NOTE: Earlier today I posted a paper from Joe D’Aleo on how he has found strong correlations between the oceans multidecadal oscillations, PDO and AMO, and surface temperature, followed by finding no strong correlation between CO2 and surface temperatures. See that article here:
Warming Trend: PDO And Solar Correlate Better Than CO2
Now within hours of that, Roy Spencer of the National Space Science and Technology Center at University of Alabama, Huntsville, sends me and others this paper where he postulates that the ocean may be the main driver of CO2.
In the flurry of emails that followed, Joe D’Aleo provided this graph of CO2 variations correlated by El Nino/La Nina /Volcanic event years which is relevant to the discussion. Additionally for my laymen readers, a graph of CO2 solubility in water versus temperature is also relevant and both are shown below:
Click for full size images
Additionally, I’d like to point out that former California State Climatologist Jim Goodridge posted a short essay on this blog, Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Variation, that postulated something similar.
UPDATE: This from Roy on Monday 1/28/08 see new post on C12 to C13 ratio here
I want to (1) clarify the major point of my post, and (2) report some new (C13/C12 isotope) results:
1. The interannual relationship between SST and dCO2/dt is more than enough to explain the long term increase in CO2 since 1958. I’m not claiming that ALL of the Mauna Loa increase is all natural…some of it HAS to be anthropogenic…. but this evidence suggests that SST-related effects could be a big part of the CO2 increase.
2. NEW RESULTS: I’ve been analyzing the C13/C12 ratio data from Mauna Loa. Just as others have found, the decrease in that ratio with time (over the 1990-2005 period anyway) is almost exactly what is expected from the depleted C13 source of fossil fuels. But guess what? If you detrend the data, then the annual cycle and interannual variability shows the EXACT SAME SIGNATURE. So, how can decreasing C13/C12 ratio be the signal of HUMAN emissions, when the NATURAL emissions have the same signal???
-Roy
Here is Roy Spencer’s essay, without any editing or commentary:
Atmospheric CO2 Increases:
Could the Ocean, Rather Than Mankind, Be the Reason?
by
Roy W. Spencer
1/25/2008
This is probably the most provocative hypothesis I have ever (and will ever) advance: The long-term increases in carbon dioxide concentration that have been observed at Mauna Loa since 1958 could be driven more than by the ocean than by mankind’s burning of fossil fuels.
Most, if not all, experts in the global carbon cycle will at this point think I am totally off my rocker. Not being an expert in the global carbon cycle, I am admittedly sticking my neck out here. But, at a minimum, the results I will show make for a fascinating story – even if my hypothesis is wrong. While the evidence I will show is admittedly empirical, I believe that a physically based case can be made to support it.
But first, some acknowledgements. Even though I have been playing with the CO2 and global temperature data for about a year, it was the persistent queries from a Canadian engineer, Allan MacRae, who made me recently revisit this issue in more detail. Also, the writings of Tom V. Segalstad, a Norwegian geochemist, were also a source of information and ideas about the carbon cycle.
First, let’s start with what everyone knows: that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, and global-averaged surface temperature, have risen since the Mauna Loa CO2 record began. These are illustrated in the next two figures.
Both are on the increase, an empirical observation that is qualitatively consistent with the “consensus” view that increasing anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing the warming. Note also that they both have a “bend” in them that looks similar, which might also lead one to speculate that there is a physical connection between them.
Now, let’s ask: “What is the empirical evidence that CO2 is driving surface temperature, and not the other way around?” If we ask that question, then we are no longer trying to explain the change in temperature with time (a heat budget issue), but instead we are dealing with what is causing the change in CO2 concentration with time (a carbon budget issue). The distinction is important. In mathematical terms, we need to analyze the sources and sinks contributing to dCO2/dt, not dT/dt.
So, let us look at the yearly CO2 input into the atmosphere based upon the Mauna Loa record, that is, the change in CO2 concentration with time (Fig. 3).
Here I have expressed the Mauna Loa CO2 concentration changes in million metric tons of carbon (mmtC) per year so that they can be compared to the human emissions, also shown in the graph.
