I’ve been doing some more than usual research as of late to answer for myself a specific question about CO2 respiration and the amount of man-made CO2 that is reatined versus naturally generated CO2. In doing so I’ve been in some discussion with some people I share an email list with.
One of them pointed out this ESRL (Earth Systems Research Laboratory) animation to me. I immediately found it intriguing because of the disparity between hemispheres:
CO2 (C13) January 1996 to December, 2007
From ESRL:
This movie shows the latitude distribution (from south-to-north) of average monthly values derived from the GLOBALVIEW extended records. Cyan circles are average monthly values from sampling locations thought to be regionally representative; pluses are average values from locations thought to be influenced by local sources and sinks. A smooth curve is fitted to the representative measurements when sufficient data exist.
Isotopic measurements from NOAA air samples are made by the University of Colorado (CU), Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), Stable Isotope Laboratory (SIL).
They caution that this is a derived product, (due to processing, smoothing etc) and does no longer represent raw data on CO2C13, along with other caveats such as this:
These and other measurements have been widely used to constrain atmospheric models that derive plausible source/sink scenarios. Serious obstacles to this approach are the paucity of sampling sites and the lack of temporal continuity among observations from different locations. Consequently, there is the potential for models to misinterpret these spatial and temporal gaps resulting in derived source/sink scenarios that are unduly influenced by the sampling distribution. GLOBALVIEW-CO213 is an attempt to address these issues of temporal discontinuity and data sparseness and is a tool intended for use in carbon cycle modeling.
But still, it is quite informative. Here is a map of the ESRL station distribution. Not all of them are CO2 surface monitoring stations.
Note how the southern hemisphere’s (90S to EQ)CO2C13 content remains nearly steady over the 12 year period, while the northern hemisphere shows major seasonal variation. The greatest variation is at the northernmost latitude, with data that likely comes from the Alert, Nunavut, Canada and the Ny-Alesund, Svalbard ESRL monitoring station.
You can see by the seasonal variation in the movie that when it is warmer, more CO2C13 is being released into the atmosphere, when it is colder, more CO2 C13 is taken out. It demonstrates a short term linkage between CO2 and temperature. While the “paucity of sampling” in the Southern Hemisphere is evident from the map, I find it curious that there is virtually no seasonal variation there, compared to the dance of the datapoints north of the equator, the ones south of the equator are wallflowers.
h/t to Allan Siddons
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Hi,
Isn’t co2 freezing (−78.5 degC) , forming tonns of dry ice on the ground down there during the winter? 🙂
-pmd
“”” George, you’re not getting the essential point about atmospheric residence times. The residence time of individual water molecules in the atmosphere is small and therefore the atmospheric water vapour concentration comes rather quickly to equilibrium defined by the local atmospheric temperature and pressure. In other words the fact that water molecules have a short residence time in the atmosphere means that the atmospheric water vapour content is locally “set” by the atmospheric temperature and pressure. “””
Well Foinavon, you seem to not be getting the point that there is no “essential point about atmospheric residence times.”
Residence time is a last gasp desperation to shore up a failed thesis that CO2 can cause runaway manmade global warming. ‘We’ve already put so much manmade CO2 (which is special) in the atmosphere that even if we all stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow it is too late and the temperature will rise forever. ‘ Have you seen those catastrophe claims trotted out to the American public.
And to justify these 1000 year residence times, they talk about the weathering or rocks. Mother nature’s growth cycle is going to drop the CO2 by 6ppm in four months, and then she’s going to quit for the day, and we’ll have to wait for some rocks to take out the rest.
Hello! earth to humans; we only have to get down to 280 ppm; how about 250 for a nice round number, that worked for countless thousands of years without upsetting Michael Mann. We aren’t shooting for zero, so we can forget about the rocks.
Whatever heating may have happened and possibly be caused by ‘greenhouse gases’ such as water vapor, CO2 and CH4, or O3, etc, has not been affected one whit, by whatever “residence time” any one or all of those species may have to remove the last molecule of it from the atmosphere.
The only thing that is involved in the molecular absorption process of thermal IR radiation, is how many of those molecules are in the atmosphere at the time that the radiation is there and avaiable to be intercepted. It doesn’t matter if the coach runs the ozone molecule off the field as soon as it captures its photon and transfers the energy to the rest of the atmospheric teram; and replaces it with another identical molecule; or whether he leaves the same one out there to grab another photon. the only thing that counts is how many are there at any time.
