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?
Anna V.
Maybe the most interesting thing about the measurements these days are their direction? The development? So if Mauna Loa has a bad location, still, if CO2 now “desides” to fall, we should see this in all locations i suppose?
Thanks, K.R. Frank
Frank. Lansner (09:51:21) :
Yes. I am not saying there is no information in the Mauna Loa etc measusurements. I am saying it is truncated information and not a candidate of a well sampled population.
Of course there is a meaning when it rises and when it falls, even if it only tells us that the oceans breath with the breath of temperature.
@ferdinand meeus
You write: “we agree on the following: temperature has a huge short-term impact on year by year CO2 increase rate. Where we disagree is if that also is the case for the long(er) term impact, that is the impact of temperature on several years to millennia.”
No, we don’t disagree as you think. I will return to this in my next writing.
You write: “Your formula implies that about half the increase in CO2 (the 0.95 constant) over the past decades is a constant (whatever the cause).”
I wrote: “Thus, the ‘constant’ of the equation should be a variable as it varies with time”
and as mentioned we have discussed the nature of these much slower changes in the ground level “long term trends”.
You know just as well as I, that temperature in the first half of th 20´ieth century changed just as much as in the second half of the 20´ieth century.
I wrote: “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?”
You see Engelbeen, the slow long term changes – that indeed is another and more complex case – cannot change the fact, that The short term changes are far to big for the flatness of the Antarctic CO2 curve to be true. Totally disregarded what effect are human etc.
Actually my CO2rise/year – UAHtemp connection seems to be underestimating the sensitivity. The same connection between CO2rise/year and HADcrut gives a factor not 3,5 but actually around 5… So lets say we have a temperature sensitivity in average 4.
Example. Not 50 but just 20 years with a temperature change of say 0,6 degrees gives a change of nearly 50 ppm using just the basic temperature dependence. It’s the “huge” Temperature sensitivity (as you call it) itself that reveals the total failure of the very flat Antarctic curves.
And yes! There are also in history many very BIG temperature changes which each of them shoud trigger BIG variation in CO2 levels. Unless temperature did not have that effect on CO2 levels in other centuries, but that’s absurd.
Just see the Maunder minumum MASSIVELY falling and later rising of temperatures on 1-2 degrees also over 20 years. And acording to the Antarctic curves, these huge changes in temperatures NEVER managed to get the CO2 level leave the 280-290ppm band I thousand years!!! Engelbeen, it IS impossible, face it. Antarctic curves are proven useless.
If you believe in the Antarctic curves Engelbeen, then explain why BIG temperature changes in history never change the totally flat CO2 curve?
No im not talking about the level of CO2 as result of temperature. No im talking about the total absence of big CO2 changes in connection with temperature changes. Hope it is now clear to you what i mean.
We spend lots of money measuring areas we know show CO2 outgasing (regardless of who or what causes it because the thing that measures “it” doesn’t care), yet we ignore measuring CO2 sinks. We know they exist but we never see the data. Maybe because humans don’t cause sinks? And if we can’t blame humans why study it, much less report it?
In other words, reporting flat measures or sinking measures is just as important in GW studies as the outgasses measures are. Why aren’t they reporting this? Why do some call them useless? It affects their bottom line research as much as the outgassing does so it should be part of the reporting, graphs and all.
@ferdinand meeus
You write: “A new equilibrium (at a higher CO2 level) can be reached, if the increase in atmospheric CO2 is sufficient to increase the uptake by the oceans and biosphere to the same levels as the continuous addition. But as the emissions show a constant increase, there is no new equilibrium in sight, despite a constant increasing atmospheric CO2 level (at 55% of the emissions).”
I believe this is written in connection with my writing earlier:
“the human influence could be much smaller than what you can imagine physically possible. Engelbeen, if humans never let out any CO2, and then suddenly let out 2ppm in the atmosphere, then of course you would see this CO2-boom in CO2 data. But this is not the case!
