From an Aarhus University press release:
Scientists at Aarhus University (AU) and the National Space Institute (DTU Space) show that particles from space create cloud cover
New input to the United Nations climate model: Ulrik Ingerslev Uggerhøj, Physics and Astronomy, AU, along with others including Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen and Martin Bødker Enghoff, DTU Space, have directly demonstrated in a new experiment that cosmic radiation can create small floating particles – so-called aerosols – in the atmosphere. By doing so, they substantiate the connection between the Sun’s magnetic activity and the Earth’s climate.
With the new results just published in the recognised journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists have succeeded for the first time in directly observing that the electrically charged particles coming from space and hitting the atmosphere at high speed contribute to creating the aerosols that are the prerequisites for cloud formation.
With the researchers’ new knowledge, it is now clear that here is a correlation between the Sun’s varying activity and the formation of aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere. Initially, the researchers have demonstrated that there is a correlation, and they will therefore now carry out systematic measurements and modellings to determine how important it is to the climate. The new studies will be made at DTU Space in Copenhagen, with support that includes a new grant of DKK 2 million (approximately EUR 270,000) from the Danish National Research Councils.
Experiment in a climate chamber
Simply by comparing situations in the climate chamber with and without electron radiation, the researchers can directly see that increased radiation leads to more aerosols.
In the atmosphere, these aerosols grow into actual cloud nuclei in the course of hours or days, and water vapour concentrates on these, thus forming the small droplets the clouds consist of.
Background
Based on the correlation between the level of activity of the Sun and the global temperature of the Earth, the Danish climate researcher Henrik Svensmark proposed a controversial theory in the late 1990s: that there could be a correlation between the intensity of the cosmic radiation that hits the Earth – and which is affected by the activity of the Sun – and the number of clouds formed.
With the experiment in Aarhus, the research group has now taken one step closer to being able to demonstrate this relationship. There is much to indicate that climate models must hereby take cosmic radiation into consideration. In doing so, the new results provide hope for better climate models that can describe the Earth’s temperature and climate more accurately.
Comments from three of the scientists behind the experiment:
Senior Scientist Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, DTU Space, says:
“Aarhus University has outstanding facilities that enable us for the first time to carry out a very direct test of the theory on cosmic particles causing droplet formation in the atmosphere.”
Scientist Martin Bødker Enghoff, DTU Space, adds:
“Before we can say how great the effect is, it’s clear that our results must be verified – just as more measurements and model computations need to be made. However, we can already reveal with no doubt whatsoever that there is an effect.”
“It’s a pleasure to see these results in climate research being achieved at our accelerator. Actually, it’s only possible to do corresponding research at CERN – the joint European research centre,” says Associate Professor Ulrik Uggerhøj, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University.
Facts about the experiment
A chamber contains air with precisely balanced amounts of sulphur dioxide, ozone and water vapour irradiated with electrons. Sunlight is a necessary ingredient for aerosol formation in the natural atmosphere, and it is imitated in the climate chamber by a lamp that emits ultraviolet light. Natural atmospheric processes such as the formation of sulphuric acid are thus imitated, and these are an important ingredient in the aerosols. When electrons from the accelerator irradiate the air mixture, an increase takes place in the production of aerosols, which act as nuclei for the production of cloud droplets. In previous SKY experiments conducted by DTU Space in Copenhagen, cosmic radiation was simulated by gamma radiation, and the scientists saw here that the gamma rays could also form aerosols. In the new experiment with the energy-rich electrons from the ASTRID accelerator, there is much more resemblance to the cosmic rays that occur in nature.
Competitors hot on their heels
A major international research group at the European Particle Research Centre (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, has worked for several years on demonstrating the correlation that the Danish researchers have found, and the group has announced that its members are also on the way with their first extensive results. Compared with the CERN project, the Danish scientists have an extremely modest budget, but when it comes to producing particles resembling cosmic ones, the facilities at Aarhus University are equal to the most advanced facilities in the world.
