Cloud killer? Research suggests that solar storms interfere with cloud formation on Earth.
Credit: ESA/NASA
Posted on 08/08/2009 8:43:34 AM PDT by neverdem
Cloud killer? Research suggests that solar storms interfere with cloud formation on Earth.
Credit: ESA/NASA
Most of Earth's clouds get their start in deep space. That's the surprising conclusion from a team of researchers who argue that interstellar cosmic rays collide with water molecules in our atmosphere to form overcast skies.
As common as clouds are on Earth, the processes that produce them are not well understood. Scientists think particles of dust or pollen can serve as nuclei for water droplets, which in turn gather by the trillions into clouds. That would help explain how clouds form over urban areas: Fine particles called aerosols are emitted from the exhaust pipes of millions of vehicles and work their way into the atmosphere, where they are thought to attract water molecules. But it doesn't explain how clouds formed in preindustrial society--or how they form today over vast stretches of rainforest and ocean.
That's where cosmic rays come in. The idea goes like this: High-speed cosmic ray particles--protons and neutrons of still-mysterious origins that travel at nearly the speed of light--collide with water molecules in the atmosphere, stripping away electrons from those molecules and converting them into electrically charged ions. The ions then begin attracting other water molecules, which eventually form clouds.
The theory seems to hold water in the lab. In 2006, physicist Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark in Copenhagen and colleagues produced aerosols artificially in an atmospheric chamber by bombarding water molecules with a particle beam. "More ions resulted in more aerosols," Svensmark says.
In the new study, Svensmark's team wanted to see if the idea also worked in the real world. The researchers focused on a phenomenon known as a Forbush decrease. Here, a massive storm on the sun's surface flings a superhot fog of particles, called a coronal mass ejection, past Earth, temporarily shielding our planet from cosmic rays. If cosmic rays really do contribute to cloud formation, Svensmark and colleagues hypothesized, then cloud cover should dip during Forbush decreases.
And indeed that's what Svensmark's team found. When the researchers examined cloud data collected by weather satellites over the past 22 years and compared them with 26 Forbush decreases, they discovered that, for the five strongest events, the water-droplet content of Earth's clouds decreased by an average of 7%. It's like bare patches forming in a field, says Svensmark, whose team reports its findings this month in Geophysical Research Letters. The cloud patterns eventually returned to normal, he says, but they took weeks to do so. "We're now convinced that aerosols are affected by the Forbush decrease," Svensmark says.
Geoscientist Jón Egill Kristjánsson of the University of Oslo, Norway, calls the findings "astonishing." He and other researchers have searched for years for relationships between Forbush decreases and cloud formation and have found nothing, or they have found significant relationships "only in very remote locations." If the data can be confirmed by other observations, he says, "Svensmark's new results would greatly strengthen the case for a cosmic ray-cloud connection."
Svensmark argues that the findings suggest a link between cosmic rays and climate change. Because clouds bring rain and reflect light from the sun, fewer clouds would mean a warmer Earth. But Kristjánsson isn't willing to go that far. Monitoring instruments "over the last 50 years or so show either no trend or a slightly upward trend" in cosmic rays hitting Earth, he notes. According to Svensmark's theory, that would mean either no increase in cloud formation or a slight increase--neither of which would warm the world.
Thanks for the neat story about your neopagan sweetie.
If you ever see her again, I have another question for her:
If sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum, why do vacuum cleaners make so much noise?
Seriously, I used to teach graduate education courses and went home one night appalled when my students expressed surprise that there are no sounds in outer space because it’s a vacuum out there.
I wonder if any of these ‘scientists’ ever attended a science fair.
http://www.sciencefairadventure.com/ProjectDetail.aspx?ProjectID=116
My son once boasted to one of his high school teachers that I had invented a new carbon dioxide scrubber for the Space Station. She asked why a carbon dioxide scrubber was needed. My son replied that CO2 builds up in the Station from humans exhaling the gas.
She asked, “Why don’t they just open a window?”
This is not a joke. She was a math teacher.
I don't even need to ask, to tell you what she would say ... the Mother is screaming, due to the sheer unnaturalness of man's cruelty to nature.
Cloud formation has been SHOUTED as a major weakness in the climate models forever. That is not the only one. Nearly all the elements of the GCMs are very far from capability of modeling within 1% their own contribution. Even 1% leads to a chaotic effect that cascades without any assurance the model is close to predictive even 10 years out, to say nothing about 100 years out.
and apparently they don’t take into account things like rainfall either
Thanks for the link.
Gut some critter, and check the entrails.
Its about as accurate as global warming theory
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Water droplets in space have been observed since 1961. It’s known as the Gagarin Effect.
If water existed in space would it be in ice form? But water exists in comets but in ice form. But comets have contained vast amounts of liquid water in their interiors during the first million years of their formation
Then we, in CNY, are experiencing an alien invasion.
I haven’t seen thunderstorms with that much lightning and rain in YEARS, nor have I ever seen them last for HOURS on end like they did last night.
It fit the classic pattern of lake-effect precipitation, though. If this were winter, we would be buried.
Actually, cloud formation has always been poorly understood, but that doesn’t stop scientists from stating their current theory as a fact simply because it’s the best one they have.
Think about the pronunciation of the name of the planet......
My daughter is a physics major and runs into the same sort of thing among the other physics majors. She just cannot believe what some of them DON’T know about physics.
I take it you’re not a South Park fan, lol.
A what?
The TV collects dust until some major disaster happens.
“Mr. Hanky” was a very peculiar character on the somewhat racy cartoon “South Park.”
He was sentient poo.
GAd! She was obviously the last holdout for the theory popular in the 1800s that “rain follows the plough” ~ that is that human activity causes the weather to change ~ well, her and Algore at least.
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