Panel (a) shows the CR flux (red line) from combined Moscow and Climax neutron monitor data, and the globally averaged ISCCP IR low (>680 mb/<3.2 km) cloud anomaly plotted at a monthly resolution from June 1983 to December 1994, (b) shows the local correlation coefficient (r-values) achieved between the cloud and CR flux data for 12-month (boxcar) smoothed values. The (a–b) panels reproduce data presented by Marsh & Svensmark (2000). Panel (c) shows the r-values achieved from the CR flux and the ISCCP low cloud, however these values are from unsmoothed data. Panels (b–c) also indicate the positions of three geostationary satellite footprints present at the start of the ISCCP dataset. The cloud and CR data contain linear trends. From the effective sample size of the CR flux data (taking into account autocorrelation effects) it is found that there are 4 degrees of freedom (df) over the analysis period, under these independence constraints no pixels are found to be statistically significant (p < .05).