Figure 4From: What is the solar influence on climate? Overview of activities during CAWSES-IICosmic ray (CR) impacts on the atmosphere. Main CR (including SEP and GCR) influences on the atmosphere. CR are the main source of ionisation in the lower atmosphere. The shading depicting the main region of this ionisation also shows that the CR ionisation is focused on the polar regions (Usoskin et al. 2011). Note that the GEC is distributed over the whole Earth.Back to article page