Source: NOAA http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
In the graph above, the black line is the seasonally adjusted value while the red is the monthly mean. This is based on data through March. May is normally the peak month. Here we see how Mauna Loa CO2 has lagged in its annual rise. The likely culprit: Pacific ocean cooling due to La Nina and increased solubility of CO2 in water.
This graph certainly supports the notion of the ocean’s importance in CO2 trends, something Roy Spencer did a guest post on CO2 and oceans here on this blog and was roundly criticized for it in some circles.
Given that May is normally the peak month for CO2, and because we still see a strong La Nina, the result could be a lower CO2 max in 2008 than 2007 for Mauna Loa. This has happened before in the 60s and 70s in the last cool PDO phase (lasting til 1977). Even if it stays even with last year’s level, this tells us a lot and sheds doubt on these ideas:
1. Anthropogenic accumulation (civilization is still producing CO2)
2. A CO2 residence time of several hundred years seems unlikely now
3. Giegengack’s thesis that if man stopped emitting CO2, the earth would emit more to compensate, the premise being that since man has for the first time “upset the balance” and is pressing CO2 into the earth, then once the balance is restored the earth will resume emitting it instead.
The global data plot below doesn’t show the same trend as Mauna Loa, so it appears that this CO2 dropoff at Mauna Loa is a regional effect due to Hawaii’s proximity to cooler ocean temperatures.
It will be interesting to see in the coming months what happens globally, should we see a drop-off or leveling of global CO2 in response to our quiet sun and La Nina, it will be difficult for AGW proponents to explain. Nature will indeed be the final arbiter of this debate.
We live in interesting times. Hat tips to Joe D’Aleo and Alan Siddon for portions of this post.
UPDATE: Lucia at the Blackboard has posted an interesting rebuttal to criticisms of this simple presentation above. It is worth a read.
Could a solar minimum cause a drop in CO2 levels?
This could be something similiar to 1992. PPM only rose 0.49 for the year. That was the lowest rise since 1959.Now if it where to go negative, that would be something. It hasn’t done that yet since 1959.
Cross linked and partially copied at the:
globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com
CoRev, Editor (above referenced blog)
In your link to Dr.Spencer’s guest post, you provide a graph of CO2 solubility as a function of temperature. You fail to provide the units of the ordinate (vertical) axis and do not mention the partial pressure ofCO2 for which the graph applies.
REPLY: I updated the graph, if you have one that is more representative, I welcome a link to an image.
Wow – One of the reasons Mauna Loa was selected as a CO2 monitoring spot was because it was so far from, well, everything and atmospheric gases would be well mixed by the time they reached Mauna Loa. If it winds up that Mauna Loa is well placed to measure ocean absorption of CO2, that would be off the irony scale!
No, no, no this is just due to Koyoto and the Bush recession reducing emissions thus proving AlGore is right! The global temperature trend has been flat so CO2 must not be rising.
If Mona Loa is the station where global CO2 is measured where does the second graph get it’s data from?
FROM NOAA: The graph shows recent monthly mean carbon dioxide globally averaged over marine surface sites. The Global Monitoring Division of NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory has measured carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases for several decades at a globally distributed network of air sampling sites (Conway, 1994). A global average is constructed by first fitting a smoothed curve as a function of time to each site, and then the smoothed value for each site is plotted as a function of latitude for 48 equal time steps per year. A global average is calculated from the latitude plot at each time step (Masarie, 1995).
Someone obviously forgot to run that through the adjustments before publication.
An interesting paper from 1994 is referenced at http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4033707 Here’s the abstract. Note the part I emphasized…
The relationship between the anomalies in the sea-surface temperature of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean region and the first derivative of the atmospheric CO2 concentration has been investigated by using cross-correlation and cross-spectral analysis. Data of the Barrow, Mauna Loa, Samoa and South Pole stations have been used in this study. The mature stage of the El Niño events usually leads the maxima of the CO2 growth rate, especially in the Mauna Loa and South Pole records. A significant time variability of the cross-correlation and cross-spectral patterns has been observed. ***GENERALLY, THE SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES PRECEDE THE CHANGES IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GROWTH RATES BY ABOUT 5-7 MONTHS AT MAUNA LOA, 7-9 MONTHS AT SAMOA AND THE SOUTH POLE AND 8-13 MONTHS AT BARROW***.
The cool part about these graphs is that it has recently been discovered that ‘global warming’ ended in 1998.
These charts show that rising Co2 does not coincide with rising temps. Or, Co2 has nothing to do with The Earth’s climate.
Great stuff.
Thx.
Wouldnt it be interesting if CO2 levels continued to fall over the next few years as ocean temps continue to fall.
Maybe man’s output of CO2 was never significant at all. Mayne the rise in CO2 followed the global temperature rise that started in the late 1800s !!
OH NO! If temprature and CO2 drops this AGW debate will go on forever. The AGW proponents will say; “see, CO2 goes down and temperature goes down”
Sceptics will say; “But temperature went down before CO2”
AGW proponents “DENIALIST, ARRRGHH!!!!”
“***GENERALLY, THE SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES PRECEDE THE CHANGES IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GROWTH RATES BY ABOUT 5-7 MONTHS AT MAUNA LOA, 7-9 MONTHS AT SAMOA AND THE SOUTH POLE AND 8-13 MONTHS AT BARROW***.”
