Releases may have speeded end of last ice age — and could act again![[]](https://i0.wp.com/www.eurekalert.org/images/clear.gif?resize=8%2C1){kind=spacer}
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IMAGE: This pictures shows the locations of cores showing Antarctic upwelling.
Natural releases of carbon dioxide from the Southern Ocean due to shifting wind patterns could have amplified global warming at the end of the last ice age–and could be repeated as manmade warming proceeds, a new paper in the journal Science suggests.
Many scientists think that the end of the last ice age was triggered by a change in Earth’s orbit that caused the northern part of the planet to warm. This partial climate shift was accompanied by rising levels of the greenhouse gas CO2, ice core records show, which could have intensified the warming around the globe. A team of scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory now offers one explanation for the mysterious rise in CO2: the orbital shift triggered a southward displacement in westerly winds, which caused heavy mixing in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, pumping dissolved carbon dioxide from the water into the air.
“The faster the ocean turns over, the more deep water rises to the surface to release CO2,” said lead author Robert Anderson, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty. “It’s this rate of overturning that regulates CO2 in the atmosphere.” In the last 40 years, the winds have shifted south much as they did 17,000 years ago, said Anderson. If they end up venting more CO2 into the air, manmade warming underway now could be intensified.
Scientists have been studying the oceans for more than 25 years to understand their influence on CO2 levels and the glacial cycles that have periodically heated and chilled the planet for more than 600,000 years. Ice cores show that the ends of other ice ages also were marked by rises in CO2.
Two years ago, J.R. Toggweiler, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), proposed that westerly winds in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica may have undergone a major shift at the end of the last ice age. This shift would have raised more CO2-rich deep water to the surface, and thus amplified warming already taking place due to the earth’s new orbital position. Anderson and his colleagues are the first to test that theory by studying sediments from the bottom of the Southern Ocean to measure the rate of overturning.
The scientists say that changes in the westerlies may have been triggered by two competing events in the northern hemisphere about 17,000 years ago. The earth’s orbit shifted, causing more sunlight to fall in the north, partially melting the ice sheets that then covered parts of the United States, Canada and Europe. Paradoxically, the melting may also have spurred sea-ice formation in the North Atlantic Ocean, creating a cooling effect there. Both events would have caused the westerly winds to shift south, toward the Southern Ocean. The winds simultaneously warmed Antarctica and stirred the waters around it. The resulting upwelling of CO2 would have caused the entire globe to heat.
Anderson and his colleagues measured the rate of upwelling by analyzing sediment cores from the Southern Ocean. When deep water is vented, it brings not only CO2 to the surface but nutrients. Phytoplankton consume the extra nutrients and multiply.
In the cores, Anderson and his colleagues say spikes in plankton growth between roughly 17,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago indicate added upwelling. By comparing those spikes with ice core records, the scientists realized the added upwelling coincided with hotter temperatures in Antarctica as well as rising CO2 levels.
In the same issue of Science, Toggweiler writes a column commenting on the work. “Now I think this really starts to lock up how the CO2 changed globally,” he said in an interview. “Here’s a mechanism that can explain the warming of Antarctica and the rise in CO2. It’s being forced by the north, via this change in the winds.”
At least one model supports the evidence. Richard Matear, a researcher at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, describes a scenario in which winds shift south and produce an increase in CO2 venting in the Southern Ocean. Plants, which incorporate CO2 during photosynthesis, are unable to absorb all the added nutrients, causing atmospheric CO2 to rise.
Some other climate models disagree. In those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the westerly winds do not simply shift north-south. “It’s more complicated than this,” said Axel Timmermann, a climate modeler at the University of Hawaii. Even if the winds did shift south, Timmermann argues, upwelling in the Southern Ocean would not have raised CO2 levels in the air. Instead, he says, the intensification of the westerlies would have increased upwelling and plant growth in the Southeastern Pacific, and this would have absorbed enough atmospheric CO2 to compensate for the added upwelling in the Southern Ocean.
“Differences among model results illustrate a critical need for further research,” said Anderson. These, include “measurements that document the ongoing physical and biogeochemical changes in the Southern Ocean, and improvements in the models used to simulate these processes and project their impact on atmospheric CO2 levels over the next century.”