So residence time is a total red herring and has nothing to do with atmospheric warming.
Both water vapor, and carbon dioxide are permanent components of earth’s atmosphere (in human time scales), and water vapor is there in quantities that make the CO2 amount negligible in comparison, and the water vapor is far more efficient in warming the atmosphere than CO2 will ever be or has ever been.
It isn’t CO2 that warms planet earth up from its orbital equilibrium black body temperature; it is water vapor.
And how long it takes for all of a ghg to vanish once humans stop emitting it is totally irrelevent to the problem. Residence time is just a smokescreen to make CO2 seem important; which it isn’t; except for plant (food) growth.
Some 20% of present world food supplies can only be explained with the inclusion of that extra 100 ppm of CO2, which is all emitted by human beings driving SUVs.
So which 1.2 billion of the world’s population would you choose to eliminate so that we can get back down to 280 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere ?
I can’t believe all the totally wasted effort to prove that some CO2 molecule found somewhere up in the earth’s atmosphere, was actually exhaled by a particular person here on earth, and needs to be replaced by one that was emitted by something wonderful and natural, like a lightning strike ignited forest fire in Australia.
And how about this little jewel of wisdom; “”While atmospheric water vapour concentrations drop after volcanic eruptions (response to cooling atmosphere) “”
Now who’d a thunk it; a mountain blows its top, driving an enormous amount of thermal energy from the earth’s interior into the atmosphere, and the atmosphere responds to all that extra energy by cooling down. Now there’s a trick for you. So the colder atmosphere responds by raining so it removes some pesky water vapor from the atmosphere.
So perhaps we should fire that high school teacher who tried to teach us that the dust and ash particles from that eruption acted as substrates for water vapor molecules to condense on, to form water droplets and ice crystals; which then formed up into clouds; which raised the local albedo of earth, reflecting sunlight back into space; and then those clouds blocked even more sunlight from reaching the ground so it got dark and cold underneath, so the ground cooled down due to lack of solar energy reaching there. Wow! what an idiot she turned out to be with that yarn.
Now it’s all clear; the hot Volcano cools the air; the relative humidity goes up till it’s over 100%, and then it rains. Hey I finally learned something !
George
“”” Chris V. (20:16:55) :
George E. Smith (16:52:53) :
Why do you find dew on the grass on summer mornings?
I think that demonstrates that water vapor concentrations are a feedback to atmospheric temperatures (even though water vapor is a GHG). “””
Maybe because at my place, we don’t have the sun warming the ground during the night time, so it cools down to where water droplets can nucleate on the grass leaves. But a foot above the ground we don’t have any grass leaves for water to condense on (not on my lawn), so it doesn’t condense there. Same thing happens in my shower in the morning, except the dew is on the mirror instead (no grass in my bathroom to form on).
Thanks for the physics lesson on the dynamics of evaporation.
So the residence time of a CO2 molecule is a millisecond when it is in a coke bottle; but when it gets up in the ionosphere it may have a residence time of a million years.
So is the man made global warming due to fossil fuel CO2 in a can of coke more dangerous than the global warming due to a million year lived CO2 specimen in the ionosphere; that maybe was emitted originally by a polar bear panting in an ice free arctic ocean.
And no; your little Lawn dew question doesn’t have anything to do with “feedback” ; it is merely a demonstration of a physical property of H2O, and you can find tables of that property in any CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. It’s on pages D-110, 111 in my 1967-68 48th edition.
George
“Gary, are you being seduced by the capital letters?”
No, I’m seduced by clarity, acheivement, perspicuity, elegance of manner, intellectual discipline, fearless integrity and yes, seeing my feeble thoughts seconded by my betters.
George E. Smith (09:47:26)
O.K. George, fair enough. You want to talk politics again. But this really is a straightforward science issue, and you can be sure that scientists and the scientific advisors that inform policymakers, understand the simple evidence that water vapour concentrations come rather quickly to equilibrium with the local atmospheric temperature and pressure, and that responsive changes in water vapour concentrations act as an amplifier to any primary factors that affect atmospheric temperature. That’s what the evidence indicates. The politics is another matter altogether!
