Guest Post By Frank Lansner, civil engineer, biotechnology.
More words on the topic first presented here: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/FlaticecoreCO2.pdf
I wrote:
It appears from this graph that CO2 concentrations follows temperature with approx 6-9 months. The interesting part is off course that the CO2 trends so markedly responds to temperature changes.
To some, this is “not possible” as we normally see a very smooth rise on CO2 curves. However, the difference in CO2 rise from year to year is quite different from warm to cold years, and as shown differences are closely dependent on global temperatures. Take a closer look:
For this writing I have slightly modified the presentation of UAH data vs. Mauna Loa data:
The relatively rough relationship between CO2 growth per year and global temperatures (UAH) is:
1979: CO2 growth (ppm/year) = 3,5 * Temp.anomaly(K) + 0,7
2008: CO2 growth (ppm/year) = 3,5 * Temp.anomaly(K) + 1,2
1979-2008:
CO2 growth (ppm/year) = 3,5 * Temp.anomaly(K) + 0,95
For 2007, a UAH temperature anomaly approximately – 0,32 K should lead to CO2 rise/year = 0 , that is, CO2-stagnation.
These equations are useful for overall understanding, but so far they don’t give a fully precise and nuanced picture, of course. On the graph, I have illustrated that there is a longer trend difference between CO2 and Temperature. Thus, the “constant” of the equation should be a variable as it varies with time (1979: 0,7 2008: 1,2).
The trend difference means, that from 1979 to 2008 the CO2-rise per year compared to the global temperatures has fallen 0,5 ppm/year, or the other way around: It now takes approx. +0,15 K global temperature anomaly more to achieve the same level of CO2 rise/year as it did in 1979.
How can this be? The CO2 rise/year now takes higher temperatures to achieve?
With the human emissions rising in the time interval 1979-2008, one could imagine that it would be the other way around, that CO2 rises came with still smaller temperature rises needed. But no, its becoming “harder and harder” to make CO2 rise in the atmosphere.
So generally, the human emissions effect appears inferior to other effects in this context at least.
Which effects could hold CO2 rise/year down as we see?
The fact that we today have higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere than in 1979 does not favour more CO2 release from the oceans. However the fact that we approx 500 million years ago had several thousand ppm CO2 in the atmosphere implies that the 385 ppm today hardly does a big difference.
My guess is, that what we see is mainly the effect of the growing biosphere.
In short: A period with higher temperatures leads to higher CO2 rises/year and thus of course after some years higher CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
In the period of rising temperatures and CO2 concentration, the biosphere has grown extremely much.
The results of trend analyses of time series over the Sahel region of seasonally integrated NDVI using NOAA AVHRR NDVI-data from 1982 to 1999:
Source: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Greening_of_the_Sahel
Even if we put every European in “Plant a tree”-projects we could never reach a fraction of what mother nature has achieved in Sahel alone over these few years. In Addition, in these areas lots of more precipitation is occurring now. ( If we here have a “point of no return” im not sure Africans would ever want to come back to “normal”. We Europeans want so much to help Africans – but take away the CO2? What kind of help is that? )
In addition, the seas are much more crowded with life, plankton etc.
The biosphere is blooming due to CO2: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
So today we have a larger biosphere. Every single extra plant or plankton cell will demand its share of CO2. It takes more CO2 to feed a larger biosphere. More CO2 is pulled out of the atmosphere today than earlier. An enormous negative feedback on CO2 levels. Roughly: Any human CO2-influence would cause bigger biosphere that eventually omits the human CO2-influence.
A rather interesting scenario: What happens if temperatures go down below approx – 0,3 K UAH??
Well first it appears from my rough equation that CO2 levels will go down. We will have negative CO2 rise / year. But the bigger biosphere is still there (!!!) even though temperature and thus CO2 levels suddenly should drop and it will still demand its bigger share of CO2. And more, in these days of Cold PDO and especially more precipitation due to the solar condition, we might see more CO2 washed faster out of the atmosphere.
This adds up to my belief, that a cooling after a longer warming trend, mostly due to the bigger biosphere, could be accompanied by quite rapid fall in CO2 levels. Faster that temperature raise leads to CO2 rise? In short, I postulate: CO2 often falls quicker than it rises:
(I am very aware that the data Ernst-Georg Beck has gathered has had a lot of critic. I will not here be a judge, but I think its fair to show that Becks data to some degree matches my expectations, even though the level of CO2 appears high. But I am no judge of what is too high etc.)