Associate Professor Ulrik Ingerslev Uggerhøj goes into more detail in the video interview below (in Danish only)
Here’s the abstract
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L09805, 4 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2011GL047036
Aerosol nucleation induced by a high energy particle beam
- Cosmic rays increase nucleation rate
- A particle beam is not needed for experiments
- Ions are important for atmospheric nucleation rate
Martin B. Enghoff
National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen
National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
Ulrik I. Uggerhøj
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
Sean M. Paling
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
Henrik Svensmark
National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
We have studied sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation in an atmospheric pressure reaction chamber using a 580 MeV electron beam to ionize the volume of the reaction chamber. We find a clear contribution from ion-induced nucleation and consider this to be the first unambiguous observation of the ion-effect on aerosol nucleation using a particle beam under conditions that resemble the Earth’s atmosphere. By comparison with ionization using a gamma source we further show that the nature of the ionizing particles is not important for the ion-induced component of the nucleation. This implies that inexpensive ionization sources – as opposed to expensive accelerator beams – can be used for investigations of ion-induced nucleation.
Received 8 February 2011; accepted 31 March 2011; published 12 May 2011.
Citation: Enghoff, M. B., J. O. P. Pedersen, U. I. Uggerhøj, S. M. Paling, and H. Svensmark (2011), Aerosol nucleation induced by a high energy particle beam, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L09805, doi:10.1029/2011GL047036.
Count down 4 3 2 1 …. They’re all funded by Big Oil…
James Hansen, a globally famous (notorious?) science denier, will not like this: real scientists doing real experiments on real atmosphere , investigating real climatic effects.
Horrible!
They might find real facts!
Ross Brisbane.
I thought this was a robust science website. I’m sorry to learn otherwise. I presume you mean websites which don’t challenge your views.
Can someone comment on cold downdrafts and rain from large thunderstorms and how this makes for additional surface cooling.
The Chilling Stars, reading this book when it was first published was a royal treat. Rarely does one get to witness science history of this significance, our weather and climate tied to the cosmos, a revolutionary theory indeed.
Makes the whole man made CO2 political hypothesis look like anti-science.
Gavin Schmitt has already spoken in a very conclusive way on cosmic rays.
“There is no connection between global warming and cosmic rays. That’s because there’s no trend in cosmic rays. It’s completely bogus,”
You can’t discount relativistic effects in calculating the ability of particles to penetrate the atmosphere. See http://cosmic.lbl.gov/SKliewer/Cosmic_Rays/Muons.htm
Now can we expect the warmistas to start beaming x-rays upward to make clouds? And how much fossil fuel will we burn to accomplish that?
DJ, we have a pretty good idea:
http://sciencebits.com/calorimeter
JKrob,
You would also probably want to get a base-line image of the earths average aerosol cover, determine a threshold (a level of optical depth) and subtract out areas where aerosol concentrations are high and therefore won’t be affected by CRF. You would want to just look at areas that normally have low amounts of aerosols. Then, you want to look a those areas albedos.
Hah! The plot… er, cloud thickens! Independent experiments converging towards common support of the Svensmark hypothesis.
Details to follow, film at eleven… Stay tuned for news!
You missed a “[sic]”: “Earth would loose [sic] all its water”. Rhymes with “goose”.
Use “lose”!
HankHenry says:
May 17, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Gavin Scmitt never looked at the output of the Neutron Monitors. The counts all agree, and they are not always tied to the SSN, 10.7cm or the TSI. They stood out during the 70’s cooling period, and they might just do that again.
Maybe Hansen is on to something with his lingering Pinatubo aerosol thesis. Could the cosmic ray generated so2 based aerosols end up in the stratosphere without becoming condensation nuclei?
In Jasper Kirkby’s recent SFU IRMACS presentation, he discusses aerosols around time-index 35:40 to 35:50. He contrasts continental aerosols with Southern Ocean wind/salt aerosols. If anyone can point to the article from which he got the graph’s right panel, please do. It was immediately apparent that he was drawing attention to a key missing link.
There is much to indicate that climate models must hereby take cosmic radiation into consideration.
I can hear the gnashing of teeth in the ivory towers of East Anglia University, NASA Goddard Institute etc.!
Now lets hear you all try to pronounce Ulrik Ingerslev Uggerhøj, and say it three times quickly.
(I can, of course.)
