This new paper shows what appears to be a link between Forbush descreases and terrestrial temperature change shortly afterwards. It is a short time scale demonstration of what Svensmark is positing happens on a longer climate appropriate time scale as the solar magnetic field changes with long periods. I’ve covered the topic of Forbush decreases before, and thus I’ll draw on that for a refresher.
A Forbush decrease is a rapid decrease in the observed galactic cosmic ray intensity following a coronal mass ejection (CME). It occurs due to the magnetic field of the plasma solar wind sweeping some of the galactic cosmic rays away from Earth.
Well we have that going on in a dramatic way right now [Feb 19th, 2011], it’s been going on since late yesterday. See the Oulu neutron monitor (a proxy for cosmic rays) graph:
You can monitor it live on the WUWT solar page here.
Nigel Calder reports of a new peer reviewed paper from the Institute of Physics in Belgrade, Serbia which demonstrates a link between such Forbush events and the increase in the diurnal temperature range averaged across 184 stations in Europe. It is quite compelling to read.
Europe: diurnal temperatures after Forbush decreases
A. Dragić, I. Aničin, R. Banjanac, V. Udovičić, D. Joković´, D. Maletić and J. Puzović, “Forbush decreases – clouds relation in the neutron monitor era”, Astrophysics and Space Sciences Transactions, 7, 315–318, 2011.
It was published on 31 August and the full text is available here http://www.astrophys-space-sci-trans.net/7/315/2011/astra-7-315-2011.pdf It’s typical of the pathetic state of science reporting that I still seem to have the story to myself ten days later.
The focus was on the “natural experiments” in which big puffs of gas from the Sun block some of the cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy towards the Earth. The resulting falls in cosmic ray influx, called Forbush decreases, last for a few days. The game is to look for observable reductions in cloudiness in the aftermath of these events. The results are most clearly favourable to the Svensmark hypothesis for the Forbush decreases with the largest percentage reductions in cosmic rays. Scientists keen to falsify the hypothesis have only to mix in some of the weaker events for the untidiness of the world’s weather to “hide the decline”.
The Serbs avoid that blunder by picking out the strongest Forbush decreases. And by using the simple, reliable and long-provided weather-station measurements of temperature by night and day, they avoid technical, interpretive and data-availability problems that surround more direct observations of clouds and their detailed properties. The temperatures come from 184 stations scattered all across Europe (actually, so I notice, from Greenland to Siberia). A compilation by the Mount Washington Observatory that spans four decades, from 1954 to 1995, supplies the catalogue of Forbush decreases.
The prime results are seen here in Dragić et al.‘s Figure 5. The graphs show the increase in the diurnal temperature range averaged across the continent in the days following the onset of cosmic ray decreases (day 0 on the horizontal scales). The upper panel is the result for 22 Forbush events in the range 7−10%, with a peak at roughly +0.35 oC in the diurnal temperature range. The lower panel is for 13 events greater than 10%. The peak goes to +0.6 oC and the influence lasts longer. It’s very satisfactory for the Svensmark hypothesis that the effect increases like this, with greater reductions in the cosmic rays. The results become hard (impossible?) to explain by any mechanism except an influence of cosmic rays on cloud formation.
To be candid, these results are much better than I’d have expected for observations from a densely populated continent with complex weather patterns, where air pollution and effects of vegetation confuse the picture of available cloud condensation nuclei. Svensmark’s team has emphasised the observable effects over the oceans. Now the approach taken by the Belgrade team opens the door to similar investigations in other continents. Let a march around the world’s land masses begin!
Physicist Luboš Motl also writes about the new paper:
What have they found? If they take all Forbush decreases, the effect is insignificant. However, if they compute the average of the largest Forbush decreases, they find a substantial increase of the day-night temperature difference by as much as a Fahrenheit degree around 3 days after the event [reference to Figure 5 above].
…
A higher day-night temperature difference indicates that the number of clouds is smaller – because clouds cool the days but heat up the nights a little bit, and thus reduce the temperature difference – which is in agreement with the cosmoclimatological expectation: the Forbush decreases makes the galactic cosmic rays disappear for some time (because of some massive, temporarily elevated activity of the Sun).
I think it’s both simple and clever to look at the day-night differences because the overall noise in the temperature is suppressed while the signal caused by the clouds is kept. Just to be sure, it’s obvious that clouds do reduce the day-time differences but that doesn’t mean that they preserve the day-night average. At typical places, they cool the days more than they heat up the nights.
