The sun is dead!! Mini iceage???

Wonderful Henrik Svensmark's documentary vid on climate change and cosmic rays

First CERN cloud results are out.But here is some info on what they did




Sulphuric Acid

Sulphuric acid (H2SO4) is thought to be the main chemical trace gas responsible for nucleation in the atmosphere. Formation of pure water aerosol particles or droplets is kinetically hindered by an energy barrier due to the surface tension of water. Sulphuric acid has a low vapour pressure which means it condenses easily (boiling point is 337° C) and can act as a precursor gas for aerosols. In liquid phase it can be mixed in any fraction with water. A single sulphuric acid molecule in gas phase can already bind up to two water molecules by hydrogen bonds. These sulphuric acid/water cluster collide and form larger clusters which eventually grow spontaneously by further condensation.

Sulphuric acid can easily be charged by removing one proton (H+). This leads to an HSO4- ion that can form stable clusters together with a few neutral sulphuric acid and water molecules. Furthermore this leads to a higher collision rate with further uptake of sulphuric acid and water molecules.

In the CLOUD chamber sulphuric acid is produced by oxidation of SO2 with OH radicals, which are produced by reaction of water with singlet oxygen (O(1D)) that is produced by photolysis of ozone (O3).
Recent atmospheric measurements and theories suggest that other species may play an important role in nucleation as well. The influence of these species on nucleation and possible mechanisms are subject of further experiments.



Ion-Induced Nucleation

Nucleation is the formation of aerosol particles from precursor vapours like sulphuric acid. The process depends on both thermodynamic and kinetic properties of the system. Gas particles form clusters through kinetic collisions, which will often evaporate because a single-particle state is more energetically favourable than a multi-particle cluster.

When clusters of particles reach a certain critical size, there is an energy cost rather than an energy gain associated with evaporation. The inclusion of an ion within the cluster can reduce the size of this critical cluster significantly, making new particle formation much more stable.

Because atmospheric ion concentrations are largely determined by the intensity of galactic cosmic rays, ion-induced nucleation is a mechanism which could explain the observed cosmic ray-climate correlation. This is especially true in a clean, pre-industrial atmosphere, where nucleation would contribute a much large proportion of atmospheric aerosol.


Aerosol-Climate Effects

Aerosol Direct Effect

Aerosol affect the Earth's climate directly, by absorbing the sun's light or reflecting it back into space. Dark aerosol like black carbon or dust will absorb light and have a warming effect, while light-coloured aerosol like sea spray or sulphate reflect light and cool the planet.

Aerosol Indirect Effect

Large aerosols (> 100 nm) can act as seeds on which cloud droplets form. Liquid water clouds have a strong cooling effect on the Earth's climate. When more aerosol are present in a cloud with a given amount of water, more cloud droplets will form. These droplets will be smaller. The result is an increase in the cloud's albedo; polluted clouds reflect more light into space, and cool the climate more effectively.

The cloud will also have a longer lifetime, because smaller droplets are less likely to rain out. The aerosol indirect effect is larger than the direct effect, and more difficult to quantify.

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Atmospheric aerosols exert an important influence on climate1 through their effects on stratiform cloud albedo and lifetime2 and the invigoration of convective storms3. Model calculations suggest that almost half of the global cloud condensation nuclei in the atmospheric boundary layer may originate from the nucleation of aerosols from trace condensable vapours4, although the sensitivity of the number of cloud condensation nuclei to changes of nucleation rate may be small5, 6. Despite extensive research, fundamental questions remain about the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles and the mechanisms responsible, including the roles of galactic cosmic rays and other chemical species such as ammonia7. Here we present the first results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN.

We find that atmospherically relevant ammonia mixing ratios of 100 parts per trillion by volume, or less, increase the nucleation rate of sulphuric acid particles more than 100–1,000-fold.

Time-resolved molecular measurements reveal that nucleation proceeds by a base-stabilization mechanism involving the stepwise accretion of ammonia molecules. Ions increase the nucleation rate by an additional factor of between two and more than ten at ground-level galactic-cosmic-ray intensities, provided that the nucleation rate lies below the limiting ion-pair production rate.