So what to expect now? First of all, how about the present cooling??
We should be able to see the big Jan 2008 dive in global temperature in CO2? Well yes, this dive should 6-9 months appear thereafter. And if we take a look at Mauna Loa data released Aug 3, nicely in the 6-9 months time frame after Jan 2008, we saw a dive.
However, this dive was mostly removed from Mauna Loa data 4 Aug 2008, so its hard to judge anything about 2008.
Antarctic ice core data shows that in the period 1890-1940 there was a flat development approx 8 ppm from 300 ppm to 308 ppm.
We have seen first in this writing, that the CO2 is very responsive to temperature changes 1979-2008. So how come the warmer temperatures 1920-40´s has no effect at all on the extremely straight Antarctic CO2 curve?
Is there a mismatch between extremely flat Antarctic CO2 data on one side and Mauna Loa data/UAH data on the other side? If so, which data sets are correct? Mauna Loa/UAH or Antarctic ice cores?
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“Mauna Loa data/UAH data totally wrong or is Antarctic CO2 data totally wrong”
I suspect that the Mauna Loa data might be correct for conditions at Mauna Loa and Antarctica ice might be correct for conditions in Antarctica.
Is there a set of Antarctice atmospheric CO2 data being taken now in the same way that the Mauna Loa data is being taken? If so, what is the difference in the two readings?
Atmospheric CO2 might be at a different level on a mountain on an island in the middle of the ocean than they are in the middle of a continental land mass.
What do real time collection data show? Is anyone collecting real time data in the area where the ice cores were taken?
Hang on. I have to go get my popcorn.
This is going to bring the alarmists raging forward with their graphs and links, I’ll bet.
Even I can see there’s flaws here, and I’m just a skeptic fan who likes to watch.
I suggest you to compare it with the sea temperature instead of the UAH satellite data for the lower troposphere. It is a known fact that a hotter sea will release more CO2 to the atmosphere than a colder sea. The correlation may be better.
You may be able to get the sea temperature anomaly from GISS. They publish land and sea+land temperatures, it should be posible to extract the sea part given that we know it is 70% of the total Earth surface.
Why do we only hear about CO2 data from Mauna Loa? Is there nowhere else in the world where CO2 is being measured and reported in the same way?
The science is settled ?
This should bring the cagw believers out.
nice work
WGN Chicago weather man said today there weather is two weeks ahead of “normal”
with below zero weather ( that is Fahrenheit ) at the 45th here we have been in signal digits for two weeks we have been four weeks ahead. this is more like February.
Phillip Bratby (23:21:36) :
Why do we only hear about CO2 data from Mauna Loa? Is there nowhere else in the world where CO2 is being measured and reported in the same way?
Plenty of places, Mauna Loa is the longest record though, will the South Pole do?
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/spo121e_thrudc04.pdf
Some others: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel.html
My first thought was:
Mauna Loa, volcano, and CO2 emission.
Hmmm, an intersting place for baseline data.
Then came across this from the Mauna Loa Observatory website:
url: http://www.mlo.noaa.gov/programs/esrl/volcanicco2/volcanicco2.html
At night a temperature inversion forms near the ground, trapping volcanic emissions coming from Mauna Loa summit fumarloes in a layer tens of meters thick. Down slope winds sometimes transport these emissions to the observatory, where they are detected as a “noisy” increase above smooth baseline levels for some gases. A volcanic component can be estimated by taking the difference in concentration between periods when the plume is present and periods immediately before and after that exhibit baseline conditions. The most significant volcanic gas is CO2, which has been monitored since 1958 through three eruption cycles Volcanic CO2 is greatest shortly after an eruption and then decreases exponentially over the subsequent years. Right after the 1984 eruption, Mauna Loa emitted as much CO2 as an American city of 40,000 people.
Hmmmmm.
I have put the UAH temperature anomaly data together with the Mauna Loa CO2 differences on one time scale graph. And I do not obtain any relationship at all between CO2 and temperature. In my dataset (obtained from the obvious sources on internet) there is no 6-9 month time lag (not positive nor negative) between temperature evolution and CO2 concentration differences. Only around 1998 there is a coincidence between the two parameters.
