Guest essay by David Bennett Laing, Asst. Prof.of Geology, Univ. of Maine (retired)
Two different styles of volcanic eruption appear to have been the principal determinants of climate change throughout geologic time.
The very fact that opinions on climate change could have become as polarized as they have, even in scientific circles, suggests we may still have much to learn. Despite the best efforts of many of the world’s brightest minds, and the claims of some that “the science is settled,” climatic enigmas still persist.
For the past nine years, Peter Langdon Ward has been working steadily in retirement from his career as a geophysicist and volcanologist with the US Geological Survey to try to demystify some of these enigmas. Two years ago, I joined my old friend and colleague in his quest. Last month, we published a new theory of global warming that we feel accounts far better for temperature change over the past 100 years and throughout the Phanerozoic Eon than the currently favored greenhouse warming theory.
In view of the extreme difficulty in getting peer-reviewed journals to publish papers that question greenhouse theory, we decided to present our observations in a semi-popular book, “What Really Causes Global Warming? Greenhouse Gases or Ozone Depletion?”. The book is available in hardback, paperback, and ebook versions on amazon.com and on other book-seller sites. The book and the science are explained in detail at WhyClimateChanges.com, where autographed copies of the book are also available.
In brief, we find that major temperature changes throughout Phanerozoic time can be fully explained with two different styles of volcanic eruption: explosive volcanism causing global cooling and effusive volcanism causing global warming. It is well-known that aerosols from explosive volcanoes, such as the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo, reflect and scatter sunlight, causing global cooling. What we found is that all volcanoes emit chlorine and bromine, which are observed to deplete the ozone layer, allowing increased irradiance of Earth by solar UV-B radiation, causing global warming. UV-B is 48 times more energy-rich than Earth’s IR radiation absorbed by carbon dioxide. The following graphic summarizes the processes involved (Note that in Panel 2, CFCs proxy for effusive volcanism, shown in Panel 3. Their global warming effects are similar, as discussed below).
Global Warming and Global Cooling Related to Ozone Depletion
Panel 1: Under conditions normal before 1965, ultraviolet-C (UV-C) warmed the upper atmosphere, UV-B primarily warmed the ozone layer, and UV-A and visible light warmed Earth.
Panel 2: CFCs, when they rise to the level of very cold polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), release chlorine that depletes ozone, causing more UV-B than usual to reach Earth’s surface, thus cooling the ozone layer and warming Earth.
Panel 3:Effusive volcanoes emit chlorine and bromine, which deplete ozone, leading to global warming.
Panel 4: Explosive volcanoes similarly deplete ozone, but also eject megatons of water and sulfur dioxide into the lower stratosphere, forming globe-encircling aerosols whose molecules soon grow large enough to reflect and scatter sunlight, causing net global cooling.
In the case of explosive volcanoes, the aerosol cooling effect overwhelms the warming effect from ozone depletion, but since effusive volcanoes don’t eject substantial amounts of gases into the stratosphere, warming prevails. Effusive eruptions are also much longer-lasting and can be extremely voluminous. Massive effusive eruptions in Iceland occurred precisely at the time when Earth warmed out of the last ice age (see Preboreal Warming in the following illustration).
GISP2 Volcanic Sulfate From 9 to 16 Ka
Periods of greatest warming coming out of the last ice age are contemporaneous with times of sulfate anomalies in numerous contiguous layers (note blue circles containing the number of layers). Red bars show volcanic sulfate deposited in individual layers of ice in the GISP2 borehole. The purple line shows the δ18O proxy for temperature adjusted for gas age. The Preboreal warming is contemporaneous with the largest sulfate deposit observed. The Bølling warming is contemporaneous with the largest number of contiguous layers containing volcanic sulfate. Dryas periods of increased glaciation are contemporaneous with little or no volcanism.
Less massive effusive eruptions coincided with every one of the numerous, enigmatic Dansgaard-Oeschger warming events during the ice age (see numbers 0 to 1 on the right side of the above illustration and numbers 2-12 on the right side of the next illustration).
GISP2 Volcanic Sulfate from 22 to 46 Ka
Dansgaard-Oeschger sudden warming events (numbers on the right side) all correspond to times of continuous volcanism. Red bars show the amount of sulfate in individual layers of ice in the GISP2 borehole. The purple line shows the δ18O proxy for temperature adjusted for gas age. Numbers in blue circles show the number of contiguous layers containing sulfate deposits at the time plotted. H2 to H5 are Heinrich events when large numbers of icebergs suddenly appeared in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
Much more massive effusive eruptions accompanied extreme warming events during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the End-Permian Extinction, the Cretaceous-Paleocene boundary, and many other times of major rapid temperature change throughout the Phanerozoic.
We view the dramatic warming event of the late 20th century as anthropogenic, but not due to carbon dioxide. The event coincided with the release of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases to the atmosphere, which are broken down by UV solar radiation in polar stratospheric clouds in late winter to release chlorine, thus mimicking the ozone depleting and global warming effects of effusive volcanism. The Montreal Protocol ended CFC production and thereby ended global warming, thus explaining the enigmatic “global warming hiatus” that prevailed from 1998 through 2013 (see following illustration). No other convincing explanation for the “hiatus” has been proposed or generally agreed upon (See ozonedepletiontheory.info/gg-warming-hiatus.html). A warming effect from the massive effusive eruption of Iceland’s Bárðarbunga volcano in late 2014 and early 2015, the largest since 1783, will likely make 2015 the warmest year on record.
Distinctly Different Trends
Trends in temperature (red bars), (NOAA), tropospheric chlorine (green line) (Solomon, 1999), and ozone depletion (black line) (Staehelin et al., 1998) (WOUDC, 2014) over the past 70 years are distinctly different from trends in concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (blue dashed line) (NOAA, 2014). Ocean heat content (Levitus et al., 2012) inceased with increasing ozone depletion and continues to increase while ozone depletion remains greater than levels prior to 1970. Carbon dioxide levels appear related to ocean heat content through the solubility of CO2 as a function of water temperature.
Global temperature has plateaued rather than fallen, ice masses still continue to melt globally, and ocean heat content continues to rise, because chlorine remains in the stratosphere and continues to destroy ozone catalytically. This will continue for several decades, and due to heat storage in the oceanic thermal reservoir, it is likely that eventual lowering of global temperature will not occur unless there is a series of explosive volcanic eruptions. Until (and if) these occur, it seems equally likely that we will simply have to adapt to a world that is about one Fahrenheit degree warmer than it was in the mid-20th century, but at least we shouldn’t have to worry about “climate Armageddon” due to further warming, as long as we remain vigilant against further releases of existing CFC stockpiles and other chemicals that deplete the ozone layer.
In the book, we also discuss apparent problems with greenhouse warming in considerable detail on both theoretical and observational grounds. An exhaustive literature search revealed that only one actual experiment has ever been performed to test greenhouse warming theory empirically. It was done by Knut Ångström in 1900, and he concluded that any warming effect from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration was negligible. Accordingly, Peter Ward has issued a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can demonstrate by experiment that greenhouse gases are more effective at warming Earth than ozone depletion. To date, he has had no takers (see WhyClimateChanges.com/Challenge/).
Meanwhile, we sought to assess the relative response of global temperature to mean monthly variations in ozone depletion and in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the same time interval in the northern hemisphere and found, in the following graph, a close correlation with temperature anomalies in the case of ozone depletion, but we also found that the carbon dioxide peak lags the temperature anomaly variation curve by two months, indicating little possibility of a significant influence of carbon dioxide variation on global temperature. A possible, but slight, influence is evident in the small upward deflection of the temperature anomaly curve in June.
The Relationship of Ozone Depletion to Temperature
Mean monthly values of northern hemisphere temperature anomalies (red) and ozone depletion anomalies (green) for the period 1975 to 1998 and of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, (blue) since 1961, normalized as percentages. Carbon dioxide values, peaking in May, show only a minor effect on temperature anomalies, but coincidence of the peaks in ozone depletion and temperature in March suggest a possible causal relationship.
We would welcome your thoughts on the foregoing, especially if they follow a careful reading of the book or the website WhyClimateChanges.com. It is clearly rather important for all living things on Earth that we get this right.