George, it’s fun to use sarcasm on blogs, I do agree (we Brits quite like sarcasm!). But if we’re considering science we really should address that properly:
e.g.:
Brian J. Soden et al. (2002) Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor Science 296, 727 – 730
“The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in June of 1991 resulted in unprecedented observations of both radiative forcing from volcanic aerosols as well as the climate system’s response to this forcing. Satellite observations confirm the decrease in solar heating due to Mount Pinatubo aerosols (20-22), which led to a global cooling of the lower troposphere (23, 24). Associated with this cooling was a reduction in the global water vapor concentrations, which closely tracked the decrease in temperature (25). ”
So yes, volcanic eruptions do cause the atmosphere to cool (and the surface temperature), and the atmosphere dries a tad in response. This is pretty basic stuff. Incidentally, I wouldn’t be too hard on your high school teacher. She gave a pretty decent explanation (even if not quite right) and the main thing for a schoolteacher is to stimulate the interest of the urchins in her charge, which she evidently did in your case!
Michael D Smith (18:30:58) :
http://rigo.altervista.org/papers/engineering_procedure.pdf
Great Mike. Ridicule my statistics understanding, then send me to a foreign language engineering website ;~D
“volcanic eruptions do cause the atmosphere to cool”
We note that ultraplinian eruptions such as Pinatubo require 20% of ejecta in the form of H2O and CO2 to support the column. This means the VEI 6 eruption ejected roughly the same order of magnitude in CO2 as the yearly anthropogenic contribution. Yet nary a bump in the MLO trend. Curious.
“”” foinavon (10:52:19) :
George E. Smith (09:47:26)
Residence time is a last gasp desperation to shore up a failed thesis that CO2 can cause runaway manmade global warming.
O.K. George, fair enough. You want to talk politics again. But this really is a straightforward science issue, “”
Near as I can tell, you are the only one mentioning politics. Of course it’s a straight science issue; and the issue is that so-called GHG effects depend on the amount of GHG molecules, most of which are water, are in the atmosphere; and it is unrelated in any way to how long any single identified molecule of any species spends in the atmosphere before being replaced by an identical molecule of the same species which will do the exact same thing as the first one.
As for Mr Soden et al: “”” “The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in June of 1991 resulted in unprecedented observations of both radiative forcing from volcanic aerosols as well as the climate system’s response to this forcing. Satellite observations confirm the decrease in solar heating due to Mount Pinatubo aerosols (20-22), which led to a global cooling of the lower troposphere (23, 24). Associated with this cooling was a reduction in the global water vapor concentrations, which closely tracked the decrease in temperature (25). ” “””
So why were these observations unprecedented; nobody ever noticed that volcanic eruptions resulted in cooling before; seems there was this Krakatoa thing long before there was any satellite observations. Come to think of it, I grew up in a city built on about 60 volcanoes; luckily none of them erupted and spewed out a bunch of aerosols.
It wasn’t the volcanic eruption that caused the atmosphere to cool and the surface temperature; it was the clouds that formed on the ash and dust; yes I know you climate scientists like to call them aerosols; but call them what they are; ash and dust. I was under my bed reading the principles of operation of the Wilson Cloud chamber, in an encyclopedia, while other kids my age (back then) were out playing hopscotch; so I think I understand at least basically how water droplets form, and why they don’t like to form without s surface to form on; even it is just a microbe, or a charged particle track caused by a cosmic ray primary striking the atmosphere.
But we don’t want to go anywhere near any suggestion that clouds might result in cooling of the atmosphere and surface; that might lead people to believe that water in vapor/liquid/solid phases was in complete control of the temperature as a result of positive feedback warming by the vapor balanced against negative feedback cooling by the solid/liquid cloud phases; something that Water alone can accomplish in the atmosphere; needing no assistance or trigger from CO2 or anything else.
And as for the atmosphere being in any way in equilibrium; I’d sure like to see some peer reviewed scientific paper where somebody actually observed such a phenomenon.
Of course it’s basic stuff, I learned it all back in the equivalent of 8th grade.
So why try to confuse the issue by raising the spectre of human emitted CO2 remaining in the atmosphere for 200-1000 years; when that, whether true or false, has nothing to do with the process of warming the atmosphere or surface.
