From CERN: CERN’s CLOUD experiment shines new light on climate change
Geneva, 6 October 2013. In a paper published today in the journal Nature, the CLOUD experiment at CERN1 reports a major advance towards solving a long-standing enigma in climate science: how do aerosols – tiny solid or liquid particles suspended in the air – form in the atmosphere, and which gases are responsible? This is a key question in understanding the climate, since aerosols cause a cooling effect by reflecting sunlight and by seeding cloud droplets.
The CLOUD researchers made two key discoveries. Firstly, they found that minute concentrations of amine vapours combine with sulphuric acid to form aerosol particles at rates similar to those observed in the atmosphere. Then, using a pion beam from the CERN Proton Synchrotron, they found that ionising radiation such as the cosmic radiation that bombards the atmosphere from space has negligible influence on the formation rates of these particular aerosols.
“Thanks to CERN’s expertise in materials, gas systems and ultra-high vacuum technologies,” said CLOUD spokesperson Jasper Kirkby, “we were able to build a chamber with unprecedented cleanliness, allowing us to simulate the atmosphere and introduce minute amounts of various atmospheric vapours under carefully controlled conditions – in this case amines and sulphuric acid.”
Amines are atmospheric vapours closely related to ammonia, and are emitted both from human activities such as animal husbandry, and from natural sources. Amines are responsible for odours emanating from the decomposition of organic matter that contains proteins. For example, the smell of rotten fish is due to trimethylamine. The CLOUD experiment’s unique ultra-clean chamber allowed the collaboration to demonstrate that the extremely low concentrations of amines typically found in the atmosphere – a few parts per trillion by volume – are sufficient to combine with sulphuric acid to form highly stable aerosol particles at high rates.
The measured sensitivity of aerosol formation to amines came as a surprise, and points to a potentially significant climate cooling mechanism. Moreover, since amine scrubbing is likely to become an important technology for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuelled [sic] power plants, this effect is likely to rise in future.
The CLOUD result adds another significant measurement in understanding the climate. But it does not rule out a role for cosmic radiation, nor does it offer a quick fix for global warming.
“This is the first time that atmospheric particle formation has been reproduced with complete knowledge of the participating molecules”, said Kirkby. “However our measurements leave open the possibility that the formation of aerosols in the atmosphere may also proceed with other vapours, for which the effect of cosmic rays may be different. This is an important step forward, but we still have a long way to go before we fully understand the processes of aerosol formation and their effects on clouds and climate.”
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Well, if the cloud chamber is any guide, one does not even need aerosols to have droplets in supersaturated vapor, ions generated by cosmic radiation are quite sufficient to serve as condensation nuclei.
Steven Mosher says:
October 7, 2013 at 11:13 am
Steven, From what I’ve read, they use neutron as a proxy for cosmic rays, now I don’t know if that’s why the data doesn’t match well or not, but I do know they use to truck cloud chamber up to the top of Pikes Peak to examine the tracks of water droplets that would form from cosmic rays, and I know that my digital camera at 1,000′ altitude recorded particle hits about every 100 seconds, and for it to detect them they have to create electron-hole pairs across the pixel’s diode junction.
Jeff Mitchell says:
October 7, 2013 at 1:32 pm
More Mkelly and Janice said:
mkelly says:
October 7, 2013 at 12:57 pm
Janice Moore says:
October 7, 2013 at 12:21 pm
“Fringe skeptics” such as I.
Janice Do not feel alone there are at least two of us fringe skeptics.
If my model was not wrong.
With a significance of 95% and R = 0.99999 ….
Now …. 4
Stephen Wilde says:
October 7, 2013 at 1:00 pm
…………
I would appreciate an explanation as to how the Svensmark hypothesis switches the jets between zonality and meridionality.
Stephen, what’s your theory regarding the switch?
Steve Mosher says:
….
one thing we do know is that even if cosmic rays could increase cloudiness in a lab chamber that in the wild they do not. That is, take the counts of cosmic rays in the wild. look for increases in cloudiness. You wont find it.
===========================================================================
Cosmic ray measurements are made by detecting free neutrons. These are
formed as the result of secondary and tertiary (and many more knock ons)
collisions between nuclear fragments created by cosmic rays of energies of around
10GeV hitting the planet’s atmosphere. These are regarded as low energy CRs.