Figures can be added with captions as
1. http://whyclimatechanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FrontCoverFinal.jpg
2. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/global-warming-sulfur.html
3. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/TempClOzCO2-5.html
4. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/sulfate-9-16ka.html
5. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/sulfate-22-46ka.html
6. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/monthly-ozone-temperature-percent.html
Or just as jpegs as
1. http://whyclimatechanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FrontCoverFinal.jpg
2. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/global-warming-sulfur.jpg
3. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/TempClOzCO2-5.jpg
4. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/sulfate-9-16ka.jpg
5. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/sulfate-22-46ka.jpg
6. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/monthly-ozone-temperature-percent.jpg
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Causal factors are obviously reversed. Everyone knows that global warming causes volcanos and that climate change causes other volcanos.
I thought that volcanoes caused global warming because they are very hot, and blow a lot of hot stuff into the air. Doesn’t all of Al Gore’s hot air also contribute to global warming?
Lungcancer causes smoking and the tail wags the dog?
Cancer cures smoking.
the extreme difficulty in getting peer-reviewed journals to publish papers that question greenhouse theory
==================
imagine for a moment that the great scientific discoveries of history had never been published. science would have ground to a halt. which explains why the IPCC has not been able in 20 years of reports to narrow the uncertainty in CO2 sensitivity.
20 years without progress. Why? Because Climate Science is at a standstill. The Pause isn’t simply in temperature, it is in Climate Science itself.
Climate Science cannot progress because there can be no challenge to the status quo. Anything that challenges the CO2 orthodoxy is actively suppressed. And without a challenge, progress halts, no new discoveries are possible.
In seeking to silence dissent, Climate Science has silenced discovery. People with bright new ideas are not welcome, so they move to other fields. What remains are the rotten apples, unable to succeed elsewhere, because they lack original ideas. And over time it is these rotten apples the spoil the entire barrel, and discovery grinds to a halt.
We live in frustrating times.
And that is why, Fred, successive Chinese Emperors saw no alternative to burning the books.
COP21 and other agendas have dismissed the science right or wrong years ago. It’s all political now – Robin Hood politics – steal from the rich countries to give to the poor. Social Justice, Climate Justice, Agenda 21 policies these all pay lip service to the science.
What’s required now is some strong leaders in the U.S. and Europe to stand up to the U.N. and say NO!
Good point!
And volcano’s cause global warming and volcano’s cause climate change
It’s a viscous cycle
It’s a cycle that’s thick and sticky?
[The mods will magmamously issue you that viscous charge, as they fear a protest will erupt otherwise. We pumice no more such wordplay. .mod]
Thank you for this. I was going to ask if there had been a
stampede of claimants for the $10,000 !
So far, we’ve had one reply, and I quote: “Please send check to IPCC-Sec@wmo.int.”
IMO the late 20th century warming was not dramatic. It was about the same as the early 20th century warming.
The main human effect on the late 20th century warming was from clearer skies thanks to pollution reduction in the West. But it was mainly a natural fluctuation, just like the cooling cycle which preceded after WWII until the PDO flipped in the late ’70s.
Gloateus Maximus ” just like the cooling cycle which preceded after WWII”
One thing you don’t hear is how much sulphur is in gunpowder .
http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/15366/why-is-there-sulfur-in-black-powder-gun-powder
Nearly all of the “gunpowder” used in WWII was “smokeless powder”; which does not have sulfur.
Jmorpuss,
1) The cooling came after the previous approximately 30 years of warming, which followed some 30 years of cooling, which followed the first warming cycle after the end of the LIA.
2) Modern black powder doesn’t need S because it is not ignited by hot flecks of steel sparked off a frizzen by flint.
3) By far the most propellants and explosives used in both World Wars were high explosive nitrocellulose derivatives, not black powder, a low explosive.
Gloateus Maximus December 22, 2015 at 3:39 pm
You are correct for, the “gunpowder” as a propellant, for bullets and shells. But many of the bursting charges for bombs and some grenades were black powder. The U.S. grenade started out with something like TNT but it made the fragments to small, sooo.. back to black powder.
But I don’t think it was enough to cause anything. Toss in say a hundred burning cities and all the crop land and you start to get an effect. To the best of my knowledge no one has totaled the tonnage so its just SWAG at this point.
michael
As for bursting charges in bombs and grenades as mentioned by Mike the Morlock : They were high explosives instead of black powder in WWII. High explosives were invented decades before WWI, and hand grenades were making a comeback in time for WW1. WWII explosive aerial bombs had their destructive power from use of high explosives. Naval warships in WWII used nitrocelluse-based propellants for shooting artillery shells, which used high explosives.
How would gunpowder used during WWII cause cooling prior to WWII?
Mike,
The US had little success with its grenade designs in WWI, so we relied upon the British Mills Bomb and French F1 grenade. Neither of those used black powder.
The filling for our WWII grenades weren’t black powder, either.
Mark,
The cooling under discussion occurred during and after WWII, from c. 1940 to 1977, despite rapidly rising CO2.
Gloateus Maximus
And the actual “air pollution” has NEVER been quantified, never been measured and actually reported.
Localized/valley/basin/regional particulate and chemical air pollution? (Los Angeles, London, New York, Pittsburgh, Ontario (by the nickel smelters), Ducktown and Copperhill (TN), Joplin (MO) -Galena (KS)) Oh absolutely many local sites were terrible. And we were right to spend money and economic power and energy to stop the particulate pollution. But LA, NY, London, and the WWII burned-out cities were SMALL (globally speaking) and their releases were removed from the atmosphere within kilometers of the valley or basin.
But global air pollution and global particulate counts from 1910 – 1976? from 1850 to 2015?
Never measured. Never released. Only estimated backwards into the models by hand-waving approximations and assumption so the final results became corrected-to-theory.
Go to Greenland. To a mountain glacier. If that dirt and those particles matter to the world’s global cooling 1940-1976, then find the “dirt” from the world’s “pollution” in those years in regions far from the local release spots.
RA,
I don’t think that the cause of the postwar cooling was dirty air, although it couldn’t have hurt.
IMO the main cause was natural, cyclic fluctuations, to include the PDO and AMO.
Others here have raised the issue of dirty air. Cleaning the air after pollution controls from the 1970s might however IMO have contributed to whatever warming did actually occur after the Great PDO Flip of 1977.
Then after the war they got serious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests
“Professional and amateur meteorologists have noted unusual weather patterns several days after each test. Most suspect these irregularities may have been caused by evaporation of surrounding sea water during the tests.” Seeding the atmosphere with salt water has already been done. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moruroa
Don;t you mean the AMO?
Nope. PDO flipped in 1977. Notably.
As a native of the Pacific Northwest, the unusual WX of that year is emblazoned on my memory. But it’s not just me:
http://research.jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
Cleaner air certainly could be a factor in warming, at least in North America, but it’s unclear just how much of a factor. Determining that would be a tough one, IMHO, but we should look at it. Tx!
David,
Attempts have been made to quantify the climatic effect of the Clean Air Act of 1973 and comparable legislation in Europe and in the former Soviet Bloc after 1990.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/19/shocker-global-warming-may-simply-be-an-artifact-of-clean-air-laws/
To what extent air pollution (the real thing, not CO2) in China, India and the rest of the developing world may have offset the cleanup in developed regions is under study.
What about the other side of the Ozone creation equation? The higher energy part of the UVC spectrum and the Far and Extreme UV spectrum deposit heat in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere as a by-product of their splitting of O2 molecules into Oxygen ions. During periods of less emissions from the sun of this part of the spectrum of emissions then less Ozone can be created. There is also more explosive volcanic activity during such times due in part to the reduced solar magnetic field strength allowing additional cosmic ray activity and hence more muons are created that interact with magma in some volcanoes. Refer Explosive volcanic eruptions triggered by cosmic rays: Volcano as a bubble chamber, Toshikazu Ebisuzaki et al. Gondwana Research 2010.
This is an area that we haven’t yet explored, but should. Thanks for the heads-up!
David Laing
Thank you for a nice article.
I have been studying the climate of Britain over the last 1000 years in my attempts to extend CET beyond 1659.
