This paper suggests a terrestrial impact on cloud cover from the interplanetary electric field (IEF) via the global electric circuit. A primer video on the GEC is below.
Clouds blown by the solar wind M Voiculescu et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 045032 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/045032
Abstract
In this letter we investigate possible relationships between the cloud cover (CC) and the interplanetary electric field (IEF), which is modulated by the solar wind speed and the interplanetary magnetic field. We show that CC at mid–high latitudes systematically correlates with positive IEF, which has a clear energetic input into the atmosphere, but not with negative IEF, in general agreement with predictions of the global electric circuit (GEC)-related mechanism. Thus, our results suggest that mid–high latitude clouds might be affected by the solar wind via the GEC. Since IEF responds differently to solar activity than, for instance, cosmic ray flux or solar irradiance, we also show that such a study allows distinguishing one solar-driven mechanism of cloud evolution, via the GEC, from others.
Introduction
There is high interest today in quantifying the solar contribution to climate change. Despite the progress in understanding the processes driving the Earth’s climate, quantifying the natural sources of climate variability, especially regarding solar effects, remains elusive (Solomon et al 2007, Gray et al 2010).
Although climate models are highly sophisticated and include many effects, they are not perfect and observational evidences are modest and ambiguous. Empirical evidences suggest a causal relationship between solar variability and climate, particularly in the pre-industrial epoch (Bond et al 2011), but possible mechanisms are unclear and qualitative. The balance between reflected radiation from space and Earth at different wavelengths contributes to temperature variation in a significant manner (Hartmann et al 1992), thus cloud cover play a major role in the terrestrial radiation budget. Modeling cloud contribution to climate at different spatial and temporal scales is probably the most challenging area of climate studies (Vieira and da Silva 2006). Despite increasing number of solar-cloud studies, there is no clear understanding of solar effect on cloud cover. Indirect mechanisms are proposed that would amplify the relatively small solar input and could explain solar-related variability observed at different time scales (from days to decades) in various cloud parameters, as for instance cloud cover (Udelhofen and Cess 2001, Marsh and Svensmark 2000, Voiculescu and Usoskin 2012) or cloud base height (Harrison et al 2011, Harrison and Ambaum 2013).
One indirect mechanism relates to the fact that the solar spectral irradiance varies significantly in the UV band, whose effect is limited to the stratosphere, thus a stratosphere–troposphere–ocean coupling, ‘top-down’ effect, is required (Gray et al 2010, Meehl et al 2009, Haigh et al 2010). Another mechanism relies on possible variations of atmospheric aerosol/cloud properties, affecting the transparency/absorption/reflectance of the atmosphere and, consequently, the amount of absorbed solar radiation. Two possible physical links have been proposed: one via the ion-induced/mediated nucleation by cosmic ray induced ionization (CRII) (Dickinson 1975, Svensmark and Friis-Christensen 1997, Carslaw et al 2002, Kazil and Lovejoy 2004, Yu and Turco 2001) and the other via the global electric circuit (GEC) effects on cloud/aerosol properties (Tinsley 2000, Harrison and Usoskin 2010). The former mechanism might be hardly distinguishable from noise, especially at short-term scale, as demonstrated using in situ/laboratory experiments (e.g., Carslaw 2009, Kulmala et al 2010, Enghoff et al 2011, Kirkby et al 2011) and statistical studies (e.g., Calogovic et al 2010, Dunne et al 2012). Opposing, studies of Svensmark et al (2009), Enghoff et al (2011), Svensmark et al (2013), Yu et al (2008) have shown that an impact of ionization on new particle formation and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) exists. Thus it is possible that the CRII-nucleation mechanism operates at longer time scales, but it might be spatially limited to the polar stratosphere (Mironova et al 2012). On the other hand, the GEC-related mechanism may be important (e.g., Tinsley 2000, Harrison and Usoskin 2010, Rycroft et al 2012), particularly for low-clouds and some links have been shown to exist between atmospheric electricity properties and cloud evolution/formation (Harrison et al 2013).
