Atmospheric Effects of High-Energy Cosmic Rays

Cosmic rays ionize the atmosphere and can produce changes in atmospheric chemistry, with consequences for ozone protection, cloud cover, precipitation, and temperature. Until recently, computations had only been done for cosmic rays up toabout 10 GeV. We have through a massive computing effort, extended this to 1 Pev (a million GeV) and will extend it further. Our work is described in this publication. We have begun to apply these tables to concrete situations, and the first set of results (apply the tables to cosmic rays from our movement in the Galaxy are seen in this paper. The tables themselves are available for free download at this ftp site.

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