Cosmic rays and terrestrial temperature: is there a direct longterm relation? Original Research Article

We perform an analysis of two recent reconstructions of the terrestrial temperature and the cosmogenic isotope 10Be, considered as a proxy of the cosmic ray flux, for the period 1580–1985. We find that the 10Be is ambiguously related to temperature on secular time scales, as one record shows no relation, and the other one presents an anticorrelation. In particular for the period 1930–1985 the correlations between both temperature records and 10Be are low, furthermore the temperature series have the same decreasing trend as the 10Be series, when an opposite behavior between them should be expected. It is observed a large jump in temperature ∼1909 that could be attributed to the opposite large jump in cosmic rays due to an enhancement of the solar magnetic field. The temperature trend behavior from 1930 onwards could be attributed to the anthropogenic contribution to the climate warming.