I have problems with volcanos . Undoubtedly the severe ones can effect the temperature, but normally it is relatively short term, perhaps a season or at most a year or so, and even within that year the climate may frequently revert to ‘normal’.
What the volcanic studies often fail to realise -as they are looking at the coarse sieve of 100 years of smoothed data, rather than a fine annual sieve-is that quite often climate had already changed BEFORE the volcanic eruption, so the volcano merely exaggerates the effect, or merely continues what has already been observed.
The best example of this is the 1257/8 volcano that some say ushered in the LIA (Mann) or the ones a few decades later that did the same job (Miller) Neither scenario is true however when looking at the actual contemporary records.
tonyb
Thanks for the good words. Please look again at the fourth graph in my post. Here, in GISP2, we see the numerous Dansgaard-Oeschger events, each of which is coincident with a major basaltic eruptive event. Note that the circled numbers indicate the number of contiguous ice layers with volcanic sulfate (the sulfate, BTW, is simply a marker for volcanism, and is not considered as a factor in warming). We have found similar coincidences of major basaltic eruptive events with every major sudden warming event we’ve looked at throughout the Phanerozoic. The other observation of note is the suddenness of the warming events and the gradualness of the subsequent cooling events. We feel this is fully consistent with a climate response to a sudden, intense volcanic event.
CET and the 10Be nucleation obtained from Greenland ice cores show good correlation, coincidental or causal ?
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/10Be-CET.gif
David
Thank you.
Gisp2 is indicative of local conditions. I see no reason why it should be considered a global proxy. Perhaps the arctic amplification applies to volcanic dust as well as temperatures, but that should not be taken as being indicative of every location.
The contemporary records (in Britain) reflect the weather of a agrarian society much affected by the vagaries of the season. Cathedral records for instance demonstrate the realities of the laki eruption as ‘alms were given to the poor to alleviate the severity of the season’.
At other times we get records of severe weather, or lack 0of sun or constant rain. The 1257/8 volcano is a classic example. The descriptions of it were apocalyptic, but the weather before it had also been catastrophic but not quite as bad) and the weather immediately after it quickly became much better.
All I am saying that extracting a signal from gisp2 is always going to be much more smoothed and generalised than contemporary accounts citing weather as it happened.
tonyb
vukcevic, a very compelling correlation between CET & 10Be, but, as you know, correlation doesn’t imply causation in either direction. Why temps in central England should increase when solar activity declines, I can’t say, but it’s certainly worth looking into.
We didn’t intend to use the GISP2 record as a global proxy, just as an example of how local temperatures appeared to respond consistently to influences from nearby volcanoes.
“I have been studying the climate of Britain over the last 1000 years ”
Just how old are you?
Today, with a sore throat, I feel VERY old
tonyb
Well it’s good to see volcanoes and ozone getting some air time, but I don’t think this is really a convincing treatise.
According to the two most recent events for which some quite detailed observational evidence is available, even stratospheric eruptions show a notable warming effect. This becomes apparent after the initial cooling has subsided.
The clearest effect is in the lower stratosphere, where the effect is reverserd compared to the effect in the lower climate system:
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/uah_tls_365d.png
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/on-determination-of-tropical-feedbacks/
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=902
I don’t see much need to invoke the Montreal Protocol to explain that change.
Does not the stratosphere react opposite to the troposphere? Its cooling was taken as a sign of troposphere warming. Why would not the two lower stratosphere volcanic ‘warming blips’ not simply indicate the well documented transient troposphere coolings caused by those two explosive eruptions stratospheric volcanic aerosols?
Exactly, try reading the links.
Having made the connection of the blips, now look at the 0.5K *drop* in TLS that followed each event. That corresponds to the warming of the troposphere that occurred in each decade.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/tls_icoads_70s-20s.png
Hmmm.
Any reason as to why there is no lag in the SST response to El Chichon?
The response to Mt Pinatubo is very different.
A pity that the data only covers 2 events. A bit short to draw firm conclusions.
The thing is that the lower climate has a lot else going one , that is why the calmer stratosphere is the key to understanding the impact of volcanoes.
Don’t expect every dip and ripple to match on a yearly basis. In view of the large thermal capacity of the surface ocean layer and negligible heat content of the stratosphere one would expect an exponential rise of the ocean temps. This is what is seen after both events.
It seems to take about 7-8 years to settle to the new level after the bottom of trough when the initial cooling effect ends. The first one may not quite have settles when Mt P hit.
This is similar to a capacitor charging in an electrical analogy. The ocean is a BIG heat reservoir and takes time to change. The stratosphere changes much more quickly.
Equally the larger Mt P effects may have taken a little longer bottom out for similar reasons. The stratosphere will react more rapidly. But I would not read too much into bi-annual wriggles in the surface data. Lower climate is complex and there’s a lot going on.
Good question but the decadal surface response to both events seems similar.
I, for one, think this is a good theory because it is backed up by real data and has a logical physical explanation that actually occurs. Climate science always bugs me because the logical physical explanations for most of its little myths are backwards and illogical. This is one theory that makes sense.
The lower stratosphere can warm by up to +2.0C in the immediate aftermath of the volcanoes as the sulphate aerosols then intercept more solar radiation in the lower stratosphere level. The surface then cools by up to -0.5C as less solar radiation is now getting to the surface.
When the sulphate aerosols eventually dissipate over the period of almost 2 years, they leave behind in their wake, lower levels of Ozone and the stratosphere then cools off in a step change of -0.5C from the previous equilibrium level. The surface then warms because more solar radiation is now getting past the lower stratosphere.
It takes 25 years or more for the Ozone to rebuild afterward. It is a good thing these large volcanoes only happen 5 or 6 times per century because at this level, the Ozone can remain at 80% to 90% of its peak potential level. If the volcanoes occurred 5 or 6 times per decade, then there would be very little Ozone and the surface would be much warmer and we would all get cancer.
The impacts are very clear in this chart of DAILY temperatures from UAH from 1978 to March 2015 (they ended the dataset when they brought in the new version 6.0 temperatures). The lines are illustrative only (some people don’t like them for some reason).
http://s28.postimg.org/e7ljczp25/Volcanoes_Lower_Strat_Daily_Temps_Mar15.png
http://s27.postimg.org/wkkvzhwb7/Volcanoes_Lower_Trop_Strat_Daily_Temps_Mar15.png
“Does not the stratosphere react opposite to the troposphere? Its cooling was taken as a sign of troposphere warming.”
Hold on here…. hmmm…. a thought just occurred to me.
If surface stations measure temperature at the “land” level, but the upper atmosphere cools, then we get higher temp readings. Conversely, if the upper atmosphere warms, but the land cools, you get lower readings.
The satellites are pointed “down” and measure both upper/ lower atmosphere and land, basically? It’s total energy coming from the “disk” of earth/atmosphere that hits the sensor.
So, if total energy is neutral, satellite records would show no increase but surface area could show an increase, and both could be correct with no malfeasance or errors at all, simply because they’re measuring completely different things/quantity?
You would expect cooling of the lower stratosphere as a result of ozone depletion because there would be less exothermic ozone photodissociation by UV-B going on. The “blips” in 1982-3 and 1992 may reflect large releases of ground-level ozone just prior to the eruptions of El Chichon and Pinatubo that are shown on ozone maps. We incline toward these being the result of exoelectron release during pre-eruption rock fracture. Exoelectrons are energetic enough to photodissociate oxygen, which leads to ground-level ozone formation. The ozone so formed would subsequently drift up into the stratosphere, forming the blips.
hypothetical ground level ozone, hypothetically rising to the stratosphere ? Very tenuous without some data.
Solomon 2011 does not show any such tendency.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/solomon_2011_fig2.png
Mike, re your post below, I think the graph you present is actually consistent with my argument. Both the T4 and the ozone-residual T4 plots show a sudden temperature increase approximately coincident with each of the eruptions, which would correspond to sudden increases in LS ozone density from pre-eruption ozone formation by exoelectrons generated by rock fracture due to rising magma. The subsequent drops in T4 would then correspond to thinning of the ozone layer with the arrival of halides from the eruption columns. This LS cooling would correspond to a LT cooling rather than an expected warming because of the development of a reflective aerosol layer below the ozone layer.
