra. One factor that is not included in
the interpretation of the geological record of cosmogenic isotopes is that the cosmic ray
spectrum incident on the Earth consists of two components that behave differently as
the Sun travels through space. Galactic cosmic rays dominate at high energies, > 500
MeV, and are subject to heliospheric modulation as the Sun travels through space.
However a second cosmic ray component at lower energies is formed inside of the
heliopause from interstellar neutrals that penetrate and are ionized inside of the heliosphere,
forming pickup ions. These are subsequently accelerated to form lower-energy
anomalous cosmic rays (ACRs) with a composition derived from neutral interstellar
atoms in the CISM (Fisk et al. 1974).
The local interstellar cosmic ray spectrum that
creates the geological radio-isotope record is thus composed of two components that
vary differently over time and space, the higher energy galactic cosmic rays (GCRs)
that are modulated by a variable heliosphere, and the ACRs that also depend on the
density and fractional ionization of the surrounding interstellar cloud.
In this paper we present the overall picture of the ISM characteristics that result
from the motion of the Sun and interstellar clouds through space. Observations of interstellar
absorption lines towards nearest stars show that spatial variations in velocity,
temperature, and ionization of the circumheliospheric ISM create temporal variations
in the heliosphere boundary conditions. These then cause temporal variations in the
spectrum and fluxes of cosmic rays at Earth. We also draw possible connections between
interstellar cloud transitions and the geological radio isotope record.”””

Leif Svalgaard,
Regarding the releasedate, I mailed CERN last year and they said the experiment had been conducted and that it had revealed “interesting results” and the data were being processed. Results were expected “later that year”.
Now…. Almost a year later, I’m still waiting… The delay of the report itself does not bother me too much, but I kinda fear it will be adjusted to the political consensus and “political correctness”, but what I’ve seen from these two, Jasper Kirkby and Henrik Svensmark, is that they do not seem to stray too far away from wthat they believe in.