Many people have pointed me to this story, I wanted to read about it a bit before posting it. Almost two years ago, when this blog was in its very first month, I posted this story on the puzzling leveling off of global methane concentrations. FYI Methane has a “global warming potential” (GWP) 23-25 times that of CO2.
CDIAC has an interesting set of graphs on methane, the first of which shows that indeed global concentrations of CH4 through 2004 have leveled off:
This one on latitude -vs- concentration would surely seem to point to anthropogenic sources of CH4:
So here is yet another addition to the puzzle, which seems to point in the opposite direction:
MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data
From: TG Daily By Rick C. Hodgin
Boston (MA) – Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature – and not the direct result of man’s contributions.
Methane – powerful greenhouse gas
The two lead authors of a paper published in this week’s Geophysical Review Letters, Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, state that as a result of the increase, several million tons of new methane is present in the atmosphere.
Methane accounts for roughly one-fifth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, though its effect is 25x greater than that of carbon dioxide. Its impact on global warming comes from the reflection of the sun’s light back to the Earth (like a greenhouse). Methane is typically broken down in the atmosphere by the free radical hydroxyl (OH), a naturally occuring process. This atmospheric cleanser has been shown to adjust itself up and down periodically, and is believed to account for the lack of increases in methane levels in Earth’s atmosphere over the past ten years despite notable simultaneous increases by man.
More study
Prinn has said, “The next step will be to study [these changes] using a very high-resolution atmospheric circulation model and additional measurements from other networks. The key thing is to better determine the relative roles of increased methane emission versus [an increase] in the rate of removal. Apparently we have a mix of the two, but we want to know how much of each [is responsible for the overall increase].”
The primary concern now is that 2007 is long over. While the collected data from that time period reflects a simultaneous world-wide increase in emissions, observing atmospheric trends now is like observing the healthy horse running through the paddock a year after it overcame some mystery illness. Where does one even begin? And how relevant are any of the data findings at this late date? Looking back over 2007 data as it was captured may prove as ineffective if the data does not support the high resolution details such a study requires.
One thing does seem very clear, however; science is only beginning to get a handle on the big picture of global warming. Findings like these tell us it’s too early to know for sure if man’s impact is affecting things at the political cry of “alarming rates.” We may simply be going through another natural cycle of warmer and colder times – one that’s been observed through a scientific analysis of the Earth to be naturally occuring for hundreds of thousands of years.
Project funding
Rigby and Prinn carried out this study with help from researchers at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Bristol and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Methane gas measurements came from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), which is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Australian CSIRO network.
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Kohl Piersen. Yup. -21 is very cold in October.
But I guess temperature can drop several degrees globally and all the glaciers on earth can start growing while the political part of AGW undisturbed moves forward. Or?
So what can be done to disturb the political bandwagon and holy political discourse?
Can anyone explain why this page-
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/oceans/system/carbon.html
has disappeared since we all started to link to it?
gfish (22:36:21)
It was a graph of global carbon flux but now you will just have to take my word for it. It used to be a graphical example of how little we know about the carbon cycle but now is reduced to this-
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/images/oceans-images/global_flows_carbon.gif
or a page of funding pitch that plays to the global warming gallery.
The Ministry of Truth is very busy this year as real science and real weather begin to strangulate the constipated logjam of climate consensus and many of the simplistic suppositions of the overfunded.
There is 100(ish) times as much water in the atmosphere as there is CO2 so a 1% drop in atmospheric water would have a similar thermal effect to completely removing CO2. A 1% increase in atmospheric water vapour would have an effect approximate to doubling the CO2 if the “science” of CO2 actually performed as claimed.
CO2 is innocent of the crime it is accused of.
Oooh – new higher resolution climate models! Does this mean they’ll be breaking the 8×8 grid barrier? It would be totally awesome if someone could finally figure out a way to get to, say, 16×16 for a massive 256 simulated data points. That could even take into account things like air circulation!
Or to put it another way: an upsampling DVD player may send a 1080p signal to your TV, but the data source is still never going to exceed 720×480, so what’s the point?
Or, yet another way: unless your climate model works on a 10cm grid for the entire planet, INCLUDING Z axis (altitude) and can accurately simulate ANY given “current” state of the atmosphere forward for several months or years, then it is useless, and not worth much more than casual interest.
Because clearly, there is more of weather and air, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your modeling.
Gfish said: “Oceans can’t absorb them, plants don’t need them, bacteria have enough.”
