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ata on cloud cover from satellites, com-

pared with counts of galactic cosmic

rays from a ground station, suggestedthat an increase in cosmic rays makes the world

cloudier. This empirical ﬁnding introduced anovel connection between astronomical andterrestrial events, making weather on Earth

subject to the cosmic-ray accelerators of super-nova remnants in the Milky Way. The result wasannounced in 1996 at the COSPAR space sciencemeeting in Birmingham and published as “Varia-

tion of cosmic-ray ﬂux and global cloud coverage

– a missing link in solar-climate relationships”(Svensmark and Friis-Christensen 1997).The title reflected a topical puzzle, that of howto reconcile abundant indications of the Sun’sinfluence on climate (e.g. Herschel 1801, Eddy1976, Friis-Christensen and Lassen 1991), withthe small 0.1% variations in the solar irradianceover a solar cycle measured by satellites. Cloudsexert (on average) a strong cooling effect, andcosmic-ray counts vary with the strength of thesolar magnetic field, which repels much of theinflux of relativistic particles from the galaxy.

The connection offers a mechanism for solar-

driven climate change much more powerful thanchanges in solar irradiance.During the past 10 years, considerations of thegalactic and solar inﬂuence on climate have pro-gressed so far, and have found such widespread

applications, that one can begin to speak of a

new paradigm of climate change. I call it cosmo-climatology and in this article I suggest that it isalready at least as secure, scientiﬁcally speaking,as the prevailing paradigm of forcing by variable

greenhouse gases. It has withstood many attempts

to refute it and now has a grounding in experi-

mental evidence for a mechanism by which cosmic

rays can affect cloud cover. Cosmoclimatology

already interacts creatively with current issues

in solar–terrestrial physics and astrophysics and

even with astrobiology, in questions about the ori-

gin and survival of life in a high-energy universe.

All these themes are pursued in a forthcoming

book (Svensmark and Calder 2007).

How do cosmic rays help make clouds?

The comparisons of data on clouds and cosmicrays, with which the story began, continued topay off. They conﬁrmed that cloudiness is moreclearly linked with solar-modulated galactic cos-mic rays than with other solar phenomena suchas sunspots or the emissions of visible light, ultra-violet and X-rays (Svensmark 1998). A big stepforward came with the realization that the lowest

clouds, below about 3 km in altitude, respondmost closely to variations in the cosmic rays

(Marsh and Svensmark 2000), a counter-intui-tive ﬁnding for some critics (e.g. Kristjansson andKristiansen 2000). Figure 2 compares data from

the International Satellite Cloud Climatology

Project and the Huancayo cosmic-ray station.There is no correlation at high and middle alti-tudes, but an excellent match at low altitudes.In ﬁgure 3, the correspondence between low

clouds and cosmic rays is seen to persist overa longer timescale. A simple interpretation is

that there are always plenty of cosmic rays highin the air, but they and the ions that they liber-ate are in short supply at low altitudes, so that

increases or decreases due to changes in solar

magnetism have more noticeable consequenceslower down.The involvement of low-level clouds provided

an experimental opportunity. The chief objection

to the idea that cosmic rays inﬂuence cloudiness

came from meteorologists who insisted that

there was no mechanism by which they could

Changes in the intensity of galactic cosmicrays alter the Earth’s cloudiness. A recentexperiment has shown how electronsliberated by cosmic rays assist in makingaerosols, the building blocks of cloudcondensation nuclei, while anomalousclimatic trends in Antarctica confirm therole of clouds in helping to drive climatechange. Variations in the cosmic-rayinflux due to solar magnetic activityaccount well for climatic fluctuationson decadal, centennial and millennialtimescales. Over longer intervals,the changing galactic environment ofthe solar system has had dramaticconsequences, including Snowball Earthepisodes. A new contribution to the faintyoung Sun paradox is also on offer.

