Note: Between flaccid climate sensitivity, ENSO driving “the pause”, and now this, it looks like the upcoming IPCC AR5 report will be obsolete the day it is released.
From a Technical University of Denmark press release comes what looks to be a significant confirmation of Svensmark’s theory of temperature modulation on Earth by cosmic ray interactions. The process is that when there are more cosmic rays, they help create more microscopic cloud nuclei, which in turn form more clouds, which reflect more solar radiation back into space, making Earth cooler than what it normally might be. Conversely, less cosmic rays mean less cloud cover and a warmer planet as indicated here. The sun’s magnetic field is said to deflect cosmic rays when its solar magnetic dynamo is more active, and right around the last solar max, we were at an 8000 year high, suggesting more deflected cosmic rays, and warmer temperatures. Now the sun has gone into a record slump, and there are predictions of cooler temperatures ahead This new and important paper is published in Physics Letters A. – Anthony
Danish experiment suggests unexpected magic by cosmic rays in cloud formation
Researchers in the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) are hard on the trail of a previously unknown molecular process that helps commonplace clouds to form. Tests in a large and highly instrumented reaction chamber in Lyngby, called SKY2, demonstrate that an existing chemical theory is misleading.
Back in 1996 Danish physicists suggested that cosmic rays, energetic particles from space, are important in the formation of clouds. Since then, experiments in Copenhagen and elsewhere have demonstrated that cosmic rays actually help small clusters of molecules to form. But the cosmic-ray/cloud hypothesis seemed to run into a problem when numerical simulations of the prevailing chemical theory pointed to a failure of growth.
Fortunately the chemical theory could also be tested experimentally, as was done with SKY2, the chamber of which holds 8 cubic metres of air and traces of other gases. One series of experiments confirmed the unfavourable prediction that the new clusters would fail to grow sufficiently to be influential for clouds. But another series of experiments, using ionizing rays, gave a very different result, as can be seen in the accompanying figure.
The reactions going on in the air over our heads mostly involve commonplace molecules. During daylight hours, ultraviolet rays from the Sun encourage sulphur dioxide to react with ozone and water vapour to make sulphuric acid. The clusters of interest for cloud formation consist mainly of sulphuric acid and water molecules clumped together in very large numbers and they grow with the aid of other molecules.
Atmospheric chemists have assumed that when the clusters have gathered up the day’s yield, they stop growing, and only a small fraction can become large enough to be meteorologically relevant. Yet in the SKY2 experiment, with natural cosmic rays and gamma-rays keeping the air in the chamber ionized, no such interruption occurs. This result suggests that another chemical process seems to be supplying the extra molecules needed to keep the clusters growing.
“The result boosts our theory that cosmic rays coming from the Galaxy are directly involved in the Earth’s weather and climate,” says Henrik Svensmark, lead author of the new report. “In experiments over many years, we have shown that ionizing rays help to form small molecular clusters. Critics have argued that the clusters cannot grow large enough to affect cloud formation significantly. But our current research, of which the reported SKY2 experiment forms just one part, contradicts their conventional view. Now we want to close in on the details of the unexpected chemistry occurring in the air, at the end of the long journey that brought the cosmic rays here from exploded stars.”
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The new paper is:
Response of cloud condensation nuclei (>50 nm) to changes in ion-nucleation” H. Svensmark, Martin B. Enghoff, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, Physics Letters A 377 (2013) 2343–2347.
In experiments where ultraviolet light produces aerosols from trace amounts of ozone, sulfur dioxide,and water vapor, the relative increase in aerosols produced by ionization by gamma sources is constant from nucleation to diameters larger than 50 nm, appropriate for cloud condensation nuclei. This resultcontradicts both ion-free control experiments and also theoretical models that predict a decline in the response at larger particle sizes. This unpredicted experimental finding points to a process not included in current theoretical models, possibly an ion-induced formation of sulfuric acid in small clusters.