Humans lets out approximately the same amount of CO2 every year. Therefore its very likely that the biosphere many many years ago has adjusted for this, qrown bigger and thus capable of eating the extra ration of CO2 every year. So Engelbeen don’t say its physically impossible.”
So.. Yes, the changes from year to year could easier have some kind of effect on the CO2 level as you write: “as the emissions show a constant increase, there is no new equilibrium in sight”
This is 100% sound logic.
But if we only calculate possible human influence as merely difference in emission per year … … .. … then we have reduced effect of human influence to just a tiny fraction of what is normally considered by Global warming people.
Finally the long term trends. This I have hesitated to put in a formular because the nature of this is perhaps not quite clear yet to say the least!
The best clue of the nature of long term trends I know comes from this graphic showing CO2rise/year compared with HADRCUT, especially SEE THE GREEN GRAPHIC in the lower part:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/attachments/co2hadcrut.jpg
Long term trend: “Something” is eating the CO2 out of the atmosphere better in some periods than others. This “something” is symbolized with the green color in the trend graph (see link above). As mentioned, part of this “something” could be the size of the biospehere. The “Biosphere” then seems to have had minimum around 1977. And a clear rise from 1977 and forward. This is what we see in real world. We also see that the “biosphere” decreasing up til 1977.
Anna & tonyb:
I live in E. Tennessee and would be interested in taking measurements of CO2. I do live in a forest but do have a mountain/hill (1700ft) at back of my property (it is called a mt. on USGS maps). If you find sensors at a reasonable cost let me know.
Thanks Mike
I have asked for quotations from three companies. The first came in at over $1500 dollars but seems much more elaborate than we need.I will let you know if the other quotes are more reasonable. We don’t need to be accurate to 2ppm but we do need to ensure we are measuring co2 and not thinking we are measuring it as per the thread elsewhere-incidentally thanks for your kinds comment over there.
TonyB
Anna V,
I have the impression that you are comparing the problems of CO2 measurements too close to the problems involved with temperature measurements. But there are huge differences.
Over land near sources and sinks of CO2, you can find any level of CO2, depending of wind speed, sunlight, inversion, rain, fog,… Diurnal variations can go over 100 ppmv with low wind speeds. If you dig a hole in the ground and measure CO2 levels there, you can find over 1,000 ppmv, due to bacterial life which breaks down organic material. Changes in wind direction/speed can give changes of over 100 ppmv within 15 minutes. That is even worse than temperature measurements! Sources at 100 km away can be measured downwind…
Down to ground level the highest levels are found, with height the amounts and variations in amounts are leveling off and levels approach the Mauna Loa values. See the CO2 levels of Cabauw (Netherlands) for different intake heights:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/cabauw_day_week.jpg
Up to 200 m, less and less influence of the variability at ground level is seen and above 1,000 m, the hour by hour or even day by day variability is completely gone, with the exception of a small factor, which is the overall change caused by the seasons. See the CO2 profile from air flights here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/inversion_co2.jpg
Thus while at ground level over land the hour by hour (diurnal) variations are huge, that has little effect on global CO2 levels (“global” in this case 95% of the atmosperic weight content), as the local changes are only a tiny fraction of the total CO2 content of the total atmosphere.
A different point is the sum of all these local changes, if these are mixed into the bulk of the atmosphere. From different estimates we know (roughly) that about 90 GtC (about 43 ppmv) as CO2 is flowing in from the oceans during summer and about the same amount (slightly more) is flowing out in winter. For vegetation that is about 60 GtC taken away in summer and a little less coming back in winter. Because these flows are opposite to each other, the net effect at ground level (e.g. Barrow) is about +/- 8 ppmv over the seasons. At altitude (MLO, 3000 m) the effect is smaller and in the SH opposite and near absent.
What effect does that have on the hourly measurements?