Mike, make that “your post above.” Sorry.
David, I think you are misreading that graph. The centre plot is the ozone related one,ie the one which reflects the levels of LS ozone: no bumps.
The lower plot is the residual, ie the temp change the does NOT relate to ozone. It contains all the post-eruption bump.
I don’t know whether you have any data for ground level ozone but the lower stratosphere data certainly does not back up your hypothesis.
Perhaps. I don’t have the advantage of the text. Check the graphic (Figure 8.15 on p. 119 of our book) in the following link.
(Sorry, I don’t know how to embed the graphic in my comment)
It shows a large spike in total column ozone (TCO, black curve) coincident with the large spike in lower stratospheric temperature (purple curve, above), followed immediately by the lowest TCO measurement ever recorded. We interpret this as pre-eruption ozone from rock fracture followed by ozone depletion by volcanogenic halogens. The ozone spike would raise LS temp by providing more O3 substrate with which UV-B could interact, and the subsequent dip in LS temp would reflect reduced available substrate.
For Pinatubo. The effects for El Chichon are similar, but more subdued.
I will buy and study your book, but will offer two general somewhat skeptical initial observations.
Citing as evidence the recent Iceland eruption as causing the 2015 warming blip when, as we all know, there is a major El Nino underway overreaches a bit.
I do not think there is any evidence for major quasi continuos effusive vulcanism during the period from 1920 to 1945, a warming period which Lindzen pointed out is statitically indistinguishable from 1975-2000. And a period when CFC’s were not an ozone factor. The later period is attributed (erroneously IMO) to CO2. Your theory would point to effusive volcanism as the explanation for the earlier one. Evidence?
I do agree that the Permian extinction was likely caused by the Siberian Traps effusive event. But that was many orders of magnitude larger and longer than anything ‘recent’, compounded by strong evidence that the event also caused massive Siberian coal seam fires which produced a large pulse of additional CO2 beyond whatever the event threw out.
Observation#1: Agreed, it’s more complex than that. I just emphasized Bardarbunga because the connection with warming seems clearer, at least by our arguments. It’s a little less obvious how El Nino ties in with warming in terms of cause and effect. The big question is what causes the breakdown of the Walker circulation that maintains La Nina.
Observation #2: We’re still looking at this, but the VEI6 explosive eruptions of Santa Maria in 1902 and Novarupta in 1912 had a large cooling effect on Earth, and we think that the warming from 1920 to 1945 was to a large extent a recovery from those eruptions. Then, in the early 1930s, a series of smaller basaltic eruptions around the Pacific Rim added to the warming trend and appear to have been responsible for the warm, dry conditions of the Dust Bowl.
If CO2 does, in fact, contribute significantly to global warming, then the coal fires associated with the Siberian traps would certainly have contributed to the warming at that time, but we are inclined more toward volcanogenic halogens as a sufficient cause.
Does it ?!
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal-variation-in-nh-sea-ice/
It will need a few more years of data from Arctic sea ice to confirm this but it looks like 2012 was the nadir for the Arctic. I also see signs that Antarctic sea increase is slowing. This is more evidence of the ‘polar seesaw’ effect , where the poles tend to show opposing trends.
Here, duration of the melting season at one pole is compared to the length of freezing season at the other.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/ant_arctic_melting_season_lag.png
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=965
Shifting of the ITCZ lead to variations in the amount of heat dispatched north and south from the equatorial zones towards the poles.
Right you are! More evidence that the Earth system is a lot more complicated than some practitioners of simplistic thinking wish it were!
Maybe it’s just the penchant of the human mind to see patterns where none exist, but my first thought at looking at the above graph was: They’ve found Nessie.
I was also wondering about the statement
ice masses still continue to melt globally
I bet “ice masses still continue to melt globally”
is just as valid as saying “ice continues to form globally”. But you have to say what catches the eye of those you wish to convert. Dr. Laing’s website uses some alarmist vernacular to get them to read on.
It is probably true if you take a line enough straight line fit but what does “still” mean?
Recent study showed Antarctica is gaining considerable ice mass and will be for the foreseeable future. Arctic sea is has been on the increase since 2013 according both ice area and Cryosat II volume data.
Lonne Thompson is still playing hide and seek with his publicly owned glacier data so not much help on that front.
This is a very important point. Chlorine has a long residence time in the stratosphere, and it destroys ozone catalytically. This will likely continue for several decades, during which global temperature will remain elevated. According to our model, we have reset Earth’s temperature upward by about 0.6 degrees C with the depletion of ozone by anthropogenic CFCs. We stopped the warming with the Montreal Protocol, which banned further production of CFCs, but for as long as the chlorine we put into the stratosphere remains there, glaciers will continue to melt, and sea level will continue to rise. Another factor is that most of the added heat has gone into the oceans, Earth’s principal thermal reservoir. To cool the planet significantly, either or both of two things will be required: 1. patience, and 2. a closely spaced series of explosive volcanoes that will create a prolonged cooling effect. Such an effect was noticed after the eruption of Pinatubo. In the following year, the Keeling CO2 curve actually dipped slightly as the oceans cooled and absorbed CO2.
Is see no grounds for such an assertion ( and that is all it is , assertion ). Once the warming effects of the two major stratospheric eruptions is recognised, there is little grounds for attributing the lack of warming to CFC.s
Attempts to link this to CFCs involves drawing long straight lines through all the changes that are happening. It’s the same game that is played with CO2. If you draw a straight line thought TLS data you can claim a long term cooling “trend” that may then be falsely attributed to AGW cooling the stratosphere.
Once you look closely at the data and see the obvious volcanic attribution, you no longer have a “trend” , you no longer have a discernible CO2 impact and with that new level of understanding you no longer have a problem with “The Pause” .
The UN’s claim to have saved the planet with Montreal and the whole AGW crisis falls apart in a puff of CO2.
Sorry , don’t buy the CFC argument at all.
Mike, I’m having a little trouble comprehending your argument in your 2:03 am post. Would you care to rephrase? Tx.
OK , I’ll try.
In order to interpret the TLS cooling from 1979 to circa 1998 as due to increasing CFCs it is necessary to draw a straight line through it . This is what climatologists generally do with all data because they have a preconditioned expectation of a general “trend” plus internal climate “noise”.
They have a foregone conclusion that they are seeking to confirm.
What is shown by the TLS data is that there is a clearly attributable inter-annual signal. To fail to look for such meaningful variability and discount any change as random climate noise is blinkered vision.
There is an attempt to attribute just the bumps to volcanic eruptions and still see the baseline as a long linear downward trend. Any deviation from that interpretation will be brushed off as “noise”. Whereas there seems to be a clear downward step after each eruption that remains very stable afterwards. TLS is very flat from 1996 onwards.
This is not consistent with fairly constant downward trend gradually turning into a post Montreal recovery. Each of these events made a step change to the chemistry of the lower stratosphere. A new steady state. The lower climate system seems to take about 7-8 years to adjust to a new equilibrium because of the thermal inertia of the oceans.
I hope that is a bit clearer to you.
I grew up with “ozone-friendly ” aerosols and bought into it entirely. Now we have the benefit of detailed daily observations, I am forced to change my opinion.
Pretending that Montreal Protocol “saved the ozone layer” was just a self-congratulatory prelude to demanding that we follow their lunacy on AGW as well .
Yes, thanks, it’s a lot clearer. We also talk about the stepwise cooling of TLS in our book (see Figure 8.15, p. 119:
). To us, it seems clear that these coolings represent successive declines in the thermogenic absorption of UV-B by the thinned ozone layer related to the two eruptions. We also see the flatness of the curve post 1993 as the result of the Montreal Protocol banning further production of CFCs. We seem to differ on the latter point, but absent the “blips” in ’83 and ’92, the TLS curve does seem to descend fairly smoothly from 1958 to 1995 and then to flatten out, reflecting the increase and termination of CFC additions to the atmosphere, respectively. Note the close similarity between the form of the purple TLS curve and that of the green chlorine curve (y axis inverted), below.