Now, compare the surface temperature variations in Fig. 2 with the Mauna Loa-derived carbon emissions in Fig. 3. They look pretty similar, don’t they? In fact, the CO2 changes look a lot more like the temperature changes than the human emissions do. The large interannual fluctuations in Mauna Loa-derived CO2 “emissions” roughly coincide with El Nino and La Nina events, which are also periods of globally-averaged warmth and coolness, respectively. I’ll address the lag between them soon.
Of some additional interest is the 1992 event. In that case, cooling from Mt. Pinatubo has caused the surface cooling, and it coincides in a dip in the CO2 change rate at Mauna Loa.
These results beg the question: are surface temperature variations a surrogate for changes in CO2 sources and/or sinks?
First, let’s look at the strength of the trends in temperature and CO2-inferred “emissions”. If we compare the slopes of the regression lines in Figs. 2 and 3, we get an increase of about 4300 mmt of carbon at Mauna Loa for every degree C. of surface warming. Please remember that ratio (4,300 mmtC/deg. C), because we are now going to look at the same relationship for the interannual variability seen in Figs. 2 and 3.
In Fig. 4 I have detrended the time series in Figs. 2 and 3, and plotted the residuals against each other. We see that the interannual temperature-versus-Mauna Loa-inferred emissions relationship has a regression slope of about 5,100 mmtC/deg. C.
There is little evidence of any time lag between the two time series, give or take a couple of months.
So, what does this all show? A comparison of the two slope relationships (5100 mmtC/yr for interannual variability, versus 4,700 mmtC/yr for the trends) shows, at least empirically, that whatever mechanism is causing El Nino and La Nina to modulate CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere is more than strong enough to explain the long-term increase in CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa. So, at least based upon this empirical evidence, invoking mankind’s CO2 emissions is not even necessary. (I will address how this might happen physically, below).
In fact, if we look at several different temperature averaging areas (global, N. H. land, N.H. ocean, N.H. land + ocean, and S.H. ocean), the highest correlation occurs for the Southern Hemisphere ocean , and with a larger regression slope of 7,100 mmtC/deg. C. This suggests that the oceans, rather than land, could be the main driver of the interannual fluctuations in CO2 emissions that are being picked up at Mauna Loa — especially the Southern Ocean.
Now, here’s where I’m really going to stick my neck out — into the mysterious discipline of the global carbon cycle. My postulated physical explanation will involve both fast and slow processes of exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere and the surface.
The evidence for rapid exchange of CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere comes from the fact that current carbon cycle flux estimates show that the annual CO2 exchange between surface and atmosphere amounts to 20% to 30% of the total amount in the atmosphere. This means that most of the carbon in the atmosphere is recycled through the surface every five years or so. From Segalstad’s writings, the rate of exchange could even be faster than this. For instance, how do we know what the turbulent fluxes in and out of the wind-driven ocean are? How would one measure such a thing locally, let alone globally?
Now, this globally averaged situation is made up of some regions emitting more CO2 than they absorb, and some regions absorbing more than they emit. What if there is a region where there has been a long-term change in the net carbon flux that is at least as big as the human source?
After all, the human source represents only 3% (or less) the size of the natural fluxes in and out of the surface. This means that we would need to know the natural upward and downward fluxes to much better than 3% to say that humans are responsible for the current upward trend in atmospheric CO2. Are measurements of the global carbon fluxes much better than 3% in accuracy?? I doubt it.
So, one possibility would be a long-term change in the El Nino / La Nina cycle, which would include fluctuations in the ocean upwelling areas off the west coasts of the continents. Since these areas represent semi-direct connections to deep-ocean carbon storage, this could be one possible source of the extra carbon (or, maybe I should say a decreasing sink for atmospheric carbon?).
Let’s say the oceans are producing an extra 1 unit of CO2, mankind is producing 1 unit, and nature is absorbing an extra 1.5 units. Then we get the situation we have today, with CO2 rising at about 50% the rate of human emissions.
