Studying Stratospheric Temperature Variation with Cosmic Ray Measurements

The long term stratospheric cooling in recent decades is believed to be equally important as surface warming as evidence of influences of human activities on the climate system. Un- fortunatly, there are some discrepancies among different measurements of stratospheric tem- peratures, which could be partially caused by the limitations of the measurement techniques [1]. It has been known for decades that cosmic ray muon flux is sensitive to stratospheric temperature change. Dorman proposed that this effect could be used to probe the tempera- ture variations in the stratophere [2]. In this talk, a method for reconstructing stratospheric temperature will be discussed. We verify this method by comparing the stratospheric tem- perature measured by radiosonde with the ones derived from cosmic ray measurement at multiple locations around the globe. References [1] David W. J. Thompson, et al., Nature 491 (2012). [2] Dorman L., Cosmic Ray Meteorolgical Effects Nauka, Moscow (1972)