Since all solar drivers correlate to some extent, it may be difficult to evaluate which driver or combination of drivers is the best candidate for cloud cover modulation. An attempt to differentiate between solar irradiation (total or UV) and CRII effects on cloud cover has been made by Kristjánsson et al (2004), Voiculescu et al (2006, 2007), Erlykin et al (2010), who showed that various mechanisms might act differently at different altitudes and geographical locations. However, the GEC is affected by the solar activity in a different way, via the interplanetary electric field (IEF), so that only positive IEF plays a role, while negative IEF does not. Positive IEF corresponds to a interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) with a southward component, or negative z-component, which favors a direct energy transfer from solar wind to the magnetosphere and to ionosphere. For negative IEF (positive z-component of the IMF) the transfer is much less efficient and only a very small percentage of the solar wind energy is transferred to the magnetosphere (e.g. Dungey 1961, Papitashvili and Rich 2002, Siingh et al 2005). Thus, in contrast to other potential solar drivers which are expected to exert a monotonic influence, IEF is expected to affect clouds only when IEF is positive. This feature has a potential of separating the IEF effect from other drivers. Here we present results of correlation studies between the interplanetary electric field (IEF) and cloud cover, which might indicate the most probable mechanism that might affect cloud cover. We discuss here mainly results obtained for low cloud cover (LCC), but we also refer to middle- (MCC) and high-clouds (HCC).
Conclusion
Here we present a result of an empirical study showing that there is a weak but statistically significant relation between low cloud cover at middle–high latitudes in both Earth’s hemispheres and the interplanetary electric field, that favors a particular mechanism of indirect solar activity influence on climate: global electric circuit affecting cloud formation. We show that all characteristics of the relationship are in line with what is expected if the interplanetary electric field affects cloud cover via the global electric circuit:
(1) the low cloud cover shows a systematic correlation, at interannual time scale, with positive interplanetary electric field, at mid- and high-latitude regions in both hemispheres;
(2) there is no correlation between low cloud cover and interplanetary electric field in tropical regions;
(3) there is no correlation between low cloud cover and negative interplanetary electric field over the entire globe.
As an additional factor, cosmic ray flux may also affect cloud cover in the presence of positive interplanetary electric field. No clear effect of cosmic ray flux during periods of negative IEF was found.
Similar, but less statistically significant results were found also for middle and high cloud cover, suggesting that the primary effect is on low-clouds. The fact that the found statistical relation exists only for the periods of positive IEF and not for negative IEF disfavors other potential mechanisms of sun–cloud relations at mid–high latitudes, such as via ion-induced/mediated nucleation or UVI influence. However, the latter might work at low–mid latitudes. Although this empirical study does not give a clue for an exact physical mechanism affecting the clouds, as discussed above, it favors a particular solar driver, solar wind with the frozen-in interplanetary magnetic field, that affects the global electric current system at Earth. The result suggest that further research of solar-terrestrial influence ought to focus more also on this direction.
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The paper is open source, see it here:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/4/045032/article
Related: No increase of the interplanetary electric field since 1926 (Sager and Svalgaard 2004)
Related articles
- Claim: Solar activity not a key cause of climate change, study shows (wattsupwiththat.com)
The weather on the moon is purely solar and galactic. As atmosphere is added, the object’s weather becomes a blend of solar and atmospheric influence. At some point, where does the solar input not influence the object’s surface or weather or climate? We have an array of planets to look at the differences in atmosphere and how sun affects each. Ionization is but one influence.
vukcevic says:
December 26, 2013 at 8:50 am
Your graph of Z field, sadly is not what I am talking about. Central Europe is not source of the Earth magnetic field, it is the Earth’s liquid core, some 3000km down.
Any effect of such changes have to be measured at the surface or above, where there is no decadal variation. Here is the secular variation in india the past 167 years http://www.leif.org/research/Secualr-Variation-CLA-ABG.png
You need to look at magnetic variability closer to the magnetic pole which is shown here:
No, I don’t. Your graph does not show any decadal variation either. Actually looks very much like the two graphs I have just linked. So, it is time for you to stop spreading misleading statements about non-existing things, they are not bringing anything to the table, except showing your capacity for self-delusion.
“..Two possible physical links have been proposed: one via the ion-induced/mediated nucleation by cosmic ray induced ionization (CRII) (Dickinson 1975, Svensmark and Friis-Christensen 1997..”
