UPDATE: I received a reply tonight from Pieter Tans, who is the manager for the MLO data, it is another error in presenting the data, similar to what happened with GISS in October, a monthly data value was carried over. In this case, November to December. – Anthony
From: “Pieter Tans” <Pieter.Tans@xxxxx.xxx>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 7:24 PM
To: “Anthony Watts ” <awatts@xxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: Questions on currently posted 2008 MLO data
> Anthony,
>
> The posted December figure is an error. It will probably be fixed
> tomorrow. The error does not appear on my computer. Our web site is
> run by a separate server dedicated to communicate outside the firewall.
> At this moment I don’t know why it repeated the November value for December.
>
> Sorry about this mishap.
>
> Pieter Tans
The year end CO2 data for the Mauna Loa Observatory is out, and it shows that the trend of Co2 increase has slowed. This year saw the lowest increase in the annual mean growth rate ever in the Mauna Loa Co2 Record: 0.24 parts per million.
Whether this is real, a data error, or something else remains to be seen. As we’ve learned previously, the Mauna Loa record is not infallible and can be adjusted post facto. To MLO’s credit, they have been responsive to queries from myself and others, and have pledged to make improvements to the process. They now have a change log, but there is no mention of the December 2008 data in it.
Here is the graph recently posted by MLO. Notice the two dips in 2008.
The blue line represents the mean value, while the red line is the monthly values. Note that the red line shows seasonal variance related to earth’s own processes that emit and absorb CO2. In the case of the 2008 value of 0.24 ppm/yr it comes on the heels of 2007’s strong year of 2.14 ppm/yr which by itself isn’t that remarkable, being only the seventh highest year in the record.
What is interesting though is the correlation of lower CO2 to a cooler 2008, suggesting that natural mechanisms, particularly the oceans, played a role in the the lower Co2 value for 2008. There are also other likely drivers of this change. For the layman reader, this is essentially the “soda pop effect”. As anyone knows, warm soda pop tends to ‘fizz’ vigorously, while cold soda pop is more tame. This is because colder water can absorb more Co2 than warmer water, and warmer water releases it more easily, especially when agitated. Lesson here, and citing from experience; don’t leave a 12 pack of Coke in your car on a hot summer day. 😉
Here is a graph of Carbon Dioxide solubility in water versus temperature:
Here is the entire annual mean growth rate MLO data set:
year ppm/yr
1959 0.95
1960 0.51
1961 0.95
1962 0.69
1963 0.73
1964 0.29
1965 0.98
1966 1.23
1967 0.75
1968 1.02
1969 1.34
1970 1.02
1971 0.82
1972 1.76
1973 1.18
1974 0.78
1975 1.10
1976 0.91
1977 2.09
1978 1.31
1979 1.68
1980 1.80
1981 1.43
1982 0.72
1983 2.16
1984 1.37
1985 1.24
1986 1.51
1987 2.33
1988 2.09
1989 1.27
1990 1.31
1991 1.02
1992 0.43
1993 1.35
1994 1.90
1995 1.98
1996 1.19
1997 1.96
1998 2.93
1999 0.94
2000 1.74
2001 1.59
2002 2.56
2003 2.25
2004 1.62
2005 2.53
2006 1.72
2007 2.14
2008 0.24
Here a copy of the CO2 values of the last three months:
| Month | Mean | Interpolated | Trend(seasonally corrected) |
| 2008 10 | 382.98 | 382.98 | 386.34 |
| 2008 11 | 384.11 | 384.11 | 386.19 |
| 2008 12 | 384.11 | 384.11 | 385.03 |
Source data from MLO is here
Note the identical months of November and December. It could be a GISS October2008 kind of carryover error, it could also be real. The global values for December 2008 are not yet out. Mauna Loa is only one of many CO2 reporting stations.
If the data is real, there is a dead stop in the monthly numbers, which results, when seasonally corrected, in a considerable decrease, not seen in previous Decembers through the entire record.
As MLO points out:
“The last year of data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks.”
As I previously mentioned, some reasons could be cooling of oceans. In particular the Pacific where we’ve had a La Nina event. See this guest post from Dr. Roy Spencer on how the oceans could be driving the observed Co2 changes. The other possibility is the global economic crisis. This has led to lowered consumption of fossil fuels, particularly gasoline, which saw a significant drop in miles driven this past year due to high prices and other economic uncertainties.
Most probably it is a combination of events or possibly an error. Stay tuned.
h/t to Werner Weber and many other people who notified me
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I think I’ll bet for a correction soon.
Another circumstantial evidence/cue is the December number(s) for global CO2 a bit further down on the page (trend in opposite direction). Both could be wrong, BTW. We’ll wait and see.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
Another layman here who is deeply interested but who admits that a lot of this debate is beyond his immediate comprehension.
Perhaps a comparative study between the Mauna Loa site and the Australian Cape Grim site run by our CSIRO would turn up some interesting comparisons between the CO2 contribution or CO2 sink originating in the Southern Ocean.