FULL PAPER LINK PROVIDED IN THE PRESS RERLEASE: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51188502/PLA22068.pdf (open access PDF)
LOCAL COPY: (for those having trouble with link above): Svensmark_PLA22068 (PDF)
(h/t to “me” in WUWT Tips and Notes)
Related articles
- EcoAlert: “Milky Way’s Cosmic Rays Have Direct Impact on Earth’s Weather & Climate” (dailygalaxy.com)
- Unexpected magic by cosmic rays in cloud formation (sciencedaily.com)
- Danish experiment suggests unexpected magic by cosmic rays in cloud formation (phys.org)
- Svensmark Effect Attacked: Study claims cosmic rays don’t effect clouds (junkscience.com)
- Ten Year Anniversary of the Climate Change Paradigm Shift (americanthinker.com)
- Spencer’s posited 1-2% cloud cover variation found (wattsupwiththat.com)
Added: an explanatory video from John Coleman –
And this documentary:
MinB says:
September 4, 2013 at 10:08 am
The most wonderful aspect of this was reading about an experiment, I didn’t detect the word ‘model’ once.
Exactly!
Another unusual aspect: when the the data and the theory didn’t agree, they felt obliged to do further work on both!
This is a step ahead of Dr Jasper Kirkby’s work, and his comments back in May 2013
http://notrickszone.com/2013/05/19/cerns-jasper-kirkby-on-the-newest-unpublished-results-of-cloud-the-results-are-very-interesting/
Now if we could just link clouds to PDO. Oh, wait! Somebody has.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/global-warming-as-a-natural-response/
@ur momisugly Steven Mosher September 4, 2013 at 11:27 am
A Forbush event is an event where GCR decreases spectacularly. Forbush event = less GCR = no clouds. Fits with Svensmark’s experiments.
One thing I’ve though has been neglected was that the high energy cosmic rays that produce the cloud effect aren’t likely to be affect much my solar changes.
Is it possible the causal mechanism is mixed up. Could changes in high energy CR affect solar weather as well as affect earth weather? Could the solar correlations be coincidental rather than causal?
Glacier-growth is remarkably correlated w/Milankovitch cycles, and specifically w/the N hemisphere summer insolation. Solar magnetic cycles/cosmic rays are completely unrelated. Even if cosmic rays have cloud effects, they are insignificant compared to the Milankovitch effects (which are straight-forward regional solar-input effects). Time to move along.
Gary Pearse, cloud changes are big events localized to macro and micro climate regions on Earth. Pressure cell shifts are big events localized to macro and micro climate regions. The potential % amount of variance from one state to the next is far greater than TSI % variance which is a tiny event Earth hardly notices. For those who jump on the UV “HUGE” change bandwagon, remember that UV is a tiny piece of IR and has only a tiny amount of energy in it relative to the visible spectrum of shortwave infrared. Kind of like CO2 is just a tiny part of greenhouse gasses, with water vapor being the major player. A 10% change in water vapor has a strong affect on radiative cooling. A 10% change in CO2 will be undetectable on radiative cooling. So too a % change in TSI produces a mathematical change in temperature (which is buried in internal noise). The same % change in UV is mathematically undetectable in temperature.
This is why I think changes in cosmic rays are a tiny event compared to cloud formation from internal sources on Earth. Indeed the Earth is ripe with stuff that can form clouds and produce rain. Salt spray, dust and other suspended particles that can attract water molecules are far more abundant and vary to a much greater degree than cosmic rays do.
Look up dry rain, or cloudless rain. We get that stuff in NE Oregon all the time. No cosmic rays need apply for the job.
Suggest a look be taken at super-cooled, but NOT frozen water; yes, water CAN exist at a temperature significantly BELOW 0 deg C and not be in a solid state (i.e. frozen).
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Brad says:
September 4, 2013 at 11:50 pm
Leif’s post on another board on this paper:
“The paper has this to say “It is proposed that an ion-mechanism exists which provides a second significant pathway for making additional H2SO4, as a possible explanation of the present experimental findings”. They injected sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the chamber and managed to convert some of that [using UV-lamps] to sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and found that adding ions to the mix made that process more efficient. This does not seem to be much of a confirmation of a correlation that has not held up over time in the first place.