If we take the largest influence of the seasonal changes as measured in Barrow: that is a change of 16 ppmv within a year or 0,04 ppmv per day or 0.002 ppmv per hour. Not even detectable with the best available techniques of today. Thus even the largest natural in/outflows of the atmosphere are not detectable in the bulk atmosphere in hour to hour or day by day measurements. Thus if you see a completely flat curve of CO2 measurements over a day, you are at the right place!
The human contribution is even so undetectable in hourly measurements: even if every part should stay in the atmosphere, the increase at 8 GtC/4 ppmv per year is undetectable in a day by day measurement.
Conclusion: never measure at places where huge hourly or day by day CO2 variations are seen, if you are interested in seasonal and/or global changes of CO2 in the atmosphere, because you are measuring mostly undefined local/regional sources and sinks of CO2, not what you are interested in.
Note: some insist that most of the influence of CO2 is in the lower meters of the atmosphere. If that was true, then the local/regional variations are of interest for the radiation balance. But the modtran program indicates that only 8% of the radiation absorption (including water vapor) takes place in the first 1,000 m of the atmosphere. A doubling of CO2 gives an extra absorption of 0.3 W/m2 for the first 1,000 m. That would give a theoretical increase of 0.1°C at ground level, hardly detectable in the general noise, if there is a real influence at all…
Dear Ferdinand,
I tend to agree with Richard Courtney that your mass balance argument fails.
We know that natural sub-annual variations in CO2 are huge and dwarf human emissions.
We also know that the only apparent signal in the detailed CO2 data is the ~9-month lag of CO2 after temperature. This is consistent with the ~600 year lag of CO2 after temperature in the ice core data (Different cycle lengths have different inherent lag times).
We have not not quantified accurately the factors that cause these large natural changes in atmospheric CO2, nor the interactions between them, nor the interactions between natural and humanmade changes.
It is possible that the observed annual increases in atmospheric CO2 are almost entirely natural and that humanmade emissions are practically irrelevant.
Best personal wishes for the New Year, Allan
Pamela,
Natural sinks are measured and reported as well. See e.g. the source/sink area’s of the oceans, where most important sources are near the equator and most important sinks are near the poles, especially the NE Atlantic:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtml
Over land there are a lot of ongoing research tests with continuous measurements from soil level to above canopea, but these are very difficult to interprete, as the CO2 level changes by fraction of meters and over the day/wind speed/rain/…. Here an example:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117991531/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
And have a view at the video of the facilities of Wageningen University:
http://www.climatexchange.nl/
@Mike Davis
Dear Mike,
one of the best handheld low-budget analysers with an accuracy of about 2,5% is the EXTECH EA80 indoor air quality meter. Cost about $750.
regards
Ernst
Ferdinand Engelbeen
Conclusion: never measure at places where huge hourly or day by day CO2 variations are seen, if you are interested in seasonal and/or global changes of CO2 in the atmosphere, because you are measuring mostly undefined local/regional sources and sinks of CO2, not what you are interested in.
I respectfully disagree . What we are interested in is global temperature. You know? The one that is rushing to the tipping point? CO2 is as important for the IPCC models as global temperature measurements.
There are enormous differences in temperatures everywhere within a day, within a season, between years, upwind, downwind etc. A method has been devised to integrate over so that an “average” can be defined. As a physicist, I do not see why one variable is differently treated than another one, in the complex system called climate, particularly one that has so huge societal implications.
I do not expect you to agree with me. Just to see that there is another point of view on the matter, and both points might be resolved once the new OCO satellite starts measuring, if they do not keep the data secret.
AnnaV
The trouble is that there are so many ingredients within the pot pourri of ‘climate change’ that are at best dubious (co2) and at worst wildly inacurate and pointless. Of these surely the one labelled ‘global temperatures’ is the most absurd yet most frequently referred to as some sort of definitive proof of unprecedented warming.
Vincent Greys document is one of the better ones to explain the background.
http://www.co2web.info/Gray_Global-Warming-Scam_2008.pdf
There were 100 weather stations worldwide in 1850- the majority wouldnt stand any sort of scrutiny. Callendar only examined some 300 in order to come up with his ‘man causes warming through co2’ document in 1938. The number has been up to 6000 and down to a thousand or so.
