Ocean levels are obviously cyclic over large periods of time and based on the glaciations that occur over large areas of land mass, thus changing the level of oceans as they melt and recover.

Based on assumed factors that the worlds mass and volume of water in liquid and solid form is roughly fixed, excluding the small fractional amount in the air, and the land mass is roughly static in form or placement for the last million years, then the largest influencing variable is heat.

Using this reference chart for the last million years then you can see that there is an approximate maximum ocean level that we are presently enjoying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_level_temp_140ky.gif

With the trends that are so obvious and repeatable who is willing to say that this recent event that started 18 thousand years ago is special?

This argument does not refute the imperative necessity to ensure that the resources we use are utilized efficiently, and the output of our consumption should be clean as possible or practical however..

“Reed Coray (24-03-2009, 18:20:54) :

Reed, with some thinking (somewhat slower nowadays, the decay rate of brain cells is high…) I suppose to have found the cause of the 1/2 year cycle: the NH and SH seasonal cycles are each opposite with maxima and minima following each other with a 1/2 year lag…”

Thank you for your response. However, I don’t think what you propose is correct. The “CO2 frequencies (periods)” of the northern and southern hemispheres should both be equal to one cycle per year (a period of one year). The hemispheric CO2 levels may have different amplitudes and phases, but the frequencies (periods) should be the same. The sum of two sinusoids having different amplitudes and phases , but having a common frequency f ISN’T two sinusoids at frequencies f and 2*f, but rather IS a single sinusoid at the common frequency f.

Mathematically Let f be the common frequency of two sinusoids, A the amplitude of the first sinusoid, g the phase of the first sinusoid, B the amplitude of the second sunsoid, and h the phase of the second sinusoid, then the sum of these two sinusoids will be a sinusoid with frequency f, amplitude C, and phase i — i.e.,

A*COS(2*pi*f*t + g) + B*COS(2*pi*f*t + h) = C*COS(2*pi*f*t + i)

where C = square root of [A*A + 2*A*B*COS(g - h) + B*B]
and i is the angle (in radians) between 0 and 2*pi
whose x component is A*COS(g) + B*COS(h), and
whose y component is A*SIN(g) + B*SIN(h)

One possible source for the “twice yearly” frequency (1/2 year period) is the fact that for latitudes between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer the sun appears directly overhead TWICE each year–once when the sun is “moving north” and once when the sun is “moving south”. I don’t claim this is the source of the twice yearly frequency, but at least a “peak” solar condition occurs twice each year.

Reed Coray

However, having looked into it a bit more I now understand that more than twice as much CO2 can dissolve into cold polar waters than in warm equatorial waters. So if warmer, relatively CO2 depleted water is moving towards the poles where it can take up more CO2, we are back (again) to ocean circulation.

Ok, this article says that gulf orcas are like teir cold water counterparts, but that they typically live in deeper water. Is this anecdotal evidence of surface water cooling off? Is there a marine biologist in the house?

Reed, with some thinking (somewhat slower nowadays, the decay rate of brain cells is high…) I suppose to have found the cause of the 1/2 year cycle: the NH and SH seasonal cycles are each opposite with maxima and minima following each other with a 1/2 year lag…

Willis and ilk are quite vocal and active, they are just ignoring you and your ilk.

http://s700.photobucket.com/albums/ww2/ReedCoray/

Reed Coray

Pamela,’

Just lost a lot of comment by an error in the connection. As it is already late here, I try to resume it again…

The ten base stations + flights above 1,000 m over land represent the bulk (95%) of the atmosphere over the past 50+ years (longer if Antarctic ice cores are included). These show the average global increase of CO2 and d13C decline over 50 years. These data are sufficient if you are interested in the global CO2 increase/decrease or variability. One doesn’t need to know any individual flow in/out of the atmosphere to know the global result of all these flows: that is measured as average of 8000+ semi-continuous CO2 levels at ten more or less contamination free places over a year.

The other 400+ stations spread everywhere over land (5% of the atmosphere) are of no interest for global inventories. These are of interest for other disciplines: to know the uptake/production rate of vegetation/crops under different climatological circumstances, to know more exactly the flows of sources (volcanic degassing, emissions, oceans,…) and sinks (oceans, vegetation) for point sources and regional exchanges.

The large variability in this 5% layer spreads rapidely in the bulk of the atmosphere: days to weeks within one layer of altitude within one hemisphere, weeks to months with altitude within one hemisphere and 12 months between the hemispheres.

Thanks Heaven that we don’t need to average CO2 ground stations like temperature measurements all over the globe to see what happens in the bulk of the atmosphere…

Further:

14C levels are influenced by the use of fossil fuels: after 1870 and before the 1950 nuclear bomb tests, radio carbon dating needed corrections as fossil fuel is completely depleted of 14C.