HankHenry says:
May 17, 2011 at 8:23 pm
Gavin Schmitt has already spoken in a very conclusive way on cosmic rays.
“There is no connection between global warming and cosmic rays. That’s because there’s no trend in cosmic rays. It’s completely bogus,”
==========================
OOOOH AHHHH “Gavin Schmitt [SIC] has spoken.”
Big deal. Inconsequential. Nobody cares.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
William says:
May 17, 2011 at 6:14 pm
If the Sun is so quiet, why is the Earth ringing? A comparison of two solar minimum intervals. Observations from the recent Whole Heliosphere Interval (WHI) solar minimum campaign are compared to last cycle’s Whole Sun Month (WSM) to demonstrate …
The WHI was not even at solar minimum. And the Earth rings at every solar minimum: http://www.leif.org/research/Historical%20Solar%20Cycle%20Context.pdf
Slide 18 shows that the solar wind has a high-speed stream leading up to every minimum.
Keith Minto says:
May 17, 2011 at 7:04 pm
My understanding of Svensmark’s theory is that Gamma rays cause lower level cloud formation.
How many times is it necessary to say that Cosmic Rays and Gamma Rays are not the same things.
——
The study shows that an electron beam can increase aerosol nucleation, and that it doesn’t matter what the ionizing agent is: electrons, gamma rays, perhaps even cosmic rays, or whatever. Ions lead to nucleation. Wilson got the Nobel Prize in 1927 for showing this. The study does not show that this has anything to do with solar activity. To show this, one has to show that the nucleation is efficient enough and that the climate has varied the same way as solar activity. And those two issues are still the stumbling blocks.
With the new results just published in the recognised journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists have succeeded for the first time in directly observing that the electrically charged particles coming from space and hitting the atmosphere at high speed contribute to creating the aerosols that are the prerequisites for cloud formation.
I should have been more precise: the study shows that gamma rays are as good at electron beams: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL047036.pdf
“[14] An important result from this work is (as seen from Figure 1) that nucleation induced with the ionization from the gamma source experiments are indistinguishable from those using the electron beam. Compared to the 580 MeV electrons the gamma rays have rather low energies and the electrons emitted through Compton scattering will ionize very locally, whereas the 580 MeV electrons have a mean energy loss rate close to the minimum (minimum ionizing) and will ionize along their path”\
The paper does NOT show that cosmic rays are involved. Nowhere in the paper [except in some references] are cosmic rays even mentioned.
REPLY: This is quite possibly the strongest argument I’ve seen that the science paper should be included with press releases, because those who write the press releases often don’t explain it in the same way the paper does. – Anthony
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 17, 2011 at 10:09 pm
You are correct, my error in haste.
First they just need to test their theory with a climate model – it would need to be one that accounts for the long equilibrium times of the deep ocean that can correctly represent cloud behavior – seems they are about to hit a wall!
Something wrong with the “Enlarge” link for the graph. Does nothing in Opera or Firefox.
😕
‘have directly demonstrated in a new experiment that cosmic radiation can create small floating particles – so-called aerosols – in the atmosphere. By doing so, they substantiate the connection between the Sun’s magnetic activity and the Earth’s climate.’
The principle was more or less accepted as realistic possibility for some time now. The problem with this hypothesis (and eventually theory) is quantity over quality, i.e. is number of such particles large enough to make any difference, particularly in the Equatorial areas, where GCR are deflected towards the magnetic poles. Contribution of albedo change at the poles for two good reasons (angle of incidence and area) is significantly lower.
If there is any magnetic effect on cloud formation and albedo than it is the:
‘Solar activity – geomagnetic storms – equatorial electro-jet- troposphere’
(tenuous) relationship which needs further investigation:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC20.htm
Same here, but click the graph to isolate, then Ctrl with + to enlarge in FF.
REPLY: Nothing wrong. That’s the AGU, graph is only 350 pix wide, which is all they provided, taking the link out so people don’t waste time. – Anthony
RoHa says:
May 17, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Now lets hear you all try to pronounce Ulrik Ingerslev Uggerhøj, and say it three times quickly.
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I tried it. But I think it sounded like what DSK said to that maid in the hotel room.