Research from a group of scientists at Lancaster and Durham Universities in the UK contradicts the idea from some climate change skeptics that changes in the cosmic ray's coming to the earth from the sun determine cloudiness and temperature, leading to global global warming.

The UK team found no evidence of a link between the ionizing cosmic rays and the production of low cloud cover.

"This is of vast significance because if the skeptics are right, it would mean we’re wasting our time trying to cut greenhouse gases. But we couldn’t find the link they were proposing which means we are right to be cutting carbon emissions," said particle physicist professor Terry Sloan of Lancaster University.

The cosmic ray theory was developed by Danish scientist Dr. Henrik Svensmark. Dr. Svensmark suggested that when the solar wind is strong, the planet warms up because fewer clouds are produced and more of the sun's heat reaches the surface. Here is a DiscoverMagazine article from last summer about Svensmark and his research.

Prof Sloan’s team investigated the link by looking for times and places on Earth which had documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals, and seeing if that affected the cloudiness – but they found no significant link, according to the Lancaster University press release.

Below is from the BBC news article.........

Dr. Svensmark was not convinced by their findings. Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds," he told BBC News.

"He predicts much bigger effects than we would do, as between the equator and the poles, and after solar eruptions; then, because he doesn't see those big effects, he says our story is wrong, when in fact we have plenty of evidence to support it."

But Terry Sloan adds............

"We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right.

"So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions," says Sloan.

There is a fairly simple explanation of the solar wind right here..

This is a link to a plot of the solar wind speed (the yellow lined plot) over the past 7 days, courtesy of NOAA. Note: the speed has increased to nearly 600 km/sec as of Friday night after being down near 300 km/sec on Thursday night. The average speed for the solar wind is about 400 km/sec. 700-800 km/sec is considered high, while 300 km/sec is considered low.

Here is the link to the entire study, which was posted in the Environmental Research Letters.