If there would be a relationship then the plot of the one parameter agains the other would show some trend.
This is not so when CO2 increase is ploted against the temperature anomalies ! One obtain a blop of points spread over the whole area between min and max of the two parameters.
I have found sources where this relationship is claimed with 20 selected points ????!!!! I thought that a scientific claim should held for all observations ?!
I am very critical towards all claims made by the IPCC clerus that are supposed to be believed without any critisism or any scientific foundations. But manipulated and unclear claims as in the first italic sentence make a very negative impression on the scientific serieux of the IPCC critics.
Actually, it could be that both are wrong 🙂
This is a very interesting proposition. However, I think it is better not to
remark on the preliminary results of any scientific measurement published on the web. You mention an early result of a Mauna Load downtick in August 08, later corrected. People should know that there was a similar uptick in early results for October 08, later corrected. The fact that NASA and other US agencies publish so much data so quickly is a wonderful thing. The last thing that we want is for them to clam up to avoid criticism. For example, is is almost impossible to get any data from the CSIRO in Australia. In fact, there is a CSIRO operated CO2 monitoring station at Cape Grim in Tasmania. An earlier commenter asked about non-Mauna Loa CO2 measurements. I’d like to see the Cape Grim results published as quickly and publicly as the Mauna Loa results, but I think you will find it very hard to get access to them.
Lets congratulate the US Agencies for their work and wish that other countries agencies would be as open.
For previous work on this subject, please see
MacRae (January 2008)
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
I am still pondering my conclusions in my paper – as some critics have noted, there are two drivers of CO2 – the humanmade component and the natural component, and both can be having a significant effect – critics suggest the humanmade component is dominant. If Earth cools significantly, perhaps we’ll see.
Following my email to him, Roy Spencer also wrote on this subject at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/double-whammy-friday-roy-spencer-on-how-oceans-are-driving-co2/
Prior work, which I became aware of after writing my 2008 paper, includes:
Pieter Tans (Dec 2007)
http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/agenda.html
Tans noted the [dCO2/dt : Temperature] relationship but did not comment on the ~9 month lag of CO2.
Keeling et al (1995)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v375/n6533/abs/375666a0.html
Nature 375, 666 – 670 (22 June 1995); doi:10.1038/375666a0
Interannual extremes in the rate of rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide since 1980
C. D. Keeling*, T. P. Whorf*, M. Wahlen* & J. van der Plichtt†
*Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California 92093-0220, USA
†Center for Isotopic Research, University of Groningen, 9747 AG Groningen, The Netherlands
OBSERVATIONS of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, and at the South Pole over the past four decades show an approximate proportionality between the rising atmospheric concentrations and industrial CO2 emissions1. This proportionality, which is most apparent during the first 20 years of the records, was disturbed in the 1980s by a disproportionately high rate of rise of atmospheric CO2, followed after 1988 by a pronounced slowing down of the growth rate. To probe the causes of these changes, we examine here the changes expected from the variations in the rates of industrial CO2 emissions over this time2, and also from influences of climate such as El Niño events. We use the13C/12C ratio of atmospheric CO2 to distinguish the effects of interannual variations in biospheric and oceanic sources and sinks of carbon. We propose that the recent disproportionate rise and fall in CO2 growth rate were caused mainly by interannual variations in global air temperature (which altered both the terrestrial biospheric and the oceanic carbon sinks), and possibly also by precipitation. We suggest that the anomalous climate-induced rise in CO2 was partially masked by a slowing down in the growth rate of fossil-fuel combustion, and that the latter then exaggerated the subsequent climate-induced fall.
Kuo et al (1990)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v343/n6260/abs/343709a0.html
Nature 343, 709 – 714 (22 February 1990); doi:10.1038/343709a0
Coherence established between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature
Cynthia Kuo, Craig Lindberg & David J. Thomson
Mathematical Sciences Research Center, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, USA
The hypothesis that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is related to observable changes in the climate is tested using modern methods of time-series analysis. The results confirm that average global temperature is increasing, and that temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide are significantly correlated over the past thirty years. Changes in carbon dioxide content lag those in temperature by five months.