If nothing else, Fig. 3 illustrates how large the natural interannual changes in CO2 are compared to the human emissions. In Fig. 5 we see that the yearly-average CO2 increase at Mauna Loa ends up being anywhere from 0% of the human source, to 130%.
It seems to me that this is proof that natural net flux imbalances are at least as big as the human source.
Could the long-term increase in El Nino conditions observed in recent decades (and whatever change in the carbon budget of the ocean that entails) be more responsible for increasing CO2 concentrations than mankind? At this point, I think that question is a valid one.
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Okay,
Now bear in mind that what I am betting are the great fluxes in CO2 emissions are prior to this graph: A downswing during the Great Depression, and an Upswing during WWII, and a downturn in the immediate postwar years.
After that there has been a somewhat steady upward economic trend. But there are some things that correspond (timewise, at least) to phases that might affect global output. So I’ll do a little off-the-cuff palm-reading, here.
On very brief observation I am noting two more noticeable wiggles that correspond (maybe causally, maybe not) with known historical phenomena.
THIS IS A PRELIMINARY TAKE
1.) I see an upward bump between 1970 and 1975 followed by a mild trough.
–The uptick corresponds with the emergence of the six (now five) “Dragons” of the far east and the Japanese Superstate.
–The Clean air Act (in practice) in the US and a whole new environmental consciousness in Europe (the west of it) seem to correspond with the trough. (The buildings–after sand-blasting–actually became the colors they actually “were”.)
“The Dragon Emergence”
“The Redbrick Cleanup”
2.) I see a bubble starting in the mid 80’s followed by a bump-back around 1993.
–The US economy recovered and took off around this time.
–China and India began to emerge as great (and coal-intensive) industrial powers.
— But the Big News is the downtick at the end which matches with the massive shutdown of the heavy Industry of the beastly Sovs and Eastern Europe.
“The Made In China/Reagan Revolution”
“The Peace ‘Dividend'”
Then there are a couple of smaller ones that are harder to peg. They match with US events but I don’t see much to compare with the rest of the world.
3.) A slight downtick around 1997.
–There was a serious financial crash in the far East in general and Japan in particular. This has a worldwide effect, having an impact on Europe/Russia and a slowdown of the US economy.
“The Stumble from Grace”
4.) A very mild dip from 2000 to 2003 that picks up.
–this corresponds with the US mild “recession” (read “slow growth”) and bear market and the resulting drop in capital gains income.
–Toward the end of the dip, Russian recovery, Eastern European tax reforms and recovery, Us tax cuts, Western Europe initiates pro-growth economic measures. Worldwide economic Boom.
“The Dubya Bubble”
Note that these are all very minor blips in a very steady upward trend. It would seem that relatively major economic swings have a very minor impact on CO2.
What also must be considered is the accumuation vs. persistance factor of CO2.
Just a first impression so far.
Andrew,
No problems here Andrew, I don’t think that you were believing that the oceans have a large effect (at maximum within one year), and I completely agree that the oceans are not a constant sink, as that is modulated by temperature… As the emissions are relative monotonely increasing in increase speed, one can expect a good match between a more variable independent cause and effect…
Ferdinand,
Thank you. Understood.
You wrote: “emissions caused the entire increase of 60 ppmv 1959-2004” which by your thinking would rule out any possibility that oceans changes and the solubility of CO2 as a factor.
My question is, does a long term record of seawater samples with analysis of dissolved gases exist? That might help put the matter to rest.
If anyone knows of one, please post it.
Evan Jones,
Why making it difficult? Simply compare it to graph 3 in Dr. Spencer’s essay. There you have the emissions and what is left of them (thanks to mainly temperature changes)…
Btw, the emissions during the Great Depression were (in MtC per year):
1927 1062
1928 1065
1929 1145
1930 1053
1931 940
1932 847
1933 893
1934 973
1935 1027
1936 1130
1937 1209
If we may assume that about half of the emissions stay in the atmosphere (as mass), then the average emissions 1927-1937 were around 1 GtC/yr, of which 0.5 GtC or 0.25 ppmv accumulates in the atmosphere.