Prof. Laing,
It occurs to me that during a period of lowered heliospheric density, the increased cosmic radiation influx could enhance nucleation of volcanic aerosols and create more high altitude clouds than when density of the heliosphere is high. We see contrails from aircraft lasting longer in the upper altitudes lately. Could cosmic rays be interacting with the volcanic and combustion emissions to trigger the changes of state?
Thank you for sharing this most informative presentation. I greatly appreciate your continued research.
“We see contrails from aircraft lasting longer in the upper altitudes lately. ”
Is that personal recollection or can you point to some data? There is certainly more air traffic now so the density of contrails will almost certainly be higher.
Mike, My personal observations as someone from the middle of Illinois is that the last 3 years have brought increasing high altitude clouds accompanying high pressure systems, and the sky is hazy, rather than cobalt blue.
This article is pertinent to the contrail reference.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/16/agu15-accidental-geoengineering-airline-traffic-may-help-create-an-icy-haze-thats-brightening-u-s-skies/
That is certainly an intriguing and quite logical possibility that deserves more attention than I have been able to give it thus far. I will try to follow up on it, and I thank you for the heads up! Thanks, too, for your good words!
Breaking:
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a lawsuit on December 2, 2015, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking records of communications from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials regarding methodology for collecting and interpreting data used in climate models (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Commerce (No 1:15-cv-02088)). The lawsuit sought the same documents unsuccessfully subpoenaed by a House committee. Less than week after Judicial Watch served its lawsuit on NOAA, the agency finally turned over the targeted documents to Congress.
Judicial Watch sued the Department of Commerce after the agency failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted on October 30, 2015 – NOAA is a component of the Department of Commerce. The timeframe for the requested records is October 30, 2014, through October 30, 2015, and requests all documents and records of communications between NOAA officials, employees, and contractors regarding:
The methodology and utilization of night marine air temperatures to adjust ship and buoy temperature data;
The use of other global temperature datasets for both NOAA’s in-house dataset improvements and monthly press releases conveying information to the public about global temperatures;
The utilization and consideration of satellite bulk atmospheric temperature readings for use in global temperature datasets; and
A subpoena issued for the aforementioned information by Congressman Lamar Smith on October 13, 2015.
Judicial Watch is investigating how NOAA collects and disseminates climate data that is used in determining global climate change. NOAA collects data in thousands of ways – from temperature gauges on land and buoys at sea, to satellites orbiting Earth. Considered the “environmental intelligence agency,” NOAA is the nation’s leading collector of climate data. In July, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) asked NOAA for both data and internal communications related to a controversial climate change study. After the agency refused to comply with the document request, Smith’s committee issued a subpoena on October 13. According to the Science, Space, and Technology Committee:
In June, NOAA widely publicized a study as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in climate change. After three letters requesting all communications from the agency surrounding the role of political appointees in the agency’s scientific process, Chairman Smith issued a subpoena for the information. Smith subsequently sent a letter on December 1st offering to accept documents and communications from NOAA political, policy and non-scientific staff as a first step in satisfying the subpoena requirements.
Information provided to the Committee by whistleblowers appears to show that the study was rushed to publication despite the concerns and objections of a number of NOAA employees.
Judicial Watch sued the agency on December 2 and served the complaint on the agency on December 8. Less than a week later, on Tuesday, December 15, NOAA finally began to turn over documents to the House committee. That same day, NOAA called and told Judicial Watch that it would begin searching for documents responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA request.
On November 26, Smith published an opinion editorial in The Washington Times, which accused NOAA of tampering with data to help promote global warming alarmism:
NOAA often fails to consider all available data in its determinations and climate change reports to the public. A recent study by NOAA, published in the journal Science, made “adjustments” to historical temperature records and NOAA trumpeted the findings as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in global warming. The study’s authors claimed these adjustments were supposedly based on new data and new methodology. But the study failed to include satellite data.
“We have little doubt that our lawsuit helped to pry these scandalous climate change report documents from the Obama administration. The Obama administration seems to care not one whit for a congressional subpoena but knows from prior experience that a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit cannot be ignored,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Given the lawless refusal to comply with our FOIA request and a congressional subpoena, we have little doubt that the documents will show the Obama administration put politics before science to advance global warming alarmism.”
Judicial Watch previously investigated alleged data manipulation by global warming advocates in the Obama administration. In 2010, Judicial Watch obtained internal documents from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) related to a controversy that erupted in 2007 when Canadian blogger Stephen McIntyre exposed an error in NASA’s handling of raw temperature data from 2000-2006 that exaggerated the reported rise in temperature readings in the United States. According to multiple press reports, when NASA corrected the error, the new data apparently caused a reshuffling of NASA’s rankings for the hottest years on record in the United States, with 1934 replacing 1998 at the top of the list.
In late 2014, Judicial Watch litigation forced out documents withheld in response to another congressional subpoena – one issued in the Fast and Furious scandal. Thanks to the Judicial Watch lawsuit, Congress finally obtained the information it had sought for years on Obama’s gun-running scandal.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sues-for-documents-withheld-from-congress-in-new-climate-data-scandal/
Excellent. It will be interesting to see the actual contents once it gets turned over. The idea that 24h data needs to be “corrected” by a biased ( selection bias ) sub-set of the same data is very surprising in itself.
I don’t see nay justification for this other than it giving the “right” result.
“NOAA often fails to consider all available data”
NOAA even fails to consider all of its OWN data for determining temperatures. It generally ignores the best data available, which is from the weather satellites under its jurisdiction. It ignores this data because it’s too difficult to ‘adjust’ cherry picked satellite data to fit the narrative. The best they can do is obfuscate it with noise (the ISCCP project at GISS), but the noise doesn’t belie the nature of the actual response to change that can be ascertained by averaging across decades of data and the true response conflicts with everything the warmist crowd asserts.
Have a look at the temp of the lower stratosphere (UAH), it shows that high SO2 volcanoes like el chichon and pinatubo have multidecadal cooling effects on stratospheric temperature. consider the equation
SO2 + O3 = SO3 +O2
SO3 + H20 = H2SO4
H2SO4 + more water = heavier than air aerosol
It becomes clear that SO2 not only destroys ozone but also strips water vapour out of the stratosphere as the H2SO4 is precipitated out. Less O3 and H20 causes the stratosphere to cool (after the initial warm spike caused by H2SO4 aerosol energy absorption). A colder stratosphere could then alter jet stream patterns resulting in cloud changes, Ie Zonal/Meridional regime change driven temp. At the same time a high H20, Low SO2 stratospheric eruption would have the opposite effect, injection additional water into the atmosphere that results in long term stratospheric warming and cooling of the troposphere.
Food for thought.
Does this impact ‘acid rain’ also?
Too high up.
“H2SO4 + more water = heavier than air aerosol”
I don’t think that “heavier” is the relevant argument for aerosols, it’s more a question of condensation nuclei, but in general yes.
I also suspect that a lot of anthoopogenic air pollution ( ie REAL pollution, not CO2 ) gets flushed out along with the volcanic aerosols, leading to a reversal of global dimming, though that is speculative.
ROB!
Good thread; I worked in a contact sulfuric acid plant (younger days). Converting SO2 to SO3 took
vanadium oxide catalyst. So I have been skeptical of sulfuric acid in the air from SO2. I didn’t think
of ozone. Atomic oxygen (very active) plus SO2 will do it! SO3 absorbs water–it will char wood while
it absorbs the water.Nasty stuff, H2SO4 also has a specific gravity 2X water.Thanks much!!
Glad I could help!
Sorry! Disregard my 6:11 post. Thought I was responding to a primary post.
Richard: I think is may be more likely to make H2SO3, ie 2 x SO3 + 2 x H2O —> 2 x H2SO3 + O2. As I understand it the formation of H2SO3 is easier. True?
Recall that there is quite a lot of H2S from the ocean which normally initiates rain drop formation (cloud condensation nuclei, CCN). My first thought is that a lot more of it would increase cloud cover immediately and remove high altitude moisture as mentioned above. Water being the most important HGH means removing it from the upper troposphere would result is significant cooling. Maybe the sulphate aerosol thing is being oversold and the water vapour stripping underplayed so as to create a role for CO2.
