Here’s a look at what black carbon does to radiation flux according to GISS, so it appears they are aware, but maybe not using the right numbers
This is for Asia, I’d really like to see Russia. Also see below the “read more” for an interesting experiment that Mike Smith of WeatherData Inc. did last year to show the effect of carbon on snow. It is a simple experiment that you can do at home. I wonder how much of that soot from Asia finds it’s way to snow at high latitudes?
And here is the article that has been making the rounds this week, h/t to Leif Svalgaard
Click for larger image Grant Stone, QCCCE
(PhysOrg.com) — A detailed analysis of black carbon — the residue of burned organic matter — in computer climate models suggests that those models may be overestimating global warming predictions.
A new Cornell study, published online in Nature Geosciences, quantified the amount of black carbon in Australian soils and found that there was far more than expected, said Johannes Lehmann, the paper’s lead author and a Cornell professor of biogeochemistry. The survey was the largest of black carbon ever published.
As a result of global warming, soils are expected to release more carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, which, in turn, creates more warming. Climate models try to incorporate these increases of carbon dioxide from soils as the planet warms, but results vary greatly when realistic estimates of black carbon in soils are included in the predictions, the study found.
Soils include many forms of carbon, including organic carbon from leaf litter and vegetation and black carbon from the burning of organic matter. It takes a few years for organic carbon to decompose, as microbes eat it and convert it to carbon dioxide. But black carbon can take 1,000-2,000 years, on average, to convert to carbon dioxide.
By entering realistic estimates of stocks of black carbon in soil from two Australian savannas into a computer model that calculates carbon dioxide release from soil, the researchers found that carbon dioxide emissions from soils were reduced by about 20 percent over 100 years, as compared with simulations that did not take black carbon’s long shelf life into account.
The findings are significant because soils are by far the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide, producing 10 times more carbon dioxide each year than all the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities combined. Small changes in how carbon emissions from soils are estimated, therefore, can have a large impact.
“We know from measurements that climate change today is worse than people have predicted,” said Lehmann. “But this particular aspect, black carbon’s stability in soil, if incorporated in climate models, would actually decrease climate predictions.”
The study quantified the amount of black carbon in 452 Australian soils across two savannas. Black carbon content varied widely, between zero and more than 80 percent, in soils across Australia.
“It’s a mistake to look at soil as one blob of carbon,” said Lehmann. “Rather, it has different chemical components with different characteristics. In this way, soil will interact differently to warming based on what’s in it.”
Provided by Cornell University
This from Brett Anderson’s AccuWeather Global Warming blog last year:
Here is a photo of fresh snow cover in my backyard over which I had tossed some eight month-old fireplace ash under a totally blue sky
Keeping in mind this demonstration is occurring just two days after the winter solstice (meaning the albedo effect is less than it would have been under clear skies in February or March), in just one hour, the greater melting in the ash-covered areas is already apparent:
After four hours, the ash-free area has a depth of 5.5 inches
At the same time, the ash-covered areas have a depth of about 2.5 inches. Multiple measurements were taken (note ruler hold about an inch in front of ruler) which yielded an average depth of 2.5 inches.
The areas without soot melt about 0.5 inches of snow during this 4-hour period while the soot-covered areas melt 3.5 inches.
For visual comparison purposes, note the ruler hole in the non-ash-covered snow above the shadow.
Even tiny amounts of soot pollution can induce high amounts of melting. There is little or no ash at upper right.. Small amounts of ash in the lower and left areas of the photo cause significant melting at the two-hour mark in the demonstration.
Any discussion pertaining to melting glaciers or icecaps must consider the accelerated melting caused by soot pollution in addition to any contribution from changing ambient temperatures.
Photos: Copyright 2007, Michael R. Smith
Mike Smith is CEO of WeatherData Services, Inc., An AccuWeather Company. Smith is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist.
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But the science is settled, there is nothing else to be learned. We know everything there is to know and it is all correct. Why are they still doing studies?
Yet another problem for the climate models.
Even if the models did add the soil carbon factor, they still would not come up with anything worthwhile to say.
Today’s models are still terribly inadequate even for predicting conditions beyond a few months, let alone for formulating government policy for the next 100 years.
The resources should flow into better weather forecasting – beyond 7 days. I’ve been watching the 15 day forecasts and they are a long way from being accurate.
And therefore land-use/cover changes have an impact on emissions as well.
Does anyone have a link on hand that can describe or quantify the sum of all sources of CO2 that also includes “black carbon?” I’m interested in seeing as a percentage what black carbon actually produces.
“We know from measurements that climate change today is worse than people have predicted,” said Lehmann. Another Lehmann bust.
“We know from measurements that climate change today is worse than people have predicted,” said Lehmann. “But this particular aspect, black carbon’s stability in soil, if incorporated in climate models, would actually decrease climate predictions.”
