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No Link Between Cosmic Rays and Global Warming
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jul 03, 2007 11:23pm |
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| Category | Study |
| News Date | Wednesday, July 4, 2007 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | By Fraser Cain EmailJuly 03, 2007 | 5:13:36 PM
The scientific consensus is in: human-produced carbon dioxide is causing a rise in temperatures across the planet. There are still those who reject the evidence that humans have an impact on global temperatures, and instead maintain that natural processes are at the root.
One of these natural causes, they say, could be from cosmic rays.
According to one paper, published in 2000 to Physics Review Letters, the Hunacayo neutron monitor detected a heightened number of cosmic rays from regions that had low clouds, less than 3.2 km in altitude. The quantity of these cosmic rays depends on the intensity of the solar wind, since the Earth's magnetosphere grows and shrinks depending on the strength of particles streaming from the Sun. Periods of warming appear to correlate with a decreases in cosmic rays over the 20th century.
When the cosmic rays interact with the Earth's atmosphere, especially the low level clouds, they create ions of varying strength and charge. These ions would then contribute to the formation of dense clouds, blocking the Sun's rays and reducing the effect of heating.
This connection between the Sun's 11-year cycle of sunspot and solar wind activity and the Earth's deflection of cosmic rays was offered up as a possible natural explanation for global warming.
But T. Sloan from the University of Lancaster and A.W. Wolfendale from Durham University have looked carefully at the evidence and found it unconvincing. They published their results in a new paper called Cosmic Rays and Global Warming. Their research will be presented at the 30th International Cosmic Ray Conference, held in Merida Mexico from July 3 - July 11, 2007. |
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