Yes they can, and yes they do, and how do you know?
Does your 3.4% include livestock CO2 emissions? And how about the CO2 IR absorption bands?
Gfish said: “Discard what you don’t like to see and focus on just half of the picture, the one where you like the data… And the source…”
You mean like Mann?
Plants don’t need it? What are they on some kind of diet? Are you saying that plant growth is self-restrictive? That plants on this planet reached their maximum production before the Industrial Revolution, and they have reached a CO2 saturation point. How do you explain the fact that plants in greenhouses are fed much higher levels of CO2 in order to increase crop production (http://www.advancegreenhouses.com/use_of_co2_in_a_greenhouse.htm)?
And, by the way, what is the ocean’s saturation point?
But but–I thought the science was settled?
Gfish: “If you have a 1.5 liter bottle of water with a hole designed to drain 1.1 liter of water over a period of 5 minutes, you can pour one liter of water every 5 minutes into an empty bottle every time.”
Except, the ‘bottle’ in question has quadrillions of tiny holes in it, each one of which can randomly grow larger or smaller or become blocked, and new holes can open up. And the ‘bottle’ is fed by quadrillions of tiny nozzles, each of which can randomly grow larger or smaller or become blocked, and new nozzles can open up.
How is it then that the water level can stay more-or-less constant over periods of hundreds of years?
AussieRon:-)
All based on the arrogant presumption that these computer models are programmed correctly!
We know these models cannot be infallible because they all make different assumptions of how certain variables work, particularly water vapour & clouds, which they are only just embarking on studying so that they can get the models to work better.
It’s also interesting reading in the article that they set out to find evidence of man’s signal in the Antarctic, & they keep saying the old IPCC SPM statement of “a lack of warming” which hides that fact that temperatures are not stagnating down there, but are cooling. Again clever use of wording to imply one thing has occurred when in fact another actually happened. If you look hard enough for something you can find it. None of the models predicted or even projected the cooling this century, yet they constantly claim “great accuracy” of the models.
The article says the methane is destroyed by the hydroxyl radical. In the atmosphere, the hydroxyl radical is produced by oxygen reacting with water… so ozone reacts with water to create hydroxyl? Sunlight has decreased only a little; has ozone in methane-affected regions decreased significantly?
I cannot believe climate scientists would make this statement: “We may simply be going through another natural cycle of warmer and colder times – one that’s been observed through a scientific analysis of the Earth to be naturally occurring for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Duh! You think?
This is reminiscent of the startling revelation by a Time magazine cover story, Men and Women are Different.
More study required which, of course, requires more funding to discover a repetition of Nature’s cycles which are a part of a historical record available at your local library and certainly available on the internet.
Is Dr. Pachauri involved? Will New Zealand’s bovine flatulence patrol go global?
Computer models are not reality. Nature is reality.
Retired Engineer (16:26:49) :
“Fascinating concept, a gas that reflects light. Must be that new silver plated methane. Absorb, yes. Reflect? Hmmm.”
Methane is to the Earth as a thin-film coating is to a camera lens. /sarc off
Peter,
“How is it then that the water level can stay more-or-less constant over periods of hundreds of years?” This analogy is substituting water for carbon dioxide. Why do you believe that carbon dioxide has stayed constant over hundreds of years? Or might it be a trace gas because it quickly gets gobbled up and what’s left in the atmosphere is only what wasn’t easily consumed by biological or chemical processes?
This is ridiculous. Absolutely and totally.
I’m talking rubbish, but the sources I get to supposedly refute what I say don’t actually say anything of the sort the posters claim they do. That is, if I actually get any sources. Most of the time I’m being bombarded by those who just lay out indignant red herrings that have nothing to do with what I said or question “how do you know that?” when I linked to a source right in my post. If you won’t actually read what is being said or don’t want to read it, I can’t help you.
And yes, every living things only needs so much carbon dioxide. You can pump a whole lot of the gas into a greenhouse but not all of it will be absorbed, a fair bit of it will stay in the air to warm the actual structure. Why do you think the gases are called “greenhouse gases.” It’s not because they’re green. It’s because they do the same job as they do in the greenhouse.
All of this tell me one thing. Many of you have no interest in the science. None. Zero. Never had. All you care about is opposing the idea of global warming because… why? What do you have to gain? Some sense of moral satisfaction of “sticking it to the liberal do-gooder enviros?” Feeling smarter than everybody else? Numerous scientists all over the world investigating what’s going on with the climate and you all know better because you took a look at a few obscure graphs and ignore all data to the contrary?
