Earth’s Climate Does Not Depend on Variations in Cosmic Rays and Cloud Coverage

Abstract

The hypothesis put forward by Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (1997), Svensmark (2007), Svensmark et al. (2017), and Stozhkov et al. (2017) assumes while completely ignoring the influence of quasi-200-year variation in TSI by ~0.4% (Shapiro et al., 2011; Egorova et al., 2018) that the increased penetrating by the galactic cosmic ray flux of the lower layers of the Earth’s atmosphere during the Grand Solar Minimum causes only an increase in cloud formation and the TSI reflected back into space. However, without calculating the changes in the global average annual energy balance between the Earth and space (Е₀), the authors of the hypothesis argue that this effect will lead to a long-term negative average of the Earth’s annual energy budget and to climate cooling up to a Little Ice Age. The hypothesis also completely ignores all subsequent changes in atmospheric physical processes associated with increasing cloud coverage: the increased reflection and absorption of thermal radiation from the Earth’s surface and of solar radiation reflected from the Earth’s surface, the narrowing of atmospheric transparency windows, and the enhanced greenhouse effect. These processes compensate for the cooling. Our assessment shows that the changes in the global average annual energy balance between the Earth and space before and after a 2% increase in cloud coverage in the lower atmosphere have a difference of almost zero: E₁ – E₀ ≈ 0. The potential increase in cloud coverage causes virtually no variations in the global average annual energy balance between the Earth and space and has no effect on climate change (cooling).