HR: 10:20h
AN: A52B-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Cosmic Rays and Climate
AU: * Kirkby, J
EM: jasper.kirkby@cern.ch
AF: CERN, PH Department, Geneva 23, CH1211 Switzerland
AB: Palaeoclimatic data provide extensive evidence for solar/cosmic ray forcing of Earth's climate on all timescales, but the underlying mechanism remains a mystery. However, satellite data suggest that clouds may be influenced by galactic cosmic rays, which are modulated by the solar wind, by the geomagnetic field and, on longer timescales, by galactic variations. Physical mechanisms to explain the cloud observations have been proposed and modelled. Although these are supported by recent atmospheric observations, definitive mechanistic experiments are lacking. In order to test whether cosmic rays and clouds are causally linked, a novel experiment known as CLOUD has been proposed using a beam from a CERN particle accelerator. This paper presents an overview of the palaeoclimatic evidence for cosmic ray forcing of Earth's climate, and reviews the possible physical mechanisms and the experimental prospects.
DE: 1650 Solar variability (7537)
DE: 2104 Cosmic rays
DE: 3305 Climate change and variability (1616, 1635, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 3311 Clouds and aerosols
DE: 3344 Paleoclimatology (0473, 4900)
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005