charged particles and clouds

(This is me here: kaggle.com/kymhorsell1).

The history of what charged particles do to the earth's climate is
somewhat fraught and amusing at the same time. 

50y ago climate deniers on WUWT & elsewhere used cosmic rays and solar
radiation (some but not total overlap between these 2 things ;) to
"explain" why the earth's global warming -- responsible for keeping
the planet 30C warmer than it would be for its distance from the sun
-- was caused by "sunspots" and particle radiation from the sun.
(There is no scientific argument from the point of view that the sun's
light radiation warms the earth).

While cloud chambers obviously are a thing -- they are the traditional
instrument used to find charged-particle radiation because protons and
electrons whizzing through a chamber with air set to condense actually
DOES condense small water particles around them, leaving a visible
trail in the chamber -- it was speculated that they should also have
an observable effect on the earth's climate via cloud formation.  It
was then a matter whether the clouds formed would be "high" -- which
tend to bounce more heat radiation coming up from the earth back down
to the earth thereby creating more GW -- or "low", which tends to
bounce light from the sun back out to space thereby cooling the
earth. So which was it?

CERN set up a big experiment to verify what was what one way or the
other.  The results I saw published argued along the lines for being a
very small and not significant effect whichever way it was. And the
subject seemed to be closed.

But we have the data. So we should look at it ourselves.

I worked at one point for some Russian Academy on a project setting up
a global cosmic ray telescope. My end of the deal was doing some of
the data processing, not designing cosmic ray telescopes and setting
them up in Greenland or Uzbekistan, or wherever. But as usual part of
the fee was to get their database to play with at some later point.
That point has never really come up in the past 20+ years. But maybe
now is the time. :)

We can ask an AI-boosted stats package to check whether there is a
robust relationship between cosmic rays and changes in the earth's
climate, and if so what they are. It should be pointed out first up
that cosmic ray telescopes don't actually detect cosmic rays as a rule.
They detect "secondary radiation" that comes down from the upper atm
after extremely high cosmic ray particles -- usually bits of small
atoms -- come charging into the upper atm and mightily smack one or
other of the air molecules up there. So there's some ambiguity usually
whether what is being see on the ground is from the sun or the wider
universe.  It's generally accepted that really high energy cosmic
particles come from way out there, possibly left over from some super
event, maybe even been travelling toward us since the start of the
universe itself.  (There are some super high energy particles that
move so fast time has virtually stood still for them since just after
the Big Bang).

So I have divided the Russian data -- 100s of different stations
around the world since the 1970s -- into some time series based on
monthly averages, and compare that with data for global temperature
and e.g. cloud formation (for which I have some sat data left over
from another job).

And the net result is this:

Cosmic ray Temp Params  R2
cosmic-wtlat glb 12o2 0.33778916
cosmic-LARC glb 1o2 0.13584963
cosmic-CLMX glb 1o2-x 0.13457051
cosmicseg-60 glb 6o2 0.13331150
cosmic70lng120 glb 6o2-x 0.13193978
cosmic-THAI glb 12o2 0.13128931
cosmicseg120 glb 6o2-x 0.13096583
cosmicseg150 glb 6o2 0.12558309
cosmic30lng-110 glb 1o2-x 0.12406043
cosmic-IRKT glb 6o2-x 0.12270517

The first column is the "X" used in a robust time series regr
(ARMA(1,1) with bells and whistles). The 2nd is the global temp ("Y")
data-file -- in this case NASA's surface temp going back to the 1850s
in 1/100th deg C. The "params" column tells me what mucking around the
AI did to get the result its posting. And the "R2" shows what fraction
of the monthly ups and downs of the Y are "explained" by matching ups
and downs of the "X".

All results are tested 2 different ways and check out 95% or better to
be not just lucky data.

We see the best model found is the "cosmic-wtlat". This is an
invention of my own. Using the value of cosmic radiation at a given
station we calculate a "weighted average latitude" over all the
stations.  This very very very roughly gives the direction relative to
earth where the big source of cosmic rays was for each given month.

Sounds spurious, but turns out this is the best measure to predict 1/3
of all those little ups and downs in global temps.  While the trend
has been steadily up for the past 150+ years according to the NASA
data-set (or 2000 years according to 100s of data-sets maintained by the
PAGES2k group; and 100s of 1000s of years according to groups that use
tree rings, shellfish, ice cores and lake sediments as temperature
proxies) maybe 1/3 of all the little jags up and down we see in the
"glb" plots seem to relate to cosmic rays.

But more importantly. What is the "sign" of the change?  Given this is
an "average latitude" is the earth slightly warmer if the big source
of cosmic rays that month is in the NH sky or is it bigger if the
source is in the SH sky?

Here's the model:

y = -2.038454e+00*x + 9.096947e+01
beta in -2.03845 +- 0.236692  (90% CI)
alpha in 90.9695 +- 1.86585
T-test: P(beta<0) = 1.000000
Rank test: calculated Spearman corr = -0.860809
Crit val = 0.432 2-sided at 1%; reject H0:not_connected
r2 = 0.33778916

I.e. we are 99% sure in 2 different ways (we might like to think of
that as 1 chance in 1000 or even maybe 1 chance in 10,000) this is not
just down to luck. There is a link.

