Latitudinal dependence of low cloud amount on cosmic ray induced ionization
I. G. Usoskin, N. Marsh, G. A. Kovaltsov, K. Mursula, O. G. Gladysheva
Abstract
A significant correlation between the annual cosmic ray flux and the amount of low clouds has recently been found for the past 20 years. However, of the physical explanations suggested, none has been quantitatively verified in the atmosphere by a combination of modelling and experiment. Here we study the relation between the global distributions of the observed low cloud amount and the calculated tropospheric ionization induced by cosmic rays. We find that the time evolution of the low cloud amount can be decomposed into a long-term trend and inter-annual variations, the latter depicting a clear 11-year cycle. We also find that the relative inter-annual variability in low cloud amount increases polewards and exhibits a highly significant one-to-one relation with inter-annual variations in the ionization over the latitude range 20--55 and 10--70. This latitudinal dependence gives strong support for the hypothesis that the cosmic ray induced ionization modulates cloud properties.
Create a lesson
Related papers
Evaluating the prediction of subgrid eddy kinetic energy from a machine learning model
Thomas Wilder, Ranjini Swaminathan, David Storkey et al.
Shifts in Rossby wave regimes via the change of group velocity with zonal jets
Zhixiang Li, Jianhua Lu, Yimin Liu et al.
Distinguishing Initial-Condition and Model Error Using Machine-Learning Weather Models
P. Trent Vonich, Gregory J. Hakim
A Multidimensional Evaluation Framework for Artificial Intelligence-Based Ocean State Forecasts
Ziqing Zu, Ye Yuan, Tiejun Ling et al.
RadarFill: Observation-Constrained Gap Filling of Systematic Blind Zones in 3-D Weather Radar Reflectivity Mosaics
Xin Huang, Haofei Sun, Wei Han et al.
Machine learning emulators of dynamic global vegetation models for fast gridded carbon budget predictions
Piyu Ke, Xiaofan Gui, Stephen Sitch et al.