Warming in a global cool period
By Peter N. Spotts| Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ September 25, 2008 edition
Graph above added by Anthony – not part of original article
With all the focus on human-triggered global warming, it may be hard to imagine that the world is riding a 50-million-year-long cooling trend.
But it is, and blame the trend on a continental-scale collision, say geophysicists Dennis Kent of Rutgers University and Giovanni Muttoni of the University of Milan in Italy.
Researchers say there is strong evidence that increases in atmospheric CO2 contributed to a warm spell 50 million years ago dubbed the Early Eocene climate optimum – the warmest period in 65 million years. But over the following 15 million years, deep sea temperatures fell by about 10.8 degrees F., reflecting a significant cooling at the surface. This cooling ultimately allowed the cycle of ice ages to emerge.
Drs. Kent and Muttoni have mined paleomagnetic and other data and suggest that atmospheric CO2 dropped because India collided with Eurasia, shutting down a productive, natural CO2 factory.
Some 120 million years ago, the subcontinent that is now India was migrating north from Antarctica. As it moved, it shoved the ocean crust that was ahead of it under an existing crustal plate. As long as this zone off the Eurasian coast was under water, bottom muck enriched by carbon from the biologically-rich ocean plunged under the plate. It got recycled as lava in volcanoes along a geological feature dubbed the Kohistan Arc, as well as in a vast lava-oozing formation called the Deccan Traps. The eruptions released the carbon as CO2, which helped warm the climate. But once India collided with Eurasia 50 million years ago, India rode over the top of the zone and shut off the process. This, plus changes in ocean circulation as continents rearranged themselves, contributed to the long chill, the researchers suggest.
The results appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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A lot of posts earlier about SO2 vs CO2 in volcanic eruptions. Just to follow up, as a geologist myself, here’s a bit more geology. There seems to be some confusion on what kind of eruptions we are talking here. The “Deccan traps” are a flood basalt eruption. Why is that key? These are eruptions of low viscosity basaltic lava that does not form large volcanoes – such as a Pinatubo. No explosive injection of SO2 into the stratosphere. Completely inconsistent with this type of volcanism. So it really doesn’t matter how much SO2 vs CO2 was being degassed – the SO2 will be ineffective as it will never reach the stratosphere. Now as for acid rain or other hypothesis, that may be a different story.
Dan Lee (15:04:13) :
“With a heat source assumed to be steady (the sun), and an increasingly warm, thick and efficient atmospheric blanket to lock that heat in, what is going stop the warming? Especially with all the extra CO2 and soon methane etc. predicted to come pouring in real soon now?
So again, does the AGW hypothesis really say that temperatures will stop spiraling upward at some point? Do you (or does anyone) have a link or a reference? This is the first time I’ve heard of warming being predicted to come to a stop somewhere down the road.”
Albedo?
If you watch the water temperatures in the tropics http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html for a while, you will see that it never gets over 30 or so C.
That is becaus after that evaporation becomes significant, clouds thicker, albedo grows and thus more energy is reflected back instead of being absorbed. A natural thermostat.
Hmmm, but then another article in the 23-Sep-2008 issue of PNAS has this to say:
50 million year global cooling trend? Pffff. It’s just a regional weather blip, nothing to do with a 30 year climate measurement. The science is settled.
I hope I’m not too late too ask a question, but I was reading that great new paper from Lindzen where he goes into all the dirty dealings in the back rooms of climate science.
There’s this one part where he’s talking about how when the models won’t line up with the data, they just re-imagine the data, or something like that. He mentions the Eocene. Here’s a quote…
“In the first example, the original data analysis for the Eocene (Shackleton and Boersma, 1981) showed the polar regions to have been so much warmer than the present that a type of alligator existed on Spitzbergen as did florae and fauna in Minnesota that could not have survived frosts. At the same time, however, equatorial temperatures were found to be about 4K colder than at present. The first attempts to simulate the Eocene (Barron, 1987) assumed that the warming would be due to high levels of CO2, and using a climate GCM (General Circulation Model), he obtained relatively uniform warming at all latitudes, with the meridional gradients remaining much as they are today. This behavior continues to be the case with current GCMs (Huber, 2008). As a result, paleoclimatologists have devoted much effort to ‘correcting’ their data, but, until very recently, they were unable to bring temperatures at the equator higher than today’s (Schrag, 1999, Pearson et al, 2000). However, the latest paper (Huber, 2008) suggests that the equatorial data no longer constrains equatorial temperatures at all, and any values may have existed. All of this is quite remarkable since there is now evidence that current meridional distributions of temperature depend critically on the presence of ice, and that the model behavior results from improper tuning wherein present distributions remain even when ice is absent.”
