CERN's 8,000 scientists may not be able to find the hypothetical Higgs boson, but they have made an important contribution to climate physics, prompting climate models to be revised.Please bookmark!
The first results from the lab's CLOUD ("Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets") experiment published in Nature today confirm that cosmic rays spur the formation of clouds through ion-induced nucleation. Current thinking posits that half of the Earth's clouds are formed through nucleation. The paper is entitled Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation.
This has significant implications for climate science because water vapour and clouds play a large role in determining global temperatures. Tiny changes in overall cloud cover can result in relatively large temperature changes.
Unsurprisingly, it's a politically sensitive topic, as it provides support for a "heliocentric" rather than "anthropogenic" approach to climate change: the sun plays a large role in modulating the quantity of cosmic rays reaching the upper atmosphere of the Earth.
CERN's director-general Rolf-Dieter Heuer warned his scientists "to present the results clearly but not interpret them". Readers can judge whether CLOUD's lead physicist Jasper Kirkby has followed his boss's warning.
"Ion-induced nucleation will manifest itself as a steady production of new particles that is difficult to isolate in atmospheric observations because of other sources of variability but is nevertheless taking place and could be quite large when averaged globally over the troposphere."
Friday, August 26, 2011
Uh-Oh for Fundamentalist Environmentalists: "Climate models will need to be substantially revised"
When global warming is your religion, this has got to hurt:
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Jasper Kirkby and Henrik Svensmark is the saviors of our world, because the enviromentalfundamentalists want to stop all new oilfields etc at a time where Europe and USA is heading into a financial crisis that pretty much has been induced by lack of energy-sources. The resulting high prices has drained Europe and US for money and now we see the consequences. Oilfields should be opened at every opportunity to counter this threat to global stability. Meanwhile, the enviromentalists are closing their ears and eyes and don't want to see the consequence of their action. They are, however, partly right in that we need alternative energy sources, but that is because we are running out of oil-based sources.
ReplyDeleteSpaceman Spiff.