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Cosmic Rays too Wimpy to Influence Climate

by Anne Minard on May 1, 2009

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cosmic-rays

Illustration Credit: Simon Swordy (U. Chicago), NASA

People looking for new ways to explain climate change on Earth have sometimes turned to cosmic rays, showers of atomic nuclei that emanate from the Sun and other sources in the cosmos. 

But new research, in press in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says cosmic rays are puny compared to other climatic influences, including greenhouse gases — and not likely to impact Earth’s climate much.

 

Jeffrey Pierce and Peter Adams of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, point out that cycles in numerous climate phenomena, including tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures, sea-surface temperatures, sea-level pressure, and low level cloud cover have been observed to correlate with the 11-year solar cycle.

However, variation in the Sun’s brightness alone isn’t enough to explain the effects and scientists have speculated for years that cosmic rays could fill the gap.

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For example, Henrick Svensmark, a solar researcher at the Danish Space Research Institute, has proposed numerous times, most recently in 2007, that solar cosmic rays can seed clouds on Earth – and he’s seen indications that periods of intense cosmic ray bombardment have yeilded stormy weather patterns in the past.

Others have disagreed.

“Dust and aerosols give us much quicker ways of producing clouds than cosmic rays,” said Mike Lockwood, a solar terrestrial physicist at Southampton University in the UK. “It could be real, but I think it will be very limited in scope.”

To address the debate, Pierce and Adams ran computer simulations using cosmic-ray fluctuations common over the 11-year solar cycle.

“In our simulations, changes in [cloud condensation nuclei concentrations] from changes in cosmic rays during a solar cycle are two orders of magnitude too small to account for the observed changes in cloud properties,” they write, “consequently, we conclude that the hypothesized effect is too small to play a significant role in current climate change.”

The results have met a mixed reception so far with other experts, according to an article in this week’s issue of the journal Science:  Jan Kazil of the University of Colorado at Boulder has reported results from a different set of models, confirming that cosmic rays’ influence is similarly weak. But at least one researcher – Fangqun Yu of the University at Albany in New York — has questioned the soundness of Pierce and Adams’ simulations.

And so, the debate isn’t over yet …

Sources: The original paper (available for registered AGU users here) and a news article in the May 1 issue of the journal Science. See links to some of Svensmark’s papers here.

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  • star-grazer west coast

    True, however, I do have concern should there be a SN about 500LY away causing the Suns’ protective heliosphere to be pushed into the inner Solar System perhaps causing far more UltraHighEnergyCosmicRays(the CR with the energy of a baseball fastball) to hit the Earths’ atmosphere and many will survive to the surface hitting humans and affect their DNA, estimates says perhaps 1% of the human population will get cancer that
    does not start from a certain spot, but affects the whole body, the person perish within 1 month-these are the ‘bolt from the blue’ cancer that has no occurence in family history nor in a cancerous environment.. I believe many out there heard of people who died from whole body cancer of ‘mysterious’ cause and died fast, this is the only good thing about it, the demise is quick , The number of humans I talk about is about 6,500,000 people.

  • star-grazer west coast

    Addendum, The number should there be a close SN should be 65,000,000 or 1% or the Earths’ population.
    about 6,500,000 cancerous ‘bolt from the blue’ occurs every year

  • Nereid

    @star-grazer west coast: I think that most UHECRs originate much further away than galactic supernovae; they’re from the jets associated with active galactic nuclei (AGNs) such as that in M87 or CygA. And in any case, they are so rare that an increase of even a thousand-fold would likely have but a trivial effect on mutation rates.

    A nearby supernova would likely produce copious quantities of cosmic rays with energies up to ~a PeV (which is ~a thousand times more energetic than the best our terrestrial particle accelerators can do), with most of the increased DNA damage being cased by considerably less energetic ones (say, GeV to TeV).

  • star-grazer west coast

    Nereid – You’re right. It doesn’t require the heavt UHECR to do damage- the lesser energetic ones are nasty enough.!!!! Thank you for the info.

  • Lawrence B. Crowell

    I am glad to see this matter put to rest. Of course global warming types will keep hawking this as a source, just creationist keep hammering old discredited ideas.

    The cosmic ray tracks, artistically portrayed above contain a lot of information. Those particle sprays contain information about particle physics up to 10^9GeV. The problem is how to we detect it all. The information is there, but we can’t so far read it.

    Lawrence B. Crowell

  • Lawrence B. Crowell

    I meant to say anti-global warming types

  • Jon Hanford

    @ Lawrence B. Crowell, Thanks for the clarification of your earlier comments. I somehow couldn’t picture you in the ‘anti-global warming’ camp, as you seem to be a rational person who can interpret current scientific information and know the scientific consensus on the global warming issue. Anyway, you bring up a good point and maybe this research may sway some policy makers as to the reality of the situation.

  • Dark Nebula

    If you are familiar at all with the research that the Danish Space Institute did on this subject, you are aware that they came up with a hypothesis, conducted physical experiments that confirmed their hypothesis, and published their data and experiments so that anyone questioning it could repeat them for themselves. When I was in school this was called science. Are you going to believe physical reality or a computer simulation????

  • Sili

    conducted physical experiments that confirmed their hypothesis, and published their data and experiments

    [citation needed]

  • star-grazer west coast

    I’ve read of studies of possible vast increase of cosmic rays up to ~a PeV as indicated by
    Nereid due to very close SN like the one that created the Vela nebula and a few others. Most likely high number of deaths were caused by ‘bolt from the blue’ whole body cancers that killed a person within 30 days. I’ve read NO account of CR causing global-warming or cooling-I was born and raised in the US, and where did this ‘hypoto’ (I refuse to write the whole thing lol) junk come from!??
    I can understand our Suns’ energy output can be affected should it go through the densest part of the spiral arms, however, humans will be in serious danger being too close to too many of the ‘big heavyweight’ stars anyway!!!!