Plankton indeed affects 13C levels, but opposite to the trend: plankton uses 12CO2 preferentially, thus causing higher d13C levels in the upper oceans (1-4 per mil) than in the deep oceans (0 per mil). Any CO2 exchange from the (deep) oceans with the atmosphere will increase the d13C level of the atmosphere (at -8 per mil), but we measure a decrease. But algal blooms (and ocean-atmosphere exchanges in general) can affect the rate of decrease in d13C…

The bulk of the seasonal CO2 and d13C variation is by land vegetation, not by the oceans. Reason why the seasonal variation is largest in the NH. But the oxygen balance shows that since about 1990, the biosphere (including ocean life) is a net sink of CO2 over the years, thus increasing d13C levels in the atmosphere, but again vegetation growth/decay can affect the rate of decrease of d13C.

At last, there is only one source (and thus one cause) of the d13C decline in atmosphere and upper oceans: fossil fuel burning…

The emissions did grow over the past 50 years from about 1 ppmv/yr to nowadays 3.5 ppmv/yr. The increase in the atmosphere was steady increasing in ratio with about 55% of the emissions.

The natural variability, including 50 years out of about 60 for a full PDO/NAO cycle, several volcanic outbursts, several ENSO events, 4 solar cycles, 50+ seasonal cycles, algal blooms, plenty hurricanes, dust storms,… results in +/- 1 ppmv (mainly a matter of -sea surface- temperature and precipitation). See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg

The natural variability is a variability in sink capacity, as in the past 50 years the emissions were always larger than the increase in the atmosphere, thus there was zero net addition of CO2 by nature in the past 50 years.

Thus all together:

The emissions are in average twice the increase in the atmosphere and twice the natural variability, including all known and unknown natural causes, except a huge meteor impact. The d13C decrease in atmosphere and upper oceans can only be caused by the emissions. And last but not least, the increase in the atmosphere follows the accumulated emissions with an extreme linear ratio, not even imaginable for any natural process…
Thus what is the cause for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Thanks for your appreciation of my page on the CO2 topic. It is the result of about two years of discussion with other skeptics on the same topic…

“The error was in thinking that plankton bloom was a seasonal event which can be averaged out. It is to a certain degree, but it also has a longer term cycle tied to oceanic oscillations. In other words, sinks come and go seasonally as well as in decadal patterns. The decadal patterns have not been averaged out. Yet.”

Warmth, increased co2, more phyto plankton blooms, and oceanic oscillations can be traced through the movements and numbers of fish. I did some work on the notion of Fish as a temperature proxy over on CA.

This link (then follow the buttons at the bottom of the page)-is a good indicator of this and demonstrates the continual ebb and flow of climate, temperatures, currents, and fish.

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/y2787e01.htm#TopOfPage

I managed to find some reports of huge plankton blooms observed in Roman times and the great fishing that accompanied it. Hope you find the link interesting

TonyB

The graphs show that if temperature drops to below -0.5 the CO2 increase drops to 0, so I would say if temp settled at -0.5 and the CO2 emmisions didn’t change, then concentration wouldn’t change either. Why is that wrong?

That is a question of duration and equilibrium: the temperature drop of the first year has an effect of 3 ppmv/°C thus also 3 ppmv/°C/year, but only for the first year. The second year, the upper oceans are a little more saturated (have a higher pCO2) with the extra CO2 uptake and a little more vegetation has lost its leaves and that is rotting then, thus the net effect is less than 3 ppmv/°C, let us say 2 ppmv/°C for a steady lower temperature than the original one, and so on. After a few years the colder temperature is in equilibrium with the CO2 levels (if there were no emissions) or the increase in CO2 is again at the old rate (as there are emissions).

We only see short term variations of less than a few years (1992 Pinatubo, 1998 El Niño), which show an overall 2-4 ppmv/°C change in increase speed around the trend. Longer trends like the MWP-LIA shows 6 ppmv decrease for a 0.8°C temperature drop over a period of a few hundred years (with about 50 years lag), or about 8 ppmv/°C. The Vostok ice core also shows about 8 ppmv/°C over the thentousand year interglacial vs. a 90,000 years glacial period, with a lag of about 600 +/- 400 years during warming and several thousands of years during cooling…

I had a lot of discussion on this topic with Frank Lansner, who had the same idea about a continuous drop at steady cooler temperatures, but that doesn’t hold for periods longer than a few years:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/17/the-co2-temperature-link/
There were 250+ responses there, but the main discussion is between Frank and me, to the (not so) bitter end…