Anderson says that if his theory is correct, the impact of upwelling “will be dwarfed by the accelerating rate at which humans are burning fossil fuels.” But, he said, “It could well be large enough to offset some of the mitigation strategies that are being proposed to counteract rising CO2, so it should not be neglected.”
You just don’t understand The Science. AGW isn’t about reducing CO2, it’s about being forgiven for our transgressions through the purchase of indulgences by those who can afford them, and a mandatory vow of abject poverty by those who cannot.
Philip_B
If there is already good data on the shifts in average mid latitude jet stream positions then I haven’t seen it and would like a link to it.
My ‘analysis’ is simply based on my own observations of jet stream movements over the past 50 years. They have clearly been moving equatorward again since 2000.
For the time being I think that my verbal descriptions of the complex ever varying interplay between sun, ocean and air are the best available match for what we actually observe.
Others with better mathematical skills, greater financial resources and more time will have to attend to the detailed mechanics.
Ron House (16:50:58)
Thanks for your thoughtful input. From your explanation, I gather that I had misinterpreted what the auther meant in stating, “Many scientists think that the end of the last ice age was triggered by a change in Earth’s orbit”. So I gather that what this statement is saying is that there was a change in the earth’s orientation toward the sun the earth moved through an orbit that was probably in it’s circular phase. Seems a bit Tweedle brothers-like to me, but then I do have the problem of having studied General Semantics as a young man and quite recovered. So what I take from your explanation is that “orbit change” as used in this paper does not imply an alteration in the earth’s normal orbit nor in the sequence of orientations to the sun that the earth assumes in traveling over its orbit, but instead indicates that the earth had reached a point in its orbiting and seqemce of orientations which ultimately resulted in the wind blow extra hard over the Indian Ocean. Fortunately, not everything Anthony presents requires such extensive interpretation!
Oh yes, I’ve got it now: Indulgences. That was quite the scandal.
So, what happens to the infidel in this new religion?
If this has already been commented upon, then I’m sorry for repeating. The article states,
“In the last 40 years, the winds have shifted south much as they did 17,000 years ago”
The last 40 years? All of the AGW hype started within this time frame. So this article, like so many others, blurs the lines of burden for GW. All of these articles should state as fact that we are dealing with theories concerning the causes of GW.
AGW is a joke. The only science it has qualified for or ever will qualify for is political science. We are not seeing any surface temperatures falling outside historical norms. This is easy to validate. AGW is an elaborate ruse being used to dismantle American freedoms and free market capitalism.
Parse Error (20:54:36) :
Nice! Conservation methods should always be maximized, first.
Mike D. (19:27:14) : Tax the wind!!!
That won’t happen… Al Gore has so much wind coming out his derriere that he would be taxed to death.
“…the earth’s orbit shifted, causing more sunlight to fall in the north…”
And the mechanism for this shift is …
Hello – interesting website.
However, I see several posts on the Heartland Institute conference, but not a single one on this week’s climate conference in Copenhagen. Seems a pity, as many reputable groups made presentations there …regards Cormac
cormac, the owner of this blog was at the Heartland Institute conference. If you were at the other one, please post!
George E. Smith (17:01:32) :
George,
Dr. Miskolczi is talking about Thermodynamical Equilibrium within an enclosure; that enclosure being the earth’s atmosphere. Schwarzschild wrote about this application of Kirchhoff’s law back 1906.
By the second law of thermodynamics, the equilibrium is complete. The only way that thermal changes can take place is by the application of external work. This is where the sun comes into play as you pointed out.
BTW, radiation inside an enclosure is called black-body radiation.
A recent (more recent than Schwarzschild anyway) introduction to this topic can be found here:
http://miskolczi.webs.com/Kirchhoff1.htm
The upshot is that by applying Kirchhoff’s law you arrive at the energy minimum principle. See section 5.1 (page 16) here:
http://miskolczi.webs.com/2007.pdf
Dr. Miskolczi is a mathematical physicist and he is not writing for the general audience. Ferenc is using terms with precise meaning that make the ideas clear to other physicist while at the same time makes the paper hard to read by non-specialist.
The work is top notch.