The cosmic rays which are thought to be involved in cloud formation are much
more energetic, about 3 or more times so. They hit the top of the atmosphere
and their collisions create high speed (nearly light speed) muons. These cannot
be measured by sensing free neutrons. About the only way they seem able to be
measured is by cloud cover variations but that is still very hard.
That’s why free neutron measurements as a measure of CRs and clouds don’t
coincide. The wrong variety of CR is being measured.
========================================================================
While this may add to an understanding of how these chemicals interact in an ultra-clean chamber, when have natural processes ever provided an ultra-clean chamber?
A piece of the puzzle? Maybe. The solution to the puzzle? No. What is the solution to chaos? Tax it anyway? Just in case?
Two points from all the above comments;
Regardless of whether Svensmark is right or wrong, his theory had sufficient credibility to trigger an actual physical experiment at CERN, not just yet another model, to ascertain the credibility of his hypothesis.
And that CERN experiment has thrown up yet another formerly unknown atmospheric chemical reaction that potentially has had a quite large influence on both the past global climate and possibly will on it’s future path.
And has opened yet another can of worms that atmospheric and climate science are faced with sorting out if we are to ever have any idea on what are the real drivers of the global climate.
Secondly, the very astute denizens of this blog have asked a surprising number of well based questions above, most of which are not well answered by known atmospheric physics or for which the answers are unknown as yet.
All of which has gone to show yet again just how little is actually known about the global climate drivers. And once again, all over again, gives the lie to the claims of the IPCC and it’s adherents and the so called alarmist climate scientists that they understand the atmospheric physical processes well enough to be able to accurately predict the future of the climate for decades ahead.
And further, the lack of comprehensive answers and understandings to a lot of those questions above destroys the constantly promoted myth that the climate modelers are so astute and so well versed in atmospheric physics and the influences of what we are now seeing as an increasing multitude of still barely known or unknown climate affecting factors that they can program their models to be able to give an accurate prediction for the future of the climate for decades ahead.
SEVENSMARK’S THEORY IS ALIVE AND WELL
Controlling for the effects of the solar winds, is the extent of flux for the type of cosmic rays in Svensmark’s Theory uniform with respect to the global atmosphere?
“In this paper we show that the model used to deduce such a large ratio of Arm to Interarm GCR intensity requires unlikely values of some of the GCR parameters, ” — paper quoted by Svalgaard.
It was once determined that Earth did not orbit the sun because the lack of measured parallax made the *distance* to the stars unlikely large. This doubles down on a ‘likelihood’ model containing one unmeasured measurable by denoting ‘likelihood’ on a pair of unmeasured measurables.
Measure your basic reasoning skills:
1) How many unmeasurables do you need before a theory is unlikely?
2) How few unmeasurables do you need before you state a theory is certain?
Ah nuts.
In my 4:11 post: “This doubles down …” should be “This quote doubles down …” Apologies for the lack of peer review before posting 😛
To Bill Marsh and Magicjava, thank you for the explanation.
@ur momisugly M. Kelly (12:57pm today) — thanks for your kind support.
****************
Mr. Mitchell (1:32pm) (ahem), thanks for your encouragement, but, for the record, I did not (nor did M. Kelly by joining me) self-identify as a “fringe” skeptic. That description originated with Dirk above. And, I may have misused Dirk’s pejorative term: he MAY have meant that only those who say TOTAL (not just human) CO2 has zero impact (for certain) are “fringe.” Anyway, thanks for trying to help me and M. Kelly to not be pitifully self-effacing. I’d guess that MOST of the skeptics would agree that human CO2 is almost certainly dwarfed to the point of insignificance by natural CO2.
**************
Hurrah, Fernando! 4 of us! (I think, if my comment had not been misunderstood, there would have been more WUWT bloggers speaking up to say the same thing).
The (I’m quite certain) NON-fringe skeptic opinion is: Human CO2 is such a piddling small part of the atmosphere it isn’t even worth discussing. But, we have to.
Thanks, so much, Fantasy Science Club, you guys are really neat — NOT.
Stephen Wilde says:
October 7, 2013 at 1:00 pm
I have observed that zonal jet streams produce less clouds globally and meridional jets produce more clouds globally.
During the late 20th century warming period the jets were more zonal and cloudiness was less.
Now the jets are more meridional, cloudiness has increased and global warming has stopped and may soon decline.