For me, this paper begs replication and confirmation. The problem they have with the European data set is that it is noisy which required the averaging. Here in the USA though, there’s a dataset that may work even better, and that’s from the recently completed U.S. Climate Reference Network operated by the National Climatic Data Center. While that network is too new to be useful yet for long term climate studies, the care that was taken for station siting placement, accuracy of sensors, data resolution, and quality control make it a perfect candidate for use in replication of this effect.
These stations were designed with climate science in mind. Three independent measurements of temperature and precipitation are made at each station, insuring continuity of record and maintenance of well-calibrated and highly accurate observations. The stations are placed in pristine environments expected to be free of development for many decades. Stations are monitored and maintained to high standards, and are calibrated on an annual basis.
The data is of high quality, so any new study looking for this effect may not even need to do the DTR averaging done by Dragić et al. to see the effect if it is real.
The logged USCRN data is now available online here http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/observations.htm The February Forbush decrease event I highlighted at the beginning of this post might make a good starting point.
I see a paper on this in the near future, maybe even in Dessler record time.
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I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that solar wind disturbances arrive at the Earth between 2-4 days after they leave the Sun – ie. do the original solar disturbances also have a direct/immediate electromagnetic effect on the Earth’s atmosphere?
Steven Mosher says:
September 11, 2011 at 1:32 pm
the GCR hypothesis is complementary to AGW, not orthognal
If the GCR hypothesis is correct, AGW is pretty much superfluous to an explanation for late C20th warming. GCR hypothesis explains increased cloudiness since 2000. I don’t think the AGW hypothesis does too well there.
Steven Mosher says:
September 11, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Seriously. Have you looked at the stations in question and the amount of irrigation done in the area?
No. I’ve read some articles by people who have though.
Can we expect to see this in the urban dicxtionary?
Desslered; to be desslered: Rushed through in an inordinately quick time. Often for nefarious purposes. Hurried along; to be rushed; to be hurried.
e.g. “I hope my application is desslered through”. “Stop desslering me, I’m moving as quickly as I can. The legislation was desslered through the senate.
Steven Mosher says:
September 11, 2011 at 1:41 pm
………..
Hi Mosher
Perhaps you are hearing echo of the voice in wilderness.
Most of GCR end up in polar, while only the strongest get through in the equatorial regions. If Svensmark is correct that the CR increase cloudiness, than largest effect will be at poles. Since GMF is weakest when solar is strongest (because the Arctic’s and solar magnetic fields have a negative correlation)
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC9.htm
as well as the Earth’s field is considerably stronger then heliospheric, than increase in cloudiness will be higher when the GMF is weaker, as it is case now, exactly opposite to what Svensmark suggests.
Increased albedo in the arctic autumn, winter and spring, has no effect (low or no insolation +high albedo from ice and snow), but higher cloudiness will act as a ‘reflecting blanket’ keeping arctic warmer and shortening the sea ice formation season.
In the summer’s daytime, albedo will reduce Arctic warming, but only in the areas which are not covered with ice or snow.
Result: weaker GMF- more cloud- warmer polar circle region; hence good correlation between changes in the Earth’s magnetic field and global temperature
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
but this is a reverse of the Svensmark’s albedo hypothesy
Speculative, but possible if CR indeed increase the cloud formation to any degree, but that is not a certainty..
Leif S
You were quite skeptic to Svensmarks Forbush paper in 2009. I reread the thread today:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/04/a-link-between-the-sun-cosmic-rays-aerosols-and-liquid-water-clouds-appears-to-exist-on-a-global-scale/
Your main criticisms were that Svensmark used too few Forbush Decreases (FD) and that a medium FD should also be visible in the data. It seems that those two issues have been resolved by Dragic et al. They use 22 medium level FDs and 13 stronger FDs (figure 5), both with significant response on Diurnal Temperature Range.
The thing you find, apparently, most intriguing in this paper is a downward spike in the upper panel of fig 5. Well that down spike sure is interesting, but what about looking a little further to the right in that same figure? What about those two big, upward, bumps? Do they address, in your opinion, any of those issues you had with Svensmarks Forbush paper?