“nihil novi sub sole” (nothing new under the sun). Has CTR Wilson, he of the Wilson Cloud Chamber even been mentioned in all this for the very a propos work he did in 1911 showing that ionized particles nucleated a trail of clouds in their paths through the saturated atmosphere of the cloud chamber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
It is not just a “proposition” it is a fact demonstrated 102 years ago. Wilson got the Nobel Prize for this, before the prize became ho-hum. In the 101st year after the cloud chamber experiment, we apparently “discovered” (re-demonstrated) the effect in CERN, the multibillion dollar apparatus which is an upgrade of Wilson’s $5.00 apparatus. Does anyone in all this recent fuss about cloud formation ever cite the work of Wilson? This kind of wiping the historical slate clean is not just a thing of warmists, it seems to be pretty much across science. Will we see in a hundred more years someone “discover” general relativity and set off an argument that this is just one explanation for observed phenomena and offer three more by post modern political scientists.
vukcevic says:
December 26, 2013 at 8:50 am
You need to look at magnetic variability closer to the magnetic pole which is shown here
No, I don’t. Your graph does not show any decadal variation either [nor bidecadal]. Actually looks very much like the two graphs I have just linked. So, it is time for you to stop spreading misleading statements about non-existing things, they are not bringing anything to the table, except showing your capacity for self-delusion.
DirkH says:
December 26, 2013 at 6:19 am
Electric forces are electric forces. Physicists don’t subscribe to Newspeak.
Circular logic is always so refreshing. They are some kind of force, perhaps similar to electricity, but that is all.
Leif what solar structure(s) comprise the deLaval rocket nozzle analog you mentioned? Is the sun positively or negatively charged wrt the heliosphere?
Bob K. says:
December 26, 2013 at 4:42 am
To be honest, I almost didn’t watch the rest of the clip, once I spotted those three “Jeff Forbes Principle Investigator” bastardisations of English.
Whilst you are right, it is important to use correctly the language, some people even if knowing correctly the right words may accidentaly use these wrongly, as same/simmilar words have a bit different meaning in different languages.
So for one person who speaks only english principle and principal is very simple to discern.
Once you have more languages in your head and the thoughts are being processed in one language, however the output is in a different one it may lead to a bit of confusion, even if you know the right words, that otherwise would not happen:
I tried google translate for the 2 languages of the authors and searched for “principal” in romanian which gives an answer, so the word exist in romanian too but with a bit of different meaning, an adjectiv: main, whereas in english is a substantiv and adjectiv and in the exemple above is used as substantiv.
I tried the same in finish and google translate shows a lot of words in finish pääasiallinen as adjectiv and päämies as chieftain etc.
If you take principle in english you get “principiu” in romanian and periaate in finish.
Using spell check may confuse people even more, ussually spell check stupidly proposes the wrong word for a minor spell error, so, when the author is foreign I would suggest to take such errors with a grain of salt…
lsvalgaard says:
December 26, 2013 at 9:33 am
http://www.leif.org/research/Secualr-Variation-CLA-ABG.png
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Link fails, used in two posts… inquiring minds want to know.
[Use
http://www.leif.org/research/Secular-Variation-CLA-ABG.png
instead, it was just misspelled.
w.]
“We need models to establish credibility”, that’s sick.
@Brant Ra
That was a very interesting contribution. Thanks.
Bob Weber says:
December 26, 2013 at 9:50 am
Leif what solar structure(s) comprise the deLaval rocket nozzle analog you mentioned? Is the sun positively or negatively charged wrt the heliosphere?
The solar wind escapes because it is HOT [the combustion chamber of the rocket engine]. Gravity, of course, impedes the escape [try to throw a ball upwards], that is the narrowing of the throat. As gravity weakens the altitude, the throat expands [as in the rocket engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Viking_5C_rocketengine.jpg and the escaping gases speed up to supersonic speeds.
The sun is not significantly charged with respect to the heliosphere.
Alan Robertson says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:00 am
http://www.leif.org/research/Secualr-Variation-CLA-ABG.png
Link fails, used in two posts… inquiring minds want to know.
Fat-fingered on a cold morning. Try to correct the typo:
http://www.leif.org/research/Secular-Variation-CLA-ABG.png
lsvalgaard says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:06 am
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Many thanks.
I should have spotted that…
Thank you Leif for that, I’ll be thinking about that. My main focus is what the authors of this article featured today are saying about here on “home world”, where we live and are on the receiving end of that solar activity. Until someone disproves the existence of the GEC, for all practical purposes its still electric weather to me, and from what I see from extreme weather events that follow earth-directed solar storms, its a major overlooked factor in climate science.
At this time in history, we are faced with being forced to pay through the nose with carbon taxes that won’t change the weather or the climate ever, in my opinion. I think no one person has all the answers, and in time, a lot of scientists today are going to be proven wrong about one thing or another, just like its always been, so its silly to say the science is settled in such topics as climate science and cosmology. Appreciate your answers. I’m not convinced yet that gravity is as all-powerful as many have said, and that’s no knock on you.
