New paper on climate sensitivity estimates 1.1 ± 0.4 °C for a doubling of CO2

When the climate cooled, more CO2 dissolved in the world’s oceans. When warmth returned so did the CO2.

I have a problem with this “doubling” thing. CO2 levels haven’t doubled for tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of years so why do we discuss the impossible?

I think the earth will warm by a qua-jillion degrees Centigrade.

Dr Burns,
Correct. Which completely deconstructs the CO2=CAGW nonsense. ΔT causes ΔCO2, not vice versa — at least not that we can measure.

One thing is very interesting. This is very, very close to the best estimate of the date of inception of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (opening/deepening of Drake Channel) at 33.6 My.
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Bijl_etal_09.pdf
One could assume this produced a massive increase in Southern Ocean cyanobacterial productivity as, for the first time, it allowed for the mixing of volcanic dust (Southern Andes), glacial particulate material (Antarctica, Patagonia) and desert dust (Australia, Southern Africa) to blow and fallout onto and circulate through, the entire Southern Ocean.
This in turn would have pumped a whole lot more DMS (dimethyl sulfide) and other cloud nuclei into the air over the entire Southern Ocean thereby producing a marked dampening of global climate sensitivity (which persists to this day).
Personally, I’m getting real old just waiting for Barack Obama to put his jive mouth where our money is, bring one or two of those 100s of B-57 left over from the Cold War out of mothballs and top dress a big swathe of ocean with cheap (now the Chinese don’t want it) Aussie iron ore to show he really is the miracle man with the answer to Life, the Universe and damn well everything, (and the good ol’ US of A really does know how to lick that pesky CAGW).

Why is there a semi-quaver preceding Oxygen 18?
[Reply: The HTML for Δ is “&+Delta+;”. But if you forget to capitalize Delta, you get: δ. — mod.]

Sorry – typo in my post. I really meant B-52s not B-57. And the more I think about it , that would be a truly spectacular way for Barack Obama to demonstrate he isn’t just a One Trick Pony.

The way the world’s economies are stagnating, we’ll be lucky to keep the plant-benefiting, biosphere-enriching increase in CO2 we’ve already got. Getting anywhere near a “doubling” will be next to impossible.

dp says:
October 5, 2012 at 9:57 pm
“CO2 following temperature is a positive feedback. Not a very strong one, but there, none the less. Because of it the temperature will be higher no matter the driving force that causes CO2 to increase.”
Perhaps I am unclear, but could you explain what these three sentences mean. Thank you in advance.

What I find interesting is the “confidence” part in this one table. What the heck? That’s not science. That’s rolling dice. Seems like a way out for them. If it doesn’t happen they can always say “look, we weren’t 100% confident about it anyway.” More proof that science has been corrupted.

Using annual values, the increase in global temperaute from 1850 to 2011 was 0.783 °C (HadCRU3T) and the increase in CO2equivalent was from 289.0 to 464.1 ppm (GISS). If all that increase was caused by CO2e this implies a sensitivity of:
Sensitivity = 0.783 * log(2)/log(464.1/289.0 )= 1.145 °C per doubling of CO2e.
This is close the estimates of other climate realists.
For more details see:
http://www.climatedata.info/Discussions/Discussions/opinions.php?id=5505161221680733484

@Allan McRae
Climate sensitivity to CO2 is independent of how the CO2 got there. It’s based on radiative transfer properties and feedbacks. The reason for the great range of estimates of sensitivity is because the feedbacks are so uncertain. Doubling CO2 alone without accounting for feedbacks gives a warming effect of 1.1 C. So estimates close to that number assume feedbacks cancel out. The bigger issue is whether to regard CO2 as a forcing or a feedback.
If warming from unknown forcings cause more CO2 to dissolve out of the oceans, for example, then CO2 itself would be a feedback to that warming event, causing even more warming. But because CO2s warming effect is logarithmic, whilst warming events tend to be quite linear, it’s effect as a feedback is not linear. You need more and more CO2 to get the same warming effect.

SamG says: Why is there a semi-quaver preceding Oxygen 18?
—–
’tis the Music of the Spheres….

