On the correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover

Abstract

Various aspects of the connection between cloud cover (CC) and cosmic rays (CR) are analysed. Many features of this connection indicate that there is no direct causal connection between low cloud cover (LCC) and CR in spite of the evident long-term correlation between them. However, most of these features are indirect. If only some part of the LCC is connected and varies with CR, then its value, obtained from the joint analysis of their 11-year variations, and averaged over the globe, should be most likely less than 20%. The most significant argument against a causal connection of CR and LCC is the anticorrelation between LCC and the medium cloud cover (MCC). The scenario of the parallel influence of the solar activity on the global temperature and CC on one side and CR on the other, which can lead to the observed correlations, is discussed and advocated.

30 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, acknowledgements replaced

References in corpus (1)

• Solar neutrino variability and its implications for solar physics and neutrino physics

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Clouds, solar irradiance and mean surface temperature over the last century
• Can periodicity in low altitude cloud cover be induced by cosmic ray variability in the extragalactic shock model?
• Time variability of high energy cosmic rays