Atmospheric ionization and cloud radiative forcing

Atmospheric ionization produced by cosmic rays has been suspected to influence aerosols and clouds, but its actual importance has been questioned. If changes in atmospheric ionization have a substantial impact on clouds, one would expect to observe significant responses in Earth’s energy budget. Here it is shown that the average of the five strongest week-long decreases in atmospheric ionization coincides with changes in the average net radiative balance of 1.7 W/m$$^2$$ 2 (median value: 1.2 W/m$$^2$$ 2 ) using CERES satellite observations. Simultaneous satellite observations of clouds show that these variations are mainly caused by changes in the short-wave radiation of low liquid clouds along with small changes in the long-wave radiation, and are almost exclusively located over the pristine areas of the oceans. These observed radiation and cloud changes are consistent with a link in which atmospheric ionization modulates aerosol's formation and growth, which survive to cloud condensation nuclei and ultimately affect cloud formation and thereby temporarily the radiative balance of Earth.

The Atmospheric Ionization during Substorm Model

<p>The Atmospheric Ionization during Substorm Model (AISstorm) is the successor of the Atmospheric Ionization Module Osnabrück (AIMOS) and thus may also be considered as AIMOS 2.0 - AISStorm.</p><p>The overall structure was kept mostly unaltered and splits up into an empirical model that determines the 2D precipitating particle flux and a numerical model that determines the ionization profile of single particles. The combination of these two results in a high resolution 3D particle ionization pattern.</p><p>The internal structure of the model has been completely revised with the main aspects being: a) an internal magnetic coordinate system, b) including substorms characteristics, c) higher time resolution, d) higher spatial resolution, e) energy specific separate handling of drift loss cone, auroal precipitation and polar cap precipitation, partly even in separate coordinate systems, f) better MLT resolution and g) covering a longer time period. All these tasks have been matched while keeping the output data format identical, allowing easy transition to the new version.</p>

Climate change via CO2 drawdown from astrophysically initiated atmospheric ionization?

Motivated by the occurrence of a moderately nearby supernova near the beginning of the Pleistocene, possibly as part of a long-term series beginning in the Miocene, we investigated whether nitrate rainout resulting from the atmospheric ionization of enhanced cosmic ray flux could have, through its fertilizer effect, initiated carbon dioxide drawdown. Such a drawdown could possibly reduce the greenhouse effect and induce the climate change that led to the Pleistocene glaciations. We estimate that the nitrogen flux enhancement onto the surface from an event at 50 pc would be of order 10%, probably too small for dramatic changes. We estimate deposition of iron (another potential fertilizer) and find it is also too small to be significant. There are also competing effects of opposite sign, including muon irradiation and reduction in photosynthetic yield caused by UV increase from stratospheric ozone layer depletion, leading to an ambiguous result. However, if the atmospheric ionization induces a large increase in the frequency of lightning, as argued elsewhere, the amount of nitrate synthesis should be much larger, dominate over the other effects and induce the climate change. More work needs to be done to clarify the effects on lightning frequency.