(sort of off-topic)
Anthony~ While the bulk of your article is pretty much taken straight from the paper mentioned, this is still Your article. I’d like to repost it to the site I lay out my skeptic arguments at, if I may. (with a link back here, of course)
May as well say it here, since many of the people I would like to ask, come by here:
I am a Skeptic in a sea of True Believers, at an art site known as Deviantart (.com). I’ve written a number of articles on climate change there, and have hopes to do a great many more.
It goes Much faster, if I can repost articles written by others, along with my own commentary / thoughts on the matter.
Don’t know that I will get many responses here (or if this comment will even be published), but thought I would give it a try.

SamG says:
October 5, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Why is there a semi-quaver preceding Oxygen 18?

It’s supposed to be a lower case delta. The term is used to designate the 18O:16O ratio in a sample against the ratio in a standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9418O

Just to clarify, this is a ‘paper under review’, right? It hasn’t been accepted for publication yet? If so, then obviously its conclusions need to be treated with a degree of caution.
Re post 1, Allan MacRae: can you confirm that you still believe a sixth order is “the best fit polynomial” trend line to use for the UAH data, as you stated in this Sept. 2008 article at ‘ICECAP’: http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/is_this_the_beginning_of_global_cooling/
Thanks.

Technically, the data at this time period says the CO2 sensitivity is Null.
Global temps fall 2.0C starting 33.6 million years over a few hunded thousand years to a level close to today. Antarctica glaciates over in under 100,000 years. CO2 stays high at 1200 ppm over the period.
Temps stay more-or-less at this level for the next 7 million years. CO2 falls temporarily, 2 million years later, but then it goes back up again.
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is constricted again at 27 million years ago and the glaciers melt back and global temperatures rise 2.0C again. CO2 then goes down, just as the temperatures are going back up.
Temperatures are still warm at 24 million years ago, the Antarctic glaciers are only at about half of today’s level. CO2 promptly falls below 280 ppm for the perhaps the very first time in history. Temperatures stay high and even go higher over the next 8 million years while CO2 stays in a range of 240 ppm to 400 ppm.
There is no correlation. .
All of the CO2 sensitivity studies in the table above did not use the actual temperature and CO2 estimates. They more-or-less just made-up the values based on some climate model simulation or some backwards math technique. You cannot get a paper published that says there is no correlation between CO2 and temperature in X period (even though the data shows this).

commieBob says:
October 6, 2012 at 5:27 am
————————————————–
I can’t see this doubling being linear for a single doubling let alone several doublings. Let’s go the other way. Assuming 512 ppm CO2 and cut it in half. Soon you’re down to 1 ppm and -9.9 degrees cooling. Using the IPCC 4.0 deg/doubling you’re at -36 deg cooling and still CO2 in the atmosphere. So at some point this simple equation must break down otherwise you would get to near absolute zero for ppb levels of CO2. Then go the other way. What has been the maximum CO2 level during the past 250 million years and what has been the average maximum temperature for the earth? I suspect the CO2 levels would be much higher than the extrapolated temperature (based on this formula) would suggest. Various graphs of CO2 and temperature show temperature peaking at about 10 deg warmer than today despite CO2 concentrations over 5,000 ppm. Are these graphs wrong or does the Earth have a natural thermostat?

Mosh’s comment on the scaling factors is interesting. They actually have the uncertainty factors shown in an equation, what a marked change from the usual crap that purports to be science. Not only that, but they state that the ice volume correction can vary by ~30%, and the deep ocean temp response could vary ~33%. So with that information, what is your comment Steven? Too high, too low?
While I’m posting, an errant thought popped up, given that there appears to be abiological genesis of methane, there should be an equally interesting equation for CO2 generation. A subsequent migration of the fluid (high pressure – above the triple point of 22 bar) could result in massive increases of CO2. This would occur during significant world shaping geological events, over short geological times, but relatively long times compared to our life spans. Obviously this occurs through vulcanism, but I’m talking about non-volcanic activity through faults. Just an errant thought.