The first part of this statement is peculiar and, I hope, taken out of context. What measurements, surface station temperatures? Worse than predicted? Not with doom prophesies abounding. At least the author and editors didn’t sweep “negative” results under the rug…
I’m suprised the climate community is just now figuring this out. The role and longevity of black carbon is well documented. Our own Tallgrass Prairie’s: http://iledi.org/ppa/docs/00/00/00/00/09/02/20061002190618_ISWSCR2003-02.pdf and the Terra Preta de Indio in the Brazilian Amazon: http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/terra_preta/TerraPretahome.htm are well known for their black carbon content.
The planet is getting colder and it is the change in the sun cycle that is driving it.
The AGW brigade are now trying to protect their jobs, reputations and liefstyles, not to mention those of the politicians.
This is interesting stuff but the bottom line is yet again the “settled science” is in trouble as more revelations come to the fore.
One wonders how long the media will put up with it before realising they can have one of the biggest stories of all time and Governments and Scientific establishments will collapse.
It should have started to happen already.
This week is CNN’s “Climate Change Week”….on Tuesday a weathergirl showed us satellite maps of the Arctic.
She explained the purple areas were the sea ice and the deeper the colour the thicker the ice.
Lots of dark purple and the ice coverage up 30% on a year ago.
She added it may be something to do with the temperature!!!!!!!
Reported and debated?
Not even on CNN who promptly wert to the adverts.
I would like to see criminal charges brought against some people and organisations.
If soils release 10 times more CO2 than all human activities combined, perhaps we should just pave over more raw land. That would easily solve the CO2 problem. No-brainer.
This is profoundly and deeply disturbing, especially given what is going on with expansion of biofuel related agriculture via slash and burn in the tropics, world wide.
Yes we are ruining the planet but not in the way popularly depicted.
“Going Green” is ruining the planet and the result may be a dire little Ice Age if not the real McCoy.
Even ash, dirt and other dark particulates on ice and snow is a positive feedback loop – a positive feedback loop for COOLING! Highly disturbing.
A trick ski areas use to firm up spring snow on night where it does not get cold enought is to salt it. Forced melting of snow or ice via either salting or sooting is a ENDOTHERMIC reaction!
SteveSadlov,
Can you explain the mechanism by which dirt and other dark particulates on ice and snow is a positive feedback loop for cooling? I am having a hard time picturing it.
thanks
I grew up watching Mike Smith on TV in Wichita, KS. He’s one of the reasons I became so interested in weather. Nice to see he’s still teaching people about the weather.
The idea that this and all the other contributing factors to the climate can be modelled is clearly absurd.
How much work is going on which would even lead to the carbon cycle alone being described well enough to model? How much agreement is there between researchers? (If there is such a thing as a describable carbon cycle, maybe there are so many variables and feedbacks that it never goes round even once).
Notice he didn’t throw carbon black on the snow, he tossed in wood ash. I believe wood ash creates sodium hydroxide (lye) on contact with water. I would expect that to lower the melting point, just like tossing salt on the snow would do.
SteveSadlov – Slash & Burn was occurring long before the biofuel explosion and will continue long after biofuels fall from favor. If you haven’t noticed, the world is requiring more food each year, so there will always be a demand for more acres. Also, slash & burn ground is not sustainable, so the need to clear more ground is ever present.
This could become a new feature in Mad Magazine. Instead of “Spy vs Spy”, we have “Climate Model vs Climate Model”.
…and I would like to know what it would be like if there were no such things like man made pavements, roads or any kind of concrete, man made structures to cover the soil. What amount of CO2 might the now covered soil/woods have produced naturally compared to the otherwise produced amount of CO2 by man. Does anybody know of any figures that might be used for such a comparison? Please.
In general woods growing naturally in temperate zones contains from 0.2 to 0.9%. and almost always less than 0.5% ash, while wood from tropical areas.
can contain up to 5% ash.
The constituents include mainly minerals: potassium and calcium, which constitute up to 50% of cations in the ash wood; are also found magnesium, manganese, sodium, phosphorus and chlorine, and silica in the case of tropical forests.
The most common anions are carbonates, phosphates, silicates and sulfates.
I ask.
Some experiment was carried out with washed ash. To avoid any effect cryoscopic (of salts present).
FM
Maybe thats why the ice bounced back this year. All the soot in the “multi-year ice” sank into the ocean when the soot caused the ice to melt last year.
If you want to see how many fires are in progress worldwide, this is your fire mash-up site … http://firefly.geog.umd.edu/firemap/
Note how many appear to be man-made agricultural fires, instead of natural forest fires. MODIS usually has satellite pictures of a selection of worldwide fires daily http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2008-11-20
How is the ‘variability’ of this taken into account by those inaccurate, horribly flawed, climate models.
GISS textbook.
One nitpick, which also reveals the efficacy of AGW propaganda: “carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas”.
The claim that black carbon in soil “can take 1,000 to 2,000 years” to be converted to CO2 must be the understatement of the year. Elementary carbon (charcoal) is one of the most stable substances known. It can stay unchanged literally for millions of years, as is well known by archaeologists and paleontologists. Abundant fusain deposits (=soot from wildfires) are known from the Carboniferous (c. 300 million years ago).