I would appreciate an explanation as to how the Svensmark hypothesis switches the jets between zonality and meridionality.
Any takers?
Stephen, I agree that the meridonal jets are at least one cause of the extra cloudiness and that the stratospheric changes in your hypothesis could lead to the jets becoming more meridonal. However, there is nothing that requires there only to be one mechanism.
So here is a potential answer to your ‘challenge’.
The low clouds formed by the extra GCR increase albedo and reduce the heating of the oceans, This in turn reduces the amount of convection and the strength of the hyrdologic cycle. The strength of the jets is driven by the energy in the convective Hadley cells and Ferrel cells. If the cells reduce because low cloud is limiting ocean heating then the jets reduce in strength and this makes them more likely to be affected by shear leading to Rossby waves forming in the jet streams. These meridonal Rossby waves increase the track of the cloudy frontal Ferrel cell weather systems more cloud leads to further increases in albedo, reduced convection and a slower hydrologic cycle. It would be expected that the reduced hydrologic cycle would lead to a reduction in tropospheric humidity – and this is what is being reported rather than a humid tropical tropospheric hotspot.
Probably lots of ifs and buts there – but I think it answers your question that a GCR initiated increase in low cloud could reduce convection, the strength of the jets and therefore lead to Rossy waves. Of course if as another aspect of the quiet sun is a drop in EUV leading to temperature/density changes in the Stratosphere that _also_ provide a meridonal impetus to the jet streams then two aspects of the quiet Sun may be working together.
I doubt that there is only ONE trigger for changes in the chaotic ocean/atmosphere system ot seems that multiple effects could be influencing the transfer of heat through the system.
Bill Marsh says:
October 7, 2013 at 10:44 am
“I don’t know that Svensmark’s theory has been falsified.”
Svenmark’s theory consists of many hypotheses. One of them was falsified. The theory was not falsified. He learned something from the falsification and that will improve the theory as he moves forward. (Also, he knows that he is bumping against the real world.)
Jeremy the cleanliness is to control the variables in the experiment, so that any results can be assigned to the reactions of interest rather than being some artifact of impurities or wall grit.
The sine qua non of experimental science is to start simple and work up to the complex. That way, one can understand everything at each step. By the time one gets to the complex system, all, or most, of the subsidiary processes are understood. Of course, once the subsidiary processes interact (see one another) in the complex system their behavior might change. One needs to know that, too. The only way to know they’ve interacted and changed is to know how they behave in isolation. Jumping right in to the most complex system is a recipe for nonsense, confusion, and disaster.
… a tax on rotten fish?
That something extrinsic to Earth can vary Earth’s temperature does not make it a necessary driver or even part of the driver mechanism responsible for long term “measurable” trends.
This issue with cosmic rays producing clouds seems trivial compared to what a warmer, less wind-driven top layer of ocean does to the atmosphere versus a colder, wind driven top layer of ocean. Could this be a measure of an extrinsic “something” that is trivial and is buried in the substantially greater potential of intrinsic drivers? That’s my thinking.
The experiments are dealing in minutia that have no potential for driving long term weather pattern variation trends. Not enough energy.
I’d like to address this point: “Moreover, since amine scrubbing is likely to become an important technology for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuelled [sic] power plants, this effect is likely to rise in future.”
For simplicity, lets assume “amine” means ammonia, NH3. If amine scrubbing is meant to be a global solution for CO2 emissions, then they’ll be converting CO2 and ammonia into ammonium carbonate: NH3 + CO2 + H2O -> (NH4)2CO3 (solid).
Ammonia is a large industrial enterprise because it’s used to make fertilizer. It’s made by fixing nitrogen gas from the air, using the Haber-Bosch Process. About 500 MT are made per year, world-wide (about 1000 MT per year are made by nitrogen-fixing bacteria).
The reaction is 6H2 + N2 –> 2 NH3
Human CO2 emissions amount to ~32.5 GT per year. The first reaction above shows that ~0.77 ton of ammonia are required to capture every ton of CO2. Full capture of global CO2 emissions would require ~25 GT of ammonia, about 50x the current global annual production.