Global temperatures have far too many variables to be tracked correctly-unless only the same sites and instruntruments are used. When we all try and parse global temperature records to a fraction of a degree dating back to 1850 we get into the realms of fantasy.
It is interesting how using long national records that are known to be reliable-which arent that many-often gives different answers to the global temperatures dataset which I increasingly think is ‘manufactured’ to suit various purposes.
Incidentally I think the co2 analyser you found seems the best value-I can’t find it at all-can you give me a reference?
TonyB
I claim first use of the word ‘instruntruments’ Some might think it was merely a misspelling in my post above, but it was of course the clever creation of a new word to denote ‘falsified and useless instrumental information appertaining to climate change…”
Happy New year to everyone!
TonyB
Anna V,
Why would you run in the same (probably worse) problems as with temperature integration, if nature has done most of the CO2 integration for you? And if you accept the AIRS data (I have downloaded the monthly averages 2002-2004, but need the right program to open the compressed .tar file), the ground station and airplane flight data show the same (seasonal variable) levels of CO2 as the satellites, be it more accurate…
Happy New Year to you and all…
Allan,
Still have to answer your questions:
1. IF annual atmospheric CO2 declines in the coming years contemporaneous with global cooling (or soon thereafter), what does this prove, if anything?
If there was a huge decline (far) lower than the 3 ppmv/K as in my (and Pieter Tans) formula, that would prove that the formula underestimates the influence of temperature on CO2 levels
2. IF annual atmospheric CO2 continues to increase in the coming years contemporaneous with significant global cooling, what does this prove, if anything?
That the strong reaction as supposed by Beck’s historical data doesn’t exist. In fact the reaction is already late, as after the peak of 1942, the CO2 levels dropped within 7 years to “normal”, now we are already 10 years after the 1998 peak…
3. If CO2 drives temperature as the IPCC alleges, how is it that the only signal apparent in the data is that CO2 lags temperature by ~9 months? See
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
The action of temperature on CO2 levels doesn’t say anything about the action of CO2 on temperature. Both are at different time scales, where any (theoretical) influence of CO2 need to change the ocean temperatures over a sufficient long period (10-30 years), to be visible in the statistics.
4. Is the aforementioned ~9 month lag in CO2 after temperature consistent with the ~600 year lag in CO2 after temperature observed in ice core data?
Yes, the first reaction is the direct effect of temperature on the upper ocean layer and vegetation growth. Reactions on longer time frames (about 50 years LIA, 600 years glacial-interglacial, many thousands of years interglacial-glacial) involves (deep) ocean temperatures, ocean current changes, vegetation/land ice area changes,…
Further, about the mass balance:
We know that natural sub-annual variations in CO2 are huge and dwarf human emissions.
Not that much. While the individual flows are relative huge, the fact that oceans and vegetation are each opposite makes that the influence in the atmosphere is resticted: 16 ppmv in Barrow, 8 ppmv at MLO, 2 ppmv at the south pole. Global average over the latitudes and altitudes is about 5 ppmv or 10 GtC variation over the seasons. The current emissions are around 8 GtC/yr, thus of the same order. What rests in the atmosphere is about 4 GtC/yr.
There is not the slightest influence of any natural cycle, as long as the inflows are equal to the outflows, which is nearly the case: the variation in net sink rate (0.5-3.5 GtC) over a year is less than the increase measured in the atmosphere…
And use simple math: If you add 8 units of any kind per time unit to any reservoir (fountain, lake, atmosphere), and you see that the reservoir increases with 4 units per time unit, no matter how much is cycling through the system in and out, any net addition by all cycles together simply is impossible…
Dear Frank,
Again a lot of questions to reply to. In order of appearance, the most important, each for a different message…
Ferdinand, we know that a greener area might influence CO2 measurements so that CO2 got TOO LOW and not too high… So continous measurements in Poona around 420 ppm in the 1940´ies, what logic can be used to say these measurement where all 120 ppm too high? – And not to low?