Yesterday afternoon, sitting in the last upper seat in the stadium, I could see clouds: high level almost stationary, and low level cloud clumps moving slowly casting us in sunlight and then overcast and then sunlight again. I could see for miles this phenomenon, maybe 20 miles or so (flat earth). I wondered, ” how can one model; ie use mathematics & physics principles to incorporate the warming clouds- high level, and low level cooling clouds I was seeing?” There were clouds to adsorb surface long wave radiation, but breaks between low clouds to radiate (through a window?) to space; everything coming and going. Solar short waves were being reflected and absorbed. With pencil and paper I was unable to come up with a model for what I was observing. Anyone with an idea? It was a remarkably beautiful day.
Steve Mosher” Yes, the same radiative physics which explains why cloudy nights are warmer ( back scatter)
also predicts that increased C02 warms the planet.
Which is why the GCR hypothesis is complementary to AGW, not orthognal”
That all depends if the extra clouds cause overall warming or cooling!
Leif: The number of cases is still very small [22 and 13]. Of interest is that [upper panel of Figure 5] that there is a statistically significant response [3 sigma according to the error bar], three days before the FD. Perhaps we can use the temperature in Europe to forecast FDs…
Leaving out your last sentence there, Leif, I wonder if there really is have something that needs to be looked at. Thanks. Something emitted from the Sun BEFORE a Forbush event???
Tallbloke? Vuk? Now Leif’s nailed some evidence, can we have your wild imaginations brainstorming?
Hi Lucy,
Brian Tinsley might have a few ideas. Basically, when the Sun erupts, stuff changes at Earth distance ~8 minutes later, with the heavy stuff arriving a few days later.
Peter Ward says:
September 11, 2011 at 9:18 am
So this is to do with night-time temperature changes as a result of cloud cover changes? That’s interesting, as I seem to recall that some (most?) of the annual average temperature increases of the last 50 years are more to do with increasing the minimum temps than increasing maximum ones. Am I right, and if so is it relevant here?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
tallbloke says:
September 11, 2011 at 11:18 am
I think this is probably partly due to ‘rural stations’ getting a countryside UHI effect from modern irrigation practices. The increases humidity elevates night time minimum temperatures.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This is not just one thing, it is multiple things, but let’s not miss the very basic physics. For any given temperature at equilibrium there must be radiative balance in which the total energy flux (P) in watts/m2 can be calculated for any temperature (T) where T is in degrees Kelvin as:
P=(5.67 times 10 to the power of -8) times (T raised to the power of 4)
or
P=5.67*10^-8*T^4
If one considers (for example) a day time high of say 30C (303 K) and a night time low of 15C (278 K) how many watts of “forcing would it take to raise the temperature one degree C? Answer:
From 30C to 31C would require an additional 6.34 watts/m2
From 15C to 16C would require an additional 5.44 watts/m2
In other words, since it takes 0.9 watts/m2 MORE “forcing” to raise the day time high one degree than it does the night time low, for any forcing that is uniform, night time lows SHOULD rise more than day time highs. By extension:
Winters should warm more than summers.
High latitudes (arctic, antarctic) should warm more than tropics.
NASA/GISS, HadCrut, etc all show that this is in fact what has happened over the last 150 years or so. While the global “average” has gone up about one degree, the tropics have warmed very little, and so have summers. Most of the warming is at night time lows, in winter, at high latitudes. Which is [why] this whole cockamamee debate should NEVER have gotten traction in the FIRST place!
Add to that the fact that CO2 is LOGARITHMIC!!!! If we get a supposed 3.7 watts/m3 from CO2 doubling (the number the IPCC uses) then, to squeeze one more single degree out of CO2, we would have to increase from our current 400 PPM to 800 PPM. It took almost ONE HUNDRED YEARS of burning oil as fast as we could to get from 280 PPM to 400 PPM. If we DOUBLE…no, let’s say we TRIPLE our consumption of fossil fuels… it would take us another THREE HUNDRED YEARS to get JUST ONE MORE DEGREE.
And that “one degree” would be an average… in the tropics almost nothing, in the summer almost nothing, and day time highs, almost nothing.
I propose a survey of all polar bears to ask this question:
If when you are hibernating it drops to -32C at night instead of -40C, but during the summer the hottest days hit +15.5 degrees instead of 15 degrees, would you give a SH*T? We could ask all the tigers in the jungles if the average temperature goes from 30 degrees to 30.1 degrees if they give a SH*T either.
The fact that this debate ever started is shamefull.
Forbush events, as well as high-speed solar wind, may also contribute to weather/climate by changing atmospheric pressure.
Solar Wind Changes Atmospheric Pressure over South Korea
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26989/
“Il-Hyun Cho and buddies at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute in Daejeon, say they have the first evidence that the solar wind can influence the sea-level atmospheric pressure at mid latitudes.