OK, I admit I don’t understand that, nevertheless my question is this. Could this new report, or whatever it is from NAS, be directed to offering up a solution for the issue Lindzen describes? I mean could it any way help the models line up with the data?
anna v
Exactly right. I’ve spent most of my life in the tropics and subtropics, and I see the negative feedbacks almost daily. We don’t have four seasons per se, we have two: rainy season and dry.
Dry season tends to be cooler and less humid. In rainy season, as we’re in now, the humidity can be oppressive at times, but then every afternoon like clockwork the clouds build up and we get absolutely drenching thunderstorms. These last for a few hours, then by evening it clears up and leaves the air mild and pleasant.
That’s why I’m always complaining about the assertion of positive feedbacks by AGW proponents. A lifetime of paying attention tells me that the relationship between warmth and atmospheric concentration of water vapor is clearly and obviously dominated by NEGATIVE feedbacks.
The clouds roll in and you can feel the temps drop. The daily afternoon rain and wind cools things further. Air that was thick and heavy in late morning is light and fresh by late afternoon.
The folks who sit in offices in the northern US and in Europe and theorize about the relationship between heavy concentrations of GHGs (water vapor) and warmth should take a break and spend some time down here where they can see what that relationship is really llike. They’ll forget about positive feedbacks in a big hurry.
“…what turned out to be the largest blast of the twentieth century…”
IMHO this is a clue.
Tom in Florida:
The answer to the professor’s question 2 is “No”. While there are more civil aircraft now there is vastly fewer military aircraft. In 1950 both the USA and the SSSR had literally tens of thousands of military aircraft each, as against just a few thousand now. Proportions are similar for many other countries.
[…] N. Spotts The Christian Science Monitor Friday, Sept 26, […]
Yes, I too grew up in tropical climates. And it does make one wonder that these climate modellers could stop staring at their computer screens and get out of the office more.
@Dan Lee
Mature stage clouds of a thunderstorm have a down draft of cold upper troposphere air. The experienced surface temperature change is a result of this downward draft.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Tstorm-mature-stage.jpg
Dan Lee and Dee Norris
Your observations agree with satellite data. Observational evidence seems to have been abandoned by certain factions of climate “science” in favor of simulations and scenarios via untested modeling.
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
Michael J. Bentley (16:18:39): “Just read on ICECAP that Gore asked young people to demonstrate against coal fired plants that don’t sequester CO2. I think I’m going to be sick – using our youth like this.”
Fully endorsed, Michael.
Reply – As I pointed out in An Inconvenient Youth, our children are being manipulated into unquestioning acceptance of the AGW agenda. Now they are being steered toward criminal behaviors against society. How many really can distinguish the fine line between civil disobedience, civil infractions and civil insurrection? – Dee Norris
“Right now, natural processes (oceans and plants) are absorbing about 2 ppm of the additional 4 ppm humans are adding to the atmosphere each year.”
Daily variance of CO2 measured by AIRS in mid-troposphere and at 10,000′ at Mauna Loa is on the order of 10^1 ppm, this corresponds to a daily fluence between ocean and atmosphere of on the order of 100 Gtons!
Spencer in Jan. posted that the variance in 13C12 fraction of the seasonal signal in the Mauna Loa data and long term trend were identical, i.e., following from the same source.
These points have been made by posts here at Watts’ posts and are easliy retrieved. The quoted statement is utterly unsupported by the evidence.
The anthropogenic contribution cannot be isolated by any means whatever and repeating this nonsense is no longer mere ignorance.
Tom: Those are good questions. You could also have him ask the “professor” What caused the Roman and Medieval Warm periods, and what caused the LIA? Also, what caused the 2.2C jump in temp. from 7.8 in 1696 to 10.0C in 1732 (2.2C in 36 yrs)?
Salute the brave hockey moms as they thread their way deftly with their suburban assault vehicles through the frontlines of the Carbon Liberation Wars. Save the Baby Ice but beware the Great Great Many Great’s Granma Ice.
=============================================
Good posting here on the “Greenhouse Effect” that everyone thinks they know so much about, but apparently really don’t as you will find when you read. The most surprising (yet really not) part to me was that over and over Mr Kininmonth, meteorologist and head of Australia’s National Climate Centre from 1986 to 1998, and author of Climate Change: A Natural Hazard, says that “Essentially, the role of greenhouse gases is to cool the atmosphere” and this works with “surface warming from solar radiation” to form clouds. Clouds both heat and cool the atmosphere, trapping heat under them but radiating incoming solar energy away from the ground. They are the great equalizer. “But this takes the wind from the sails of the AGW folk,” says Mr Kininmonth. I would have to agree.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/08/william-kininmonth-on-the-radiation-of-energy-and-global-warming/
Tom in Florida
Here is the link to the green-house effect, which was omitted from my previous post: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
The Global Carbon Project (the official agency tracking carbon emissions) just released the new numbers for 2007.
Carbon emissions are now 8.5 billion tons per year (4 ppm).
Land and Oceans are absorbing 54% of this amount (2 ppm).
