” However, since the ‘age’ of the deep ocean water that is currently upwelling is likely in the range of ~1000 years”

You might want to take a look at this paper:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7244/full/nature07979.html

The idea that the ocean has currents that hold water at the bottom for 1000 ears may not be correct.

Re: RACookPE1978 (10:19:02)
Clarification: Philip was asking about the effect of salinity.

Re: anna v (09:31:57)
The real data is available online too …but one has to be careful because some websites have posted modeled “data”. Watch out for seasonal structure that looks “too perfect”. In the example I gave, the NOAA data ‘seems’ real, but the CDIAC “data” is a ridiculous representation of seasonal variation.

Philip Mulholland (15:16:17) “Does surface water salinity affect the rate of CO2 uptake by cold ocean waters?”

—

OK, so look at it this way: We know that real-world (air!!!!) temperatures have “only” gone up by 1/4 of one gree. 1/2 of one degree at maximum in 1998.

So, given the aera of the ocean, assume the ocean went up an equal amount. (Or, get actual ocean near-surface (top 10 meters) temperature data for every ten years since 1945 from anti-submarine records of the Atlantic and Arctic. )

Can the real-world changes in real-world ocean surface temperatures explain the change in CO2 levels measured? If not, what is the difference? Is the measured difference inn CO2 concentration GREATER or LESS than what is predicted from the change in ocean temperatures, and – if it is – can that difference be CALCULATED from what is known about man’s ACTUAL carbon mining and drilling?

(No “gueses” or “assumptions” about jungle-clearing effects – cutting trees to clear land only exposes new land for growing NEW trees and vegetation and grass on the newly cleared land. )

Here is a suggested exercise – using Alert, Nunavut (formerly part of NWT = Northwest Territories – but now separate), Canada:

Break the analysis down as follows:
a) annual timescale – i.e. applying 12 month bandwidth moving-average.
b) seasonal timescale – i.e. using differencing to isolate seasonal variations from the (secular) trend.

—-

OK, so try this third breakdown of the data:

Instead of using a running 12-month “average” to smooth data – Use a “5 month seasonal” average: This month is averaged against LAST YEAR’s month, last year (month-2 , month-1, month, month+1, month+2)

Too much impact of just last year’s influence?

Alternative 4: Add one more year to the check:

Smooth this month with (year-2: month-1, month, month+1) and (year-1: month-1, month+1)

My reaction to what I found went something like this:
“This is outrageous – unfathomably & unbelievably so!”

The adjustments seriously & systematically distort seasonal variations.
……
Why replace real data with loosely-related severely-seasonally-biased modeled “data”, particularly if defending the model assumptions is like asserting that a colorful polka-dot pattern is indistinguishable from solid-grey?

…

If one breaks the analysis down by month, 8 of the 12 r^2s go below 0.1 and 4 even go below 0.01.

thanks for this info. So Pamela Pamela Gray (09:27:30) : was right about modeling being inputed to the data.

My suspicion flags were raised when on a search of bibliography I found all the publications were Keeling + somebody else, a graduate student most probably. One could call it the Keeling effect. Lets hope the Japanese do not catch it.

Compare the following 2 (monthly-resolution) time series:
1) http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/altsio.co2
2) ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/flask/month/alt_01D0_mm.co2

Break the analysis down as follows:
a) annual timescale – i.e. applying 12 month bandwidth moving-average.
b) seasonal timescale – i.e. using differencing to isolate seasonal variations from the (secular) trend.

Cautionary Notes:
i) Be (very) careful with missing values (which are summarized differently in the 2 series).
ii) Be sure to note any systematic patterns in the errors.

My reaction to what I found went something like this:
“This is outrageous – unfathomably & unbelievably so!”

The adjustments seriously & systematically distort seasonal variations.

…So why are the files listed as “Data“?
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel.html

The ‘adjustment’ procedures are mentioned in the files (at the bottom), but this does not change the fact that:

Labeling model-output as “Data” is grossly misleading.

For those who skipped the analysis, r^2 (seasonal) is less than 0.33 and model assumptions are severely violated.

Why replace real data with loosely-related severely-seasonally-biased modeled “data”, particularly if defending the model assumptions is like asserting that a colorful polka-dot pattern is indistinguishable from solid-grey?

If one breaks the analysis down by month, 8 of the 12 r^2s go below 0.1 and 4 even go below 0.01.

…and earlier in the discussion attention was already drawn to “daily” data which are not actually daily, so …

Some websites begin appearing ‘fishy’, ‘sketchy’, & untrustworthy. “Data” labeled as data should not be assumed to be unbiased representatives of data. Rigorous interrogation is clearly warranted.

Yes

But are you saying that the raw hourly data is fake

I assume this is made by gas analysers.

There are various other methods which I have posted somewhere (climateaudit?) 2 flasks/single flask etc.

It is inconceivable that someone is going to go through 10MBytes of hourly data to falsify the output.
If you look at the output here:
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/6678/barrowhoulydata.jpg
I have not removed their flagged errors (the vertical lines are all for total failures (-99 or -999) there are other flags used to remove spurious “errors” – these have not been acted on.

Are you suggesting someone sat down and did this?

On this plot I have added filtering to remove the randomness so that the plot is usable. But there is still large variability.
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6153/co2manysitesch4.jpg
I again would be suprised if this error ridden data is falsified.

So pleae tell!

Anyone curious to know more?

Sure – since it has a very serious effect on freezing temperature.

Otherwise, the references the chemically-minded WUWT participants have posted haven’t (so far at least) emphasized a (strong) role for salinity in the CO2 equilibrium chains. (I’m eager to learn if anyone has any details &/or links to share to shed deeper illumination on the role of salinity.)

