July 21, 2009: "
Is the Sun Missing Its Spots?" by Kenneth Change, New York Times, New York City, U.S.A.
"The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.
But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.
“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.
Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years."
Read whole piece.
Read another piece that describes the proposed process in more detail.
Read Professor Tim Patterson's 2007 National Post piece on the field and his research.
Read summary of a review article on cosmoclimatology by
Dr. Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center, published in Astronomy & Geophysics, February 2007.
