Cosmic Rays to Climate Change

Svensmark's Theory of Climate Control

‘‘…It’s gonna get really cold. And humans are just gonna turn into animals…’’ Eric Dollard, 2019

Overview

1. A Danish physicist has proposed a theory of climate control that has its origins’ deep within the cosmos.

2. As well as a convincing sounding mechanism, the theory is supported by real-world observations and experimental results.

3. Spoiler Alert: The theory suggests that cold times lie ahead! But this will be the subject of a later, follow-up piece, so please keep a look out for that one!

All of my readers will be somewhat familiar with the Greenhouse theory of climate control. See my previous articles What is the Greenhouse Effect, and A Fork in the Road for further discussion on this theory.

I described an alternative theory of climate control in Is There a Greenhouse Effect on Venus? that uses principles such as Ideal Gas Law to predict geological time-frame temperatures on Earth and elsewhere.

In this article we will take a look at another interesting theory of climate control…

This theory - known by some as the ‘Svensmark Theory’ after the Danish physicist Dr Henrik Svensmark - can be summarized in these three basic steps which I have explained in relatively simple terms below.

1. Solar Activity

2. Cosmic Rays

3. Cloud Formation

For more detail you can refer to the original Svensmark report upon which my descriptions are based.

(Or you can of course skip to the Conclusions at the end of this article if graphs are not your thing!)

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1. Solar Activity

The Sun’s output - or ‘solar activity’ - can be measured by the number of sunspots that appear on its surface. Sunspots appear quite literally as dark spots when looked at through a suitable telescope¹.

Observations show a clear 11-year cycle in the number of sunspots. These cycles are remarkably consistent, although the strength of the cycles are themselves modulated over a much longer timescale of centuries to millennia. For example, during the ‘Mini Ice Age’ of the 1600’s and 1700’s (The Maunder Minimum), the 11-year cycles were weak compared to the cycles of say the 20th Century.

Sunspot reconstructions showing their cyclical nature (reproduced from GWPF Report 33, Henrik Svensmark)

2. Cosmic Rays

Cosmic rays are particles produced by stars outside of our own solar system². These particles continuously bombard and penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere.

The Sun’s magnetic field, known as the Heliosphere, engulfs the Earth and acts like a shield against these incoming cosmic rays. A reduction in the Sun’s magnetic field, caused by reduced solar activity (which shows up in the sunspot cycles described above), allows more cosmic rays to reach the Earth’s atmosphere.

In other words, low sunspot numbers = high numbers of cosmic rays in our atmosphere, as can be seen in the figure below.

The relationship between cosmic rays recorded on Earth and the sunspot number, itself a proxy for solar activity (reproduced from GWPF Report 33, Henrik Svensmark)

3. Cloud Formation

Cosmic rays contribute to a process in the atmosphere that form ‘condensation nuclei’. These are surfaces upon which water vapor present in the air can condense to form water droplets, which when combined make up clouds.³

Discovered as far back as 1996, there is a strong correlation between the amount of cosmic rays within the atmosphere and cloud cover.

The relationship between cloud cover and cosmic ray flux (reproduced from GWPF Report 33, Henrik Svensmark)

Cloud cover is known to impact the Earth’s ‘energy budget’ significantly; clouds reflect the suns energy back into space preventing it from entering the climate system. If the Earth had no clouds, it would on average be much warmer, and vice versa.

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The Missing Link?

So here we have a basic mechanism for climate control that can be predicted by looking at sunspots (a measure of solar activity). During periods of low solar activity the theory predicts a cooling of the Earth’s climate through the formation of additional cloud cover, and vice versa.

The relationship is further supported by looking at historical climate proxies over various timescales. Here I present one such example which is based on oxygen isotope levels in cave stalagmites found in Oman (a proxy for temperature), and Carbon-14 isotope levels as a proxy for solar activity. The correlation is impossible to ignore.

The correlation between solar activity (blue) and global temperature (green) over thousand-year timescales (reproduced from GWPF Report 33, Henrik Svensmark)

On the one hand it might sound obvious that the Earth’s climate follows the Sun’s activity.

However, it is a firmly held belief in current mainstream climate science that changes in the Earth’s climate are not sensitive to changes in observed solar activity. It is estimated that such solar changes would need to be an order of magnitude greater than those observed to be able to make a difference to the climate.

Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray-induced cloud formation may, however, provide a missing amplification step, allowing our climatic changes to be explained by the solar variations we see.

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Conclusion

Dr Svensmark believes that the impact of solar activity on climate is much larger than the official consensus (as put forward by IPCC, for example) suggests. IPCC have suggested that the effects on the climate from changes in the solar activity are negligible when compared with effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

One obvious problem with the IPCC’s position, however, is that reconstructions of greenhouse gas levels on century to millennia timescales do not correlate well with temperature (see my Climate Control Knob article for more discussion on this topic).

Dr Svensmark’s proposed mechanism explains the solar-climate link and is supported by theory, experiment and observation.

Might one reason that current climate models consistently over-predict future temperatures be because they are missing this important cloud-formation mechanism of the climate system?

Coming soon...

I will return to the Svensmark theory of climatic control, and in particular, what it suggests for the immediate future of the Earth’s climate in a later article.

For now I will leave you with the words of the maverick electrical engineer, Eric P. Dollard, whose (somewhat dystopian!) words have stayed with me since hearing him discuss his own personal solar observations on a podcast in late 2019;

‘‘I pick it up on my radio equipment. There is something going on with the sun. Right now the sun has gone dead. There is no more solar cycle which is going to have profound implications… people will be begging for Global Warming. It’s gonna get really cold. And humans are just gonna turn into animals…’’ Eric Dollard on THC, Oct 2019

Please do keep an eye out for my follow-up piece where we will take a closer look at whether Mr Dollard’s concerns are well-founded!

As ever, I hope you found it interesting, and keep on asking questions!

-Tristan

1. Galileo Galilae started to measure sunspots back in the early 1600’s, with observations made ever since, resulting in a 400-year record of some form or another. Sunspots are regions of reduced temperature caused by magnetic phenomena reducing convection, and they can last anywhere from days to months.

2. Cosmic rays are particles that originate from outside of our solar system, high in energy from their acceleration caused by the shock-front of supernovae (stars that end their lives with violent explosions). Cosmic rays can be measured by ‘neutron monitors’ here on Earth.

3. The cosmic ray flux produces positive and negative ions in the Earth’s atmosphere (atmospheric ionization). These charged particles help form new small aerosols from trace gases in the atmosphere. Sulphuric acid, produced from natural photochemical processes, is one such example of a condensation nuclei-forming trace gas in a process helped and stabilized by cosmic rays.