As I understand it, this “sensitivity” is simply the regression b coefficient in the equation T=a+b*ln(CO2). Normal regression statistics assumes the values for CO2 are accurrately fixed(especially with time) and the relationship (b) and it’s confidence limits can be calculated using a least squares technique on the fixed data. The problem with using proxie data and normal statistics to test the validity of this simple model is that neither temperature nor CO2 are accurately fixed. This is easily demonstrated by transposing the equation to ln(CO2)= T/b-a/b and using normal regression techniques to calculate the coefficients. If the values were accurate, the calculated coefficients should be the same. Because neither is accurate, the coefficients will not be the same. Their differencies will depend on the relative accuracy of each. I don’t think using proxie data to test the validity of an oversimplified model of the temperature/CO2 relationship is going to do a good job. Trying to do it on a global scale is beyond my understanding.

FWIT for WUWT readers here’s a site on Race Rocks in the Strait of Juan De Fuca that tracks water temperature and salinity: http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/data/seatemp/seatemp.htm It tracks temperature back to 1921 and salinity back to 1936.

1.1+- 0.4 is roughly a 3 sigma result, it suggests the sign of the forcing is positive but not much more than that.

Ferdinand,
I said elsewhere why your Henry’s Law objection is not valid.
Simply, If the balance between release and absorption changes then the atmospheric CO2 levels will change and Henry’s Law provides no constraint because it only works on a point by point basis locally or regionally and not globally.
Furthermore, winds need to be taken into account whereby the air circulation can take CO2 away from one location allowing more to be released whilst it backs up elsewhere unable to be absorbed.
And, in general, windflow is away from warm CO2 sources towards CO2 sinks so one can get a good deal of backing up in the atmosphere above the sinks before Henry’s Law causes any restraint on emissions from the sources.
Bear in mind that warming equatorial oceans will first increase release in the equatorial oceans and then when that warmth circulates poleward it will reduce absorption in polar regions thus compounding the net effect.
Your simplistic reliance on Henry’s Law bears little relation to reality.

There seems to be a significant amount of comment that purports to be from serious scientific sources, yet they have no links? Are you under the impression that your opinions have some sort of merit?

There it is again…. “Doubling C02 increases forcing by 3.7Watts.”, stated as fact by Mosher.
Mosher, that’s an assumption, it’s never has been empirically proven that I have ever come across. If you merely state a small lab test-tube test, that just don’t cut it for myself and many others.
However, you know what would be a very good test to see if an open ended test, with an established thermal gradient, would actually show that figure so many just assume of that hypothetic value in a planetary atmosphere?
Take the SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Collider) some time when it is down for maintenance and use that two-mile tube for a more realistic ‘atmosphere’. One end capped with a dual plate with liquid nitrogen flowing between the plates (the space end), the other end using a warmed copper plate much a Tyndall original apparatus, at 288K, as the LW generator for the ‘surface’ end. Temperature loggers along the two mile tube.
Now vary the CO2 concentration within at 1 STP, from 300 to 600 to 900 ppmv and then back down to 600 to 300 for a few cycles as the data was being logged of the temperature variances along that shortened ‘atmosphere’ (from the 11 km to about 4 km).
I now you will never be able to also get the pressure and density gradient of a real atmosphere but it seems that would be the about the best we could ever approach. If such a test showed warming a quarter of the way from the ‘surface’ end I would no longer question this 3.7Wm-2/C figure as being actual in an real atmosphere’s environment.
My suspicions are such a test would show a fraction of the 3.7, could even be zero, could even be very slightly negative due to the increased thermal conductivity via radiation between that infinite cold absorber end and the warm surface end.

R. de Haan says:
October 6, 2012 at 2:35 pm
NYT publishing BS again: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/scientists-in-washington-state-adopt-tiny-island-as-climate-change-bellwether.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0

As I noted above there is a recording station at Race Rocks. It is about 40 miles east of Tatoosh. Look at RR’s records of salinity. http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/data/seatemp/seatemp.htm January 1937 it was at 31.6. January 2010 it was at 30.16. Seems like those readings debunk the rising salinity from CO2 conjecture in the NYT article.