To my totally untrained eye it seems that there was a considerable rise in CO2 levels measured by Cape Grim during the 1998 El Nino event.
Cape Grim is on the north west corner of the island state of Tasmania at lat. 40 degrees 41 minutes south and therefore well down in the Southern Ocean.
There are no land masses upwind of this station until the South American continent which is well over 10,000 kms to the west as even South Africa is well north of the roaring forties latitude that Cape Grim is located on.
The Cape Grim station has been operational since 1976 and it has been collecting flask CO2 samples for analysis since that time.
The last time I looked the global CO2 number didn’t have the December data.
Tom in cooler than I like Florida (13:22:48) :
[snip – enough of this – Anthony]
Dear Anthony,
I want to use a few lines to spekulate, what an actual measured drop in the atmospheric CO2-concentration would mean . .
Well, as the “lifetime” of a CO2-molecule is about 5 years and we still burn coal, a real drop in CO2 could only mean, that the anthropogenic carbon-hypothesis is wrong and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is driven by the sea temperature (going down since a few years . .). I ask this question for some time now:
How can we know that the rise is purely/mainly anthropogenic?
The rise of the C12/C13-ratio and the rise of near surface sea water CO2-concentration are not valid answers, since they would also rise if the domination cause of the athmospheric increase would be a deep sea warming.
All the best regards,
LoN
I’m with Ric. Looks like a simple case of mis-handled missing data point.
The comments that this month’s data should get closely reexamined because they are unexpected have neglected to mention that reexamination done for that reason will skew the results. If adjustments are made only when the results are unexpected, errors in expected results will tend to be overlooked. Errors should be corrected, but does the methodology have predefined means to handle positive and negative errors?
La Nina getting stronger: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.1.9.2009.gif
Each spring, when the Northern Hemisphere’s vegetation awakens from the dormancy of winter and begins to grow again, it removes enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reduce the air’s CO2 content by several parts per million. Then, in the fall, when much of this vegetation dies and decays, it releases huge quantities of carbon dioxide back to the atmosphere, raising the air’s CO2 content by a small amount. Together, these two phenomena produce a seasonal oscillation that is superimposed upon the yearly incremental rise in the air’s mean CO2 concentration; and the greater the yearly growth of the planet’s vegetation, the greater are the yearly down- and up-swings in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Consequently, the amplitude of the atmosphere’s seasonal CO2 oscillation serves as a good relative measure of the planet’s total vegetative productivity in any given year.
While the size of this seasonal oscillation has increased over the last 30 years or so – a signature of increased CO2 fertilisation of plants, what we see in the last couple of years isn’t an increase in this seasonal oscillation. It appears to be a lessening of the winter increase.
It’s not obvious why less CO2 would be emitted in winter. I don’t buy the decreased CO2 emissions due to the economic crisis argument. No global metrics are showing a decrease in energy consumption and if anything we have seen a shift toward cheaper and more ‘carbon intensive’ coal.
The only explanation I can come up with is more absorption by cooler oceans, but the effect is suprisingly large.
I had a quick look at the Mauna Loa Observatory change log linked in the original post. I don’t have the knowledge to make an assessment of its content, but the simple act of publicly documenting changes to the record dramatically enhances the credibility of that record. I’m sure that documenting changes to a “single source” collection record is much, much simpler than documenting changes to the various surface temperature records, but that of course doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done. Credibility is a hard thing to create and an easy thing to lose, but not attempting to create it in the first place is a straightforward recipe for utter failure.
Surely the keepers of the various published surface temperature records can understand this?
OA
New Study Doesn’t Support Climate Models (But You’ll Never Hear About It)
January 11th, 2009
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/new-study-doesn%e2%80%99t-support-climate-models-but-you%e2%80%99ll-never-hear-about-it/
Dr. Spencer says:
“For instance, a paper I recently submitted to Geophysical Research Letters was very rapidly rejected based upon only one reviewer who was asked to review that paper. (I have never heard of a paper’s fate being left up to a single reviewer, unless no other reviewers could be found, which clearly was not the case in my situation). That reviewer was quite hostile to our satellite-based results, which implied the climate models were wrong in their cloud feedbacks.”
————————————————————-
Senator Boxer was apparently too busy with the magnifient debt-creation stimulus package the Congress is working on, to burden my great grandchildren with insurmoutable debt, when they attain the age to be productive and are taxed to provide for the maintainance of the giant cesspool of waste called the Beltway. Otherwise, the Senator would have been happy to review a scientific work, I am sure.
CO2 levels are decreasing as we get closer to Obama taking office. It’s simple, it’s the Obama effect.
