Study of hemispheric CO2 timing suggests that annual increases may be coming from a global or equatorial source

Pamela Gray (07:06:40) :
Long-term dynamics of chlorophyll concentration in the ocean surface layer (by space data)
A. Shevyrnogova, and G. Vysotskayaa, Institute of Biophysics of SB RAS, Krasnoyarsk
The information about atmospheric warming imparts particular significance to the task of determining the real-life dynamics of the biosphere. The actual contributions of the land and ocean biotas have not been accurately determined, although there is a great body of literature on the subject.
The extensive scientific discussion of global warming causes a natural wish to relate this process to possible changes in the amount and dynamics of terrestrial and oceanic vegetation. Does this process influence variations in the amount and diversity of plants? Does it influence the pattern of their seasonal and long-term variations? It would seem that continuous elevation of CO2 and increase in the mean global temperature must cause permanent long-term changes in the amounts of phytopigments in the biosphere. But is this really so? What should be the direction of these changes?
Thus, the initial task was to reveal long-term trends of phytopigment concentrations in the ocean. This task could be fulfilled based on daily satellite measurements conducted for many years.
However, analysis of variations in phytopigment concentrations under different biogeographic conditions showed that the initial statement of the problem of studying linear or nonlinear trends was not quite correct. It has been found that on a global scale, the variations are oscillatory and the trends revealed for separate time periods must be just parts of a long-period oscillatory process. Moreover, these oscillations at different latitudes and in different times (e.g. in the time of CZCS and SeaWiFS functioning, in different seasons, etc.) are often in antiphase.
Fig. 1 shows variations in the average chlorophyll concentration in the Global Ocean from 1998 to 2003. The latitude dependence of the obtained measurement data has been taken into account: the origin of this dependence is different area of pixels at different latitudes. The graph indicates that in the time period between 1998 and 2003 the average chlorophyll concentration in the Global Ocean reached its minimum in 1998. The maximum chlorophyll concentration was registered in 1999, subsequently stabilizing at 0.227–0.23 mg/m3. The variation of chlorophyll concentration from 0.231 to 0.228 mg/m3 between 1999 and 2000 is statistically significant, because it resulted from the calculation of a large body of pixel-to-pixel satellite data.
An increase in chlorophyll concentration from 0.223 to 0.231 mg/m3 between 1998 and 1999 was 1.3%, which is a very large value for the area of the whole Global Ocean and thus cannot be accidental.

“It is absurd to claim that it shows that human activity is not responsible for the observed increase of CO2 in the atmosphere ”
It is equally absurd to claim that increased CO2 is having any significant impact on climate. So far we have no such evidence. None of the impacts that “the models” predict have come to pass in actual observation.
If it isn’t having any detrimental impact, what is the point in pouring millions of dollars into all this study and arguing so much over the cause of it? What evidence there is suggests that atmospheric CO2 is more of a response to temperature change than a cause of it. There is also no indication that life on this planet was in any difficulty when CO2 levels were twice today’s levels or even time times today’s levels as they have been in the geological past.
And we should be more worried about sea level drop from cooling than sea level rise from warming. Not a single coral reef on this planet can survive above sea level.

Re: John A (03:20:04) :
‘Can someone explain why the countries of Northern Africa have a persistently higher CO2 concentration that the heavily industrialized nations of Northern Europe?
Anyone?’
..Possibly the drier atmosphere and lesser vegetation across North Africa absorbs less CO2? LK
Re: Chris Knight (04:00:42) :
“The huge surface area into which CO2 is absorbed is condensed water –
clouds, fog and mist, dew, humid tropical atmospheres, cold surfaces, melting ice etc.,
(and surface vegetation)
– and not directly on land or ocean surfaces, which do not possess sufficient surface area in contact with free atmosphere to account for diurnal or seasonal CO2 concentration changes.”
..Chris, I take your point. It is a very good one. Regards, LK
Re deforestation:
Actually I am an evil mining geologist, who has long been defending himself by pointing out that you can barely see the vast Mt Newman iron ore mine on a Landsat image, whilst the rather trendy-lefty Western Suburbs of our local metropolis show up as a vast scar, and the inland agricultural devastation that feeds and funds them goes on almost forever.
In 1986 I drove inland eastwards from Pontianak into western Kalimantan (Borneo), as far as Sanggau on the Kapuas river, and then spent a rather amazing two months just north of there mapping and sampling alluvial gold deposits in a virgin jungle of monstrous trees, teeming wildlife and scattered tiny Dayak settlements. The only thing that broke the spell though, was the constant scream of Stilhl chainsaws, and the sight of endless rafts of logs being poled and tugged, Candian-style, down the huge equatorial rivers.
Ten years later, in 1996, I went back to look at another gold prospect, further inland, at a place called Nangapinoh. The frontier town of Sanngau was now a forgotten backwater, and it was a further two and a half hours drive inland from there before we reached the retreating jungle front. All that remained of the intervening magic wilderness that I had seen ten years before was a sea of brown mud, dotted with the shanty settlements of miserable ‘transmigrated’ Javanese, and very sparsely planted with oil palms. The only wildlife that I saw this time was from my shabby hotel window in Nangapinoh: a rather sad, old, balding orang utan, tethered by a chain around its neck to the steel verandah post of the next door balcony.
Deforestaton was real. And such a great pity, that I couldn’t help concluding that, failing education and contraception, a severe cullling of our species might be the only effective environmental policy.
But I don’t believe in anthropogenic global warming! It’s doesn’t seem to be very good science.