HenryP says:
October 6, 2012 at 1:38 pm
There have been several recent studies that showed a marked increase in bio activity both on land and on sea. So there is your explanation for the increase in DIC.
An increase in bio-activity gives a decrease of DIC, not an increase. Part of DIC is used in the shell of some plankton (coccoliths) and all organics. Part of the food chain drops out of the surface as organic and inorganic sediments at a net cost of DIC in the surface layer. Or why you think they tried to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere by fertilizing experiments (with iron) on the ocean surface?
Many measurements were/are done with ships surveys over the decades. They all show the same trends: an increase of DIC and a decrease in pH (usually not measured, but calculated from the alkalinity, DIC and salt content, which is more accurate than direct measurements). But the stations have the longest continuous record.
Either way, energy -in is going down from 1995 so the reaction now goes the other way:
CO2 + 2H2O ==> HCO3- + H3O+
The energy or heat delivered to water is not of direct influence on the equilibrium reactions or pCO2, only temperature is. As far as I know, seawater temperatures in average haven’t dropped (yet), thus the drop in pH and increase in DIC can’t be explained from that.

Line by Line transfer code works for frequencies – it doesn’t mean it work as advertised for a whole atmosphere.
Photons at 10 Um will get intercepted by CO2 at certain rates over certain distances. Then what happens. That whole part is missing. I want the rest of the story.
The Earth emits to space 1,811,047,389,073,350,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 IR photons per year. Somebody has a guesstimate about how that works and we are supposed to just accept it.

Something I was carelessly neglecting myself is that this is a much different situation than the ice age graphs of temperature change causing CO2 release, much different than such as the first graph in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/
In the case of the ice age graphs of the past few hundred thousand years, temperature varies by 7K or more, while CO2 meanwhile ranges by around 100 ppm or less.
In contrast, in this study’s era of focus, CO2 varies by several times more, while temperature varies by a number of times less.
In fact, within what this study is looking at, the ratio of change in CO2 in ppm to the change in temperature in K is literally tens of times greater.
The ratio of change in temperature, even at the surface, let alone deep ocean temperature, to the change in CO2 is far less than in the ice age graphs, not the same order of magnitude.
In other words, while temperature change predominately causes the change in CO2 seen in the ice age graphs, this temperature change did not cause the 770 -> 1130 ppm CO2 change, not being the right order of magnitude.
CO2 variation meanwhile occurred from other factors.

Skiphil says:
October 5, 2012 at 7:59 pm
ooh, 1.1C (+/) will put quite a damper on Alarmist frenzies…..not much of a pretext for panic there…. they will need to find ways to discredit or ignore this.
————-
Nup. Will not be ignored and will only be discredited if its faulty in some way. There is already a body of research in this area and researchers will have to figure out why this does not agree with other research. Simply saying this paper is correct because it gives you the answer you want, does not cut the mustard in real science land.

I would also like to disagree that a lower cap has been placed on CO2 sensitivity. This would only be the case if it were provable that oceanic temperatures had no effect on CO2 concentration,
and it is well known that colder fluids dissolve more gases.
Although radiative physics suggests that a certain variation in CO2 causes a radiative forcing, asserting that this directly leads to temperature variation ignores the physics of convection. Fixed lapse rates means that the extra heat is easily convected away for the slightest of increases in temperature.
Therefore the lower bound on CO2 sensitivity might approach zero.

peterg,
Excellent comment. Thanks for posting.

“The theory that CO2 can trap radiation, or acidify sea water in the concentrations it is present in our atmosphere and oceans is physically impossible, and no amount of Mickey Mouse conclusions will change that”
Exactly. All the energy spent arguing over literal nothingness. The oceans have an extensive amount of buffers that chemically resist Ph change, especially from CO2, not exactly a strong acid maker as it does not stay readily in solution. Just open a bottle beer and let it sit over night…oops went flat. Oh darn.
If anything, I would say the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere that dilutes water vapor would actually have a cooling effect as the CO2 increases to 100%.
But….it is more fun to debate … a condition of having too much free time.

peterg says:
October 6, 2012 at 8:21 pm
This would only be the case if it were provable that oceanic temperatures had no effect on CO2 concentration, and it is well known that colder fluids dissolve more gases.
Yes, but very limited: 16 ppmv/°C, nothing more, at equilibrium as can be derived from the solubility curve of CO2 in seawater, or ~18 ppmv for the warming oceans during the period in question. Thus not responsible for the CO2 increase from 770 to 1130 ppmv as estimated from the sediments. That allows us to estimate the effect of CO2 on temperature, as far as no other positive and negative driving forces and feedbacks are at work. Which is the big question…

Allan MacRae: October 6, 2012 at 6:11 pm
“A better questions would be:
Does this 6th order polynomial have any predictive value? Perhaps you can answer that for yourself.”
Thanks for the reply.
I would say that a 6th order polynomial has absolutely no predictive value; and it has a very limited indicative value too. That is true now, and it was true in September 2008, as you now know.