But I’m not interested in trying to change your mind; but I am interested is seeing that my kids and grandkids aren’t taught a lot of nonsense about CO2 being a dangerous air pollutant that needs to be taxed.
“”” Joel Shore (17:29:08) :
George E. Smith says:
Oh forgive me; now I get it; the reason why climatologists ignore water vapor greenhouse effect, is that they can’t hang the problem on us humans; we don’t control it, so they can’t use it to hammer us into meekly accepting their Leftist behavioral control of our lives;
They don’t ignore water vapor. They just don’t see a mechanism by which water vapor concentration in the atmosphere will spontaneously change and produce dramatic climate change on its own. Do you know of such a mechanism?
The fact is that humans are dramatically changing the levels on CO2 on a timescale that is very rapid geologically speaking. It is not a “Leftist” plot to be concerned about the consequences of this. It is simply a combination of science and common sense. “””
Joel,
I bring this back up again to affirm that I do not consider ALL (sorry about the caps) climate scientists to be Leftists. But some are; notably Pachauri of the UN’s IPCC; well he’s a railway engineer, and since old trains put out a lot of soot and smoke and water into the atmosphere, which evidently upset him, that qualifies him as a climate scientist; some say the world’s leading climate scientist; which is why he was invited to speak to Barbara
Boxer’s Senate committee on environment and public works just yesterday I believe; at least in the last few days.
But the program of the likes of Pachauri and his band of scientists; fully 20% of whom actually have some real involvement in climate science; is to use the threat of runaway manmade global warming for which no evidence yet exists; to stop the industrial base of the developed world in its tracks; and control their behavior in the name of environmentalism.
Now that part IS (there’s those caps again) a Leftist; some would say Marxist position.
But the Leftist comment was not pointed at anyone on this forum; just those prominent in the public awareness, who trumpet the urgency of drastic action immediately; even if ten years after James Hansen’s dramatic plea to the Congress; accompanied by universal concensus predictions of disaster; absolutel none of what was predicted (up to now) has actually come to pass; and not a hint, that any of it is going to start happenning soon; despite his ratcheting up the rhetoric on the tenth anniversary of his chicken little speech.
So I apologise to any climate scinetist present who feels I may have accused him of being a leftist; and I apologise to all who don’t understand the use of capitals to imply emphasis, rather than the use of an underline, or Italics, or larger font, or any of the fancy tricks of web awareness. I have a shift key; it works for me for emphasis; and although I may be emphasising, I am nto shouting at anybody.
George
pmd (09:08:00) :
Hi,
Isn’t co2 freezing (−78.5 degC) , forming tonns of dry ice on the ground down there during the winter? 🙂
The vapor pressure of the tiny amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere (0.04%) is too low to be frozen out, at – 80 deg. C, but at -90 deg. C it may be in equilibrium with dry ice. But that are even for Antarctica rather extreme temperatures…
George E. Smith (09:47:26) :
Mother nature’s growth cycle is going to drop the CO2 by 6ppm in four months, and then she’s going to quit for the day, and we’ll have to wait for some rocks to take out the rest.
Hello! earth to humans; we only have to get down to 280 ppm; how about 250 for a nice round number, that worked for countless thousands of years without upsetting Michael Mann. We aren’t shooting for zero, so we can forget about the rocks.
The drop of 6 ppmv in four months where you allude on is what happens during the seasons, as plant growth and decay are very much temperature dependent. The overall ratio is about 5 ppmv/°C globally. Opposite to that are the oceans, which have a short term influence on CO2 levels of about 3 ppmv/°C, up to 8 ppmv/°C over decades to millennia.
But as we have a 100 ppmv increase of CO2 in the past 150 years, you need a new (real) ice age to get rid of all that CO2, if you think that temperature will do the job.
Without a real temperature drop, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will drop only slowly, at about 40 years half life time. That is slower than the residence half life of about 5 years for individual molecules, but faster than the Bern model of the IPCC predicts. The latter assumes that about 10% of the extra CO2 will remain in the atmosphere near forever. But that is based on using all available oil and much of the coal reserves…
Now who’d a thunk it; a mountain blows its top, driving an enormous amount of thermal energy from the earth’s interior into the atmosphere, and the atmosphere responds to all that extra energy by cooling down. Now there’s a trick for you. So the colder atmosphere responds by raining so it removes some pesky water vapor from the atmosphere.