The difference 1929-1932 is about 0.3 GtC which results in 0.06 ppmv less accumulation over a year…
Even no current measurement technique is accurate enough to detect such small difference in accumulation, and hardly can measure the total increase per year.
Most historical chemical measurements were accurate to +/- 10 ppmv. Ice core measurements are accurate to +/- 1.2 ppmv (one sigma), and smooth the whole depression away…
@Anthony,
For up to date CO2 data for Mauna Loa, see here
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Ferdinand, I disagree with that. The “65 GtC original molecules” is inconsistent with the fact that 1/2 of human emission is sequestered the very first year. I’ve played with a simple flux model and I KNOW that this number wouldn’t sum up. No way.
We agree that isotope counting is no help in determining the part of human CO2 in the concentration build up (even if it is an argument often heard from the AGW people). But I don’t adhere to your claim that the calculation of this part can be done with “mass balance” for which you have provided no concrete demonstration. Even the IPCC doesn’t claim -AFAIK- that 100% of CO2 concentration rise is anthropogenic. Simply because it CAN’T, as long as the problem of the “missing sink” remains (which you haven’t addressed).
– Please let me know what you do think about the missing sink before we dig down further in the arcane of numbers. And please, elaborate about your above claim that icecore CO2 data’s resolution is 5 years and there is no divergence problem: where are the raw data, why Bohm’s results stop in 1980 (with a 10 year lag, it should be in the 90s), are they independently replicated by others (not that hard to have an short icecore)…
Just as an anecdote, one of the well known glaciologist is Jean Jouzel, lead author in TAR, who happens to be the French chief climate alarmist (he wouldn’t miss a single media event to claim out loud future disasters). That’s one of the reason I have highest doubts about claims that Antarctca’s icecores can be easily reconciled with direct measurements. Up to now, I haven’t seen any credible data, nor proper archive which support such claims. This remind me too much of the tree rings divergence problem.
Anthony,
There are a lot of data of ocean composition, but most dataseries start from 1992, when several ship’s surveys were done for the first time at a lot of places in the same year. Today we have several ship’s surveys per year and fixed moorings which supply data on a regular base.
There were several attempts to measure CO2 over and in the oceans with seaships, with a lot of data, including high latitudes in the SH.
Here are several addresses which supply data + several interesting articles and slide presentations about ocean data:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/home.html data oceans
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/gcc/co2research/
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml Feely ea. and following pages.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2633/abstract.shtml Feely CO2/carbonate
http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/~nikki/Metzl-Lenton-SOLAS_China07.pdf Southern ocean
http://ioc.unesco.org/IOCCP/pCO2_workshop/Presentations/metzl-SOCOVV-Final2.pps Southern ocean and world 2007!
There are two island based stations which continuously measure air and seawater CO2 (and a lot of other data), which are used to calculate seasonal fluxes over the North Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
From the results of the Bermuda station:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5602/2374 variation North Atlantic
A very good introduction is the Feely overview:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml and following pages.
“As the emissions are relative monotonely increasing in increase speed, one can expect a good match between a more variable independent cause and effect…”
Ferdinand,
The human emission increase rate was +1%/year in the 80s and 90s. But it has surpassed +3%/year since 2000 (see the Corine le Quéré paper in the PRS some months ago).
The fact that CO2 concentration increase remains around 0,5%/year (over the last 50 years) even with a trebling of emission increase rate is a big problem to the science !
Thanks Ferdinand, I’ll look those over.
One thing that immediately struck me was this graphic:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/images/fig01.jpg
A PH of 7.91 for 2xCO2 is closer to neutral 7.0 “aka” pure water than the PH for 1xCO2 at 8.14.
claims like this one:
“British Scientists Say Carbon Dioxide Is Turning the Oceans Acidic”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/01/international/europe/01ocean.html
where they say: “growing acidity would be very likely to harm coral reefs and other marine life by the end of the century.”
I don’t get this claim, if its closer to 7, aka “neutral” how could such a shift be “more acidic”? It’s really “less basic”.
reference: http://www.fst.vt.edu/extension/valueadded/pH.html
Is the chemistry wrong or the claim or both?