A

BSTRACT

Cosmoclimatology: a

1: Cosmic rays (relativistic electrons) stirring in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant make the wispyblue lines of energetic X-ray emissions seen by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. (NASA/CXC/UMassAmherst/M D Stage

et al.

)

Henrik Svensmark drawsattention to an overlookedmechanism of climate change:clouds seeded by cosmic rays.

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do so. On the other hand, some atmospheric

physicists conceded that observation and theoryhad failed to account satisfactorily for the ori-gin of the aerosol particles without which watervapour is unable to condense to make clouds. Aworking hypothesis, that the formation of thesecloud condensation nuclei might be assisted byionization of the air by cosmic rays, was open tomicrophysical investigation by experiment.

Experimental tests

In 1998 Jasper Kirkby at the CERN particle

physics lab in Geneva proposed an experimentcalled CLOUD to investigate the possible role

of cosmic rays in atmospheric chemistry. The

idea was to use a beam of accelerated particlesto simulate the cosmic rays, and to look for aero-sols produced in a reaction chamber containingair and trace gases. The temperature and pres-sure would be adjustable to simulate conditions

at different levels in the atmosphere. Kirkbyassembled a consortium of 50 atmospheric,solar–terrestrial and particle physicists from

17 institutes to implement it (CLOUD proposal2000), but regrettably there were long delays in

getting the project approved and funded. The

go-ahead eventually came in 2006 and the fullexperiment at CERN should begin taking datain 2010.

Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, the discoverythat low-level clouds are particularly affected

by cosmic-ray variations suggested that a sim-

pler experiment, operating only at sea-level

temperature and pressure, might capture someof the essential microphysics. Instead of a par-

ticle beam, we used natural cosmic rays, sup-

plemented by gamma rays when we wanted tocheck the effect of increased ionization of the air.Our team set up the experiment in the basement

of the Danish National Space Center, with a large

plastic box containing puriﬁed air and the tracegases that occur naturally in unpolluted air overthe ocean. Ultraviolet lamps mimicked the Sun’srays. During experiments, instruments traced thechemical action of the penetrating cosmic rays inthe reaction chamber. We called the experimentSKY, which means “cloud” in Danish.

By 2005 we had found a causal mechanism

by which cosmic rays can facilitate the produc-tion of clouds (Svensmark

et al.

2007). The data

revealed that electrons released in the air by

cosmic rays act as catalysts. They signiﬁcantlyaccelerate the formation of stable, ultra-smallclusters of sulphuric acid and water moleculeswhich are building blocks for the cloud conden-sation nuclei. Figure 4 shows a typical run. Vast

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005year27282930

l o w c l o u d a m o u n t ( % )

–20–10010

c o s m i c r a y ( % )

new theory emerges

c l o u d a n o m a l i e s ( % )

1980 1985 1990 19951980 1985 1990 19951980 1985 1990 1995year

c o s m i c r a y s ( % )

highmiddlelow

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2: At different levels in theatmosphere (high >6.5 km,middle 6.5–3.2 km andlow <3.2 km) the blue lineshows variations in globalcloud cover collated bythe International SatelliteCloud Climatology Project.The red line is the recordof monthly variations incosmic-ray counts at theHuancayo station. Whilethere is no match at thehigher altitudes, a closecorrespondence betweencosmic rays and clouds lowin the atmosphere is plain tosee. (Marsh and Svensmark2000)3: As in ﬁgure 2, the low-cloud comparison extendsover a longer period.

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numbers of such microscopic droplets appearedin the air of the reaction chamber, and their pro-duction increased proportionately when we usedgamma rays to induce more ionization (ﬁgure 4,bottom). The speed and efﬁciency with whichthe electrons do their work of stitching molecu-lar clusters together took us by surprise. It is amechanism previously unknown in meteorologyand it brings the cosmos into climate studies in aprecise microphysical way.

Do clouds really drive climate change?