I think you overestimate the thermal energy of the Pinatubo eruption, that is peanuts compared to the thermal energy from the sun we receive within a day. The cooling which followed the Pinatubo was in first instance the local/regional cloud, where most of it dropped out or rained out within days.
The interesting part is what happened in the stratosphere: a lot of dust and SO2 was injected in the stratosphere. The heavier dust dropped out within a few months, but SO2 indeed formed droplets which grow with water vapor to form bigger droplets. As these droplets reflect incoming sunlight back to space, the insolation on the ground is reduced and the earth cools. As there is little water in the stratosphere, the whole process of growth and dropping out of the heavier droplets (without real cloud formation, too little water) out of the stratosphere did take 2-3 years for the Pinatubo eruption. The cooling at the surface was measured and the drop in water vapor was measured too.
That confirmed that the water vapor in the atmosphere goes up and down with temperature at about constant relative humidity. That also revealed something else: that human SO2 releases have very little (cooling) influence on temperature, as the residence time in average is only 4 days before raining out (against 2-3 years for stratospheric SO2). Thus the large cooling influence of human SO2 emissions as incorporated in current climate models (and consequently the large warming influence of CO2) is overblown…
Thus while a disagree with you about the lifetime of excess CO2 in the atmosphere and the cause of the Pinatubo cooling / influence on water vapor, I agree that the influence of CO2 on climate is much lower than climate models “project”…
George E. Smith (10:13:39) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point
When air cools, it can’t hold as much water vapor, so some condenses out as dew.
Whether you want to admit it or not, that shows that the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere is a feedback of the temperature.
It is my recollection that the association with volcanic eruptions and cooling began a bit earlier. In the 1970’s volcanic aerosols were being mentioned in regard to global cooling in publications of the time (see H.H. Lamb Volcanic Dust in the Atmosphere 1970). They were drawing tentative associations between “The year without a summer”, and volcanic activity, but at the time they were simply talking about the shading and reflection effects of particulate dusts and their residence time in the atmosphere. The Eruption of Mt. Agung in Bali in 1963 and the eruption of Volcan de Fuego in Guatamala in 1974 were being specifically mentioned in books of the period in association with volcanic aerosol cooling.
see Genesis Strategy (1976) pg 181
Climates of Hunger (1977) pg 145-148
But the clincher event was the eruption of El Chicon which had 3 eruptions in 1982. That is the eruption that as I recall, they first mentioned sulfur content in the aerosols and its impact on cooling as the droplets circulated in the stratosphere. In fact I understand that El Chicon actually had a greater sulfur related cooling impact than Mt. Pinitubo although the actual size of the eruption was (ejecta) was smaller.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Chich%C3%B3n_Volcano
See the illustration of Mauna Loa Observatory dust observations.
I recall the news items on the “revolutionary” discovery — or perhaps confirmation, that the eruptions sulfur content was the key variable to determine the cooling effect of a major volcanic eruption. It was clearly a period of “developing science” regarding the effect of particulates and global temperatures.
Larry
Joel Shore:
I have reviewed Tamino’s post “Bag of Hammers” for relevance to my discussion.
He does not address the F-Test. He does not explain its purpose-to establish the significance of differences between populations in their differences of response in a selected f(x); that one studies this and the ANOVA battery in courses of Intermediate Statistics; he does not demonstrate the test or attempt to duplicate it with the data but devotes his discussion to a matter of presentation, etc.
He summarizes his discussion with a bald-faced lie repeated here by a number of commenters:
“Ignore, if you can stretch the truth that far, that there’s no evidence whatever that the oceans are a net producer of atmospheric CO2 but there’s very strong evidence they’re actually absorbing. ”
Your representation of this account as pertinent, even the notion that Basic Calculus might somehow be relevant to either Tamino’s discussion or ANOVA, is at best ignorant.
Tamino has once again demonstrated that he/she is a fabulist.
gary gulrud (07:39:18) :
He does not address the F-Test.
gary, you didn’t grasp what Dr. Spencer did: he compared the trend data with the detrended data for the ratio of 13C/12C and compared these two. Of course these have exactly the same shape, as detrending in this case only changes the values on the axis, not the slope of the ratio. Thus with or without F-test, both trendlines are mathematically exactly the same in slope and thus show exactly the same ratio change over time.