Has anyone seen this article? I’m not qualified to comment, but found it interesting as well:
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
“There are a lot of data of ocean composition, but most dataseries start from 1992, when several ship’s surveys were done for the first time at a lot of places in the same year. Today we have several ship’s surveys per year and fixed moorings which supply data on a regular base.”
The is no reliable global data of ocean composition. In the Metzl et al paper for example (your link above), Ocean-atmosphere fluxes differ wildly between models and observations (more than 5 GTc/month, ie 60 Gt/y, ) and measurements are made on short periods (less than a decade). So if you try to do a “mass balance” of the anthropic 7,5 Gt/y, it’s like trying to know if you’ve gained 7,5 pounds using a scale with 60 pound tolerance. You simply can’t tell the difference. Yep, the CO2 “science” is as bad.
Ferdinand,
You say:
“There is no difference between open bubble and closed bubble CO2 levels at closing depth, thus no diffusion problems seems to occur at least at closing depth.”
when discussing cores a few decades old. Surely you are not using that as a basis to confirm there would be no diffusion for 3000+ years in the Vostok cores *above* closing depth would you? Do you still feel there is no diffusion for thousands of years before the bubbles reach closing depth at Vostok?
Demesure,
The emissions have a constant “increase in increase speed”. That is the same as saying that the there is a constant % increase of the total CO2 level.
As with all processes:
1. if a disturbance of a dynamic equilibrium is a one-time addition, then the process will go back assymptotely back to the equilibrium
2. if a disturbance is a continuous fixed addition, then the process will increase assymptotely to a new, higher level equilibrium.
3. if a disturbance is a continuous increasing addition (fixed % increase), then the process will never reach a new equilibrium and continuous to increase with a fixed % of the disturbance.
Today we see a type 3 disturbance. Which implies that the CO2 cycle was a simple dynamic equilibrium process in pre-industrial times…
No problem at all for science. It is simple process dynamica…
About the missing sink: I have not the slightest problem with a missing sink. We know the average total of natural sinks with reasonable accuracy. We don’t know the exact sinks in the oceans and vegetation, only rough estimates. Battle ea. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/5462/2467 ):
vegetation: 1.4 +/- 0.8 GtC/yr; oceans: 2.0 +/- 0.6 GtC/yr.
Minimum 3.4 GtC/yr, maximum 4.8 GtC/yr. A missing sink of 1.2 GtC/yr? Or there may be some unknown large sink besides oceans and vegetation, which acts as absorber of extra CO2 at higher levels…
My bet is that they underestimate the direct sink of CO2 in the North Atlantic deep water formation (THC sink). That goes directly from atmosphere in the deep ocean. Hard to measure exactly.
This doesn’t change the measured/calculated mass balance which shows a near-continuous net sink for all natural sources/sinks together.
The mass balance still is:
increase in the atmosphere – emissions = natural inflows – outflows = -3 +/- 2.7 GtC/yr (with a few exceptions…).
It is only unsure where it all exactly sinks.
But as already said before, there would be more problems to explain a missing source…
As already warned, the difference between an accumulation in % and an accumulation in mass is the difficult part…
The accumulation in mass is near entirely due to the emissions, except for a small temperature factor (and maybe a few other small factors, as the two-variable formula doesn’t give an exact match with the observations).
That means that about 184 GtC from the 300+ GtC emissions of the past 150+ years has accumulated as mass in the atmosphere. That it is. We can stop here.
But we can ask ourselves, how much of the original 13C depleted anthro molecules still reside in the atmosphere, from the first halve GtC in the far past, after 150 years, to the last 8 GtC from last year after one year. Knowing that these are diluted by a yearly exchange of about 90 GtC from the 13C rich deep ocean waters (vegetation plays a minor role in this), we don’t expect to find much anthro CO2 (labeled with a low d13C per mil) in the atmosphere.