It seems to me much simpler to explain the stratospheric cooling, and the short-term surface global warming, from Pinatubo, et al., with ozone depletion by volcanically produced halogens. See out Figure 8.5 on p. 105 of our book showing a major surface warming event 6 to 8 moths following the eruption and prior to the subsequent long-term cooling event due to growth of sulfate aerosol particles. The surface warming is easily explained by ozone depletion allowing increased UV-B irradiance. SO2 could theoretically “deplete” ozone by absorbing the UV-A radiation necessary for photolysis of O2, the first step in ozone formation, but that step occurs much higher in the stratosphere than the altitude at which sulfate aerosols form.
That is very interesting. How about posting the graph.
The tropical feedbacks article also shows an additional warming effect starting just months after Mt P event. Read the article for an explanation.
http://climategrog.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tropical-feedback_resp_ci.png
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/on-determination-of-tropical-feedbacks/
The question of ozone formation is also related to solar activity. Both volcanic events were on the downside of the respective solar cycles.
Sorry, the website won’t let me post animations, but if you visit https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/pre-eruption-ozone.html, you’ll see the animated maps of total column ozone (N hemisphere) associated with the eruptions of Eyjafjallajökul and Pinatubo.
Thanks for the link , though I find the animations very unconvincing. There is virtually no variation near the Philippines but large change in far eastern Siberia. Most of the variation is at quite high latitudes, at least 50-70N.
Correction to my 6:32 post, in which I mistakenly wrote “…absorbing the UV-A radiation necessary for photolysis of O2,…” I should have written “…UV-C…”
Since they peak substantially AFTER temperature, I see no reason to conclude that they show ANY “effect on ” temperature anomalies. It is well established that short term change is CO2 is DRIVEN by temperature change ( SST ). That is not to say there is not a long term ( centennial ) influence in the other direction, but the quoted statement is clearly putting the cart before the horse.
Agreed. My quoted statement was largely a CYA attempt that might have backfired. I was simply looking at the graphed data in isolation, an old Cartesian habit I should probably break.
If CO2 changes were driven by SST changes, then CO2 should be highest during southern hemisphere summer, since there is a lot more water in the southern hemisphere.
True, but this analysis was limited to the N hemisphere.
A couple of papers from last year claiming the effect is due to UV changing the energy levels of molecules of water vapor and this in turn altering the absorption bands in the microwave bands:
Could the Earth’s surface Ultraviolet irradiance be blamed for the global warming? A new effect may exist
http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.6511
Could the Earth’s surface Ultraviolet irradiance be blamed for the global warming? (II) —-Ozone layer depth reconstruction via HEWV effect
http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.2325
I don’t know if either was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Though seeing as they don’t fit the narrative I wouldn’t expect them to be allowed.
Tx. Could be useful.
ditto the thanks!
“Despite the best efforts of many of the world’s brightest minds, and the claims of some that “the science is settled,” climatic enigmas still persist.”
You are joking right ? most of the climate scientists on the warmist side are second rate intellects at best …
“You are joking right ? most of the climate scientists on the warmist side are second rate intellects at best …”
Agreed, but he is right that the science is most defiantly not settled and we have a lot of enigmas left to figure out.
[And we will definitely let the defiant ones separate the settled enigmas from their left-emitted magmas. .mod]
Just don’t separate the enigmas, from the enigpas.
The only think I can see is that I should never use a spell checker unless I have my glasses on. (no excuse, just an observation) On the other hand, that was an extremely witty reply by the Mods and I would have missed it if I had worn my glasses when I typed the original message.
🙂
How much does stratosphere halogens concerntration vary and how much of this variation can be attributed to volcanic sources? How much to CFCs? When the CFC scare began in the mid 1970s Lovelock argued that nature sources of stratospheric chlorine would swamp the CFC input. Against him it was argued that natural sources all get rained out before reaching the stratosphere. As far as I can see the outcome of the dispute was a compromise: only half is natural (mainly methyl chloride) while the rest is from CFC. There is indirect evidence (correlations) for this attribution. However, I have never found out whether there is any direct evidence of provenance of stratospheric chlorine. As for effusive volcanoes, I thought that debate was over. In the ozone hole debate of the late 1980s, I thought Mt Erebus as the likely local source chlorine inside the Antarctic vortex had been roundly dismissed on empirical evidence. Thus, as an observer (not an expert participant) I can’t yet see how Ward and Laing’s work meets the old controversy.
Surely, “How much DO stratosphere halogens concentration vary”.
I think that you were losing concerntration.
Personally I prefer halogens to those nasty CFL – compact flourescent lights. 🙂
But, LED’s seem to have trumped both.
We will need a new word for trump, once Donald fails to trump anything.
Since I appear to be refusing to consider the thoughtful technical detail of your post, here is my apology:
I believe that when huge financial incentives exist that distort a topic to the extent that is possible in the case of CFC’s and ozone and CAGW – then an ordinary person has almost zero chance of figuring out what the hell is going on.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1989/eirv16n24-19890609/eirv16n24-19890609_018-cfcs_are_not_depleting_the_ozone.pdf
Let’s hope that debate is never “over!” It’s the lifeblood of all science. What compels us is the overwhelming evidence we’ve found throughout the geologic record of sudden warming events coincident with basaltic eruptions, with the intensity of the warming consistently correlated with the intensity and duration of the eruptive event. We know that basaltic magmas release HCl and HBr in far larger quantities per erupted volume than do more evolved magmas, and we know that Cl and Br are powerful catalytic depleters of ozone. As far as we are aware, there are no other possible agents that could produce the highly evident link between volcanism and global warming
Another hypothesis. Can’t say I have any more faith in it than any of the others going around. I will stick with the null hypothesis and the good old scientific “I don’t know”. I do know the greenhouse effect is well and truly falsified, but not much else.
You sound just like me about three years ago before I read Peter’s material and agreed to be the editor and troubleshooter for his book. The more I delved into the material, the less fault I could find with it and the more convinced I became that it did a far better job of explaining a lot of enigmas in the geologic record than many of the existing crop of theories that I had previously somewhat uncomfortably acknowledged. I highly encourage you to read the book, or at least to read the material available on whyclimatechanges.com.
The seasonal response of surface temperature is predominately the Sun. The seasonal CO2 concentrations clearly lag temperature changes, although the causal factor is biology where CO2 decreases as biomass grows in the spring and summer and CO2 increases as biomass decomposes in the fall and winter. This is a smaller scale version of the mechanism behind the relationship we see between CO2 and temperature in the ice cores, where what affects the steady state CO2 concentrations is the amount of the planet that can support biomass (i.e. not covered in ice).
Ozone changes seem to be coincident with temperature changes, but that doesn’t indicate a forward effect of ozone on temperature, only that there is some kind of dependence of the ozone column on the surface temperature. The null hypothesis would be that increased solar energy during the summer months increases the production of O3 in the upper atmosphere and colder months with less Sun leads to ozone depletion.
The biological response of CO2 is also significantly understated in the data. The response of the two hemispheres is opposite and because CO2 is well mixed, most of the change cancels out. What we are left with is the signature of the N hemisphere as it has more seasonally variable biomass than the S hemisphere.
We see the same effect with global temperature variability across a year. While N hemisphere temperature change cancels S hemisphere change, a net change with the signature of the N hemisphere results because the p-p magnitude of N hemisphere change is larger than in the S hemisphere owing to the different ratio of land to ocean.
Bingo. The local star that creates the heat which keeps our planet from being dead is…hot. But also not a total steady output state of being. It varies how much energy it blasts towards our little planet.
Yes. The variability we know well comes from orbital and axis variability. Most stars we can observe exhibit periodic variability across a wide range of periods. Who can say that there is not also some kind of longer term periodicity in the output of the Sun itself. We don’t have reliable enough proxies to tell. We do know that solar output was reduced during the LIA when almost no sunspots were recorded, but we really don’t know the exact magnitude of by how much, We will have to wait for the next event now that we have precise measuring capabilities in place.
This is certainly the operative process in the annual variability of the Keeling curve, but notice, in my final illustration, that the CO2 peak is broad and symmetrical. Now compare this with the Dansgaard-Oeschger events in the fourth illustration, in which temperature consistently rises abruptly and slows much more gradually. Ozone depletion by volcanic halogens explains this consistent pattern far better than the biological model.
temperature consistently rises abruptly and slows much more gradually
=====================================
and indeed the abrupt rise always takes place when CO2 levels are low, and the decline always takes place when CO2 levels are high.