It is interesting that Earth and Venus have such different magnetic field strengths, when accordingly to the belief that Earth’s magnetic field is internally generated, Venus should also have a similar magnetic field to earth.
When one considers however that earth’s magnetic field is not internally generated, but rather induced by the rotation of the earth within the sun’s EM field, then there is no problem. Venus with its much slower rotational rate is consistent with a weaker magnetic field.
An externally generated magnetic field is also consistent with the core temperature of the earth. Iron when heated loses its ferromagnetism above the Curie point, which precludes a molten iron core from self-generating a magnetic field through convection.
Bob Weber says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:21 am
I’m not convinced yet that gravity is as all-powerful as many have said, and that’s no knock on you.
In the end, gravity is the root cause of everything, even electric and magnetic fields. To get an electric field you need to separate positive and negative charges. Since the negative charges [electrons] are much lighter that the heavier protons, gravity can separate the two and create a [weak] electric field, which if the charges are free to move in turn creates an electrical current which has an magnetic field. This process actually does work weakly on the Sun [the Pannekoek-Rosseland polarization electric field] but is not enough to create the solar wind acceleration we observe. Gravity nicely does that via the deLaval mechanism. The IEF is purely a local effect created when the solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field: positive charges are deflected one way around the Earth, and negative charges are deflected the other way. The resulting electric current neutralizes/closes by flowing through the ionosphere giving rise to aurorae and associated magnetic disturbances. Reality is a lot more complicated than this, but the gross features are well described by this simplified view.
Nikola Tesla knew (in 1891) that air is an insulator at high pressure (troposphere) and a conductor at low pressure (ionosphere) from his work on lamps. Combined with the conductive ‘earth’ these three comprise a huge spherical capacitor (‘electrical condensor’ for all you old-timers like me).
The plasma the sun continually(!) sends our way gets separated into streams of penetrating electrons and non-so-penetrating protons by the earth’s magnetic field, which deflects the differently charged particles in different directions. A CME is simply a surge in the stream of plasma.
The more penetrating electrons follow the magnetic field to the earth’s lower atmopsphere and ground, while the protons are stopped at the mesosphere (~85 km) producing auroras. The earth becomes a capacitor charged to about 600 volts per meter.
A rising column of wet (and highly conductive!) air has a chance of shorting out that capacitor: 600 V/m x 85 km = 51 million volts.
ferdberple says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:32 am
When one considers however that earth’s magnetic field is not internally generated
There is no need to ‘consider’ such a scenario [for many reasons] as already Gauss showed us [in the 1830s] that observations demonstrate that the field is internally generated. His conclusions have been verified many times since.
tadchem says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:33 am
The more penetrating electrons follow the magnetic field to the earth’s lower atmosphere and ground, while the protons are stopped at the mesosphere
No, none of those particles penetrate to the ground Aurorae result from emissions of photons in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, above 80 km (50 mi), from ionized nitrogen atoms regaining an electron and then returning from an excited state to ground state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_field
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In the past, electrically charged objects were thought to produce two different, unrelated types of field associated with their charge property. An electric field is produced when the charge is stationary with respect to an observer measuring the properties of the charge, and a magnetic field (as well as an electric field) is produced when the charge moves (creating an electric current) with respect to this observer. Over time, it was realized that the electric and magnetic fields are better thought of as two parts of a greater whole — the electromagnetic field.
……
Once this electromagnetic field has been produced from a given charge distribution, other charged objects in this field will experience a force (in a similar way that planets experience a force in the gravitational field of the Sun). If these other charges and currents are comparable in size to the sources producing the above electromagnetic field, then a new net electromagnetic field will be produced. Thus, the electromagnetic field may be viewed as a dynamic entity that causes other charges and currents to move, and which is also affected by them.
Svalgaard @ur momisugly vukcevic
Any effect of such changes have to be measured at the surface or above…. Actually looks very much like the two graphs I have just linked.
Yes indeed they are measured at the surface, and for ‘look very much like’ let show all three together:
http://www.leif.org/research/Secular-Variation-SED-NGK.png
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Gmf.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LLa.htm
(last graph is bi-decadal delta Bz, magnetic units scale should be also a good clue).
If my graphs look ‘very much as graphs you have just linked’, you then appear to agree with my assertion that there is a (causal or not, future science may show which one) correlation between magnetic field and global temperature variabilities.
