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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M.A.Vukcevic says:
>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.
++++++++++
The reflectivity from the top of Arctic clouds reaching sunlight is very high because of the low incident angle, just as at the surface. They are not only insulating things in the dark.
Leif Svalgaard says:
September 11, 2011 at 6:39 pm
This might mean that comic (sic) ray variations have no effect except …..”
Leif – Your Freudian slip is showing……
HankH says:
September 11, 2011 at 7:14 pm
>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 need to think about that for a while. GTP occurs in the presence of particles, certain gas molecules (H2S) and GRC’s and I am sure a buncha other things, but not in pure water unless it gets really cold (not sure what the lower limit is).
About the light frequency thing. I am actually mystified why this is not taken more seriously. A ‘cloud’ is not something that only occurs as a visible light phenomenon. You look at the sky, you see clouds. They are white because they are scattering all the visible light spectraand we can see some of it.
If you could see ultraviolet light, you would see a lot more clouds because before the particles are large enough to interfere with and scatter visible light, they do the same thing with shorter wavelengths. And all rain drops start of well below the visible light scattering size.
Have a look at what is meaasured as ‘cloud cover’. It is 100% visible light. But the TSI is measured as the total incoming radiation. So is the reflection from the clouds, and the outgoing radiation. People have tried looking at the variation in TSI (everything) and visible clouds (selective reflection). You get my point? They are mixing apples and oranges.
The global albedo is measured at all frequencies by satellite, and instead of analysing what is reflected in terms of the particle sizes in the atmosphere below, the ‘global cloud cover’ is only made in the visible spectrum. Makes no sense. What UV light gets reflected is quite possibly bouncing off particles that are transparent to visible light and are recorded as ‘clear sky’. As UV is highly variable it matters whether or not the Earth is being shaded by clouds of UV-interactive particles.
So is there a GRC-temp delay because of visible light clouds formed well after the UV-visible clouds have formed? Which is more important? The analysis presented does not look for this. In fact no one does. Clouds are counted only if they are visible to our eyes – hardly a fair measure of the totality of what arrives from the Sun.
The change in temperature takes place without reference to the clouds, they are just temperature measurements. Now suppose instead of looking for ‘visible clouds’ as the explanation, and when, one looked for the particles that were formed by GRC, then time the growth of the particles and look for ‘invisible clouds’ which should scatter EUV and UV. These should show up on the TSI count (which is segregated by frequency) and temperature, to the extent that they form part of TSI reaching the ground.
In short, clouds are treated in all the papers as if they exist on their own – that they are not in fact the product of particle size and a man-detectable sub-set of the total frequency range of radiation. Meanwhile everything else is split into sectors and absorption lines and given all sorts of detail.
The invisible UV-opaque clouds are there but we can’t see them. In the case of FB events, there are effects on insolation at the ground before any clouds are visible. With ‘regular’ clouds there is always a particle mix, so I am suggesting that FB events are a good place to look for a vast number of nanoparticles, growing together, detectable as they interfere with progressively lower frequency radiation.
I see they are waking up are they, or turning a blind eye.? Go to the Arabian deserts. Bleedin’
hot during the day, and temps fall dramatically at night, sometimes minus in their winter. Why no cloud cover. Frost will not form in winter with cloud cover. But as CO2 only makes up 4% of Greenhouse gases 3% is naturally formed, then 95% is water vapor and 1% trace gases. What some AGW graphs, look at the GHG results. They add on a clear day (no clouds) that puts CO2 as the main GHG when it isn’t. Then water vapor is an important element that produces rain, depending on what part of the world you live in, and the seasonal variations, such as a Monsoon region. But experiments held over 10 years regarding the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, showed that precipitation levels were effected when the trees were removed. Clouds got higher because of the lack of transpiration creating a rain forest. Been in a rainforest I have. Less than 10 yards away the rain forest had been converted into grazing land. New England National Park near Dorrigo and Ebor, that always has more rain and airborne humidity than elsewhere.
Within 5 feet of entering the rain forest (temperate in this case but some sub tropical spots)
The humidity increased and so did the temperature. Eucalypti had no foliage down beneath the
canopy, but Antarctic beeches had evolved to not shed leaves like they would normally and were considered deciduous elsewhere, but keep their leaves most of the year, shedding all year round like gum trees. Why this? Obviously a rain forest environment did not create the same growing
environment that open land did. Their sap kept circulating.