A sober assessment of the available evidence http://www.leif.org/EOS/swsc120049-Cosmic-Rays-Climate.pdf [see also http://www.leif.org/EOS/Cloud%20Cover%20and%20Cosmic%20Rays.pdf ] concludes “In this paper we have examined the evidence of a CR-cloud relationship from direct and indirect observations of cloud recorded from satellite- and ground-based measurement techniques. Overall, the current satellite cloud datasets do not provide evidence supporting the existence of a solar-cloud link”
”
Since he knows about this post and has chosen not to respond in the thread, maybe we should not post this, and use this is just an FYI to Anthony.
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Those quotes are from THIS thread.
Do not forget that MF (300 – 3,000 kHz) and LF (30 – 300 kHz) are affected by ‘those layers’ as well, speaking as one active in 160 meter band WSPR operations, and hopefully (IF the FCC will get in gear) 630 meter (472 – 479 kHz) band operations since the last WARC conference approved that as a world-wide ‘Amateur’ radio allocation. On the 160m band I regularly get ‘spots’ (automated web-based signal reports from other WSPR participants) from AUS (down under) and EU (over there) countries as well as all across the continental 48 on 160 meters (approx 1836 kHz).
‘The pitch’; An updated map of WSPR participants all-over-the-world: http://wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map
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Gary Pearse says:
September 5, 2013 at 4:59 am
Agreed. Nobody should expect to find a single control function/knob (despite the alarmists claims that CO2 is that knob!). The problem with small cause/effect systems is that if there are several, or even many tens or perhaps hundreds of such effects overlapped and interactive upon each other – almost NO amount of data or modeling would be able to separate them out. Now, add to that that we probably don’t even fully know what half the processes are or may be involved and it becomes a real needle in a haystack situation. Curve fitting type observations simply do not necessarily mean correlation – and could simply be a coincidental conjunction of a ‘mass’ of effects!
I know this sounds rather defeatist, – but it is the fact that Man, or more explicitly Climate Science Man, believes that they know what is happening and have the ability to lecture the rest of us instead of actually openly admitting that they know very little ‘concrete’ facts.
I’m quite disgusted at the simplification of the processes used to ‘model’ our climate – in the context that climate science boys believe that a few simple ‘catch all’ type forcings could even remotely be expected to reflect reality. The sooner we realise that the only way to delve into these small cause/effect realms is with greatly detailed measurement over long timescales, the better. How many billions have been spent delving into atomic structure over several decades? – that would be peanuts by comparison to the required data and analysis of global climate!
In short, the climate ‘team’ are writing a novel based on a few start middle and end paragraphs! At almost every stage of development of the ‘novel’, new and additional data and hypotheses will arise and this is likely to continue for many decades.
You know, the UK Metoffice studies a relatively tiny zone of the earth climate in order to give forecasts over an area of say 1000×1000 sq miles – and they can’t get that right half the time! – and this with supercomputers and lots of data!
This, of course, does not in any way explain why we get thin, high-level cloud ‘decks’ forming mid-day on some summer days here deep in the heart of Texas; there are, apparently, a number of factors at work to form reflective ‘cloud’ material starting with water vapor to the initial formation of ‘water droplet (and/or ice) nuclei’ and upwards …
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beng says:
September 5, 2013 at 7:25 am
Cloud effects don’t cause ice ages, so aren’t posited as an alternative to Milankovitch cycles. They theoretically can & probably do however affect the smaller cycles within both glacial & interglacial phases during icehouse climates & similarly during hothouses.
And to think, we could have saved hundreds of billions of dollars already spent on non-solutions to a non-problem if we had instead paid a single scientist to perform basic atmospheric experiments like this one.
That’s the question, isn’t it?
When I can take an inch and a half (1 1/2″) diameter Sodium Iodide/Thallium-doped gamma scintillation detector NaI(Tl) ‘probe’ and observe a ‘background’ count of 3,000 to 4,000 CPM (counts or ticks per minute) at sea level and that value only INCREASES with altitude – what *is* that affect on the formation on cloud/water nuclei at altitude?