But GHG theory predicts that the temperature rise should take place when CO2 levels are high, and the temperature decrease should take place when CO2 levels are low.
Thus, paleo observations directly contradict GHG theory for CO2. The only GHG conclusion that can be drawn is that low CO2 causes high temperatures, and high CO2 causes low temperatures, or that GHGH theory has cause and effect backwards.
David,
Another connection could be the extreme heat of a large lava field integrated across the planet. A pool of lava the size of Yellowstone would raise temps 100’s of miles away by many degrees just from the heat being released. If the lava was near water, that heat could be distributed over a much wider area, for example, a large pool of lava centered on Iceland.
There does appear to be some correlation, but when you take out the effects from varying perihelion (22K year period), the absolute magnitude of the effect becomes diminished.
Clearly there are multiple forces at work that affect the temperature, but changing CO2 concentrations isn’t one of the important ones.
ferdberple, we agree on this. It seems likely that rises and falls in the Keeling curve are actually reflections of the solubility of CO2 in seawater as it warms and cools, respectively. In fact, the dip in the Keeling curve following the Pinatubo eruption coincides with the cooling effect of the aerosol veil on the oceans. Also, in the Vostok ice cores, CO2 rises rapidly just after (volcanically induced) temperature increases and then falls much more slowly. This pattern makes sense in terms of the immediate exsolution of CO2 from the warming oceans followed by a more gradual reabsorption, which would be expected to proceed more slowly due to the dispersal of exsolved CO2 throughout the troposphere.
co2isnotevil (I love your username), thermal input from erupted lava could certainly be a valid contributor to warming. The potency of ozone depletion, however, lies in its catalytic nature. A little chlorine or bromine goes a very long way, as we’ve recently seen from what we argue is the dramatic warming effect of CFCs from 1975 to 1998. Most of the chlorine is still up there, too, which should maintain Earth’s elevated temperature for several more decades to come.
As Willis Eschenbach and I have repeatedly pointed out, the effects of volcanic eruptions are short-lived and inadequate to explained glaciations. See
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/09/volcanoes-once-again-again/
Throughout the Phanerozoic record, we consistently find major basaltic volcanism temporally associated with major warming events. See the third and fourth illustrations in my post. Duration and intensity of eruptive events is important. The Preboreal warming event that ushered in the Holocene lasted for over 2000 years and involved 11 eruptive centers in Iceland. It took that much to warm the oceans–Earth’s thermal reservoir–out of the Wisconsin ice age, but even minor eruptions can have an effect, such as did the 7 small ones in the Pacific Rim that ushered in the warm, dry conditions of the American Dust Bowl.
volcanic eruptions are short-lived
==============
are all eruptions short lived?
No. The eruptions that we suggest are responsible for the Preboreal warming (see third illustration in my post) were active from 11 distinct eruptive centers for over 2000 years, long enough to warm the oceans–Earth’s thermal reservoir–out of the last ice age. Some of the Large Igneous Province basaltic eruptive events throughout the Phanerozoic lasted for hundreds of thousands of years.
David,
Correct me if wrong, but doesn’t the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province of the Triassic/Jurassic Period boundary (c. 200 Ma), associated with the initial breakup of Pangaea, falsify your hypothesis?
The CAMP was second only to the Siberian Traps (again, correct me if wrong) in volume of basalt extruded, yet the Early Jurassic was cooler than the Late Triassic. It also, like the ST, was associated with a major mass extinction event.
One recent paper states that the CAMP was larger than the Siberian Traps. Same study dated the mass extinction event (MEE) to the end of the Triassic, before the CAMP, which it placed in the Jurassic. But this 2013 paper claims that the MEE occurred early in the 600,000 year-long eruption, which according to the authors’ dating started in the Triassic but mostly occurred during the Jurassic.
http://earth-pages.co.uk/2013/06/10/end-triassic-mass-extinction-link-to-camp-its-official/
Data on plaeotemperature at the Tr-J boundary are surprisingly sparse, perhaps because the rifting that led to the CAMP province was centered in the supercontinent Pangaea. In “Earth System History,” p. 408, Steven M. Stanley notes a sudden decrease in leaf stomata at the Tr-J boundary, which he sees as indicative of an increase in CO2 levels from about twice current levels to about 7-8 times current levels, suggesting a large temperature increase, which some interpret as CO2-driven, but that we interpret as the cause of the CO2 increase. The following link shows a pronounced temperature spike in the early Jurassic, which could well be the signal of the prolonged CAMP event.
David,
Thanks for your responsive reply. Naturally I agree with your assessment of the CO2 increase, although the CAMP might well have released a lot of the magic gas, too.
However, looking at the same graph, it appears to me that temperature fell in the Early Jurassic (c. 201/2 to 174/6 Ma). The spike seems to occur at the Early/Middle Jurassic epochal boundary (around 174 or 176 Ma).
Contributing to the unusual characteristics of the CAMP eruptive suite is the fact that Pangaea was encircled by subduction zones, which would have constituted a total length well over three times that of the central rift complex. This geometry could well have favored explosive volcanism over effusive, which was further suppressed by the sialic crustal cohesion of the rifts’ central location. The net effect of all this could have been a suppression of the expected temperature spike. Speculative, of course, yet plausible, but clearly needs more study.
Regarding: “UV-B is 48 times more energy-rich than Earth’s IR radiation absorbed by carbon dioxide”. This is amount of energy per photon, which is merely inversely proportional to wavelength and does not indicate the warming power of a radiometric quantity (such as W/m^2) of any given radiation.
All W/m^2 aren’t created equal, and they can’t be added across bandwidths. The way it works is either a given frequency is capable of inducing a chemical or thermal change in receiving matter or it isn’t. You have to reach a certain threshold frequency before radiation becomes chemically and thermally effective. It’s not just a matter of totting up all the incident frequencies (“wavelengths”) to see how much heat you have. Only those frequencies that are above a certain threshold will be effective in causing warming. It doesn’t matter how much of those you have below that threshold; they might just as well not even be there, as they won’t contribute to warming.
The frequency threshold for radiation to cause a thermal change of water sure seems to be at least about 4 orders of magnitude less than that of thermal infrared that is absorbed by CO2. Consider the frequency used in microwave ovens, 2.4 GHz, whose wavelength is 12.5 cm.
Any thermal effect in receiving matter depends on the resonant responses to the mix of incident LW radiation of the various degrees of freedom of the molecular bonds holding the matter together. In the case of microwave ovens, microwaves of a frequency of 2.45 GHz (122.36mm) are just right to induce in-phase dipole reversals in liquid water molecules. At progressively higher frequencies (shorter wavelengths), an inertial lag effect restricts dipole reversal, reducing, and ultimately eliminating, any heating effect on water molecules. There is virtually zero microwave radiation in Earth’s thermal emissions.
The reason earth’s thermal emissions have little microwave emissions is because of the shape of the Planck curve at the relevant temperature. A black body at 287 K has about 88% of its thermal radiation shorter than 30 um. The earth is optically thick, and shortfall of emissivity (which is the same as absorption) from unity occurs only from reflectivity. If a surface is optically thin, then earth below that surface makes up. And reflectivity of an optically thin nonmagnetic surface is related to the refractive index. Water is something like 50% reflective at wavelengths around 8 millimeters, and this figure is minimum in the LWIR – even slightly less than for visible light. And LWIR penetrating into water is absorbed within a very short distance because of water’s LWIR wide absorption band (shorter wavelengths penetrate deeper but still get absorbed). Absorbed radiation’s energy has to become something – in this case heat.
Although volcanoes emit chlorine and bromine, they do so as inorganic chlorides and bromides such as hydrogen chloride which are extremely hygroscopic. Air rising from the surface to the stratosphere almost always has clouds being formed, where inorganic chlorides and bromides would be absorbed by cloud water particles. Organic chlorine and bromine compounds reach the stratosphere much more easily because they and water do not have affinity for each other as is the case with inorganic chlorides and bromides.