–Mike Ramsey
Can someone explain how the wind can bring up CO2from the depth of the antartctic, but a volcano would not.
David A (18:23:58)
You ask “Can someone explain how the wind can bring up CO2from the depth of the antartctic, but a volcano would not.”
I don’t know about the wind part of your question, but my understanding is that some volcanic activity results in a release of CO2 and other sorts do not. The largest volcanic release of CO2 that I know of occurred about 250 million years ago, when the volcanic Siberian Traps (an area about as large as France) got started and continued on for the better part of a million years. The level of CO2. This reresulted in about a nine fold increase of CO2. Prior to this extensive volcanism, the levels of both CO2 and oxygen were at record lows. Sinc CO2 drives oxygen in the carbon cycle, the increase in CO2 also resulted in a marked increase of oxygen as well. This was also the time of the Permian-Triassic (P-T) extinction event, when something like 90 percent of living forms were killed off.
Since my field of research is that of perception rather than climatology, don’t be surprised if I am off a tad in some of the details I’ve covered. By the way, this massive release of CO2 did indeed go beyond a “tipping point”, and so this resulted in a major increase in world temperature.
C.Colenaty.
A volcanic outbreak in the Siberian Trapps of the scale mentioned would do a lot more than simply put more CO2 into the air.
The injection of particulate matter and other gases and materials into the air would have had greater consequences than the CO2 on it’s own.
At this stage we cannot say that it was just CO2 that had the observed consequences however convenient that assertion might be for some.
Stephen Wilde (01:02:24)
In regard to my post mentioning the PT extinction and the Siberian Traps, you say, “The injection of particulate matter and other gases and materials into the air would have had greater consequences than the CO2 on it’s own.” I agree with you completely. My estimate is that the massive increase in CO2 probably had little negative effect upon plant or animal life, in that the CO2 remained at close to that high level over a periiod of millions of years during which plant and animal life became abundant once more.
The PT boundary extinction (The Grerat Dying) apparently was a multi-phase event, and not just the result of gases and particulates release by the Siberian Trapps, which more or less came as the final act in the extinction. There is speculation that a major meteorite strke might have started things off by destroying most of the C3 vegetation (trees and bushes and such), followed by an upsurge of aggesive insects and fungi. My own conjecture is that the massive die-off of C3 plants occurred as a result of atmospheric CO2 dipping below the 150 to 200 parts per million that are needed for photosynthesis to proceed efficiently. As an aside, the PT boundary possibly represent the only time an the past 540 million years or so that atmospheric CO2 level was ;lower than that which occurs during our current glaciation periods. Anyway, the only form of vegation that would benefit from seems to have been an explosive growth of both terrestrial and marine fungi Now I think it is the case that fungi would represent the only form of vegetation that would benefit from such a reduction of atmospheric CO2, in that fungi do not obtain carbon through carrying out photosynthesis. It is estimated that fungi might have existed as a dominant vegatative form (they are not considered as plants) for about 64,000 years.
I wonder what might have happened if the Siberian Traps volcanic event had not hadn’t come along at that particular time in the earth’s history. At the very lest, it seems certain that there wouldn’t be any such thing as mankind present.
“”” Mike Ramsey (16:44:44) :
George E. Smith (17:01:32) :
George,
Dr. Miskolczi is talking about Thermodynamical Equilibrium within an enclosure; that enclosure being the earth’s atmosphere. Schwarzschild wrote about this application of Kirchhoff’s law back 1906. “””
Explain to us once again just how the earth’s atmosphere is an “enclosure”.
An “enclosure”; something that really prohibited radiation from either entering or exiting, would presumably eventually reach a single equilibrium temperature at every point in the enclosure. Only then would Kirchoff’s law apply, and only then would the radiation INSIDE the anclosure be Black Body radiation. A body that is not isothermal does not emit black body radiation.
And how can the earth’s atmosphere be an “enclosure” at a single temperature, when the sun rotates around it once in every 24 hours ( so far as the atmosphere can tell).
Old Martin must have been off his rocker when he made such a claim.
I haven’t looked lately; but I think I too am a Mathematical Physicist. At least my degree is regarded (by the issuing University) as a dual Major, in Physics and Mathematics.
