El Reg on CLOUD

Andrew Orlowski has noticed a good quote in the CERN press release about CLOUD (emphasis added):

What has CLOUD discovered and why is it important for our understanding of climate? There are several important discoveries from CLOUD. Firstly, we have shown that the most likely nucleating vapours, sulphuric acid and ammonia, cannot account for nucleation that is observed in the lower atmosphere. The nucleation observed in the chamber occurs at only one‐tenth to one‐thousandth of the rate observed in the lower atmosphere. Based on the first results from CLOUD, it is clear that the treatment of aerosol formation in climate models will need to be substantially revised, since all models assume that nucleation is caused by these vapours and water alone. It is now urgent to identify the additional nucleating vapours, and whether their sources are mainly natural or from human activities.

I am slightly confused about this though - are we saying that the models include a factor for nucleation that is equal to the rate of nucleation currently observed, and which changes based on how we think sulphuric acid and ammonia levels in the atmosphere will change in future? Or are we saying that the level of nucleation in the models is 10--1000 times too small? I assume the former, but I had also believed that the models went back to first physical principles rather than using empirical measures.

Maybe somebody can put me right here?

Update on Aug 25, 2011 by Bishop Hill

David Whitehouse has more.

Comments

[AJStrata]

Anyone want to lay a bet the final nucleating agent is CO2 derived?

[DocMartyn]

My guess is that DMOS will play a big part,
Phytoplankton generate DMSO in response to light flux; more light more DMSO.

http://aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_52/issue_6/2456.pdf

DMSO increases the rate of cloud formation, at low levels. More light, more DMSO, more clouds.
Wait until they stick some DMSO and blast that with pions; lots of lovey potential sulphur chemistry.

[Richard Drake]

What the Doc said.

[Lord Beaverbrook]

Philip
Starting to follow your line now I think, there has been a gradual decarbonisation throiugh advancements in technology. Hartwell paper looks interesting, thanks for the link.

[Richard Drake]

It's nice to see other bits at CERN - the LHC as well as the proton synchrotron - providing surprises and giving hope to a new generation of researchers:

According to Dr Lykken, some younger theoretical physicists are beginning to develop completely novel ideas because they believe supersymmetry to be "old hat" .

"Young theorists especially would love to see supersymmetry go down the drain, because it means that the real thing is something they could invent - not something that was invented by the older generation," he said.

And the new generation has the backing of an old hand - Professor George Smoot, Nobel prizewinner for his work on the cosmic microwave background and one of the world's most respected physicists.

"Supersymmetry is an extremely beautiful model," he said.

"It's got symmetry, it's super and it's been taught in Europe for decades as the correct model because it is so beautiful; but there's no experimental data to say that it is correct."

That's our old friend Pallab Ghosh. The theory that CO2 is the driving force of the small warming we've seen since 1850 isn't particularly beautiful but the rest hopefully does apply.

[kim]

Heh, AJ, that chain of nucleating agents may well be enhanced by increased CO2, or something else related to CO2 concentration.

Life is short, Art is long.
========

[tutut]

I think now:

-less clouds than warmer
-theory proposes that cosmic rays cause droplets = clouds
-in CERN they have a chamber where they can have less cosmic rays, so they indeed see less droplets, which is their main experimental result.
-the svensmark argument is now that the sun's more active magnetic field the last few decennia is suspected to blow away cosmic rays
hence we have less cloud formation hence warmer.

But ~OK Maybe it is the other way around and the sun is less magnetic qactive and we have more cosmic rays and more clouds and more clouds cause warmer weather but then wodehouse writes faults
or do we hv less sun more magnetism less cosmic rays less clouds more heat ???
we can do some permutation games on (rays, sun magnetic field, clouds, warm, yes no) to find out the possible truths "out there"

[tutut]

I am waiting for BBD to come withthe final interpretatons

[tutut]

Time series analysis :
=>

sun magnetic activity <-> temperature anomaly

=> correlation y/n ?
ffs these are only 2 arrays with 50 elements. admittedly one of them is an array adulterated by UEA CRU.

an new interesting observable seems "cloud coverage" is someone putting this in an .xls on a daily basis for earth ?

[tutut]

Or : more clouds then warmer ?
the clouds let the sunshine through but then keep the internal reflections inside
mb it depends on the lcouds

but ir more clouds then warmer, then maybe it is the increased sun activity itself that causes warming
rather than the increased sun activity its side effect of averting cosmic rays

[MINERVABradshaw]

freelance writer