Depends of what time of the day (and in what season) samples were taken: at night and mornings, the highest levels are found, as at night plants and soil bacteria respire CO2 and wind speeds are often low, thus all CO2 of all sources (including human sources) accumulate, typically with over 100 ppmv compared to background. During the day, although there is more uptake through photosynthesis, more turbulence happens either by increased wind speed or by increased soil heating by the sun or both. In these cases the near ground CO2 is more readily mixed with higher (“background”) air layers and the average over a day is biased to higher values. This was observed by Keeling already in 1955 midst of Big Sur state park, California. Reason why he was looking for better places to measure CO2:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/diurnal.jpg
As he measured the d13C levels of the same flask samples, he could know the sources: vegetation respiration at night, better mixing during the day.
And see the difference between Diekirch (not a typical rural area, but with a lot of forests in the valley) and Mauna Loa in modern times: during the day with sufficient wind speed, the Diekirch data are around the MLO values of the same days in July:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/diekirch_diurnal.jpg
and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2006_hr_week.jpg
Thus I wouldn’t use any data from any place on earth where huge diurnal or day by day variations are seen, as that points (in general) to local sources/sinks and/or problems with sampling and/or handling and/or measurement accuracy.
The total variability (if you add all estimated flows together) over the seasons is about 75 ppmv in halve a year or less than 1 ppmv/day. Anything else is noise…
Should I reject the Poona, or even the Spitsbergen data (which show an average of 291 ppmv in 1936), if the average was around 300 ppmv in 1940?
Yes, as my objective criterium is that the variability over a day or consecutive days may not be more than a few ppmv in the current period (0.25 ppmv at MLO!), or let’s say +/- 10 ppmv for pre-Mauna Loa data, because of the inaccuracy of the methods used and the more elaborate sampling and handling.
Main question number 2:
I wrote: “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?”
You see Engelbeen, the slow long term changes – that indeed is another and more complex case – cannot change the fact, that The short term changes are far to big for the flatness of the Antarctic CO2 curve to be true. Totally disregarded what effect are human etc.
To begin with, the ice cores are not the only indication that CO2 levels were not that much varying in pre-industrial times. Coralline sponges are an indication of d13C levels over some 600 years. The first 400 years show little variation, only the effect caused by the temperature changes, including the LIA. From 1830 on we see a faster and faster decline, as well as in the atmosphere as in the upper oceans. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
An addition of any huge amount of any source should give a change in d13C of the atmosphere, as deep ocean CO2 is richer in d13C than the atmosphere. On the other hand, increased plant uptake increases d13C, while more decay decreases d13C of the atmosphere.
Thus two completely independent observations say that your formula doesn’t hold for the periods before 1940. The coralline sponges also indicate that your formula doesn’t hold for the period after 1940, as increased plant uptake + increased deep ocean release of CO2 (the only other fast source of huge quantities of CO2) both should increase the d13C level of the atmosphere and the upper ocean waters.
Why doesn’t match your formula with the observations? Your formula attributes a large part of the trend of CO2 over time to temperature changes, while the d13C changes show that a large part (if not all) of the increase in the atmosphere/upper oceans is from human emissions [1]. For the d13C levels of several parts of the carbon cycle see:
http://homepage.mac.com/uriarte/carbon13.html
There are only two sources of low d13C on earth: fossil fuels and vegetation decay, but as the biosphere is an overall carbon sink, thus specifically a 12C sink, it can’t be a 13C sink.
Other sources: volcanic, carbonate rock weathering, (deep) ocean upwelling,… are richer in 13C than the atmosphere.
Thus at one side we see a huge short term influence of temperature on CO2 variability, but conflicting results for longer term CO2 changes.