That is a simple calculation: we know the d13C drop in the atmosphere from ice cores/firn/Mauna Loa data. Recalculated to 800 GtC today, the original anthro molecules still residing in the atmosphere are about 65 GtC or 8% of the atmosphere (that means, most of last years, as we add about 1% 13C depleted CO2 per year to the atmosphere). This has nothing to do with the increase in mass of about 30% over the past 150 years, although this type of calculation is used as argument that the anthro CO2 is not the cause of the rise…
Anthony,
The claim is wrong, a pH of 7.91 indeed is less basic than 8.14, not “more acidic”. That is typically alarmspeak (sounds more horrible, all that fish in vinegar…).
Even if the pH drop were real (still debatable), the effects on fish are non-existent and on corals/coccolithophores debatable, see http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/auscore/auscore-abstracts-2001-01.html#03
Demesure,
I don’t even want to start a mass balance based on any natural flow of CO2. All mass balance I need is based on the calculated emissions and measured increased of CO2, which are more than accurate enough…
But even in ten years time, one can see that several ocean parts changed from permanent or seasonal sources of CO2 to seasonal sources and permanent sinks…
More tomorrow (it’s 1.30 AM here!)…
“No problems here Andrew, I don’t think that you were believing that the oceans have a large effect (at maximum within one year), and I completely agree that the oceans are not a constant sink, as that is modulated by temperature… As the emissions are relative monotonely increasing in increase speed, one can expect a good match between a more variable independent cause and effect…”
Okay, glad we understand each other, now. 🙂
Simon Donner has some important links on corals and CO2. The world has moved on since 2001.
http://simondonner.blogspot.com/2008/01/temperature-and-co2-new-figure-for-new.html
http://simondonner.blogspot.com/2008/01/rising-co2-and-other-reef-organisms.html
http://simondonner.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-is-dangerous.html
and I put in a word about the threat this poses to the biological pump
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/01/elevator-trouble-simon-donner-at-maribo.html
and, FWIW, Atmoz has plotted the different Scripps CO2 series on one graph
http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/01/24/co2-is-still-rising-even-at-locations-other-than-mauna-loa/
although his choice of colors sucks
Decreasing pH is more acidic, increasing more basic. A solution with pH 8 is more basic than a solution with pH 9. The equilibrium is [H+][OH-]= 1E-14. pH = -log10 [H+]. At pH = 8 the concentration of [H+] is 1E-8 moles/liter and the concentration of [OH-] is 1E-6 moles/liter. Increase the pH to 9 and [H+] is 1E-9 moles/liter and the concentration of [OH-] is 1E-4 moles/liter. a solution with pH 8 is more acidic than one with pH 9. At pH 7 the concentrations of both is 1E-7.
REPLY: I think this post may be in error, you are making conflicting claims. Second sentence and second to last sentence conflict. By my training second to last sentence is correct. However, a pH greater than 7 by anybody’s definition would not be considered ‘acidic” and that is the issue I brought up in my previous post. -Anthony
Eli,
As Anthony already replied, the definition of neutral is at pH 7.0, acidic is below 7.0 and basic is above 7.0…
Calling a drop of pH in the basic range “more acidic” is at least confusing and for the general public rather misleading…
Re: John M. query on isotopes, pertaining to Demesure/Englebeen discussion.
The Suess effect for C-13 depended on his work with C-14. The latter has a comparatively simple mechanism of creation that has more recently been seen to be on decline over his lifetime for a reason unknown to him, the level of cosmic ray input.
Isotopes of carbon are particulary bad choices for proxies due to its chemical promiscuity. Water easily carries it away (apart from cellulose) wherein it readily moves between organic and inorganic forms. In comparison Be-10 quickly precipitates out of the atmosphere forming relatively inert oxidants.
As Segalstad has pointed out, perhaps 2 dozen empirical estimates for the atmospheric carbon residence time provide values less than 12 years, and average 7 years. The C-13 proxy is therefore an outlier in this application.
Waaaaayyy out of my league here, but I do have a quick question:
How good are the estimates of CO2 sources? Seems that there’s an assumption that the amount of CO2 in the CO2 sinks are well known. But it also seems quite remarkable that these types of data could be well known with any type of precision.