Comparing climate models to cell phones and wifi precision shows that Mosher is desperate enough to bring in any nonsense in support of his favourite climate models. [snip – ad hom ~mod]

I would think that the most critical part of this paper is the first line of the abstract combined with the information given in table 2.
Quote
“Climate sensitivity is a crucial parameter in global temperature modeling.”
This to me says that without accurate knowledge of the sensitivity modeling is a complete and utter waste of time. From table 2 we see that the current estimates of sensitivity vary from 0.5-9, more than an order of magnitude! It is reasonable to conclude that there is no accurate estimate of climate sensitivity, therefore no accurate modeling, therefore we can all pack up and go home after requesting that the “experts” and politicians refund all of the money they have so far wasted on combating “climate change”, to the people who unwittingly provided it.

jeremyshiers says:
October 7, 2012 at 1:12 am
In a previous lecture Prof Salby showed the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is small number which arises from the difference between 2 large numbers, the amount of CO2 emitted and the amount absorbed.
The natural amounts emitted and absorbed are huge, compared to the human contribution, but these are mainly throughput, what goes in goes out, without a huge change of the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The effect of these flows is a net sink of ~4 GtC/year, while the human (one-way) contribution is ~8 GtC/year. The variability in the natural sink rate also is around 4 GtC/year, which is quite small for a natural process…
Further, Salby in his latest lecture is completely wrong by his attribution of the integrated temperature increase to the CO2 increase and forgetting to tell where the human contribution goes…

HenryP says:
October 7, 2012 at 3:18 am
Most recently some clowns in the arctic reported their CO2 for the first time above 400 ppms
I have serious objections against the language you use in this case. Since Keeling Sr. started with accurate CO2 measurements at the South Pole (yes SPO was first, not Mauna Loa, but lacks a few years of continuous data), the data are what they are. Keeling was only interested in supplying the most accurate CO2 readings available, only in second place in GW, which he thought was mainly beneficial in the first decades of the MLO data. The measurments at MLO started in 1959, before the global cooling scare and long before the global warming scare…
Further, there are lots of stations all over the world operated by different laboratories in different countries. Even if they all cheated over the course of 50 years, why there is nobody of the hundreds of people involved in the world objecting to this practice, even not after retirement…
——————-
What you forget is that the Arctic has a huge seasonal amplitude, thus while the global average currently is ~395 ppmv, with the fall/winter NH increase of CO2 it is possible that the Arctic levels were reaching 400 ppmv.
Normally, the cold would act as a sink for CO2:
CO2 + H2O ==> HCO3- + H3O+
Yes, but in the NH, the mainly mid-latitude seasonal changes of vegetation are more important than what is absorbed by the oceans. The Ferrel cells bring in new air from the mid-latitudes to the polar areas much faster than the absorption rate of the polar oceans…
Further, a regional decrease of 1°C in polar waters gives a decrease of 16 ppmv in regional pCO2 of the waters, thus an increase in uptake flows, but the human input is ~4 ppmv/year, of which ~2 ppmv as mass remains in the atmosphere. Thus within a few years, the human input exceeds the temperature influence.