Like I said, this is a political discussion. As science and religion don’t mix, neither do science and politics.
REPLY:You wrote: “You can pump a whole lot of the gas into a greenhouse but not all of it will be absorbed, a fair bit of it will stay in the air to warm the actual structure. Why do you think the gases are called “greenhouse gases.”
I’m sorry but that is patently false. CO2 does nothing in a greenhouse related to warming. Glass and lack of convective heat transfer is the real reason for retained heat. CO2 in a greenhouse does nothing except help the plants with their chemical processes. – Anthony
AnonyMoose: “Why do you believe that carbon dioxide has stayed constant over hundreds of years?”
Whatever made you think I do?
Here’s a stupid question from an interested bystander. If the earths revolution around the sun causes vast changes in the temperature and weather of the earth, what effect doe the revolution of the solar system around the galactic center have on the temperature and weather of the solar system? How long does this revolution take? If our seasons change with just a 25% revolution around the sun, what effect does a 25% revolution around the galaxy have?
Anthony,
According to this primer on the use of carbon dioxide in greenhouses from the Canadian government, you can’t put too much of the gas in the air because the plants will be damaged by the excess gas. So if you pump too much carbon dioxide into a greenhouse, it will just stay in the air.
Most greenhouses are very precisely controlled which is why that doesn’t happen in the vast majority of them. I admit my explanation was a little confusing, but the point remains valid. Plants only need so much carbon dioxide.
REPLY: Why not simply admit that your explanation about CO2 causing warming in greenhouses was wrong rather than confusing? Whether the CO2 stays in the air or not makes no impact on the heat balance in the greenhouse. The effect is too small and is swamped by other physical processes. Yes too much CO2 will harm the plants, too much sunlight will do that, too much heat, too much cold, too much fertilizer…so I don’t see any point there. – Anthony
Jerry,
The galactic rotation does nothing for the Earth. The only reason the seasons change is because of the Earth’s tilt on its axis.
Anthony,
Because it was a “what if” scenario. If you would take a look at the primer, it warns against putting more than about 1,000 ppm of CO2 because it will disrupt the very natural processes you say will gobble it up. You don’t see the point because you need to go back in the discussion.
The question was: “how do you know that plants will only absorb so much CO2 if greenhouses pump in more of the gas than normal to make plants grow faster?” This was the answer. We know because guidelines for greenhouses state that over 1,000 ppm, and the plants you’re trying to grow with a flood of CO2 are damaged.
The references to sunlight and heat and so on are red herrings here.
REPLY: Red Herrings? This thread is about METHANE and you’ve gone OT and turned it into an argument about CO2 in greenhouses. Go find another website to waste time on. I’d never said this to a commenter before, but you sir (whomever you are) are are making an idiotic and disingenuous argument. – Anthony
Gfish: “According to this primer on the use of carbon dioxide in greenhouses from the Canadian government, you can’t put too much of the gas in the air because the plants will be damaged by the excess gas”
Yes, but the figures they quote are around 1000 – 1300ppm, which is more than three times current atmospheric levels.
” Retired Engineer (16:26:49) :
Methane reflects the sun’s light back to the earth? Then it should also reflect incoming light back into space. Unless we have a one-way mirror. Now that would be worthy of several Nobel prizes.
Fascinating concept, a gas that reflects light. Must be that new silver plated methane. Absorb, yes. Reflect? Hmmm. ”
It’s not quite like that Retired Engineer, gases don’t exactly do a lot of reflecting. Clouds reflect due to the fact that they consist of water droplets, and ice crystals. When you have true reflection (from optical materials, the reflected radiation has pretty much the same spectrum as the incident radiation such as sunlight for example. To the extent that reflected spectra may differ from incident, some of the incident radiation may be absorbed by the materials so it is subtracted from the incident.
The action of “Greenhouse gases” is quite different. They work their wonders, by ABSORBING a portion of the total spectrum that falls on them.
The portion that is absorbed depends on the atom or molecule doing the absorbing. For example in the case of CO2, the molecule looks (vaguely) like this; O=C-O
Now why did I draw it like that? The O is actually linked to the C by two electron bonds as shown with the first O on the left. There are also two electron bonds to the O on the right, but you can’t see them both, because the pair are at right angles to the pair on the left; so there really are two on the right (trust me). At the central carbon, the four bonds actually form the corners of a tetrahedron; which a little playing with your fingers will show it is like two pairs at right angles.