  • Aqua

    I think the question should be whether cosmic ray showers induce ion trails that initiate lightning strikes. THEN, what effect do those lightning generated shock waves have as they propogate outward in dense cloud structures?

  • star-grazer west coast

    Aqua Says- I have to agree with you.Unfortundately, Ann had to post this article whether it made sense to her or not.
    . I;ve read articles some time back,something about it made no difference to the climates dispite high or low CR counts. In the event that a very distant object is affecting our weather, that would be the least of our worries!!!! It would probably mean our atmosphere is being torned apart!!!

  • S.E.Cycloid

    Henrik Svensmark (along with Nigel Calder) have written a book detailing their research; it also contains many references to other works. The book is called “The chilling stars” I read it recently; it is worth reading with an open but critical mind. A good read (I have no connection with this book whatsoever).

  • star-grazer west coast

    S.E.Cycloid Says:
    Thank you for the title-besides your suggested book-I’m also getting ‘Death from the Sky’ by Philip Plait . It took me 3 hours to read ‘Physics of the Impossible’ by Michio Kaku. These books are so relatively cheap being paperbacks, I usually give them to the libraries when finished. I have to check what ‘The chilling stars’ have to say, I will be open but always critical minded, if I have doubts, I always check other sources dealing with the same subject matter. S.E.Cyclold, it is true there are 2 sides to every story, but some tries to inject a 3rd-4th etc for whatever reason. Like some of the subject matters in
    ‘Physics of the Impossible’ , many things will remain impossible but I do have an open mind, but will start to think of smashing all weaknesses in the ‘fortress hypothesis’ of someones ideas- if the ‘fortress’ remains standing, then someone does have revolutionary facts, however, practically all ‘fortresses’ were breached, and I exterminated everything inside lol. You get the idea!!!!!!!

  • Lawrence B. Crowell

    Henrick Svensmark’s research, which came out around 2006-7 or so, ran into trouble back then as I recall. The problem is that I am far from being a climate scientist, so I have to go with what is being published in the mainstream on the subject. I will say that it largely makes more sense than the “alth-theories.”

    For cosmic rays to be a major driver in the climate picture they would have to deposit some appreciable fraction of a watt/meter of energy ot the Earth. They don’t have anywhere near this flux. Further, there would have to be some mechanism for why cosmic radiation has a variation with time and data to support that conclusion. There is none on either account.

    My sense is similar with solar variation hypotheses. There is no data to support a variation in solar irradiance that would drive a warming of the planet. The Ulysses probes and other space based solar observatories have recorded nothing of that sort.

    The CO_2 warming mechanism remains as the dominant source corroborated by data at this time. Denialisms and counter claims are a matter of political smoke screens than honest research. These are of course a disservice, and we risk not fully addressing this problem as a result.

    Global warming is really just an extension of a problem identified 50 years ago by Rachael Carlson in her “Silent Spring.” We humans are extracting resources and energy and by corollary dumping entropy on the biosphere at a rate far faster than natural systems can adjust, replensish or absorbe these changes.

    Lawrence B. Crowell

  • groupguy

    Professor Wang at the University of Albany has been charged with massaging data to attack the Urban Heat Island effect in two seminal papers, and the University has failed to make the results of its investigation known as Prof. Wang has refused to turn over his source data. This behavior casts a pall on all University of Albany research in my view.

  • star-grazer west coast

    groupguy
    The effects and feelings of the Urban Heat Island is known to anyone with a pulse-the only ones who don’t know about the UHI are those who never left the very rural areas and those without a pulse. The UHI effect is so extreme in some metro areas, NOAA had to move the thermometers out further, sometimes several times, even then, the minimum temperatures is higher then when the term UHI was not generally known. I can’t figure out why that Professor Wang is trying to disprove something known for decades

  • faithandphilosophy

    Mr. Crowell, you have not understood the CR theory if you suggest that the CR must contribute an “appreciable fraction of a watt/meter.” The CR are proposed as having an amplifying effect through their influence on low cloud cover. I suggest reading Jasper Kirkby’s proposal paper for CERN. Notice that CERN is spending a lot of money to do the research on this and replicate Svensmark’s own work. (http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/) Notice too that Ms. Minard seems to be a bit schizophrenic: the title leads us to believe the theory is dead; her own conclusion states, “so the debate goes on.” Ms. Mindard may not be a careful writer, may be simply trying to sensationalize, or may be a victim of her editor’s desire to sensationalize. The CR – climate link’s death has been exaggerated before. Here is a recent defense: http://www.sciencebits.com/SloanAndWolfendale

  • Feenixx

    Lawrence B. Crowell, who keeps pointing out that he’s not a climate scientist, just gave me the best simple explanation for global warming I’ve seen so far:
    “We humans are … dumping entropy on the biosphere at a rate far faster than natural systems can adjust, replensish or absorbe these changes.”
    Woah, could it really be that obvious?!

  • Jon Hanford

    Readers interested in published work on ‘cosmoclimatology’ by Henrik Svensmark and the controversial nature of his claims might want to check his Wiki page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrick_Svensmark . I found it to be a good overview of his work on this topic with many links to peer-reviewed, published work on both sides of this issue. Links to CERN’s proposed CLOUD experiment can also be found here. While mention is made of ongoing research on this particular topic, nothing I’ve read on this seems very convincing, so I await independent confirmation of his results, preferably by multiple research efforts, confirming his theory of ‘cosmoclimatology’.

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