Well I would also point out that in that little list just how many of those min-med-max triads there are with 95% confidence limits, and having mutually exclusive non-overlapping sensitivity ranges. Izzat some statistical mathematical definition of bullsh*t ?
And related to that subject and the value of proxy Temperatures and proxy CO2 data, and the relative timing of events., readers should check out the new Oct 2012 issue of PHYSISC TODAY on page 13 (good karma) a rather definitive statement by somebody named John Harte at the University of California, Berkeley. He gives his e-mail if you want to comment to him.
So John Harte splits the knowledge universe into “the concensus view on global warming” versus the “Deniers” with a capital D, of that view, and poo-poos the argument as “fallacious”, that such proxy data from Vostok, for example, show that Temperature rise comes before the CO2 rise that caused it.
“It is widely recognized today” announces Harte, “that temperature and CO2 are locked in a positive feedback relation to each other.”
Harte asserts; (Dr Leif Svalgaard notwithstanding,) that the sun causes it, with “weak” insolation variations, which then of course the CO2 amplifies.
One could infer from his claim, that the loop gain of this positive feedback mechanism is significant; maybe even greater than unity.
Now Harte does not explain why the Vostok data shows nowhere, the sequence of monotonic stepwise increases (or decreases) which such a propagation delayed transient sequence must contain.
It is a complete fiction that the Vostok data shows some specific CO2 rise –Temp rise response propagation delay, and then some specific temperature rise — CO2 rise propagation delay, and of course likewise fall response times. There is no discernable fixed prop delay from CO2 change to temp change; they are randomly unrelated; Only the Temp change to CO2 response delay, is anything like a fixed propagation delay; typically cited as 800 years or so.
But Harte is evidently declaring the new concensus mantra; each simply drives the other; always in the same direction; hence the positive feedback declaration; but no explanation for the complete lack of any such sequential stepwise bootstrapping in the data.
Now Harte described the causal solar insolation signal as weak (not me), so he presumably is excluding Milankovitch type orbital events, which many would consider unweak provocations, compared to 0.1% p-p solar cycle TSI changes, which Leif rightly says don’t do much.
I take Harte’s use of the perjoritive terms “Denier” and “concensus” to imply he is making a political statement, and NOT a scientific one; which seems a good reason why PHYSICS TODAY should not have published his essay.
He ends with a conjecture that ” the Vostok data suggests carbon – climate feedback could greatly enhance future warming as well.”
Since I’m in California, I’m sure my tax dollars are being used at that institution, to keep food on the table of many unemployable “experts”.

WRT the table; note Lindzen and Choi 2011 put the range at 0.5 to 1.3 also with 95 confidence from physical measurements.
It would be nice to see some real data with 95% condidence that there even IS a logarithmic relationship between CO2 abundance and global temperature.
T = T,0 + CS* log2( CO2 / CO2,0)
If you can’t figure out the nomenclature, go watch “The View” or some other suitable time eating entity.
For me personally, I believe the entire concept of climate sensitivity is total horse pucky; both real data observationally, and on pure physical theoretical grounds.
So I really think the whole discussion is an exercise in self flaggellation.
Try fitting some real data to the form T = T,0 exp (-1/ CO2^2) or alternatively
CO2 = CO2,0 exp (-1 / (T-T,0)^2) .
Of course you have to throw in some range and scale parameters to select the correct part of the function, to get a fit.
I know it fits either one of those equations either way, because, the data also fits a perfectly linear and equally unsupportable equation, and there is always some roughly linear portion on any continuous function; and you only have to equal the fit to the logarithmic and ergo exponential equation; that allegedly Stephen Schneider invented for climate sensitivity.
How many more tax dollars are going to be wasted supporting this fiction of climate sensitivity.

Allan MacRae says:
October 5, 2012 at 7:59 pm
“I may have read this abstract too quickly, but to me the term “climate sensitivity” assumes atmospheric CO2 drives global temperature, whereas the data I am familiar with clearly shows that CO2 lags temperature and is driven at least in part by temperature.”
Yes, Petit et.al., Fisher et. al., Callion et. al;
http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/CaillonTermIII.pdf

gymnosperm says:
October 7, 2012 at 7:49 am
This is very interesting. So the sink variability equals the sink rate and some years there will be hardly any absorbtion and other years it will absorb much of the human contribution? This seems very unstable.
For a natural process, the variability in CO2 rate of change is quite modest: individual processes may vary with 10-20% from year to year. The main fast processes for CO2 are the temperature influence on oceans surface layer and vegetation: while the continuous and seasonal flows are huge (some 90 GtC in and out of the oceans and some 50 GtC in and out of vegetation per year, that is good for 45 resp. 25 ppmv change within a year), the net result in the atmosphere is not more than some 5 ppmv/°C for the seasonal swings (mainly due to NH land vegetation) and 4 ppmv/°C for huge influences like the Pinatubo eruption and the 1998 El Niño. The main reason for a low influence probably is that vegetation and oceans work in opposite direction for the influence of temperature on CO2 levels…