Again, as others have posted above, recall your Wilson chamber experience at uni, or, take a gander here:
1) Cloud Chamber, MIT Video; Subatomic particles such as cosmic ray muons, alpha particles, and high energy electrons are striking our bodies all the time. In the cloud chamber, these particles ionize air molecules, creating delicate cloud trails by condensing supersaturated alcohol vapor.
http://video.mit.edu/watch/cloud-chamber-4058/
2) Cloud Chamber at Exploratorium, San Francisco; Cloud chamber uses tiny droplets of water vapor to show the trails left by subatomic particles.
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Jim, your cirrus clouds usually form in front of an encroaching warm front as it pushes water vapor up into the atmosphere where it “glaciates”, or forms ice crystals. Because the humidity is so low up there, the clouds that form are thin and easily swept into wispy shapes. I would imagine that Texas often has these as the humidity in the interior would be quite dry, especially in the northern parts. We get them here in NE Oregon too.
Speaking of muons, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Web site years ago had a great page on the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation, with climatic consequences. The graphics showed how the rays impacted muons.
When I posted some time ago that the orthodoxy-offending page had magically disappeared, Dr. Svalsgaard attributed it to funding cut backs. I’m not so sure.
I thought that Svensmark’s theory was elegantly demonstrated about 80 years ago by the discovery that cosmic rays produce visible white traces (high albedo) in WIlson cloud chambers.
tadchem says:
September 5, 2013 at 8:34 am
A Harvard site used to have an excellent presentation on your observation, but sadly it too, as with the SLAC instance cited above, has been disappeared by the CACA goon squad.
only today was i told i should spend less time on here by a warmist. yet every visit compels me to spend more time here.the comments are almost the equal of the work in question.
constant inquisition,unlike the science is settled from the warmists,and real experiments , those who believe in the catastrophic element of AGW,wont even know what an experiment is.
This experiment shows how under certain conditions H2SO4 aerosols can grow to sufficient size to become CCN in a chamber. What hasn’t been done as far as I can see is to relate this to conditions in the atmosphere, for example while the pressure, temperature, SO2 and O3 are maintained at near surface values and above, the UV light used is 254nm which is removed by the ozone layer. Also the paper does not relate the gamma rays used to the expected cosmic ray fluxes in the lower atmosphere, is it a realistic simulation? This experiment is far from proving that Svensmark’s link between cosmic rays and global warming is confirmed.
You seem to be describing decreased HF propagation that correlates with diurnal periods of higher exposure to solar radiation. Since, as many on this thread have said, TSI doesn’t significantly vary, it seems as if his comment about changes in TSI having less effect on HF propagation could be germane. In other words, it’s quite possible that variation in TSI effect HF propagation much less than solar factors which vary significantly.
(Diurnal fluctuations of exposure to solar radiation is not the same as variation in TSI.)
A few avenues for exploring experimental evidence:
1. Look in locations where CN particles are rare or vary considerably in concentration. ie. over the oceans away from aerosol drift from land. There is not likely to be any observable effect when there is already CN particle competition.
2. Look where the molecules likely to be affected by CRs are (near the ocean surface? warmer waters? more turbulant waters? turbulant winds at ocean suface?).
3. Look for atmospheric drying. Two things happen when clouds form, water vapor is removed from the atmosphere from condensation (and heat is released) and less SW radiation would hit water on the surface, causing another delayed drying.
4. Look at albedo change. Where these clouds happen is as important as the extent. A small change in cloud cover over the ocean near mid-low latitudes can huge impact on the energy absorbed while a large change over land in high latitudes could have almost none.
Hmmm … something is not right here.
a) ‘Fronts’, a surface phenomenon, cirrus, an upper level phenom.
b) This is Texas Summer environment, where fronts are nonexistent (or the high exception, but that’s not the case under consideration).
It should be almost be a tautology that not all clouds (cirrus in this case) are associated with ‘frontal’ activity.
The point is being missed, though with this side discussion, the point being that … well, see prev. posts above and conclude as appropriate.
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JN says:
September 5, 2013 at 6:25 am
MinB says:
September 4, 2013 at 10:08 am
The most wonderful aspect of this was reading about an experiment, I didn’t detect the word ‘model’ once.
Perhaps that’s because they refer to their model as a ‘numerical simulation’ most of the time?