A university hired by a fisheries department found that cosmic ray activity did effect the amount of rain falling in a specific area and the fishing grounds effecting the shoals of anchovies and sardines/pilchards. Climate is very dependent on our orbit around the sun, and the amount of
precipitation varies from the normal sometimes to create drought and floods, and of course the region. The further inland one is the less precipitation is expected. Broad continents, well Australia is an example, the middle of the continent has always been known as desert. But occasionally it gets rain and Lake Eyre comes to life again. (Huge inland ‘sea’ that is below sea level)
Sorry to be long winded, but this report will shake the AGWists. But getting them to accept the CERN report and the above as an important aspect of climatology is another matter. Lobby, Lobby, and more lobby. Humans create pollution in cities and change the landscape through farming and to a smaller degree cutting down huge tracks of trees. But people are waking up
and leaving now large strips of trees that balance those cleared.
.
Steven Mosher says:
September 11, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Vuk.
When you have a testable hypothesis talk to me.
As they say in a primary school class ‘compare & contrast’:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
At least I found good correlations.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LL.htm
Could you show one for the CO2 ‘hypotheses’ that you so valiantly (despite hopeless evidence and prospects) defend?
Talk to me when you have a testable hypothesis.
I have re-run their analysis for one randomly chosen US station and the february event and I saw a clear signature there. I must admit the day-night difference is very clever technique as it is far more stable than just the temperature record. I saw no signature in just temperatures, it disappeared in the noise, yet it was pretty nicely visible on the difference.
Of course re-running it for just one station and one event has zero statistical significance but it suggests doing it right may be worth the effort.
Damn Leif. I just sorted through every hour of every day in feb 2011 for 206 stations.
screw temperature, I have solar radiation. its pretty neat data. a bitch to get organized.
Ok, which one of these events is the biggest..
And people expect that a Forbush event will lead to fewer clouds and therefore more incoming
solar radiation.
problems: If it was already cloudless, it cant get less cloudless.
GCR are suppose to effect the genesis of clouds..
So if it was already cloudy….. what’s the effect ..
Hmm. I can see finding nothing and believers will still believe.. what about x? what about y?
try z? no wait mosh, do this, try that?
Anyway, I have the data. Hourly temps ( 3 calibrated sensors per location) hourly solar.
hourly rain. pristine locations.
Waiting for a testable hypothesis..
Steven Mosher says:
September 12, 2011 at 12:25 am
problems: If it was already cloudless, it cant get less cloudless.
About 60% of the Earth has cloud over it at any one time IIRC. What is the relevance of your statement?
GCR are suppose to effect the genesis of clouds..
So if it was already cloudy….. what’s the effect ..
Clouds form and disappear on timescales ranging from minutes to months. Observational evidence shows cloudiness is reduced a few days after strong solar events which reduce GCR incidence.
There is a strong link between cloud cover and surface temperature. This paper demonstrates a correlation between temperature changes and GCR incidence with a few days lag.
“Waiting for a testable hypothesis.”
Are you able to test whether any change in globally averaged stratospheric temperatures occurred a few days before,during or after, a significant Forbush Decrease?
I suggest that such stratospheric temperature changes would shift the position of ALL the components of the surface air pressure distribution latitudinally.
That would have regional cloudiness and rainfall consequences such as those reported in some of the above posts.
M.A.Vukcevic says:
September 11, 2011 at 2:10 pm
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.
Always remembering that the polar areas are small compared to the rest of Earth’s surface.
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.
I think this may affect distribution more than incidence rates.
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
The Sun was more than averagely active in the late C20th. Weather satellites measured a drop in tropical low cloud cover from 1980-1998 according to ISCCP data. Insolation changes near the equator have a bigger effect on global temperature than changes near the poles.
Well maybe someone could explain to me why I was taught at Uni, evaporation from the sea creates water vapor that go up and form clouds. They are swept in over land but lose momentum
and precipitation the further inland they go, hence there are desert regions on broad wide continents. And actually if there is elevation of the land then higher altitude areas tend to get more rain. But no one so far although getting there has remarked that weather is subject to many
variables within one season but it isn’t CO2 or the probable pollutants caused by oil burning engines, or industry, aeroplanes exhausts, or clearance of land for tillage. The latter now is being
considered as the no no in agriculture as it degrades top soils as does the use of herbicides and pesticides. And why greenhouse commercial tomato farming they pump more CO2 into the greenhouse atmosphere to spur the plants on. And workers do not drop dead like flies or wear oxygen equipment to breathe! Has anyone heard of ‘rain shadows’ explain them?
Leif S
It seems to me that you’ve changed your line of defense, so to speak. You are no longer arguing that “there is nothing there to see” (like you did in response to Svensmarks Forbush paper) but rather “something seems to be happening, but it’s unimportant”. (Hope I don’t misinterpret you)
Well that remains to be seen. Since the exact physical process isn’t known there is still a lot of science to produce before one can conclude that the cosmic ray interaction on clouds is unimportant.