Best regards to all for the Holidays!
Allan
Shear unbelievable crap.
13C and 14C budgets proove its all wrong. O2/N2 data do the same. The sahel lost enormous fractions of biomass in the 70s/80s but still CO2 level rise and rise.
One should better stick here to pictures of weather stations. At least they are focused.
Anthony, correct “concentraion” by placing a “t” after the “a” in this scentence
(second line above the “Greening” map.
In short: A period with higher temperatures leads to higher CO2 rises/year and thus of course after some years higher CO2 concentraion in the atmosphere.
Regards,
Ron
I think I would like to refer here to a link relevant to CO2 I read recently:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
In it you will find compilations of CO2 measurements in various places and times.
I am not adopting the arguments of the link, just the data.
From previous discussions and readings and the plots in the link above I have come to the following tentative conclusions:
CO2 concentrations are as badly represented as temperatures and as depended on location as temperatures. People who do not accept that there can be one measure for temperature over the globe should not accept the CO2 measures either.
Let us see what is done:
For temperatures, the climate community has decided on the following algorithm: take high and low for the day , average it, take many stations and get a global average. Then find some time interval whose average is convenient and subtract from the global temperature and voila, the anomaly. This means that as an effect a two degree raise from -60 to -58 in Siberia will show as warming.
For CO2 it was a different school that took hold. They decided to find “stable” points, where updrafts,( more than 100ppm differences, see link) day and night variations ( more than 20ppm diffences) and seasonal variations( more than 20ppm differences) would be minimized , and use those numbers as world numbers, calibrating with icecore data and calling it “world CO2”.
Can you see the fallacy? to be consistent, either we should have 100 points measuring the temperature on a specific hour of the day on mountains and in the ocean, and no average world temperature, or we should do the same with CO2, measure high for the day, low for the day, average, and make a global average from many regions, and then define an anomaly on the same interval as the temperature anomaly in order to be consistent.
Now ice core temperatures are touted as the Lydian stone. Think where ice forms: either in and close to oceans, which are large sinks of CO2, or in huge areas of snow and ice where the only CO2 available is volcanic and geothermal . It is not representative of the vibrant live planet CO2.
Ferdinand in the link above argues that the oceans, which are 75% of the earth have isotropic CO2. I do not buy the argument. If one looks at the ocean/water temperatures http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst.html there are enormous differences between the tropics, temperate and north, and enormous seasonal variations during the year which will affect CO2 absorption and emission, and there is a lot of biological activity in seas and waters that also are involved. Until the new satellite measurements come in, we are blind on this since AIRS can only see CO2 up in the 5 km range.
New satellite http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7769619.stm.
AIRS has been useful, because it has shown that even at that height there is no homogenization of CO2, and it has shown how the planet breaths.
The data in the link provided above explain also the discrepancies of last century chemical measurements and the sanitized Mauna Loa etc measurements. Location, time of day and season make an enormous difference.
The siting of the most significant C02 measuring center on Mauna Loa is interesting. It’s not just that it is a volcano, but that it is the most active volcano in the world. Not only that, but vog production (the gritty poisonous discharge residents of the Big Island have to wipe off their car windows) has significantly increased in the past two years, so much so as to negatively affect health, agriculture, and real estate prices. Is the major, sustained uptick in vog related to the solar minimum? Maybe, maybe not. Whatever is causing it, it sucks. http://archives.starbulletin.com/2008/05/11/news/story08.html
I would not be surprised in the least if the difficulty the record keepers are having with this year’s figures was related to increased degassing on Mauna Loa. Again, an interesting place to put an instrument that could affect world history.
The AGWers will likely be able to poke holes in Beck’s work to their hearts’ content. What should happen as a result of his efforts, however, is that concerned parties should begin to measure C02 directly around the world. In the same spirit that Anthony’s Army is correcting faulty temperature recording, C02 measurements should be carefully taken at the local level — worldwide. We would be less easily manipulated if that were to happen on an ongoing level, it seems to me.
Correct to perform a regression between CO2 levels and temperature. Far too often time is used as a variable, as a proxy for CO2 levels.
However, the known physical relationship between CO2 and warming is that its proportional to log (CO2 concentration).
