Sun's Impact on Clouds via Cosmic Rays

NASA has an interesting article on Spaceweather.com, see link, which is copied and shown below.    Key statement:  "Our latest measurements show that cosmic rays are intensifying, with an increase of more than 12% since 2015.  Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return." "Cosmic Rays in the Atmosphere

Updated: Sept. 29 2016 // Next Flight: Oct. 1, 2016

Sept. 20, 2016: Readers, thank you for your patience while we continue to develop this new section of Spaceweather.com. We've been working to streamline our data reduction, allowing us to post results from balloon flights much more rapidly, and we have developed a new data product, shown here:

This plot displays radiation measurements not only in the stratosphere, but also at aviation altitudes. Dose rates are expressed as multiples of sea level. For instance, we see that boarding a plane that flies at 25,000 feet exposes passengers to dose rates ~10x higher than sea level. At 40,000 feet, the multiplier is closer to 50x. These measurements are made by our usual cosmic ray payload as it passes through aviation altitudes en route to the stratosphere over California.

What is this all about? Approximately once a week, Spaceweather.com and the students of Earth to Sky Calculus fly space weather balloons to the stratosphere over California. These balloons are equipped with radiation sensors that detect cosmic rays, a surprisingly "down to Earth" form of space weather. Cosmic rays can seed clouds, trigger lightning, and penetrate commercial airplanes. Furthermore, there are studies ( #1, #2, #3, #4) linking cosmic rays with cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death in the general population. Our latest measurements show that cosmic rays are intensifying, with an increase of more than 12% since 2015:

Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay. Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. (bold added) Another reason could be the weakening of Earth's magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation.

The radiation sensors onboard our helium balloons detect X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners.

The data points in the graph above correspond to the peak of the Reneger-Pfotzer maximum, which lies about 67,000 feet above central California. When cosmic rays crash into Earth's atmosphere, they produce a spray of secondary particles that is most intense at the entrance to the stratosphere. Physicists Eric Reneger and Georg Pfotzer discovered the maximum using balloons in the 1930s and it is what we are measuring today."

Sowell comments:

The mainstream climate community, especially the IPCC, claims that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for the average climate warming over the past 100 years.  Especially, they make that claim for the last 25 years of the 20th century, from 1975 to 2000.  Since 2000, however, the warming has stopped, a feature that is known as "The Pause."    What is known now, from experiments in the CERN cloud chamber, is that cosmic rays do in fact cause clouds to form, and the sun's magnetic field weakens as the sunspot numbers decrease.  

Given the much weaker sunspot cycle presently, cycle 24, it is no surprise then that the Earth is cooling as more cosmic rays strike the atmosphere and produce more clouds.   It does not take much more cloud cover to change the precarious balance between slight warming and cooling.  

The data from above shows a 12 percent radiation increase in only 18 months.  

This is one to watch. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California

copyright (c) 2016 by Roger Sowell, all rights reserved.