HenryP says:
October 7, 2012 at 1:05 pm
I remember that some gas labs used to measure CO2 in gases (like oxygen) at 4.26 um using an infra red spectrophotometer.
I wonder why we could not use that method for CO2 in air mixtures? Or is that the one Conrad is selling?
One of the problems with CO2 in air is that water vapour overlaps in several bands of IR. In the relative simple hand-held NDIR methods that is compensated for by measuring at two frequencies: where water is the only absorber and where CO2 is the main absorber, but disturbed by water vapour. The first band gives how much water is present and thus its influence on the CO2 band can be calculated and substracted. But that gives results with a resolution of not better than a few ppmv.
Most baseline stations remove water vapour over a cold trap and measure CO2, but also measure 2 or 3 calibration gases within the same hour. This makes the method more accurate to about 0.2 ppmv. This can be made fully automatic with quite robust equipment and a minimum of fine mechanical items and maintenance.
A few automated stations use GC for CO2, CH4 and other gases of interest. But these indeed need far more maintenance…

rbateman says:
October 7, 2012 at 3:44 pm
I’m wondering why someone doesn’t do laboratory experiments with CO2, H20 vapor and both in combinations
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm
Be sure to read the docs in the zip file containing the criticisms of the experiment as well.

D Boehm;
Dr. Hug’s conclusions reflect current real world observations.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Only by coincidence. The criticisms in the zip file are fair in my mind.

gymnosperm says:
October 7, 2012 at 9:33 pm
So really the atmosphere and oceans work in opposite directions? In spite of the fact that there is quite a bit of pelagic “vegetation” in the oceans?
An increase of temperature of ocean waters gives more release of CO2, due to less solubility of CO2 in seawater with elevated temperatures. On the other hand, biolife increases with higher temperatures in seawater, which removes in part CO2 from the surface layer and atmosphere, depending of exchange speed with the atmosphere and drop out of organic and inorganic residues out of the oceans surface layer. Precipitation plays no role for ocean plants, but play a huge role in land plants in some circumstances: an El Niño event increases temperature and plant growth in general, but gives drought to large parts of the equatorial rainforests, leading to extra CO2 releases.
How can we determine which is leading at some events? CO2 releases from ocean water warming give a slight increase of 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere and opposite for cooling. CO2 releases/uptake from vegetation decay/growth give a huge drop/increase in 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere. O2 releases from ocean water warming are limited, but O2 use/release from vegetation decay/growth is substantial. The combination of both reveals the source of the CO2 movements as result of increased/decreased temperatures.
On seasonal changes, biolife is dominant: the huge growth of leaves/wood in spring/summer, mainly in the mid-latitude NH, removes so much CO2 from the atmosphere that the increase in water temperature can’t coop with that and CO2 levels drop (and the 13C/12C ratio increases). In the SH, the seasonal swings are much smaller, thus biolife in the oceans seems less influential in the seasonal changes than land plants.
On year-by-year changes, the oceans seems to be more dominant, as an increase in temperature shows an increase in CO2 rate of change, around the trend. Partially also as result of droughts in some events (El Niño) and light scathering in other events (Pinatubo eruption) on land plants.
Over very long term (ice ages, interglacials), the oceans are dominant too, but reduced by increased land area (less land ice) and more plant growth, both in the oceans and over land. While the solubility of CO2 decreases with 16 ppmv/°C, the ice cores show some 8 ppmv/°C over tenthousands of years…