I was not aware of that either, but Tamino in this case is completely right: Dr. Spencer compares two slopes which are mathematically identical.
Anyway, even if Dr. Spencer had compared one year (like the 1998 warm El Niño year), where near all of human CO2 (as mass) was retained in the atmosphere, the drop in 13C/12C ratio would have been similar (but not identical) to the long term trend. Simply because the human emissions are so strongly depleted of d13C, that these overwhelm the (near) d13C neutral exchange from the oceans and the strong positive d13C signal from vegetation uptake (about 1.4 GtC vs. 8 GtC from human emissions).
This fancy movie (pretty cool) confirms the NOAA 3-D plot of CO2 from pole to pole showing that at the north pole, the amplitude of the annual CO2 cycle is 17 ppm P-P, versus 6 ppm at Mauna Loa, and essentially zero at the south pole and for most of the southern ocean.
The NOAA plot actually shows a south polar effect of maybe 1 ppm max, and it appears to be double humped, so it seems to be a composite of a northern hemisphere leak through and an out of p[hase southern hemisphere cycle.
I’m not surprised; I think the temperatures at the south pole and southern ocean are such that there is much lesss annual change on CO2 takeup.
I can’t for the life of me figure whay the maximum cycle is at the north pole, instead of lower down in the tree belt; but it certainly doesn’t give me any confidence in any mixing theories, or any notion that Vostok cores are representative of any global phenomenon.
Incidently there really is more land north of +60 north (the Arctic) than there is south of _60 south (the Antactic).
George E. Smith (15:55:19) :
I can’t for the life of me figure whay the maximum cycle is at the north pole, instead of lower down in the tree belt; but it certainly doesn’t give me any confidence in any mixing theories, or any notion that Vostok cores are representative of any global phenomenon.
The deeper CO2 dip at the Arctic stations probably is not only from vegetation (there is a lot of tundra there), but mostly from CO2 absorption from the still cold but ice free Arctic Ocean. Despite that, the yearly averages at Barrow and Mauna Loa are near the same with a few months delay and with a year delay to the south pole, all have quite identical trend slopes. Thus the mixing ratio is fast enough to see the same CO2 level all over the globe within a year at all places away from local sources/sinks (which is mainly in the first hunderds of meters over land). See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
As Vostok shows an average of 600 years CO2 level, the seasonal variability plays no role at all. Even the fastest accumulation ice cores (Law Dome, 1.5 m ice equivalent per year) gives the average of 8 years CO2 levels. But these show the same CO2 levels as directly measured at the south pole for the same age, with an overlap of 20 years (1960-1980). See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_sp_co2.jpg
I would think that is mostly driven by the polar region is totally surrounded by tundra consisting of fast growing grasses (Cottongrass in Alaska), and other fast growing species like willow, that compress their entire growing season into 6-8 weeks of 24 hour sunlight and abundant water on the thawed permafrost.
In this respect, I think the contrast between zero growth during the winter and rapid explosive pulse of growth in 6-8 weeks of summer over vast areas of land explain the swings in CO2 content.
By comparison the growth rate of mature Pine trees is relatively slow and spread out in time.
Larry
“gary, you didn’t grasp what Dr. Spencer did: he compared the trend data with the detrended data for the ratio of 13C/12C and compared these two.”
Ferdinand, I told you to study the F-Test and that the presentation was not material to the argument. Are you really so dense, or just congenitally disingenuous?
Dear Ferdinand,
oops, you do it again:
You write:
“With other words, neither the (deep) oceans (too high d13C level), nor the biosphere (a net sink of CO2) are responsible for the recent increase of CO2 or the recent decrease of d13C in the atmosphere (and oceans). Only humans are to blame for the CO2 increase of the past 150 years, not the same as saying that humans are to blame for the recent warming…”
That is still not proven at all! (See my unanswered comment in the older thread.
The d13C only shows, that we indeed burn fossil fuel (and a decreasing pH-value in the upper sea reflects a higher CO2-concentration in the atmosphere). If you look at scenarios were the oceans swallow the CO2-rise (For example because humans pump CO2 from the upper sea into the deep sea), the C13-depleation would continue at very much the same rate if we continue to burn fossil fuel.