This is much more of a problem with explosive eruptions from evolved magmas than with primitive basaltic magmas, which are richer in halogens and poorer in water vapor, but even evolved magmas have a warming effect, as revealed in Figure 8.5 on p.105 of our book, showing major warming in the northern hemisphere from 6 to 8 months after the June 1991 eruption of Pinatubo. After that, the aerosol veil grew thick enough to reflect enough sunlight to overwhelm the warming effect and usher in three years of global cooling.
6 to 8 months after June 1991 was during an El Nino.
And your point is…?
The warming after Pinatubo erupted and before Pinatubo’s aerosol cooling effect took place was from the El Nino.
Unlikely. The El Nino of ’91-’92 was moderate, and the same warming pattern was repeated in the following winter, in which there was no El Nino. (Robock, 2002, DOI: 10.1126/science.1069903)
No El Nino the following winter? This graph of an ENSO index says otherwise. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ It also shows both of these El Ninos peaking higher than that of the one of 2009-2010, which had a very noticeable impact on global temperature.
Choose your index! Holbrook et al., 2002 (http://www.oceanclimatechange.org.au/content/images/uploads/2012_ENSO_marine_report_card_2.pdf) shows no El Nino in ’92-’93. Wolter’s Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) does show one, but it’s idiosyncratic, and NOAA specifically disclaims it. Your observation has merit, however, and it deserves further research, which we will undertake.
Here’s Peter Ward’s response to your question:
“How could El Niño cause major warming over continents at 50-60oN? What is the mechanism? This is exactly where ozone depletion was greatest, around the outer edge of the polar vortex.”
“The null hypothesis would be that increased solar energy during the summer months increases the production of O3 in the upper atmosphere and colder months with less Sun leads to ozone depletion”.
Close, but to pick the nit, that’s not null, that’s the alternative, rival, or directional hypothesis.
Null would be something like – ozone production/depletion is not related to changes in solar energy.
Cheers
misplaced my comment
it was directed to:
co2isnotevil December 22, 2015 at 2:36 pm
For the last two million years we have been in an increasingly colder Ice Age/sudden Interglacial cycle whereby the Interglacial warm eras are ridiculously short whereas the Ice Age part is extremely long. And these start and stop with very abrupt surges and drops off of a cliff.
Over and over and over again, this cycle is obvious and it is dire. It is also relentless. How come all the Interglacials start with a huge jump in temperatures? And the end of the cold cycle is the coldest part of the cycle? There is no ‘gradual warming’ going on nor is the cooling part of this repeated cycle, slow.
No storyline explains this. Anyone can cook up an explanation for a cold cycle or even a warm cycle but this bizarre business of the cold/warm cycles ending and beginning so violently is very hard to explain away with various talk about gas levels of this element or that element or volcanoes or whatever, oceans, the only thing that can suddenly turn on lots of heat and shut down lots of heat very suddenly is our local star.
And few people want to contemplate this because it scares us greatly.
You are still asking the right questions.
Everyone else is forgetting this question or trying to sweep it under the carpet.
We firstly need to resolve quite thoroughly and without doubt or dispute why the climate of earth jumps about like a frog in a box.
Before we start describing ourselves as frogs in a saucepan.
“Before we start describing ourselves as frogs in a saucepan.”
Frog, now you’ve gone and done it… Can you part with those legs?
I nipped off for Xmas, and left the internet behind for a few days.
Thanks for making me laugh upon my return!!!
If you look at the third illustration in my post, you’ll see that the very sudden Preboreal warming coincided with the inception of a 2000+ year eruptive event in Iceland, with eleven volcanic centers erupting at once. The following illustration shows most of the Dansgaard-Oeschger sudden warming events, each of which coincided with one or more major basaltic eruptions. The eruptions that resulted in the D-O events weren’t prolonged or intense enough to warm the world ocean out of the ice age, but the Preboreal event was. The cyclicity of these major eruptive events is likely related to the Milankovitch rhythms, not through changes in insolation, obviously, but through their gravitational effects on Earth’s delicately balanced tectonic plates, which generate volcanism when they move. Large igneous provinces like the Siberian and Deccan traps and the NAIP were all associated with major positive excursions of temperature, which are much more logically explained as a result of ozone depletion due to volcanic halogen emissions than by variations in insolation, changes in ocean currents, or what have you.
The cyclicity of these major eruptive events is likely related to the Milankovitch rhythms
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at scale the crust of the earth is thinner than the skin of an apple. what is surprising is how stable it appears, given that the inside of the apple is in large part molten rock.
Absolutely!
Interglacials start with a huge jump because there is a range of snow/ice cover, when the Milankovitch cycles are right, where the natural feedbacks (primarily the surface albedo one) are highly positive, possibly to the point of instability. When the snow/ice cover is high (towards snowball earth) or low so that there is less km^2 of snow/ice cover variation per degree change of temperature, the natural feedback is less positive, and can get negative. Notice that interglacials have smoother temperature over than glaciation periods.
Ice ages have gotten worse in the past few million years and global temperatures got cooler in the past several million years because Antarctica moved to roughly centered over the South Pole. At the South Pole, it got year round ice cover. When it was elsewhere, it did not – and the world was warmer. Notice how the Antarctica is generally colder than the Arctic Ocean area is, even at the same altitude above sea level. And when Antarctica’s current ice was liquid water, ocean currents transported more heat to the Arctic and reduced Arctic sea ice because some of the land currently in the way was under water.
When the Antarctic wasn’t centered on the pole, sea levels were also generally higher. Leading to a wetter world, which all other things being equal would be a warmer world.
One of the beauties of our volcanogenic ozone depletion climate model is that it obviates the need to invoke the very feeble radiative forcings associated with Milankovitch rhythms. As I’ve noted elsewhere, I feel it’s far more likely that the dominant effect of Milankovitch cycles is not radiative but gravitational. Earth’s tectonic plates rest on an asthenosphere of very low rheidity, as a result of which they are susceptible to very slight gravitational nudges, such as could be effected by Milankovitch cycles. This would explain the prevalence of Milankovitch-type cyclicities in sedimentary basins throughout the geologic record, even during hothouse worlds, as in the Cretaceous, in which snow was not a significant contributor to Earth’s albedo.
Radiative forcings from the Milankovitch cycles are great during the melt season in the northern latitude zone where ice cover is variable.
Relatively “great,” perhaps, but would the consequent suppressive effect on albedo due to snow and ice melt be sufficient to account for observed warmings without additional amplification(s) of some sort?
Take that, Shermer!
Indeed, the entire concept of a ‘steady state’ climate of ANY SORT is insane. It isn’t happening. It has not happened for the last 2.5 million years which incidentally are the same years this shambling ape creature in Africa began to undergo a fierce level of evolutionary violence changing from an ape to a thing we call ‘homo sapiens’. This process of violently eliminating ape creatures that couldn’t cope with this constantly changing climate has molded us into the creatures we are today!
The entire idea of a ‘steady state’ climate either cold or hot is ridiculous and flies in the face of history of our planet under present conditions.
I’ve just casually chanced upon a candidate for the role as a prime driver of global warming.
Quite clearly, the rise in upward trend from 1970 – 1998 and the following reduction of that trend to near zero correlate to sales of physical music media.
With a small grant I can develop this work and produce exacting tiny p values.
(some sarc here, with apologies.)
http://blog.roblox.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/SOPA_music_revenues.jpg
@ur momisugly indefategable, You may have just a point, These are obvious ( to my small brain anyway). Here goes:
The CD does not only have their uses set on music alone. It is used for movies, instructional CDs, storage for data and the list goes on,
How much energy did it take all across the board from manufacturing, then to using energy to read them in, a one time use loading it with the info. And then out, multiple uses for the users. A blank disc probably did not cost much to make but the amount of uses of one alone (like you said music in this case) could use up much more energy than the initial production and thus add to global warming.
And looking at the graph it to me and my smallish brain it shows a down fall for CDs when then the net and now the “Cloud” really started growing and a lot less energy was needed to follow music, information.
A perfectly plausible correlation, given the progressive perspective.
Gracious! How ever could I have missed this compelling candidate for a driver of global warming? Well, it just goes to show how mind-bogglingly complex our wonderful Earth system is. BTW, what does “CD” stand for? Constant Drivel? 😎