These guys searched through space weather records from 1983 to the present looking for times when the solar wind speed exceeded 800 kilometres per second. That’s a stiff breeze that occurs very rarely, less than 0.1 per cent of the time. They found twelve of these high speed events, nine of which were accompanied by a Forbush decrease..
Cho and co then used records from 76 meteorological stations around South Korea to study how the atmospheric pressure at sea level changed during these events.
Sure enough, they found, on average, a small increase in pressure just after each high speed solar wind event. They reckon a fast solar wind increases the pressure by 2.5 hectoPascals. To put this in context, atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 1000 hPa.”
Mr Mosher is right in one sense when he says (September 11, 2011 at 1:32 pm) “Which is why the GCR hypothesis is complementary to AGW, not orthognal(sic)”
The effects (if the hypothesis is correct) of GCR would work along side the effects of the various components of AGW to “share the load” as it were. In other words what GCR has done, AGW need not have done to produce the fraction of a degree of industrial and post-industrial age warming actually observed.
I remain unconvinced that they are not in reality orthogonal as I have yet to see evidence that the GCR effect would not operate independently of any part of AGW but that is something I am prepared to be proved wrong about.
The kicker here is only that, if the GCR thing turns out to be all it seems, policies to reduce CO2 etc. will be far less useful than some believe (though sadly no less expensive).
Perhaps it would be a good idea to temper the hailing of the Serbian paper as a potentially important item in the climate debate and to give recognition to the Brazilians and Russians who predated the Serbian paper by some 16 years .
The Brazilian / Russian equivalent of the Serbian paper on Forbush Event’s effects on rainfall over the Amazon Rain forest was already done way back in 1995.
Of course in 1995 it was already becoming not at all fashionable or politically correct to go against the then increasingly powerful vested interests of the IPCC / CRU / GISS climate science cabal that were promoting anthropogenic CO2 as the be all and end all cause of the coming CAGW so this paper was unfortunately confined to the climate science trash bin.
Unfortunately the Brazilian / Russian paper is behind the usual springerlink paywall [ GRRRR!! ] so only the abstract is available to the public.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/662166078h432877/
IL NUOVO CIMENTO C
Volume 18, Number 3, 335-341, DOI: 10.1007/BF02508564
Rainfalls during great Forbush decreases
Yu. I. Stozhkov, J. Zullo, I. M. Martin, G. Q. Pellegrino, H. S. Pinto, G. A. Bazilevskaya, P. C. Bezerra, V. S. Makhmutov, N. S. Svirzevsky and A. Turtelli
Abstract
The changes of rainfall values during great Forbush decreases recorded by the low-latitudinal neutron monitor of Huancayo (47 events from 1956 through 1992) were examined. The data on precipitations were taken from the State of São Paulo and from the Amazonian region, Brazil. As a rule, the data from more than 50 meteorological stations were used for each events. The main result is the following: during strong decreases of cosmic-ray flux in the atmosphere (great Forbush decreases) the precipitation value is decreased. The effect of rainfall changes is seen more distinctly if wet seasons are considered.
Lucy Skywalker says:
September 11, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Leif: The number of cases is still very small [22 and 13]. Of interest is that [upper panel of Figure 5] that there is a statistically significant response [3 sigma according to the error bar], three days before the FD. Perhaps we can use the temperature in Europe to forecast FDs…
Leaving out your last sentence there, Leif, I wonder if there really is have something that needs to be looked at. Thanks. Something emitted from the Sun BEFORE a Forbush event???
Tallbloke? Vuk? Now Leif’s nailed some evidence, can we have your wild imaginations brainstorming?
~
A call for wild imaginations..
How about a bump in the HCS from neg. to pos. just before the CME?
Which may have been travelling with a coronal windstream or something.
Steven Mosher says:
September 11, 2011 at 1:32 pm
“Yes, the same radiative physics which explains why cloudy nights are warmer ( back scatter) also predicts that increased C02 warms the planet.”
But not the whole planet, and therein lies one of the biggest problems with the AGW hypothesis. Cloud at night and increases in CO2 can slow the rate of cooling over land. However the oceans have been incorrectly included in the surface area of the planet that is effected by backscattered LWIR. Liquid water which is free to evaporatively cool does not exhibit the same response to LWIR as other materials.
The Dragić et al. Paper shows increased t-min in response to increased cloud cover over land only.