We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer. However, even with the large enhancements in rate due to ammonia and ions, atmospheric concentrations of ammonia and sulphuric acid are insufficient to account for observed boundary-layer nucleation.


Video talking bout results,
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/featured/prime-time/867432237001/climate-change-culpability/1144692117001

CERN Finds “Significant” Cosmic Ray Cloud Effect reactions

Best known for its studies of the fundamental constituents of matter, the CERN particle-physics laboratory in Geneva is now also being used to study the climate. Researchers in the CLOUD collaboration have released the first results from their experiment designed to mimic conditions in the Earth’s atmosphere. By firing beams of particles from the lab’s Proton Synchrotron accelerator into a gas-filled chamber, they have discovered that cosmic rays could have a role to play in climate by enhancing the production of potentially cloud-seeding aerosols. –Physics World, 24 August 2011

If Henrik Svensmark is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal.–Terry Sloan, BBC News 3 April 2008


Henrik Svensmark welcomes the new results, claiming that they confirm research carried out by his own group, including a study published earlier this year showing how an electron beam enhanced production of clusters inside a cloud chamber. He acknowledges that the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation will not be proved until aerosols that are large enough to act as condensation surfaces are studied in the lab, but believes that his group has already found strong evidence for the link in the form of significant negative correlations between cloud cover and solar storms. Physics World, 24 August 2011

CERN’s CLOUD experiment is designed to study the formation of clouds and the idea that Cosmic Rays may have an influence. The take-home message from this research is that we just don’t understand clouds in anything other than hand-waving terms. We also understand the effects of aerosols even less. The other things to come out of it are that trace constituencies in the atmosphere seem to have a big effect on cloud formation, and that Cosmic rays also have an effect, a “significant” one according to CERN. –David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 25 August 2011

I have asked the CERN colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters. –Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, Welt Online 15 July 2011

Although they never said so, the High Priests of the Inconvenient Truth – in such temples as NASA-GISS, Penn State and the University of East Anglia – always knew that Svensmark’s cosmic ray hypothesis was the principal threat to their sketchy and poorly modelled notions of self-amplifying action of greenhouse gases. In telling how the obviously large influences of the Sun in previous centuries and millennia could be explained, and in applying the same mechanism to the 20th warming, Svensmark put the alarmist predictions at risk – and with them the billions of dollars flowing from anxious governments into the global warming enterprise. –-Nigel Calder, 24 August 2011

Jasper Kirkby is a superb scientist, but he has been a lousy politician. In 1998, anticipating he’d be leading a path-breaking experiment into the sun’s role in global warming, he made the mistake of stating that the sun and cosmic rays “will probably be able to account for somewhere between a half and the whole of the increase in the Earth’s temperature that we have seen in the last century.” Global warming, he theorized, may be part of a natural cycle in the Earth’s temperature. Dr. Kirkby was immediately condemned by climate scientists for minimizing the role of human beings in global warming. Stories in the media disparaged Dr. Kirkby by citing scientists who feared oil-industry lobbyists would use his statements to discredit the greenhouse effect. And the funding approval for Dr. Kirkby’s path-breaking experiment — seemingly a sure thing when he first announced his proposal– was put on ice. –Lawrence Solomon, National Post, 23 Feb 2007

This link has come to my attention care of NW In Depth / Technical Model Discussion.Not sure if i posted it before but here it is anyway.EDIT; YES i posted it last year page 13 post 192 so maybe there copying me cause they have there other link in my same post.

http://strat-www.met.fu-berlin.de/labitzke/moreqbo/MZ-Labitzke-et-al-2006.pdf

From link;

Influence of the 11-Year Sunspot Cycle on the Stratosphere in Late Winter
The Arctic Stratosphere since 1942

Figure 3 shows in two scatter diagrams the 30-hPa heights over the North Pole in February when the modulation of the solar signal by the QBO is at its maximum. The correlations between the 30-hPa heights and the solar cycle are shown, with the winters in the east phase of the QBO in the left part of the figure,and the winters in the west phase of the QBO in the right part. The abscissas indicate the sunspot solar cycle (SSC)

The correlations are clearly very different in the two groups,with negative correlations over the Arctic in the east phase of the QBO and large positive correlations there in the west phase. (The correlation for all years is 0.1,not shown.) The numbers in the scatter diagrams are the years of the individual Februaries.