Just in case anyoneis interested, CPD have an on-line comments feature. This allows others to put up comments aboutpapers that are up fordiscussion.
Asten only has 1 comment, but it is from some people who might know a bit about the subject:
The authors of one of the main studies Asten uses in reaching his conclusion, Pearson et al.
Link here: http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/8/C1879/2012/cpd-8-C1879-2012.pdf
General conclusion: They are deeply underwhelmed by Asten’s results. They go into quite a bit of detail as to why. Their general conclusion is that if one were to apply their data correctly then the range of CS values Asten should calculate is anywhere between 0.6 to 4.9 – such a broad range of values as to basically be useless. Their criticism spans a range of objections. But it seems to boil down to the fact that the period Asten examines is simply unsuited to this type of simplistic analysis – not enough detailed data and a period in climate history when a lot of complex factors were at play, making it very hard to extract a CS value from this period. They suggest another period around 3.3Myr ago that gives clearer results.
This is often a problem when one tries to draw conclusions from very preliminary work. To all those commenters here that seem to have just accepted the results of this study without looking any deeper into it, go and read the reply from Pearson et al. It provides an interesting case study in to how the relatively simple level at which many climate science topics get discussed in the blogosphere can lead many people to reach faulty conclusions based on insufficient information.
Sites such as WUWT andmany others are really only engaged in a simplistic shadow play. The actual nuts and bolts details of climate science is very seldom reported on the blogosphere. It’s probably too large, complex and nuanced to be boiled down to the level that non-scientists on blog’s can grasp. So the simplified version of science that is the actual currency of the blogosphere often has very little to do with the reality of the actua lscience that is out there.

Allan MacRae says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/05/new-paper-on-climate-sensitivity-estimates-1-1-%c2%b1-0-4-c-for-a-doubling-of-co2/#comment-1106783
Henry says
Good comment. Put all the dirty linen of such people on the wash line so we can have a good (scientific) look at that as well..
Like I said before, they even put a lot of my pension money on this alternative energy nonsense and with so much at stake, for such a lot of people: it makes me wonder and doubt the results of CO2 stations currently reporting to us. I think you will find some there are some crooks there as well. They could not possibly reporting that CO2 is going down because that would cost them their own jobs.
We therefore desperately need (an) independent CO2 station(s) reporting to us, skeptics.
Any ideas from anyone on this?

Allan says
Perhaps we will see this annualized CO2 decrease again, IF we see significant global cooling.
henry says
you still seem to have some doubts about that
I was recently on holiday at a resort where we often go
with computer tablets telling us the weather and even giving me stats I was amazed to find that temps. dropped on average 10 degrees C compared to a year ago and even the sea water was at least 2 or 3 degrees cooler from what I knew it should be….at this time of the year (when we always go)…
then I say to the family: it is cooling…globally…
I even have my graph to prove it…
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
then everyone says
but why is nobody reporting it?
you tell me?
could it perhaps have something to do with (a lot of) money?
Relying too much on satellites (where you cannot go inside to re-calibrate) could also be a factor…
as to the CO2 data
I don’t know why they would use Hawaii as a measuring point;
it is a very volcanic island (lots of CO2 there going up naturally, in big squirts, I am sure)
so our starting point would be… what… exactly?
on top of that we still have those crooking the results…..
(sorry, but I have become very skeptical, true, but I hope you see that I have my reasons)

Henry@Allan
I can do an estimate of the cooling from my own dataset;
it is not that I do not trust others, it is just that I trust myself better.
The parameter that is important to watch is the drop in maxima, in degrees C/annum as it follows on a perfect curve. I estimate from the sinus wave curve on the maxima that we are now nearing the bottom at an average rate of about -0.035 degrees K per annum for the next 6-8 years. That would be a drop about 0.3 degrees K by 2020.
So far, on the maxima we have dropped 0.2 degrees K since 2000, but don’t forget we came from an average of +0.036 38 years ago to -0.016 for the past 12 years.
On the means we also dropped about 0.2 degrees K since 2000, looking at my own data set.
(Hadcrut 3 says it is -0.1 K; UAH says: …..? = too much noise to say anything at all)
I would therefore say that on the means we will now drop as fast as we are dropping on the maxima.
(I hope it is not more than that)
So, what we on earth are looking at is a total drop of about -0.5 degrees K from 2000 – 2020.
Do you think that is a lot?
(my sun laughed at me when I showed that the walls in our house differ by about the same 0.5)

So we are cool!!
Be assured of a few very cold winters coming up – especially Europe. I predict an elfstedentocht in Holland for next year and/or any of the 2 following years
I am most disturbed now, since on checking my tables again I found that although warming of the globe (in the past) was more biased towards the NH – i.e. the landmasses in the SH did not really warm up much.- I was hoping we in the SH would be OK against the coming cold. But it appears we are cooling on both hemispheres at the same rates now. How can that be? It is not fair./
…..I hate the cold….