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Title: Dynamical evidence for causality between galactic cosmic rays and interannual variation in global temperature

Journal Article · · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [4]
  1. Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of Oxford, Oxford (United Kingdom)
  4. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
+ Show Author Affiliations

As early as 1959, it was hypothesized that an indirect link between solar activity and climate could be mediated by mechanisms controlling the flux of galactic cosmic rays (CR). Although the connection between CR and climate remains controversial, a significant body of laboratory evidence has emerged at the European Organization for Nuclear Research and elsewhere, demonstrating the theoretical mechanism of this link. In this article, we present an analysis based on convergent cross mapping, which uses observational time series data to directly examine the causal link between CR and year-to-year changes in global temperature. Despite a gross correlation, we find no measurable evidence of a causal effect linking CR to the overall 20th-century warming trend. Furthermore, on short interannual timescales, we find a significant, although modest, causal effect between CR and short-term, year-to-year variability in global temperature that is consistent with the presence of nonlinearities internal to the system. Thus, although CR do not contribute measurably to the 20th-century global warming trend, they do appear as a nontraditional forcing in the climate system on short interannual timescales.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0005305
OSTI ID:
1348396
Journal Information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 112, Issue 11; ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher:
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 63 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (15)

Bottom-up linkages between primary production, zooplankton, and fish in a shallow, hypereutrophic lake journal July 2018
Dynamical evidence for causality between Northern Hemisphere annular mode and winter surface air temperature over Northeast Asia journal June 2018
Central European air temperature: driving force analysis and causal influence of NAO journal October 2018
Testing for Dynamical Dependence: Application to the Surface Mass Balance Over Antarctica journal November 2019
Detecting the Causal Effect of Soil Moisture on Precipitation Using Convergent Cross Mapping journal August 2018
Causality, dynamical systems and the arrow of time journal July 2018
Reconstructing directional causal networks with random forest: Causality meeting machine learning journal September 2019
Global environmental drivers of influenza journal October 2016
Prediction of solar cycle 25: a non-linear approach journal September 2018
Detection of time delays and directional interactions based on time series from complex dynamical systems journal July 2017
Causal dependences between the coupled ocean–atmosphere dynamics over the tropical Pacific, the North Pacific and the North Atlantic journal January 2018
Testing for Dynamical Dependence: Application to the Surface Mass Balance Over Antarctica journal May 2020
Causal dependences between the coupled ocean-atmosphere dynamics over the Tropical Pacific, the North Pacific and the North Atlantic journal January 2018
Deep learning algorithm for data-driven simulation of noisy dynamical system journal January 2019
Limits to causal inference with state-space reconstruction for infectious disease text January 2016

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
climate variability
cosmic rays
global temperature
causality
convergent cross mapping