London: Contrary to a favoured theory of climate sceptics, scientists claim to have found evidence that solar activity is not linked to global warming. In their study, the researchers from the Lancaster University in Britain used three different methods and found that changes in the Sun's intensity are in no way behind modern climate change.

They investigated the link between variations in solar activity and cosmic ray intensity by looking for periods in time and for places on Earth which documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals and seeing if that affected the cloudiness observed in those locations or at those times.

"For example; sometimes the Sun burps - it throws out a huge burst of charged particles. So we looked to see whether cloud cover increased after one of these bursts of rays from the Sun; we saw nothing," the BBC News portal quoted lead researcher Terry Sloan as saying. This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Centre under very heavy pressure.

"We started on this game because of Svensmark's work. If he is right, then were going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal," Sloan said.

Source : PTI