This example shows that dC13-level cannot prove an anthropogenic cause! (Neither can the pH-value)
You are wrong!
> Without a real temperature drop, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will
> drop only slowly, at about 40 years half life time.
That of course is only true for the amount bigger than the equilibrium concentration!?
All the best,
LoN
gary gulrud (12:53:58) :
Ferdinand, I told you to study the F-Test and that the presentation was not material to the argument. Are you really so dense, or just congenitally disingenuous?
Gary, I am open to any argument, but in this case there is no argument: any test that compares two identical slopes and variability will show you that the slopes and variability are identical! And the slope and variability between two variables is identical, when you substract constant values of the two variables…
Law of Nature (23:46:08) :
That is still not proven at all! (See my unanswered comment in the older thread.
The d13C only shows, that we indeed burn fossil fuel (and a decreasing pH-value in the upper sea reflects a higher CO2-concentration in the atmosphere). If you look at scenarios were the oceans swallow the CO2-rise (For example because humans pump CO2 from the upper sea into the deep sea), the C13-depleation would continue at very much the same rate if we continue to burn fossil fuel.
This example shows that dC13-level cannot prove an anthropogenic cause! (Neither can the pH-value)
You are wrong!
I do agree that the ocean’s pH can be the source or the effect of increased CO2 levels, that in itself is not a proof for humans as source of the increase, it just adds to the overall arguments.
The d13C argument in combination with the mass balance is different. There are two possibilities: either the (deep) oceans are the main source of the extra CO2, or humans. The biosphere can’t be, as that is a proven sink, as can be seen from the oxygen balance (around 1.4 GtC or 0.7 ppmv per year).
The d13C decrease in the atmosphere (and upper oceans) is about 1/3rd of what can be calculated from fossil fuel burning. Thus about 2/3rd is diluted by either extra amounts emitted by the oceans, or by simple exchange between oceans and atmosphere (or a mix of both).
1. The d13C decrease is 1/3rd human, diluted by 2/3rd ocean release:
Problem is then that the mass balance doesn’t fit: the increase in the atmosphere then should be 4 ppmv (emissions) + 8 ppmv (ocean release) – 0.7 ppmv (bioshere uptake), or about 11 ppmv/year. But we see only 2 ppmv/year increase in the atmosphere.
2. The d13C decrease is 100% human, diluted by the about 20% exchange of CO2 over the seasons.
This can fit the mass balance, if about 2 ppmv CO2 more is absorbed by the biosphere and oceans than is released. Including the oxygen balance, that is about 0.7 ppmv by the biosphere and 1.3 ppmv by the oceans.
3. There is a mix of both mechanisms.
Hardly possible, as long as the increase in the atmosphere is less than the emissions.
4. What if we pump all extra CO2 into the deep oceans?
If you do that at all human sources, there is no increase of total CO2 and no decrease of d13C. If you do that after mixing in the emissions, there would not be an increase of total CO2, but still a decrease of d13C. But I don’t see the relevancy for the current situation where the natural sink capacity is only about halve the emissions, thus the emissions still are (near) 100% responsible for the increase in total CO2 of the atmosphere…
Dear Ferdinand,
thank you for your patience with me!
well, my argument is still quite easy and it seems that we are slowly approaching a common ground. I should apologize, my language seems not to be clear enough (thnaks you for untangeling it :))
You wrote:
4. What if we pump all extra CO2 into the deep oceans?
[..] If you do that after mixing in the emissions, there would not be an increase of total CO2, but still a decrease of d13C. But I don’t see the relevancy for the current situation where the natural sink capacity is only about halve the emissions, thus the emissions still are (near) 100% responsible for the increase in total CO2 of the atmosphere…
This simply shows, that the dC13 (like the pH-change) is not a measure of the total rise and hence you cannot blame the anthropogenic CO2 with that arguments (like you did before).
It is possible, that the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is either rising or falling while the C13-amount decreases depending of how the deep oceans behave. Thus you seem to need a mass balance which includes the deep oceans and it’s error bars.
Regardless of this argument, I looked at your exponential graph with the change of CO2-concentration after a increase of 100GTC CO2 . .
It seems to me, that from that graph alone a doubling of CO2 is quite unreachable, since an increase of seceral hundred GTC CO2 would provoke an anual dumping rate into the deep sea, which is much higher than any estimated human output . . do i read your graph correctly?