Now that is interesting!…. It’s what the longer timescale ice cores show as well….
I wonder if we’ll hear more on this?
I don’t find the lack of recent increase to be that significant. Ocean temps have stayed flat for several years but CO2 have been rising. Thus it is reasonable to assume human emissions to be the source.
What is significant though, is that the rate of increase is still roughly constant, even though human emissions have increased exponentially. That certainly doesn’t square with a CO2 lifetime of 200 years…
It would make sense. Let’s assume:
1. We’ve entered a period of reduced solar activity, a Gore Min.,
2. The oceans respond by beginning to cool.
3. The 3000 or so Argus project robots confirm this.
4. Cool oceans start to absorb CO2, as confirmed above.
5. World atmospheric temp-drops also confirm cooling.
Could it be that we’ve been underestimating the power of the next solar minimum? Could a real nasty cold period be coming up – a GORE MINIMUM? How will the media and the entire zealot lot respond to this, should it turn out to be the case? These changes often occur abruptly.
Amazingly, with all that bio-fuel driven deforestation going on and climbing CO2 emissions, one would not expect CO2 concentrations to go decelerate.
I’m looking forward to the next few years. Truly I am.
Did I just hear a bunch of scientists bolt out the back door?
Anthony – Just eyeballing your upper graph, isn’t the drop almost exactly the same as in mid 2004?
REPLY: I didn’t do the graph, NOAA did. I looked at 2004 also, but this seems a little bit different. 2004 has one month of drop, this has two, with a larger effect on the running mean. Though, part of that could be an endpoint effect of the data.
AGW zealots try to have us believe that the CO2 comes before the warming – first the CO2, and then the warming.
I know when I drink my 1/2 liter glass of beer, the “fizz” disappears much more quickly if the beer is served warm. If the beer is served cold, it keeps it’s fizz much longer. This would have me believe that warm oceans emit CO2. Should the oceans begin to cool, as instruments have shown over the last 5 years, then CO2 would certainly be absorbed. A Finnish scientist named Ahlbeck, I believe, wrote a paper on this.
So what could be driving the temperature of the oceans?
@Mike Bryant,
I’d say indirectly yes. A Gore Minimum would lead to cooling, thus cooler oceans, and thus more CO2 absorption. I have no idea about the time lags here. Perhaps someone could cast some light on this.
I wonder if the temp trends of stations in the immediate area surrounding Mauna Loa are also showing a sharp drop in temps, vs those surrounding the other CO2 stations, which haven’t shown the same CO2 drop. Could we get a better idea of CO2 induced temp change rates by studying these man-made microclimates?
Since the 1960s, the annual increase in Mauna Loa CO2 has been LINEAR – ie. the same each year.
But CO2 emissions are now 300% greater than in the 1960s :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_Carbon_Emission_by_Type_to_Y2004.png
So how is possible that the increase in C02 could be linear, if our emissions are exponential ? I understand that fertilization and oceans are explainations – but the globe and oceans cooled from the 50s till the mid 70s – so the tiny CO2 emissions of the 50/60s (compared to today) should have been absorbed by the cooling oceans – and easily. If the oceans are today absorbing the 200-300% increase from the the 50/60s, then the cooling oceans of the 50/60s shoud easilty have absorbed all of the CO2 emission, which back then were just 30% of todays.
[sarcasm]
Obviously Mauna Loa has deciding to be environmental responsible and what you’re seeing is the result of Carbon Credits offsets.
See, they really do make a difference!
[/sarcasm]
On CO2 resident time:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef0.htm
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=433b593b-6637-4a42-970b-bdef8947fa4e
5-10 years. Hmm. Henry’s Law? We don’t need no stinking laws!
so this shows that co2 follows temperature on earth? Now that we have plateued or cooled in the last 10 years due to decreased solar activity, does this mean that co2 is following the drop? As GK said, all the rise in temperature in the last century could of been followed by an increase in co2.
Walter Dnes,
Thanks for that reference. I have a more recent study, somewhere in my files, presented at a NOAA conference, showing the same thing. There are others. For anyone interested in researching this further, the keyword to search for, besides C02, is “interannual.” The latter is a reference to the sawtooth pattern in CO2 rise. The interannual change in the rate of change (there we go again, looking at time derivatives) is pretty clearly driven by sea temperature — when oceans warm, they emit CO2, when the cool, they take up CO2.
GK,
Don’t hold your breath. The Mauna Loa series begins, in the ’50’s, I think, I don’t know what exists for meaningful measurements of CO2 prior to that (ignoring indirect measurements from isotopes), but I don’t think there’s any evidence of significant dips in the late 1800’s or mid 20th century when the temperature trends went negative. The current upward trend is probably the result of human activity; I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. I just don’t think it has much influence on global, or even regional, temperatures.
Anthony,
Thanks for the report. Enjoyed the read with my morning coffee. Who reads the morning paper any more, when there’s much more interesting stuff on blogs?
Basil
I would love to see these graphs with the vertical scale from 0 to 1,000,000.
That would show how tiny the rise of CO2 really is and put it in perspective.
No wonder we have an outbreak of hysterical climatologist syndrome, panicing the children with horror stories of impending global burnup. They real scared that the facts are showing.