-
Philip Mulholland (15:16:17) “Is it possible to determine the total mass of CO2 removed from the Arctic atmosphere by the boreal summer draw-down?”

I know people who work on this, but I haven’t been following their work; however, recent WUWT threads have made me curious enough to make some enquiries next opportunity I have.

One thing I can share is that ~15 years ago when I was involved with a research group that was modeling biogeochemical (earth-water-atmosphere) cycles, the modelers were happy if they got fluxes to within a factor of 2.

There’s a lot of spatiotemporal variability in the field (& sampling resources are not infinite), so it is unrealistic to expect precise estimates – in many biogeophysical modeling contexts.

-
I am also curious about the roles of fresh water (on land) and rocks …and wind …i.e. beyond vegetation, oceans, & temperature …but for the near term (i.e. until I have time to consult a *lot* of literature and run a lot of analyses) I’ll be content to lump everything together, with the possible exception of wind.

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6153/co2manysitesch4.jpg

A plot of days from 1st jan for Barrow CO2 to reach minimum

http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/4917/barrowlajollatimeformin.jpg

Note that la jolla pier clifornia has almost identical date.
Note also that the Barrow minima have no greatly changed over the record despite temperature and seaice changes. The La Jolla data is daily the barrow is houly. Plot of last 3 barrow minima:
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/6678/barrowhoulydata.jpg

The minima at barrow occur Not at minimum Ice Not at Autumn onset Not at algal Bloom time

If it were sea ice then why is it so strong over 2/3rds the globe christmas island shows a significant dip.

South Pole station has a ripple 6 months out of phase with NH.

The signal is as strong in central kazakhstan (land locked) as at Barrow (coast)

I cannot explain it!

“Certainly this is an interesting puzzle to work on …”

Indeed so, care to join me?

Your caveats are well founded and I know that the standard explanation is that the “massive circumpolar boreal forest” forms the biological sink for carbon dioxide. However, when Ferdinand Engelbeen last year posted graphs showing this northern hemisphere CO2 summer draw-down signal, I was intrigued. There are two hats I can wear, geoscience (professional) and bioscience (amateur) and I viewed this atmospheric response from my geoscience experience and not the standard bioscience perspective. After all, thinking outside the box is what scientists are suppose to do :-)

I decided to build on the analysis that Ferdinand presented, so I looked at CO2 data for high and low latitudes from both hemispheres, continental and oceanic locations, & high and low elevations. From inspection it is clear that there is a global pattern to these data. Consider the CO2 variation as a signal, its greatest amplitude and sharpest onset is at the highest Arctic latitudes (e.g. Barrow, Alaska), the signal propagates south through the atmosphere; Mauna Loa, Hawaii is later in time and smaller in amplitude than at Barrow, and it then reverses phase into the Southern Hemisphere, down to the South Pole which has the smallest amplitude excursion of all.

What follows is a description of my simple scoping study to establish if there is a correlatable relationship between the atmospheric CO2 summer minima at Barrow, Alaska and the extent of the Arctic Ocean open water (ice free) area.

Establishing the open water area of the Arctic Ocean is relatively straight forward using published sea ice data, if we accept the idea of a progressive northward zonal melt of sea ice as the boreal summer advances. My assumption that the southerly located frozen waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, Bering Sea, Hudson Bay & Baltic Seas all melt before the Arctic Ocean ice does, is of course a simplification prone to error, but one that could be corrected by using a detailed latitudinal melt history database.

In order to determine the strength of the CO2 summer draw-down signal for Barrow we must establish the notional carbon dioxide concentration that would exist if the summer sink was inactive. The CO2 data base for Barrow extends from 1974 to 2006, by using an appropriately designed filter it is possible to preserve only the winter data and discard all the summer values. By this means the preserved winter data can be curve fitted and the equation of this curve used to establish (despite the rising annual trend) the hypothetical inactive sink summer CO2 concentration at Barrow for all of the 33 years in the record. A cross-correlation of the strength of the CO2 draw-down signal at Barrow versus the Arctic Ocean open water extent for July thru November, fitted with a simple linear trend curve, has an R squared value of 0.664.

The amplitude of the annual Antarctic CO2 signal is small compared to the Barrow data. The South Pole CO2 record is for a high elevation continental location, when compared with the time series data for Syowa, a low elevation coastal Antarctic station, both of these CO2 data sets are coincident in amplitude and phase. The simple sinusoidal form of these data matches the phase of the annual variation in areal extent of the Southern Ocean sea ice. This phase locked match with the surrounding Southern Ocean sea ice area suggests a local geochemical cause for the austral summer CO2 draw-down, rather than a distant land-based biochemical cause for this signal.

Questions & Comments
1. Why, if the Arctic Ocean is the predominant cause of the Barrow CO2 signal, is the Southern Ocean signal so weak in Antarctica?
The Arctic Ocean is a geographical feature with a defined southern coastline, whereas the Southern Ocean is unbounded in its northern latitude. The Arctic is a “ponded ocean” and occurs at higher latitude and has lower surface water salinity than the open Southern Ocean does. The key question therefore is “Does surface water salinity affect the rate of CO2 uptake by cold ocean waters?”

2. Is it possible to determine the total mass of CO2 removed from the Arctic atmosphere by the boreal summer draw-down?
A comparison of the Barrow sea level data with the high altitude Greenland Summit data suggests that the summer CO2 draw-down affects the full vertical extent of the Arctic atmosphere.

The R squared correlation coefficient of 0.664, noted above, gives support to the idea that the ice free Arctic Ocean sea water acts as a CO2 sink during the northern hemisphere summer, in addition to the currently recognised biological sinks.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6350237.ece

We need to keep in mind that “‘background’ CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa” is just that.

Questions:
a) Have you watched the AIRS movies?
b) Are you suggesting the South Pole CO2 record is pure fabrication?