Notice that hydrogen is needed to make ammonia. Guess where that hydrogen comes from. Right: from natural gas, by steam reforming and the water gas shift reaction:
CH4 + H2O -> CO + 3H2 steam reforming
CO + H2O -> CO2 + H2 water-gas shift
Assuming 100% efficiency, every single NH3 molecule produced to capture CO2 requires 1.5 H2 molecules in its manufacture, which means 3/8 of a CO2 from using methane to produce H2. Since reaction 1 shows that two ammonia molecules are necessary to capture one CO2, then every CO2 captured from a power plant will require the amount of ammonia that produced 3/4 CO2 molecule during its manufacture.
That means capture of CO2 using ammonia will produce a net reduction of only 0.25 in CO2 emissions. That is, total CO2 emission will decrease only by 1/4 if all CO2 is captured using ammonia, and that at the cost of a huge and cost-only industrial infrastructure. Cost-only means no economic surplus is produced by the exercise. If more complex amines are used, such as trimethylamine, the cost in CO2 produced during manufacture will increase.
And that’s using natural gas to produce the hydrogen — by far the most efficient method, unless there’s a huge investment in nuclear power. But if you build dozens of new nuclear power plants, why would anyone (sane) use them to make hydrogen for CO2 capture?
One other thing. I’ve used ammonium carbonate, (NH4)2CO3. It’s the salt of a weak acid and a weak base. That means it’s not very stable. Solid ammonium carbonate always smells slightly of ammonia. That means the solid slowly and spontaneously decomposes back to CO2, H2O, and NH3, all of which are gases and all of which diffuse away. So, where and how are they going to store 57 GT of ammonium carbonate per year, every year, where it doesn’t decompose?
The US alone produces ~5.5 GT of CO2 per year, translating into 4.2 GT of ammonia needed and 12 GT of ammonium carbonate storage. Even 1% CO2 capture requires storing 120 MT of (NH4)2CO3 every year in the US. Where are they going to put it – Yucca Mountain, maybe? Good luck with all that.
If the ammonium carbonate is injected into wells, it will certainly decompose from geothermal heat. Ammonia gas is less dense than air. Even if the ammonia is captured and recycled (lowering the CO2 produced per ammonia used), some amounts will escape. Some will escape into the air during recapture, producing the ammonium sulfate aerosols noted in the head post. Some will escape from subterranean decomposition and diffuse up through any cracked strata. Some of the ammonia diffusing through stratal cracks will find its way into shallow aquifers and the water supply. It’s not hard to predict the outcry. Power companies will be blamed. Fracking will seem benign in comparison.
That should have been “So, where and how are they going to store 71 GT of ammonium carbonate per year, every year, where it doesn’t decompose?”
Pat Frank says:
October 7, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Excellent chemistry, but the amine proposed has been monoethanolamine. Haven’t made comparable equations for that substance as yours for ammonia, but probably not much different.
Of course it’s not proposed to scrub all human-generated CO2 with amines, but just that from coal & gas-fired power plant exhausts. Whether this would be worth the large costs depends upon your opinion of the threat posed by man-made CO2. IMO, so far the increase has been beneficial rather than a danger, so removing it in this way is definitely not worth the great cost.
Personally, I blame all the unwashed masses for global cooling….http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/conference/ei14/session1/fu_pres.pdf
…you just can’t make up this stuff….
Wait a second, Pat Frank. We’ve been told repeatedly on here that subterranean gases can not make it through cracked strata, no matter how cracked, to aquifers. Please explain yourself.
Steven Mosher says:
October 7, 2013 at 11:13 am
Svensmark’s hypothesis refers to changes in the cover of low level maritime clouds in areas with clean air that doesn’t otherwise have cloud condensation nuclei.
The CRN stations are over land, the air above them has plenty of condensation nuclei.
Not much of the Earth’s surface is affected by the clouds Svensmark claims exist, but there isn’t a need to have more than a percent or two account for the claimed thermal effect.
Mr. Mosher: Rather than address your somewhat inane comment about ground based observation stations/cloud cover, et. al., I would suggest simply, perhaps you are oblivious to other work by Svensmark, such as:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/svensmark-forebush.pdf
Of course, this HAS to be taken in the light of “correllation is not causation”. However, the striking relation between the satellite measured cloud cover, and it’s response to a Forebush decrease, does give one pause on the way to generically dismissing Svensmark’s basic hypothesis.
In this case, the laboratory is NATURE and the conclusion “God Given”, so to speak. (Or perhaps it’s just a miscelaneous fractal happening? Pure chance, as in your existance or mine?)
Max H.