Average cloud cover is the most important factor in global warming

While global warming alarmists are trying to create a hysteria about Man causing the heat death of the planet, some physicists in Denmark and Israel are adding to the data that Nature — not Man — is the most important determinant of global warming.  

The Basic Model

This is a story I have already related, but there is significant new data bearing on this that everyone should know. First, the basic story is summarized in the post Global Warming: A Summation, but I will summarize it in an even more brief fashion here. The first thing to be said is that any theory explaining global warming must not just explain the warming itself, but must also explain why it only occurs during definite periods of time. What I mean by this can be seen in the plot over time of the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) dataset of globally averaged temperature anomalies. The temperature anomaly  is a difference of the globally averaged temperature from an amount that is considered by someone somewhere to be what the “normal” value should be. Never mind that climate has been so greatly variable that any meaningful definition of what is “normal” might well be impossible. Nevertheless, time averages of globally averaged temperature can be calculated in a number of ways, and the values produced can be taken as “normal”. Whatever temperature zero NCDC, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), chose, they produced the plot shown below.

Notice that from about 1910 to 1940 there was approximately thirty years of warming, followed by an approximately 35 years of pause in global warming from about 1940 to 1975, which in turn was followed by about 25 years of warming from 1975 to approximately 2000. Since then we have experienced another 16 years of a pause in global warming. Other people read the turning points between warming and pause slightly differently, giving slightly different periods of warming and pause. Nevertheless, the pictures are fundamentally the same. And during this time do we see pauses in increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to explain these periods? The plot below shows the atmospheric concentrations to be increasing steadily in time.

This strongly suggests that something else is determining the periods of warming and pauses in warming. Something that has a half-period of about 35-40 years.

In fact these periods are on top of another, much longer period of warming and cooling with a half-period of about 500-600 years. The last cooling phase of that long cycle lasted from about 1300 to 1850 and is called “the Little Ice Age” (although it certainly was not a true ice age). The previous warming phase of that cycle is called the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from roughly 950 to around 1250. The warming and cooling we are discussing here are mere perturbations on the back of this much longer cycle, Since the warming phase started around 1850-1860, we should see overall warming until the year 2350! Because we can see this cycle operating long before the industrial revolution, we can rest assured it has nothing to do with Man.

So what kind of model can explain alternating 30-40 year periods of warming and cooling or pauses in warming? In fact we now have a model which connects 30 to 40 year fluctuations in solar power output to cosmic ray intensities in Earth’s atmosphere and to cloud cover over the Earth. As the solar power output increases, the solar wind sweeps more of the cosmic rays entering the solar system away from the inner planets. The cosmic rays are composed primarily of highly energetic protons and atomic nuclei originating outside our solar system, possibly from supernovae. They are considerably more energetic than the protons in the solar wind, and therefore can penetrate deeper into Earth’s atmosphere; but are considerably less dense than the density of protons in the solar wind. Therefore, a particularly energetic and dense solar wind in periods of high solar power output can sweep cosmic rays away from Earth, lowering the intensity of cosmic rays penetrating our atmosphere.

The connection of cosmic rays with Earth’s climate lies in the fact that the energetic, massive particles (mostly protons) that make up the cosmic rays produce multiple ionizations of particulates in the atmosphere.  These ionized particulates then act as nucleation centers, attracting and binding water molecules by electrostatic attraction. A large collection of these ions electrostatically bound to water molecules are what is known as a cloud. Clouds predominantly cool the Earth by acting as a sunshade that reflects incident solar radiation back into space.

This solar wind—cosmic ray—cloud cover mechanism can work in two ways: either to warm the Earth or to cool it. In the warming phase of the cycle, the Sun becomes more active, producing more intense solar wind that blows cosmic rays away from the Earth. With less cosmic radiation entering the Earth’s atmosphere, cloud cover lessens allowing the Earth to absorb more radiation and to warm. The cooling cycle starts when the Sun becomes less active, producing less intense solar wind, which allows more cosmic radiation to penetrate the atmosphere. The cosmic rays create more cloud cover and the planet cools.

Evidence for the Solar Wind-Cosmic Ray-Cloud Cover Mechanism for Global Warming and Cooling

Now we can get to the new evidence that this in fact is what is happening. A team of physicists at the National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, and at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have just published a peer-reviewed paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research. [The exact citation is J. Svensmark, M. B. Enghoff, N. J. Shaviv, H. Svensmark. The response of clouds and aerosols to cosmic ray decreases. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/2016JA022689, Clicking on this last link will get you to a full copy of the paper, although you will have to pay for the privilege!] A review of the paper in ScienceDaily states the following:

A team of scientists from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Space) and the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has linked large solar eruptions to changes in Earth’s cloud cover in a study based on over 25 years of satellite observations.