All the best,
LoN
Law of Nature (22:15:46) :
This simply shows, that the dC13 (like the pH-change) is not a measure of the total rise and hence you cannot blame the anthropogenic CO2 with that arguments (like you did before).
It is possible, that the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is either rising or falling while the C13-amount decreases depending of how the deep oceans behave. Thus you seem to need a mass balance which includes the deep oceans and it’s error bars.
You should be right if we were pumping CO2 directly in the deep oceans (thus changing the mass balance), but in the current situation, the mass balance is that there is an imbalance of about 2 ppmv/year absorbed by nature, of which about 0.7 ppmv by vegetation (based on the oxygen balance) and 1.3 ppmv by the (deep) oceans. Thus the mass balance simply says that nothing (as net result over a year) is added by the biosphere or the (deep) oceans, so the mass balance doesn’t need to include the (deep) oceans, as these can be assumed to be sinks only. Anyway, indeed it is the combination of mass balance and d13C changes which gives the right answer, not the d13C level alone…
What may be of interest is to calculate the amount of deep ocean CO2 which exchanges directly (or indirectly) with the atmosphere. As the biosphere and the upper level oceans act more as an extra reservoir for d13C changes than as sink (some of the change in d13C returns next season from vegetation decay/warming oceans), it is mainly the deep oceans which are such large that the d13C level going in (at the sink places of the THC near the poles) are practically disconnected from the upwelling deep ocean d13C levels near the equator (a delay of about 800 years). The d13C level of the deep oceans is around zero per mil d13C, while the average fossil fuel d13C level is about -24 per mil and the atmosphere is at – 8 per mil. With different seasonal exchange rates, one can show a reasonable match to the observed data:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
With about 40 GtC/year continuous exchange from the deep oceans, the d13C reduction calculated from human emissions match with what is observed…
A one-time dump of a lot of CO2 (100 GtC or 50 ppmv in the example) gives a huge initial increase in absorption rate, in ratio with the CO2 in excess to the “baseline” equilibrium, but that is without any further addition. The rate of absorption is also true for (currently) increasing human emissions: the average rate of increase in the atmosphere is about 55% of the emissions, as long as the emissions increase, thus without a limit on atmospheric CO2 levels in that case.
If the emissions should stop increasing and stay at an equal level over the years, the increase speed in the atmosphere would reduce and ultimately stay at a level where emissions and uptake are equal.
Dear Ferdinand,
it’s me again, howdy? 🙂
> Anyway, indeed it is the combination of mass balance and d13C changes
> which gives the right answer, not the d13C level alone…
Well, this seems only a small step away from agreeing with me, that the dC13 only tells you that we burn fuel…
– you just aggreed if the deep sea would uptake CO2 the dC13 in the atmosphere decreases.
– new: if the CO2 in the amtosphere increases independent of the reason, the dC13 in the atmosphere decreases as well (just assume we would pump CO2 form the deep ocean to the near surface)
> With about 40 GtC/year . .
Your number seems about 250% wrong, shouldn’ that be closer to 100GtC/a?
> If the emissions should stop increasing and stay at an equal level over the
> years, the increase speed in the atmosphere would reduce and ultimately
> stay at a level where emissions and uptake are equal.
Of course, I can agree to that, but I was trying to see, how long the peak stays in an atmosphere after the cause is gone and it looks like there is a quite short time constant for that.
Your key argument still is:
> Thus the mass balance simply says that nothing (as net result over a year)
> is added by the biosphere or the (deep) oceans, so the mass balance
> doesn’t need to include the (deep) oceans, as these can be assumed to be
> sinks only
And my question for that still is:
The deep sea is still very close to the equilibrium after the assumed 35% anthropogenic raise, which makes no sense, at least your explanation does not explain this. How can one bucket after a 35% raise in the level be in near-equilibrium with a bucket, which did not experience such a raise?
Well, I give you that the deep ocean takes up more CO2 from fuel if we burn it as if we would not burn it and your mass balance clearly seems to indicate that. But this is not the question, the question should be, what is the reason for the increase? How can you say, that even without any burned fuel we would have the same atmospheric CO2-level? (dC13 and pH-values cannot tell you that)
__
All the best,
LoN