Corrections: magnificent; insurmountable; maintenance
Mr. Sowell, not to pick at straws or anything…
” …With respect, actually there is data from EIA to support a rather small decrease in mileage driven in the U.S. in 2008, compared to 2007. The reduction was small, approximately 3 or 4 percent”
As a frequent visitor to WUWT and CA, I am more than a little bit leery of statistical claims without documentation. A 3-4% result could be arguably within the margin of error for the poll.
Ed Scott says:
To a first approximation, all scientists believe that they have been screwed in some way by the editorial process when their paper gets rejected. See, for example, here for the complaints of a scientist with conventional views on AGW who submitted a comment on a paper that argued for a low climate sensitivity. One should generally take these complaints with a grain of salt.
Well, most economists believe that the time to tighten the federal government belt is not when the economy is in what may be the worst freefall since the Great Depression and the federal government is the only entity that can take up some of the slack. Of course, the fact that we spent the last 8 years building up additional debt after having erased the deficit during the Clinton years is clearly a lost opportunity.
The last time we got all excited like this the explanation was that Mauna Loa had gone through a couple of weeks at the end of the month (IIRC) when they weren’t able to get good readings. As a result they waited until they had a couple of weeks data the next month, and then they went back and infilled, thus bringing the number Up, considerably.
It seems likely we’ll see something similar this time. However, couldn’t we just give the good Dr. a call, and see if this is the track we’re on?
REPLY: I sent an email earlier today, no reply yet. – Anthony
DaveM –
EIA’s data isn’t from polls. They take data from sales and other tax data as collected by the federal government.
A quick rundown on statistical “error” of the tyoe you are talking about is sampling error (as opposed to some of the othe types of statistical errors discussed here). A ~3% error would be for a population of ~1000. Each factor of 10 decreases that error (i.e., a 10000 sample size would have a 2% error). Now – that applies to “uniform” populations (say, red and black balls drawn from a jar). In non-uniform pops, the 3% error that is often bandied about is a load of hooie. Much more work is required to come up with errors when your random sample comes from the human jar…
I should mention that the 1000/3% is for bery large base populations of red/black balls (as an approximation for the human jar). For smaller base pops, sampling theory also applies, and gives different results. However, my basic premise is that EIA is not sampling, and although there is errors associated with that sort of data collection, they will be different than those found with sampling theory.
G Alston (13:27:51). Thanks for that Pravda link. Very balanced; and very interesting material.
Joel –
Having reviewed papers, I have to agree with Dr. Spencer. Asking for only one reviewer is not common. For an AGU based publication, I would also be shocked.
Gov’t spending to get us out of a recession is a Keynsian approach. And I believe even Keynes wanted it to be limited. When you get too much spending (and the pre-requisite printing of money) by gov’t, you get inflation, and perhaps hyperinflation (see Weimer Germany and the wheel barrow of money).
Other economic theorists (ie, Chicago School) would recommend slashing corporate taxes to stimulate growth, but then again, what would that do? Its not like businesses efforts have ever led to any economic growth. Gov’t is always the grower of economies! Just ask the Soviets!
Good slapdown of the last eight years of overspending. Like you, I have complete confidence that the current congress and Pres. Obama will be completely restrained…
The link to “The year end CO2 data for the Mauna Loa Observatory” that Anthony supplied at the top of this post, also has a chart for the Global Monthly Mean CO2 levels with a table that shows the Global Average Annual Mean Growth Rate for 2008 to be 1.82. (Scroll down for the chart and table). Since this Global number is way more than the Mauna Loa .24, the Mauna Loa number is probably an error. But even if its not an error, the Mauna Loa number is not very significant since the global number doesn’t support the basic premise of the post.
Anthony,
That plot and the conclusion that you draw in terms of the year-over-year rise in CO2 doesn’t pass the smell test in my view. For one thing, you get a very different result if you use November 2007 to November 2008 instead of Dec 2007 to Dec 2008 to compute the year-on-year rise. For another, it makes no sense that they report the mean value but not the monthly value.
I’ll bet you dollars-to-donuts that the person updating the data set at NOAA accidentally put the value that belongs in the Dec. 2008 monthly column into the “mean” column instead. That would explain the lack of a monthly value, it would be at about the place one would explect the Dec. 2008 monthly value to be, and it would explain the extreme glitch in the “mean value”.
So, you heard it from me first…Tomorrow, we will be seeing a correction to that data.
REPLY: I’ve never figured out how to collect or pay on a dollars to donuts bet. It’s always confusing, who sends what? 😉
You may very well be right and if so, it will be the second time in the last 4 months that such an error has caused data for the public release to be incorrect. – Anthony
[Okay, maybe not first anymore! I see Kum Dollison is thinking along similar lines.]
Joel Shore (19:05:27) :
“To a first approximation, all scientists believe that they have been screwed in some way by the editorial process when their paper gets rejected. See, for example, here for the complaints of a scientist with conventional views on AGW who submitted a comment on a paper that argued for a low climate sensitivity. One should generally take these complaints with a grain of salt.”
Could you give us your opinion on this paper?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090109115047.htm