The solar eruptions are known to shield Earth’s atmosphere from cosmic rays. However the new study, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, shows that the global cloud cover is simultaneously reduced, supporting the idea that cosmic rays are important for cloud formation. The eruptions cause a reduction in cloud fraction of about 2 percent corresponding to roughly a billion tonnes of liquid water disappearing from the atmosphere.

This is just the latest in a long line of research that began with Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and  Mr. Friis-Christensen in 1996. They analyzed satellite data to demonstrate a close correlation between solar activity, cosmic ray levels, and cloud cover.  Of course, correlation is not proof of causation, so the next step was taken by CERN physicist Jasper Kirkby, who had his interest piqued by the research of Svensmark and Friis-Christensen. In 1997, he and a team of CERN scientists, together with Dr. Svensmark, designed a cloud chamber experiment to demonstrate causation. They designed a cloud chamber holding gases representing the atmosphere, inundated by a CERN particle beam representing the cosmic radiation. Interestingly enough, they could not get permission from CERN management to conduct the experiment for six long years until 2006, and the experiment itself did not start until 2009. Below is an embedded, entertaining video of Kirkby giving a seminar describing his experiment in 2011. At the time they had not obtained definitive results, as you will hear from Jasper Kirkby. (Hint: going full screen with the video will make it easier to follow Kirkby’s pointer over his slides.)

At the time of this seminar, the CERN group had not yet demonstrated cloud nucleation at sizes of nucleation centers sufficient to produce clouds. Another, shorter, and less technical description by Kirkby about the CERN cloud experiment is given in the video embedded below.

Some of the Cloud experiment’s early results are summarized in the plot below, which shows particle concentrations of ions with different diameters under three different situations as a function of time. In the time period between 3:45 and 4:34 labeled with a boxed J_n, an applied electric field in the cloud chamber swept most ions out of the chamber, resulting in a very low concentration of ions. Then at about 4:34 the electric field was turned off, and the major source of ions came from natural cosmic radiation penetrating the chamber. In this period, labeled with J_gcr , the ion particle concentration rapidly rose. Then around 4:58 the CERN particle beam simulating the cosmic radiation in the upper atmosphere was turned on and the rate of ion production became much higher in the period labeled J_ch.

Kirkby’s experiment however was still not definitive, since they needed to show that much larger nucleation centers could be formed by cosmic ray ionization. Eventually, they got their proof and published their results in the peer-reviewed journal Science. The article citation is Riccobono et. al., “Oxidation Products of Biogenic Emissions Contribute to Nucleation of Atmospheric Particles”, Science, vol. 344, Issue 6185, pp. 717-721, 16 May 2014. Their abstract reads:

Atmospheric new-particle formation affects climate and is one of the least understood atmospheric aerosol processes. The complexity and variability of the atmosphere has hindered elucidation of the fundamental mechanism of new-particle formation from gaseous precursors. We show, in experiments performed with the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) chamber at CERN, that sulfuric acid and oxidized organic vapors at atmospheric concentrations reproduce particle nucleation rates observed in the lower atmosphere. The experiments reveal a nucleation mechanism involving the formation of clusters containing sulfuric acid and oxidized organic molecules from the very first step. Inclusion of this mechanism in a global aerosol model yields a photochemically and biologically driven seasonal cycle of particle concentrations in the continental boundary layer, in good agreement with observations.

Both the title and the abstract are masterpieces of misdirection, not saying a word about cosmic rays being connected with global warming! No doubt the authors feared their paper would be rejected if they were more blatant in their up-front claims!

After this body blow to the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), solar physicist Dr. Leif Svalgaard vividly showed with a “sunspot integral” , which time-averaged the number of sunspots over a year, the very close correlation between solar activity and mean global temperature.

Certainly the activity of the Sun has absolutely nothing to do with how much CO₂ humans are pouring into the atmosphere. How then to account for this obvious correlation?

As a final piece of evidence I will cite data measured by a student group affiliated with the website SpaceWeather.com. The student group, called Earth to Sky Calculus, periodically launches weather balloons with instruments for measuring cosmic ray intensity in the stratosphere. Below you can see their latest graph of cosmic ray intensity from March of 2015 to August 2016.

From their data you can see that cosmic ray intensity in the upper atmosphere has increased by about 12.5 percent from March of 2015, consistent with the fact that the Sun is becoming more quiescent and that we are at least 16 years into a pause of global warming. If you wish to monitor the activity of the Sun, you can see daily changes in sunspot number, solar wind speed, solar wind proton density, and solar wind current density on my Solar Activity page.

There is a great deal more research into the solar wind—cosmic ray—cloud cover model of global warming that could have been cited. For an end-to-end listing and explanation of much of this research, see the Hockey Schtick posts sorted by date for the query svensmark. You can then see posts on this research starting on September 6, 2011 and ending on August 25, 2016.

And the AGW enthusiasts claim that the science is settled on the case of global warming? Hah!

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