Bengt A says:
September 11, 2011 at 2:56 pm
It seems that those two issues have been resolved by Dragic et al. They use 22 medium level FDs and 13 stronger FDs (figure 5), both with significant response on Diurnal Temperature Range.
Actually not. As most of the signal seemed to be in the 13 strong ones. If you subtract those out of the 22 overall, there is nothing significant left.
What about those two big, upward, bumps? Do they address, in your opinion, any of those issues you had with Svensmarks Forbush paper?
See above.
oops… I meant 288 not 278 K in my math above. But I used the right numbers in calculating the w/m2. Lomg story short, CO2 isn’t significant, never was. the only way it could be is if the rest of the climate system was INCREDIBLY sensitive to changes from CO2… or anything else for that matter.
Which we know it isn’t.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 11, 2011 at 6:14 pm
If you subtract those out of the 22 overall, there is nothing significant left.
Sorry, I overlooked that they were already disjoint. Still, it would be of interest to see the variation for the weaker ones less than 7%. The power of a superposed epoch analysis includes that you can show all cases on the plot, not only the mean. That makes it clear what the spread is. An example is Figure 4 of http://www.leif.org/research/Semiannual-Comment.pdf
Bengt A says:
September 11, 2011 at 2:56 pm
It seems that those two issues have been resolved by Dragic et al. They use 22 medium level FDs and 13 stronger FDs (figure 5), both with significant response on Diurnal Temperature Range.
They also show that FD less that 7% have no effect. This might mean that comic ray variations have no effect except the 25 times in 40 some years that the FD was above 7%. Hardly strong support.
Carla says:
September 11, 2011 at 5:59 pm
A call for wild imaginations..
We have enough of those already. How about a call for cool, considered, correct, skeptical science? Precious little of that around, it seems.
Crispin in Waterloo says: (September 11, 2011 at 1:02 pm)
Thanks for your added clarifications.
Actually, we’re talking about two different processes. Nucleation mode particles are principally produced by gas-to-particle conversion (GPC). Accumulation mode particles are principally produced by heterogeneous condensation (coagulation). When referring to the initial formation of nucleation mode particles via GCR’s, I believe GPC to be an acceptable term.
I’m not certain what the significance of “without bothering to first separate the effect by light frequency” is. Rayleigh scattering is highly sensitive to frequency relative to the particle size as it is inversely proportional to the fourth exponent of the wavelength. If the effect is being demonstrated without separating by frequency, it suggests to me that you’re referring to a mixed air column which is a mixture of Rayleigh and Mie scattering sized molecules and particles that would indeed be less spectrally selective as an aggregate.
My reasoning in my statement, which I didn’t bother to qualify and might have better stated, is that most air molecules in the atmosphere scatter light energy via Rayleigh scattering. Add in some nucleation mode particles and I don’t see where they substantially change the reflectivity (backscatter) of the air column. Changing the air column density would indeed increase backscatter but are the changes in the air column resulting from GCR CCN’s enough to be significant? I don’t think so. However we’re just talking about the properties of the particles prior to cloud nucleation (their initial particle properties). The relationship of temperature, cloud nucleation mechanisms and thresholds, and cloud albedo is where it gets real interesting and scientists like Dessler and Spencer and Svensmark take sides.
I agree that Dessler needs to read more. Svensmark and Spencer have a mounting body of evidence in their favor. Besides, the notion that Dessler puts forward of unidirectionality in a chaotic system just doesn’t make sense to me at a fundamental level. This is the nonsense tipping points are made from.
Well folks,
I’m ready to test any real hypothesis about these events with hourly data from 206 pristine
CRN stations. ( need to see how many actually have records for this day)
( fricking mountain of data)
Which hypothesis do you all want to test about the feb 11th 2011 event.
Do you expect cloudiness to decrease?
how about rain?
How big of an effect are you expecting to see?
What number will make you change your mind?
I’m not going to put a bunch of work into this unless some believers lay down a hypothesis.
Vuk.
When you have a testable hypothesis talk to me.
Steven Mosher says:
September 11, 2011 at 8:41 pm
Which hypothesis do you all want to test about the feb 11th 2011 event.
Since it is smaller than the 5% threshold one would expect no effect.
@Lief: The reason for the lack of a result below 7% was not because it is not there – it was not detectable in the chaos, as explained in the text. I congratulate him for not claiming it is there, only saying it is to onoisy to detect.
He also suggests looking a) over the oceans and b) using a land base not so known for complex weather patterns. My own c) is in the note below.