PS That was aimed really to those who still believe in AGW, forgive me but I get rather perplexed
as we continue to go in circles about what drives the weather and the climate. And some on this
site seem to try and argue against it?
Mosher:”Waiting for a testable hypothesis”
Not wishng to sound glib, but a lot of folk have been waiting for a testable (and therefore falsifiable) hypothesis about CAGW for quite some time, care to propose one so we can see whether this idea is worth pumping many billions of $/£ into mitigating?
Instead of trying to control the planet’s thermostat by controlling CO2 levels, why don’t we just put up a string of satellites in low earth orbit — like GPS — each equipped with a cosmic ray generator? This would allow us to control cloud formation, heating or cooling the planet at will. Probably cheaper, and certainly less painful, than dismantling western civilization.
Steven Mosher says:
September 12, 2011 at 12:25 am
“Waiting for a testable hypothesis..”
My hypothesis is: “correlation presented in the serbian paper can be replicated using US data”.
Is it good enough?
Still waiting for a testable hypothesis on anything happening with the climate right now is unnatural or unprecedented.
tallbloke says:
September 12, 2011 at 1:39 am
The Sun was more than averagely active in the late C20th.
The Waldmeier effect artificially inflates the sunspot number by some 20% and the cosmic ray proxies show that the Sun was not more active over the past 600 years.
Bengt A says:
September 12, 2011 at 1:41 am
Since the exact physical process isn’t known there is still a lot of science to produce before one can conclude that the cosmic ray interaction on clouds is unimportant.
The burden of proof [not met yet as you point out] is on the other camp: showing that it is important. The 13 strong FDs cover only about 1/1000 of the time over which the test was made, so can hardly be taken as strong support for an effect.
Tallbloke.
“problems: If it was already cloudless, it cant get less cloudless.
About 60% of the Earth has cloud over it at any one time IIRC. What is the relevance of your statement?”
The relevance is obvious.
You are looking for an effect that is supposed to decrease cloudiness.
I am looking at a site on feb18th 2011. On feb 18th it is cloudless. On feb 19th you have a Forbush event. For that site… it cannot get MORE CLOUDLESS.
Any way.
“Clouds form and disappear on timescales ranging from minutes to months. Observational evidence shows cloudiness is reduced a few days after strong solar events which reduce GCR incidence.
There is a strong link between cloud cover and surface temperature. This paper demonstrates a correlation between temperature changes and GCR incidence with a few days lag.”
ONCE AGAIN. I am asking all the believers in the room to put their thinking caps on and answer the question.
I have hourly data. Hourly measurements of incoming solar radiation. If it’s cloudy you’ll see lower figures. at night you see 0 of course. There are 206 locations.
What do you predict will happen to the levels of solar radiation after feb 19th 2011?
will it happen at all stations?
How would you do the test?
Come on, I’m sitting here with the data. What test would you run AND what would make you stop believing…..
In other words what would it take to falsify your belief.
206 files.. Hourly incoming radiation data.. no UHI worries AT ALL.
Surely somebody knows how to form a testable hypothesis for this data..
I have the data. More than happy to test your hypothesis.. BUT you have to be able to SPECIFY a test.. And stipulate that you will change your mind if the test fails..
Kasuha.
Sorry nice try. The problem is that this dataset doesnt have enough years of data to get a stable DTR average.
On the other hand.. its got hourly radiation data. Why worry about inferring clouds from DTR..
Moshe, we don’t know enough to specify, but the imaginative are getting closer.
=========================================
No, they don’t show that FD less than 7% have no effect, they show that FD less than 7% has a currently immeasurable effect given the data they used. That is an important distinction. This paper, even with their clever use of DTR, is clearly skirting the boundaries of signal-to-noise ratio. That would be expected with the disparate data sets that can be influenced by so many other things.
Steven Mosher says September 12, 2011 at 8:09 am Quote “I have the data. More than happy to test your hypothesis.. BUT you have to be able to SPECIFY a test.. And stipulate that you will change your mind if the test fails.”
Why don’t you repeat what the original Europe: diurnal temperatures after Forbush decreases paper did, but for the USA.
Then you can write a paper and prove them wrong, as you are so positive that will be the outcome.
Leif S
I don’t get the ”only 13 strong FDs during 40 years”-argument. The reason we study FDs are because they are used as indicators, not because they affect climate. What does it matter if there are 5, 13 or 100 FDs as long as we are positively sure that the measured effect is a real effect (and not because of some systematic error etc)?
The result of Dragic et al. is clear enough, or do you have an alternative explanation for the shape of those graphs?