Clouds complicate the measurement of climate change. Last year, for example, a couple of Colorado State students used CloudSat data to show that pollution by aerosols is causing the formation of more of those eerie, high altitude noctilucent clouds. (Said clouds are reportedly encroaching on the lower latitudes…) The increase in cloud cover resulted in an increase of reflected sunlight, which resulted in less solar radiation reaching the surface.
Now, a team of Ukrainian scientists argue that clouds are the only thing that matter when it comes to climate change. Well, almost. Clouds… and solar radiation. Basically, contrary to what almost every other scientist has been saying, they hypothesize that the big picture of climate change has little to do with carbon dioxide. There’s incoming solar radiation, and clouds that either reflect said radiation or reflect it back into space.
Here’s where cosmic rays come in, according to the Ukrainians: they cause an increase in cloud cover by ionizing the atmosphere, which forms aerosols, which leads to more clouds. Thus, cloud cover patterns should follow the same 11 year cycle that is observed in the Sun’s magnetic field, which corresponds the influx of cosmic rays.
Is it time to throw out any inconvenient truths out there?
Nah, says a different team of researchers. From the physics arXiv blog, where I read about these papers:
On the other hand, we have Terry Sloan from the University of Lancaster and a pal who have studied the evidence that links cloud cover to cosmic ray flux. They point out that in some places the cloud cover data appears to correlate with cosmic rays, in others it anticorrelates. And since cosmic ray flux changes with latitute, so should cloud cover although there is no data to support this. They conclude that if cosmic rays do influence cloud cover, then they can be responsible for no more than 23 per cent of globally averaged cloud cover changes during the 11-year solar cycle.
Somebody is itching for a fight...
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