CO2 level therefore rising at 2 ppm per year.
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/ppt/GCP_CarbonBudget_2007.ppt#806,1,Slide 1
Well, they all went to Bali a little while ago, but I think the presence of too many bikini-clad girls prevented them from really understanding climate. That, and a foregone conclusion…
windpower, like ethonal and solar is unreliable and uneconomic without taxpayer subsidization…heavily burdened taxpayers are being duped by archer daniels midland, t bone pickens, general electric and hansen and gores’ doom and gloom infomercials to line their own pocket….instead of talking about hot air, whether it sometimes turns a bladed monolith to stupidity, or how its causing the earth to meltdown, we should be discussing how to solve this great country’s energy needs by developing our vast resources of homegrown energy…we should fire every one of our green-special-interest-pandering-to elite members in congress and push for natural gas cars, trucks, buses, more coal and nuclear plants as well as opening up all our places to drill, drill, drill….those that dont read history are bound to repeat it…remember the carter era when subsidization of wind, solar and oilshale was the answer to the oil embargo and high fuel costs?…sound familiar thirty years later?…when reaganomics put an end to all the “alternative” subsidies each of the sound good energy solutions including windfarms, all went broke…in contrast, when reagan eliminated the energy subsidies, a wonderful time of economic prosperity followed …look what is going on in our financial markets today because some DODDo’s decided bad loans is a good idea…alternative energy, like wind power is tomorrow’s wall street crisis, just like it ended up thirty years ago…if your not convinced green power is a taxpayer funded pipedream, then ask the europeans about their windpower, cap and trade fiasco, and the cost of their energy…instead of lining special interest pocket’s with subsidies, its high time America start producing and eliminate the transfer of wealth out of our country….there, i fell better….have a nice day!!!
sorry, posted windfarm comments to wrong thread..tks
Bill Illis
DOE data shows the concentration of atmospheric CO2 to be 368 ppm on a chart dated October, 2000. Mauna Loa station gives the 2008 atmospheric (at 11,000 feet) CO2 concentration as 385 ppm, an increase in concentration of 17 ppm. From the pre-industrial base-line of 288 ppm of CO2, to the year 2000, natural emissions of CO2 contributed 68.52 ppm and man-made emissions contributed 11.88 ppm to the base-line, resulting in a concentration of 368.4 ppm. The ratio of natural to man-made emissions is 68.52/11.88 = 5.76767676…. Let us round off to a 5 to 1 ratio.
The GCP report seems to indicate that this ratio has drastically changed. The change from the year 2000 to the year 2008 of 17 ppm averages 17/8 = 2.125 ppm per year combined natural and man-made CO2.
The Mauna Loa station gives the yearly increase of CO2 as 2.14 ppm.
Why does the GCP report say that natural sources (making a contribution of 5 to 1 until the year 2000) are now irrelevant and only contributing 0.14 ppm of CO2, which results in a ratio of 0.07/2.0 of natural to man-made CO2?
What caused this anomaly to occur in the year 2000? I suspect a reduction in the ppm of scientific fact and reliance on the sacred model.
Well, if you ever want to keep a dead issue going, convolute it!
Gotta love the creativity these scientists going back 65 million years to try to show some correlation between CO2 and warming. You see, it has been well extablished that CO2 increases FOLLOW Warming by about 800 years. So how do you battle that if you are a “Warmist”. You graph CO2 versus temperature over 65,000,000 years, so that the 800 year lag basicially disappears unless you a examining a billboard sized graph with a microscope.
Then you turn around and further convolute it by attributing the subsequent cooling to plate techtonics. How fitting. Plate Techtonics is very similar to Global Warming in that it has been accepted by consensus, despite much evidence to the contrary, and legions of non-believers almost as big as believers.
Cooling of the earth over the last 65 million years is in fact easily explained by the “Expanding Earth” theory. More surface getting the same amount of sun, Voila cooling. Understanding how the plate techtonic mechanism would trigger this cooling trend is considerably more complicated. Almost as complicated as explaning how the Pangea theory could be accepted anyone with more than a 4th grade education.
But hey it makes sense. As more and more reliable and compelling data threatens the high ground currently held by Global Warming and Plate Techtonics, it only makes sense that their combined powers to scare, confuse, and validate flawed models would be necessary to keep them relevant. Irrelevant as they may be…
Short term fluctuations are weather, NOT climate. You [snip] need to try to comprehend the difference. 50 million years does not a trend make.
I think now is where I’m supposed to tell you all to “educate yourselves,” or something like that.
Reply – The d-word is banned here. Like grains of sand become a beach, so does weather become climate. The vast majority here know the difference between the two and several are trained scientists. Also, all here use real email addresses and clearly your ‘sdgh@sg.sdf’ is not real. Repeated offenses often result in IP addresses getting banned. – Dee Norris