Now the bonds are somewhat like connecting springs; they are stretchy and bendy.
So the CO2 molecule is capable of oscillating, with the two oxygens moving back and forth along the horizontal line in opposite directions so the carbon stays stationary,a dn the two oxygens always move opposite each other. That is called the “symmetrical stretch” mode, and becasue it is symmetrical, the center of the electric charge stays put in the middle of the carbon. So it doesn’t generate much of an external electric field.
Alternatively, the oxygens can move in the same direction, and they would tend to push/pull the carbon with them, but they will move to the center of mass stays stationary. This is the assymmetrical stretch mode, and its frequency corresponds to a wavelength of about 4 microns.
The really interesting mode is when the molecule bends about the carbon atom. Those two springs on the left can bend back and forth in and out of the page toward you; or the pair on the right can bend the same way, but only up and dowen in the plane of the paper. It is pretty obvious that those two bending situations are really exactly the same thing, just at right angles tyo each other. We call that a degenerate mode because there are really two modes that are identical in frequency. This one has a frequency corresponding to a 15 micron wavelength (roughly).
Now if you thought of a child’s swing, you can make it oscillate if you push it at the right rate, depending on how long the chains are.
Same thing with molecules; if you hit them with photons that correspond to the same frequency of the molecular oscillation, then they absorb those photons very efficiently and start oscillating, so at 15 microns CO2 absorbs infrared radiation, and goes into this degenerate bending mode of vibration.
So those IR photons emitted from the surface of the earth get captured by the CO2 molecule and set it ringing like a bell. The molecules are also moving about due to collisions with other air molecules, so the exact frequency that gets absorbed depends on a doppler shift mechanism as well so it really becomes a band of wavelength due to “temperature broadening” ie the doppler effect. Also depending on the gas density, the molecules coillide now and then, and when the CO2 molecule bangs into a nitrogen or Oxygen molecule or once in a while one of those snooty loner Argon chaps; it’s like spilling your coffee when somebody nudges your elbow, and the CO2 molecule will spit out the exciting photon, and stop bending or stretching. When it does so, once again you get a doppler effect, so the wavelength of the emitted photon might be slightly different from the one that was absorbed, and the final energy of the CO2 molecule will alter a little bit.
Now the molecule doesn’t know up from down, so when it spits the photon, it could go in any direction, so the photons that are “re-radiatted” (not reflected) by the molecules of CO2 will go up down left roight etc, and about half go back down towards the ground, and the other half head upwards towards oouter space. They may get absorbed and re-emitted many times before they escape, and it is that delay in escaping that creates a warming effect, because druring that delay, solar photons are still arriving at the same rate as before, so more are getting absorbed, than ir ones are escaping.
So the ir radiation is not really “blocked” from escape; we don’t know how to block radiation from ultimately escaping; that would make one hell of a thermal insulation.
So that is the basic mechanism by which all GHGs work including water vapor, and each of them have their own modes of molecular vibrations oscillations, rotations to capture different wavelength photons.
Of course there are lots of other things that can happen next to alter the outcome of the GHG absorbing and re-emitting photons, and figuring out exactly what that is is where all the disagreements come in.
Now aren’t you glad you are a Retired Engineer ?
George
And so will too little, and the level of CO2 that is optimum for plants in greenhouses is uncomfortable for humans … (much higher than current levels in the atmosphere).
gfish(10:39:47) :
You can pump a whole lot of the gas into a greenhouse but not all of it will be absorbed, a fair bit of it will stay in the air to warm the actual structure.
For the majority of greenhouse crops, net photosynthesis increases as CO2 levels increase from 340–1,000 ppm (parts per million). Most crops show that for any given level of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), increasing the CO2 level to 1,000 ppm will increase the photosynthesis by about 50% over ambient CO2 levels.
First paragraph above: False. It will all be absorbed down to roughly 200 ppm, when the plants die! (assuming a sealed, airtight greenhouse) The [CO2] will only stay constant through additional imputs to replace what is removed by (improved) plant growth.
Second paragraph above: Copied from your supplied link. Plant growth continues to increase up to 1000ppm. When we get to 1000ppm [CO2] in the atsmosphere, give me a call.
This thread has gone so far off topic I no longer wish to waste time moderating it. – comments are closed.