Bruce Cobb says:
December 26, 2013 at 9:47 am
“”DirkH says:
December 26, 2013 at 6:19 am
Electric forces are electric forces. Physicists don’t subscribe to Newspeak.”
Circular logic is always so refreshing. They are some kind of force, perhaps similar to electricity, but that is all.”
So you claim there is an as yet undiscovered force that you call the cosmic force? Well, I put that in the same bin I put Dark Matter and Dark Energy in – conjecture. I didn’t use any kind of circular logic; I told you what it’s called.
By L. Svalgaards argument BTW there cannot be charge separation in space. That’s funny; Earth must be a very special place then because we observe charge separation all the time.
What might be useful is to have Leif read the history for Hannes Alfven and MHD which has been written by David Talbott for Edge Magazine, and ask him where within this broader historical context, either Talbott or Alfven should have determined that there is no question to be asked here? The real problem, it seems to some of us, is that the university system continues to present this apparent half-century controversy as a series of conclusive claims rather than a set of assumptions with a question mark at its end. Why would students be primed to think they know the answer on such a fundamental set of questions? The risk inherent to assuming the wrong answer here seems too great to just accept the assumption, for many of us …
From http://www.scientificexploration.org/edgescience/edgescience_09.pdf …
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The underlying idea was that space could have been magnetized in primordial times or in early stages of stellar and galactic evolution, all under the control of higher-order kinetics and gravitational dynamics. All large scale events in space could still be explained in terms of disconnected islands, and it would only be necessary to look inside the “islands” to discover localized electromagnetic events—no larger electric currents or circuitry required. In this view, popularly held today, we live in a “magnetic universe” (the title of several recent books and articles), but not an electric universe. The point was stated bluntly by the eminent solar physicist Eugene Parker, “…No significant electric field can arise in the frame of reference
of the moving plasma.”
But the critical turn in this story, the part almost never told within the community of astronomers and astrophysicists, is that Alfvén came to realize he had been mistaken. Ironically—and to his credit—Alfvén used the occasion of his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize to plead with scientists to ignore his earlier work. Magnetic fields, he said, are only part of the story. The electric currents that create magnetic fields must not be overlooked, and attempts to model space plasma in the absence of electric currents will set astronomy and astrophysics on a course toward crisis, he said.
In accord with Alvén’s observations, American physicist, professor Alex Dessler, former editor of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, notes that he himself had originally fallen in with an academic crowd that believed electric fields could not exist in the highly conducting plasma of space. “My degree of shock and surprise in finding Alfvén right and his critics wrong can hardly be described.”
In retrospect, it seems clear that Alfvén considered his early theoretical assumption of frozen-in magnetic fields to be his greatest mistake, a mistake perpetuated first and foremost by mathematicians attracted to Alfvén’s magnetohydrodynamic equations. Alfvén came to recognize that real plasma behavior is too “complicated and awkward” for the tastes of mathematicians. It is a subject “not at all suited for mathematically elegant theories.” It requires hands-on attention to plasma dynamics in the laboratory. Sadly, he said, the plasma universe became “the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulae which we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong.”
Again and again Alfvén reiterated the point: the underlying assumptions of cosmologists today “are developed with the most sophisticated mathematical methods and it is only the plasma itself which does not ‘understand’ how beautiful the theories are and absolutely refuses to obey them.”
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Also, people might want to check out the paper titled “Possible reasons for underestimating Joule heating in global models: E-field variability, spatial resolution and vertical velocity”.
But, if I can make a suggestion as an outsider looking in, maybe Leif would consider releasing the Electric Universe hostage so that people can have permission to question cosmological assumptions here … ? I recall running him shutting the same conversation down a couple of years ago. We are all entitled to our own worldviews and assumptions, but does science permit us to impose those assumptions upon each other?
lsvalgaard says:
December 26, 2013 at 10:33 am
“In the end, gravity is the root cause of everything, even electric and magnetic fields. ”
Gravity even causes the protective hypothesis of Dark Matter, because it needs it to keep the Gravity-only cosmology alive for the time being.
DirkH says:
December 26, 2013 at 11:00 am
By L. Svalgaards argument BTW there cannot be charge separation in space. That’s funny; Earth must be a very special place then because we observe charge separation all the time.
Earth is, indeed, a very special place, namely one where the air where we live and breathe is not ionized to any significant degree. In such environments [insulators] charge separation can and do occur. 99.99..% of the baryon Universe is not like that, so we are very special. Of course, that is not funny at all, we could not live if that was not so, so we are ‘victims’ of a selection effect.