That is it meets ALL of the requirements and prerequisites for (their) degree in Mathematics, in that BOTH Pure and Applied Mathematics are required for a minimum of three years study (and passes in the appropriate three (units); plus it also meets all the requiremts of (their) degree in Physics; that being a minimum of three years study in Physics, and passes in those three units; where the third year Physics Unit, could be Physics; or Radiophysics (including electronics, propagation etc (all that ionospheric physics); or it could be in Mathematical Physics. Any one of those third year (unts would qualify for the Physics degree (with the two prerequisite Physics years).
Come to think of it; I actually took and passed ALL three of those third year Physics Units plus the two mathematics requirments. Maybe that’s actaually five majors; I’ll have to ask them what they think; I know they thought I was weird at the time.
I’m no Martin Schwarzchild; but I think maybe I am a Mathematical Physicist; or at least an ersatz one. Just wish I ould remeber all of that stuff after 50 years. I also have the entire set of my (Technical) High School report cards; just in case somebody ever asked me if I had any educational credentials.
But I don’t think earth’s atmosphere is either an enclosure; or is in equilibrium; or any facsimile of an equilibrium condition; I wouldn’t even call it “steady State”.
George
PS I confess I flunked the Pure Maths III the first time I took it, and had to repeat it. That was because they forgave me the PM-I prerequisite, so I took PM-III in my second year with a really big load. Aced it the next year though.
I have no idea how that system compares with today’s Degrees or Curricula; so maybe I only qualify for an “associate” degree today.
George E. Smith (17:59:53) :
Old must have been off his rocker when he made such a claim.
Either Karl was whacked or you need to dig a little deeper. Take a look at the following:
http://www.met.utah.edu/tgarrett/5210_07/Radiation/LTE.pdf
I haven’t looked lately; but I think I too am a Mathematical Physicist.
Then you should be up to the task of actually reading Ferenc’s paper. 🙂
–Mike Ramsey
Mike Ramsey said;
“Dr. Miskolczi is a mathematical physicist and he is not writing for the general audience. Ferenc is using terms with precise meaning that make the ideas clear to other physicist while at the same time makes the paper hard to read by non-specialist.”
I went through this step by step with a mathematical physicist last year and even he was impressed. Has any of the theory and science behind it been properly refuted-and I don’t mean by people shouting at it from Real Climate but by peers demonstrating any part of the hypotheses is incorrect.
TonyB
TonyB (11:53:59) :
I went through this step by step with a mathematical physicist last year and even he was impressed. Has any of the theory and science behind it been properly refuted-and I don’t mean by people shouting at it from Real Climate but by peers demonstrating any part of the hypotheses is incorrect.
TonyB,
Not that I am aware of. I have searched the World Wide Web many times looking for such a paper but have found nothing.
Dr. Miskolczi worked at NASA but quit when they refused to let him publish this paper. Shame on NASA.
Here is another analysis you can look at:
http://www.landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction
The conclusion states:
“1 The new theory is based on relationships discovered from detailed LBL calculations, in turn based in quantitative determination of absorption properties of gasses in the laboratory. The theory is also based in more appropriate boundary conditions used in solving the differential equations describing radiation equilibrium. Unlike empirical models, his theory contains no parameters that are “fitted” to historic climate trends and greenhouse gas concentration trends. The greatest areas of difference are: * Infrared Radiation equilibrium between surface and atmosphere * Partly infrared transparent atmosphere.
The main consequence of the new theory is that the atmosphere tends to maintain an globally optimal optical thickness by water vapor take-up or release, in order to maximize maximum Outgoing Long wave Radiation for a cloudy atmosphere. This ensures that if perturbed, the system uses negative feedback to revert to a mean values, based largely on the average solar isolation. The relaxation time at this point is unknown, but would be expected to be in the order of 60 years.
2 This article shows the new theory better explains radiosonde and satellite measurements than the standard theory of “Anthropogenic Global Warming”. Measurements of the correlations with weather patterns in the tropical Pacific show the negative feedback, via changing water content of the air, and changing cloud cover and cloud height. Changes in water vapor temperature in the upper troposphere in the period 1979-1999 predicted by the standard theory as a consequence of the greenhouse gas contradict the observations.”
–Mike Ramsey