You need to do the regression against this, not against time. Well, you need to both, and see which gives the better fit.
The data does need adjustment to remove volcanic effects, and solar effects before performing the regression.
A while ago I came up with this interesting plot:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
This shows the 1-5 year cycles in both temperature (HADCRUT3) and CO2 – temperature clearly leads CO2 at this scale by about 9 months, as you suggest. But note that the CO2 range here is only 1ppm, a tiny fraction of the total change – here is the same CO2 change plotted against the (slightly smoothed) raw CO2 data:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/offset:375/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12
I saw Frank Lansner’s chart on icecap (and tried it out on my data since I have all these metrics on a monthly basis back to the 1850s.)
There is a strong correlation of temperature increase to a lagged CO2 response back to 1958 when CO2 first started getting measured on a monthly basis. The lag seems to vary somewhat but an average lag of 5 months seemed to be the best fit.
Here is the same chart going back to 1959 (for Hadcrut3 and the CO2 annual increase).
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/879/co2lagkz2.png
CO2 is still increasing in this chart. Temperature changes just result in slightly less CO2 increase or slightly more.
I heartily commend Frank’s focus on CO2/Temperature comparison. Following Nylo, the ocean surface temps are best compared with the seasonal signal in CO2 at Mauna Loa. Remember that this is a smoothed presentation. The daily fluctuation is on the order of 10ppm which is consistent with the AIRS data.
In otherwords, at Mauna Loa, the daily fluence of CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere impies a global daily flux, twilight to afternoon, of 80Gtons, or ten times the yearly anthropogenic contribution! Moreover, the seasonal signal is that of the SO surface temperature.
Unlike Beck’s data where CO2 is measured directly, CDIC at Mauna Loa dessicates the air by means of H2SO4 before measuring via IR. Beck’s work indicates this systematically understates CO2 by 20ppm.
Freeman Dyson is right. The state of the science is such that we don’t know enough to make any conclusions. The gaps in knowledge are enormous. Only a complete fool could develop sufficient hubris to declare that he knew what the climate is going to do over the next 100 years.
Some day soon, a response to Algore’s movie is going to show how stupid he and his followers have been. He will be a laughingstock for all time.
And “Hansen” will be the punchline for jokes (e.g. “that guy pulled a Hansen”).
just read this article in science daily and now i understand everything. It turns out that it was a drop in CO2 caused by a drop in human population that caused the LIA so that must mean we caused the warm period before that. Now that’s all arguments covered, so now we know for certain the LIA and MWP did not happen despite the history we all taught we knew but if they had happened it was our fault anyway so it does no matter. i am glad that is cleared up.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081218094551.htm
If the beneficial aspect of CO2 increases in a lineal manner and the warming effect of CO2 decreases logarithmically, then does it not makes sense that at some point CO2 itself becomes a negative feedback?
A few questions. If the measurements of CO2 at Mauna Loa have a significant anthropogenic component should we not see a drop resulting from the world wide economic slowdown? What drop should we expect? How can we distinguish that drop from the drop caused by a cooling ocean? If there is no significant drop does that not prove the proposition that reduction in CO2 emissions will have no effect?
It seems to me that the world wide recession if the first “experiment” that can test the opposing hypotheses.
Hi Anthony,
I am not a scientist and the equation for your graph is over my head. I desperately want to know how to read the equation as it related to the graph.
1979: CO2 growth (ppm/year) = 3,5 * Temp. anomaly (K) + 0,7
What is 3,5?
Is it suppose to be a constant and is it suppose to be 3.5?
What is (K)?
And what is 0,7?
Is it a constant, too?
Thanks for the help and anything else that you might share to help a lay person like me.
Jeff Wiita
A good post.
All of the commentary has been directed to CO2-global temperature relationships. It might be useful to consider the phenomenon of GW as a train travelling to some unknown destination. But what is the engine, and what is the caboose? To me, given the history of climate change, the answer is less significant than the result. I live in a cold climate – the temperature this morning outside my front door is -28C with a wind chill warning, so let the train to warmer climate proceed!
Of much greaater significance, to my mind, are the data presented about the greening of the Sahel, and its suggested relationship to increased global concentrations of CO2. Now there’s a welcome result from CO2 concentration increases!