Including the February 2006, the total number of Februaries available is now
65, more than twice the number available in the beginning (Labitzke, 1987; Lab-itzke and van Loon, 1988) and comprises 7 minima and 6 maxima, see Fig. 4.

As mentioned above, the 20 years after the first publication in 1987 (filled
squares) fit very well into the scatter diagrams (Fig. 3) and confirm the earlier
results. But also the NCEP/NCAR re-analyses from 1948 until 1957 (10 years,
filled circles) as well as the six Februaries from 1942 until 1947 (REC-Index: open diamonds) fit very well and the size of the correlations (particularly in the west phase of the QBO) did not change much (see Table 1 and van Loon and Labitzke, 1994 and 2000).

The average height dierence ( H in Fig.3) between solar maxima and min-
ima is very large in the west phase winters, reaching 704 meters which is almost 2 standard deviations of the interannual variability, cf. Fig. 2.
Figure 4 presents the SSC based on the 10.7 cm solar flux for the period 1942-2006. It is indicated whether a winter (January/February) belonged to the west or east phase of the QBO.

Further, large filled symbols indicate if a MMW
was observed. This can be well decided since 1950. The definition of a MMW is based on a reversal of the zonal wind over the Arctic at the 10-hPa level. As the very early data do not reach that high we must rely on comparisons with more recent events. The 30-hPa height values derived for 1947 and 1949 (west phase of the QBO) and 1942 (east phase) must be compared in Fig.3 with neighbouring values, e.g., 1958, 1991,1970, 1960 in the west phase group, or 1985, 1963 in the east phase group, which all represent well known MMWs. Therefore, we speculate that also during the winters 1942 (Bronnimann et al., 2004), 1947 and
1949 MMWs took place.

There is a very clear tendency for the MMWs in the west phase of the QBO
to occur during solar maxima (solar flux above 150 units), Fig.3: out of 11 cases 10 took place in solar max and none in solar min and this leads to the large positive correlations with the SSC over the Arctic, as discussed above.

For the MMWs in the east phase of the QBO the situation is less clear, but
more MMWs took place during solar minima (solar flux below 110 units): 10 out of 15 MMW cases, against 4 in solar maxima. This leads to the negative
correlations in the east phase.






Figure 3: Scatter diagrams of the monthly mean 30-hPa geopotential
heights (geopot.km) in February at the North Pole (1942 till 2006), plotted against the 10.7 cm solar flux. Left: years in the east phase of the QBO (n=29); right: years in the west phase (n=36). The numbers indicate the respective years; r=correlation coefficient; H gives the mean difference of the heights (geopot. m) between solar maxima and minima. Data: + = 1st period: 1958-1986; filled squares = 2nd period:1987-2006; filled circles = 3rd period: 1948-1957; diamonds = 4th period: 1942-1947.
(REC-Index: 1942 until 1947; NCEP/NCAR re-analyses: 1948 until 2006)(van Loon and Labitzke (1994), updated).





Figure 4: Time series of the 10.7 cm solar flux, 1942 until 2006,(January+February)/2.Squares denote winters in the west phase of the QBO, circles winters in the east phase. Large filled symbols characterize the occurrence of Major Midwinter Warm-ings (MMWs). (Labitzke and van Loon (1990), updated).
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At the moment folks we're trending at the limit mark on the 10.7cm Solar Flux graph,in relation to QBO being easterly , so would not want to get any higher if we want increase chance of a Major Mid-Winter Warming.(EVEN THOUGH THEY DON'T GUARANTEE A COLD SPELL).It all helps,:)