Low-level clouds cover more than a quarter of the Earth and exert a strong cooling effect at thesurface. (For clouds at higher altitudes there is

a complicated trade-off between cooling and

warming.) The 2% change in low cloud during

a solar cycle, as seen in ﬁgure 3, will vary the

input of heat to the Earth’s surface by an aver-

age of about 1.2 W m

–2

, which is not trivial. It

can be compared, for example, with 1.4 W m

–2

attributed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-mate Change for the greenhouse effect of all of the additional carbon dioxide in the air since theIndustrial Revolution (Houghton

et al.

2001).If cosmic-ray counts merely went up and down

with the 11-year cycle of solar activity, therewould be no trend in the climate. Systematic

records of inﬂux to the Earth’s surface go back

to 1937. Cosmic-ray changes before then can

be seen in the rate of formation of radioactiveisotopes such as beryllium-10, or inferred fromthe Sun’s open coronal magnetic field. As seenin figure 5, the various methods agree that therewas a pronounced reduction in cosmic rays inthe 20th century, such that the maximal fluxes

towards the end of the century were similar

to the minima seen around 1900. This was inkeeping with the discovery that the Sun’s coronal

magnetic ﬁeld doubled in strength during the

20th century (Lockwood

et al.

1999).

Here is prima facie evidence for suspectingthat much of the warming of the world dur-

ing the 20th century was due to a reduction incosmic rays and in low-cloud cover. But distin-guishing between coincidence and causal actionhas always been a problem in climate science.

The case for anthropogenic climate change

during the 20th century rests primarily on thefact that concentrations of carbon dioxide and

other greenhouse gases increased and so did

global temperatures. Attempts to show that cer-

tain details in the climatic record conﬁrm thegreenhouse forcing (e.g. Mitchell

et al.

2001)

have been less than conclusive. By contrast, thehypothesis that changes in cloudiness obedientto cosmic rays help to force climate change pre-dicts a distinctive signal that is in fact very easilyobserved, as an exception that proves the rule.Cloud tops have a high albedo and exert theircooling effect by scattering back into the cosmosmuch of the sunlight that could otherwise warmthe surface. But the snows on the Antarctic ice

l o w c l o u d c o v e r ( % )

01700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000year

c o s m i c r a y f l u x c h a n g e ( % )

30102040302728313229

a e r o s o l s ( c m

– 3

) H

2

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c o n c e n t r a t i o n ( 1 0

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a e r o s o l s ( c m

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4: Creation of thebuilding blocks of cloudcondensation nuclei (top)under the inﬂuence ofgalactic cosmic rays is seenin a typical run in the SKYexperiment in Copenhagen(Svensmark

et al.

2007).At time 0 a burst of UVlight (simulating solar UV)triggers the formation,from trace gases in the air,of sulphuric acid moleculesshown by the blue areaand the right-hand scale.Within 10 minutes, greatnumbers of molecularclusters of sulphuric acidand water molecules largerthan 3 nm appear in thereaction chamber (blackcurve and left-hand scale).The red curve is the ﬁt ofa simple model combiningrates of production ofclusters and their loss onthe walls of the chamber.The lower diagram showsthe linear relation betweenion density and aerosolnucleation. Red stars arethe experimental data. Inthe real atmosphere, inthe absence of walls, theclusters would grow in amatter of hours to becomecloud condensation nuclei.5: Changes in the ﬂux ofgalactic cosmic rays since1700 are here derived fromtwo independent proxies,

10

Be (light blue) and opensolar coronal flux (blue)(Solanki and Fligge 1999).Low cloud amount (orange)from figure 3, is scaled andnormalized to observationalcosmic-ray data from Climax(red) for the period 1953 to2005 (3 GeV cut-off). Notethat both scales are invertedto correspond with risingtemperatures. The long-termchange in the average fluxis as large as the temporaryvariation within one solarcycle. The change in radiativeforcing by a 3% change in lowcloud amount over this periodcan be estimated to ~2 W m

–2

.