That is in fact resolved by our formula: The huge influence of temperature on CO2 increase speed still holds, but is limited in time, while the trend itself is completely attributed to the emissions:
dCO2(full period, ppmv) = 3 * dT (full period, K) + 0.55 * emissions (accumulated over the full period, ppmv)
This formula holds for any “full” period in time over the past few years to one million years. It holds for 50 years of CO2 increase at MLO, for 150 years of temperature/ice core data, for 600 years of coralline sponges…
Thus instead of asking why the ice core CO2 trend is “impossibly” flat, better ask why your formula conflicts with two different observations, which since a decade are proven to be reasonable accurate and robust (ice cores) to accurate, robust and very detailed (coralline sponges, resolution 2-4 years)…
Thus if my formula holds, there is no conflict at all, and a 0.8°C cooling during the LIA gives a drop of about 6 ppmv (which is observed in the ice cores, with a 50 years lag), the increase of 1°C in the period 1850-current gives ~8 ppmv increase, the rest is from the emissions, which nicely fit the curve with an incredible straightforward ratio:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
Compare that to the temperature-CO2 increase ratio:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_1900_2004.jpg
Where a temperature change of halve the full scale has little effect (3 ppmv/°C) compared to the full scale (80 ppmv/°C).
Which process do you think is more responsible for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Even so, fast, huge variations of CO2 increase rate, around the trend caused by human emissions are visible and caused by the huge near-momentary influence of temperature variations. But these are limited in time, as a new equilibrium (3 ppmv/°C) is reached fast, longer periods of increased or decreased temperature will have more influence (8 ppmv/°C), but still limited.
——————-
[1] The decrease of d13C in the atmosphere is about 1/3th of what can be calculated, if all human CO2 would stay in the atmosphere. But as about 150 GtC as CO2 over the seasons is exchanged between atmosphere and biosphere/oceans, a huge part (near 20%) of the “human” CO2 is replaced by “natural” CO2 each year, thus removing a part of the human d13C fingerprint.
TonyB
I agree that global temperature is a dubious measure. On the other hand, with the advent of satellite measurements there can be a meaning because there can be a well defined integration. It is hard to see how one could study temperatures the way one studies CO2 currently: specific locations where they are stable at specific times of day . That is why I am looking forward to OCO data.
I will look for the detector again. I had found it through a Yahoo search for CO2 detectors.
Anna V
Today I drove seven miles from our seaside town to another sea side town passing over a hill 500 feet high. The temperature varied in that short distance thfrom 1.5 to 6.5 degree C
How can that have any meaning to anybody-tomorrow if the wind is in a different direction the temperature profile might have reversed. I think the global temperature is bad enough but when someone appends the phrase …”to 1850″ Then I start to laugh uncontrollably.
tonyB
TonyB
http://www.gesensing.com/products/telaire7000s.htm?bc=bc_ge_telaire
http://www.eseasongear.com/cppco2mocap.html
I think though that to be effective, somebody with some knowledge of these devices should be advising us. It might be possible to order from China if one knew what was what.
Here is a cheap one but inaccurate, 50ppm:
http://www.globalspec.com/FeaturedProducts/Detail/ATIAirtestTechnologies/PM2200_Desktop_CO2_Temp_RH_only_16900/77336/0
Anna V
It seems to be for indoors use. Keeling used an analyser intended for indoor use for his first readings and look where we ended up!
Yes we need some assistance-I think Ernst Becks suggestion was probably the best one but its way too expensive to expect others to buy so we can ensure we can have a genuine monitoring system that has any validity.
I will keep looking-I am awaiting a couple more quotes but I expect the holidays have got in the way of their replies.
TonyB
TonyB
It is too much trouble finding this thread. It is on page three now. Lets agree to talk, even OT, on the most recent entries, if there is any news on this CO2 detector search. I check them even if I may not be responding.
anna
TonyB
There is an interesting O2 thread over at
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=102&sid=ed9c80d78cc81f206edba9ba87db655e