Bruce
That should have been ‘oxides’, not oxidants.
The hypothesis may be provocotive but there is some clear supporting evidence that shows nature not humans is the prime driver of increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Emissions from fossil fuels are calculated from oil, coal, and natural gas consumption data which are not part of the mainstream climate data. When this is compared to the concentration data from Mauna Loa the relative contribution of humans and nature can be roughly calculated.
Kyoto is based on the direct relationship between CO2 emissions and CO2 concentration.
From 1990 to 2003 emissions increased from 21,230 to 25,030 megatonnes or 292 megatonnes per year.
From 2003 to 2006 emissions increased from 25,030 to 29,330megatonnes or 1435 megatonnes per year.
This represents an increase in the rate of emissions of 491% (this alarming rate of increase was duly noted at the conference in Nairobi last year using 2001as the pivotal date and “over a four fold increase” stated.)
If there is a direct linear relationship between CO2 emissions and concentration then this same 491% increase should have taken place in the rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration increase.
From 1990 to 2003 the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increased from 254.16ppmv to 375.79ppmv or 1.66ppmv per year.
From 2003 to 2006 the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increased from 375.79ppmv to 381.89ppmv or 2.03ppmv per year.
This represents an increase in the rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration of only 22% yet the emissions rate increased by 491%.
If emissions are increasing at a rate over 20 times greater than the increase in concentration then it is clear that human emissions are not primarily responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration and consequentially not primarily responsible for global warming for those who subscribe to the Greenhouse Gas hypothesis of global warming.
Since human emissions can be calculated in actual tonnage, simple algebra can show the relative contributions of CO2 to the atmospheric concentration from human and other sources.
In 2006 this equates to humans contributing 1435 megatonnes to the concentration increase and other sources presumably natural (such as out gassing of the oceans and volcanoes) contributing 4836 megatonnes.
This is a clear statement that human emissions are only contributing 29.7% of the atmospheric CO2 increase and therefore any statement that human emissions are the major cause of global warming is clearly false.
The sharp increase in human emissions took place in 2001 as was pointed out by the IPCC. If the same calculation is done using the 5 years before and after 2001 the human emissions contribution to the atmospheric concentration is reduced to 27%, and if the natural emissions are increasing as would be suggested by out gassing theory this number would be reduced even further.
Norm K.
Eli,
I have read a few of the references (and references in the references) about coral reefs. Most of the references point to “probable” influences of higher temperatures and lower pH somewhere in the future. The 2001 reference I gave was on the observed increase in coral growth in the Great Barrier (marvellous nature!), despite of (or thanks to) higher CO2 levels in the past 50 years…
Besides a few large scale laboratory tests, I haven’t seen many studies in field tests, except that other types of human interference (overfishing, pollution, mangrove destruction) has done a lot of damage to the coral reefs.
Although CO2 levels during the Cretaceous were much higher than today, that was the time that coccolithophores were building enormous layers of chalk, like the white cliffs of Dover. I know, carbonate levels in seawater probably were much higher too, but is remains to be seen in how far the theory describes reality…
[…] Spencer on how Oceans are Driving CO2 Double Whammy Friday: Roy Spencer on how Oceans are Driving CO2 « Watts Up With That? […]
“I don’t even want to start a mass balance based on any natural flow of CO2. All mass balance I need is based on the calculated emissions and measured increased of CO2, which are more than accurate enough…”
Ferdinant, you’re just citing a coincidence, at betst a correlation, not a causation. Since there is no way to determine the outcome of fossile CO2 (certainly not by isotope dosage), you can only assume that it’s integrally responsible for the concentration increase but that’s a claim out of the field of refutability. It’s no better an hypothesis than an increased upwelling of ocean currents, a change in plankton activity or many other changing factors.
After all, 10 years ago, nobody at the IPCC thought methane levels would stabilize but that’s what happened, unexpectedly.
So as long as the missing sink (which is 3 GTC/y, see chap 7 AR4, and not 1.2 GTC/y as you claimed) remains, let’s say that the science in CO2 accounting is far from “settled”.