“It has been found that on a global scale, the variations are oscillatory and the trends revealed for separate time periods must be just parts of a long-period oscillatory process.”
Part of a larger, chaotic process?

Could it be true that the largest body of CO2 eating vegetation is the ocean? And that oceanic plant growth is tied to large oscillating swings mediated by trade winds? Given the land based vegetation compared to an active global plankton bloom added to the already rich plant life in the oceans, I am beginning to think that forests and crops don’t hold a candle to the oceans. Were you to compare them right now, one would be thinking it is about even (it still probably favors the ocean plant life), but with cold water mixing, and the nutrients that event brings to surface dwelling oceanic plant life along with the dust that fertilizes the whole mariachi, I think the balance swings way wide to the side of the ocean. Maybe that red tide ain’t so toxic after all. Just don’t eat the shellfish.

Tim
CO2 from wherever doesn’t “end up” in the atmosphere. Or anywhere else. It enters a huge, complex and poorly understood cycle over a period of (depending on whom you believe) up to about 10 years or more than a 1000.

@Eric
The bottom line answer for AGW seems to be ‘carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas therefore it must be causing global warming’. The corollary to this is ‘man is burning fossil fuels and therefore all increases in atmospheric CO2 are human.’
The climate is just not that simple. It’s not just wrong, it’s plain ignorant for anybody to assume the world is in a natural steady state. ‘Climate change’ is a meaningless phrase and ‘stopping climate change’ is absurd. Climate change is natural. It’s ongoing. The climate is supposed to change, it’s always changed and it always will change.
I recall a Persian emperor who sent soldiers to the sea to whip the waves to stop the tide from rolling in. Fighting climate change is just as absurd and will have the same results.

There are numerous independent threads which prove that the increase is a direct result of human emissions. This thread simply shows that the sceptic here choose not to read or understand basic science.
The decline of this site into an imitation of the numerous industry advocacy and lobbying sites continues.

Pamela
“Scientists have found a temporary “chemical equator” that separates the heavily polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere from the cleaner air of the Southern Hemisphere over the Western Pacific — only it isn’t where they expected to find it. ”
http://www.livescience.com/environment/080930-chemical-equator.html

George E. Smith (09:41:54) :
Well I see in that color map, a global variation of more than 15 ppm of mid tropospheric CO2 abundance. (why do people keep on saying “by volume”). If they can identify the molecules as being of different species; why not just report abundance by molecular species. In the atmosphere there is only one volume; the total sample volume, so to measure any individual species by volume, you have to extractr every last specimen of a species from the sample, and none of any other species, and then reduce each to STP before you can measure its volume.
Simply counting molecules allows you to use an infinitesimally smaller sample.
ppmv in dry air is used instead of ppm by weight (wet or dry), simply because every (ideal) gas has the same volume and the same number of molecules for the same amount of moles in the mix: one mole (~32 g) of oxygen has the same volume as one mole (~28 g) of nitrogen,… This makes calculations of mixing ratios easier, no matter the sample size.
Why “dry”? Because water shows an enormous gradient from ground level up to high in the sky, the same volume of CO2 (compared to the O2/N2 level) would go up with height as the water vapor content drops. This is completely artificial, as the ratio between CO2 and O2/N2 doesn’t change with height…
But to get back to my point. The total range of CO2 abundance in this plot is about 15 years worth of annual baseline increases.
That does not make me comfortable that the 15 ppm global spread is simply a lack of adequate mixing time from some transient event. That 15 ppm spread would seem to be a stable global pattern that is being maintained by global variables.
The AIRS map is just a snapshot in summer, a winter snapshot shows the opposite colors… If you look at the MLO data for the same time stamp and color on the map, you will see that the local CO2 levels match (no coincidence, the AIRS satellite data are calibrated with the ground stations and flight measurements!).
See the seasonal variation from North to South at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/Photo_Gallery/GMD_Figures/ccgg_figures/tn/co2_surface.png.html

@ur momisugly Ferdinand Engelbeen (12:55:50) :
So carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be unchanged if not for man? How is it that CO2 has gone up and down in the past without man’s help?
I recall a book and move called an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ that showed a graph of CO2 going up and down quite naturally for thousands and thousands of year. How do you explain that?

Typical anti-warming hype. One single study of the dispersion of CO2 from a nuclear explosion does not necessarily mean CO2 will spread the same way in general. This is typically bogus.