So it seems the sign is -ve. The further NORTH the big source of
cosmic rays is this month the COOLER will be the earth to the tune of
.02 deg of temp for each deg of latitude further north.  The data-set
for wtlat shows it varies erratically N and S of the equator from
month to month and has no statistically robust trend.

If we look at the station that seems to predict global temps best we
find this:

Cosmic data     Temp    Params  R2              Beta          stderr(Beta)
cosmic-LARC glb 1o2 0.13584963 -0.0117559 +- 0.0024414

I.e. the station "LARC" (in Antarctica) seems to find about 14% of
variations in global temp are down to cosmic rays detected down there.
For a month with e.g. 100 more events per sec average for the month
global temps go down .012 deg. (Remember, the "glb" temps are in
1/100th deg C).

So there is some evidence we can find that more "cosmic rays" (i.e.
charged ions that come down from the upper atm for some reason -- many
probably connected with increased solar activity) hit the detector in
Antarctica, the earth temporarily cools a little -- as if more low
clouds were formed and booted some of the incoming solar light back
out to space before it could hit the earth or ocean and warm things up.

The footnotes show some relevant other reading.

--
From cosmic rays to clouds -- CERN
CERN, 10 Oct 2019
The CLOUD experiment studies how ions produced by high-energy particles
called cosmic rays affect aerosol particles, clouds and the climate. ...

  CLOUD -- CERN
  Kirkby went on to say in the definitive CERN press Release "Ion-enhancement
  is particularly pronounced in the cool temperatures of the mid-troposphere
  and above, where CLOUD has found that sulphuric acid and water vapour can
  nucleate without the need for additional vapours.
  -- wiki

  Scientists find evidence cosmic rays influence Earth's climate
  Besides atmospheric temperature and the amount of water vapour in the air,
  cosmic rays beaming down through space also contribute towards cloud
  formation.
  -- www.downtoearth.org.in

  Atmospheric ionization and cloud radiative forcing
  Nature Scientific Reports, 11 Oct 2021
  Atmospheric ionization produced by cosmic rays has been suspected to
  influence aerosols and clouds, but its actual importance has been questioned.

  What's the link between cosmic rays and climate change?
  skepticalscience.com, 17 Nov 2019
  While the link between cosmic rays and cloud cover is yet to be confirmed,
  more importantly, there has been no correlation between cosmic ...

On 5 Nov 1965 climate scientists summarized the risks associated with
rising carbon pollution in a report for Lyndon Baines Johnson [...]
[PCAST warned the president the accumulation of CO2 would "almost
certainly cause significant changes" to the environment].
Based on projected world energy requirements, the United Nations Dept
of Economic and Social Affairs (1956) has estimated an amount of fossil fuel
combustion by the year 2000 that with our assumed partitions would give
about a 25% increase in atmospheric CO2, compared to the amount
present during the 19th Century.
A 25% increase from pre-industrial levels would result in about 350 ppm of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The United Nations underestimated the
growth in fossil fuel combustion, because the actual carbon dioxide
level in 2000 was 370 ppm.
-- Dana Nuccitelli, "Scientists Warned ... 50 Years Ago Today", 5 Nov 2015

The term "global warming," which describes an increase in the Earth's
average temperature surface due to greenhouse gas emissions, is widely
believed to have been coined in 1975 by Columbia University geochemist
Wallace Broecker, according to NASA.
[In June 1988 NASA scientist James E. Hansen popularised the term
when he testified to the US Senate].
Meanwhile, "climate change," which describes a long-term change in the Earth'
s climate, appeared a few years later in a 1979 National Academy of Science
study on carbon dioxide.
-- UNEP-REGATTA

23% of US Congress Members Are Climate Change Deniers - And They're
All Republican
Green Queen, 10 Aug 2024
A new report has found that nearly a quarter of elected federal
officials in the US think climate change is a hoax, and all of them
belong to the Republican...

  Despite the Evidence, Nearly 15% of Americans Deny Climate Change
  US News & World Report, 15 Feb 2024
  [A prev Yale survey in 2023 estimated 16% of Americans do not accept
  AGW is real].

[Humans == 40 Gt CO2/yr; volcanoes <0.1 Gt/yr].
Global carbon dioxide emission to the atmosphere by volcanoes
Volcanic CO2 presently represents only 0.22% of anthropogenic emissions but
may have contributed to significant "greenhouse" effects at times in Earth
history.
-- Science Direct

[Operating Insolvent:]
In 2022, fossil fuel subsidies in the United States totaled $757 bn,
according to the International Monetary Fund.
-- EESI.org, 30 Jan 2024
[Around $6900 per US household per year].

  During this period, the US made an annual average revenue of 136.9
  bn USD through the production and marketing of fossil fuel
  products.
  -- statista.com, 29 Apr 2024

[Fossil subsidies as usd per capita for different countries
(From IMF Working Paper WP/19/89):]
#post-tax fossil subsidies usd/yr/cap
russia 3832
saudi.arabia 3709
UAE 2452
US 2028 <-- you are probably here
kazakhstan 1617
iran 1399
japan 1382
ukraine 1357
australia 1198
canada 1191 <-- or here
china 1025
germany 885
turkey 814
s_africa 806
thailand 577
france 545
argentina 435
mexico 431
UK 427 <-- or maybe here
indonesia 377
colombia 278
costa.rica 257
jamaica 217
india 160
philippines 99
pakistan 97
morocco 84
cote.d'ivoire 81
tanzania 34
ethiopia 16