From a Louisiana State University Press Release Oct 1, 2009
Algae and Pollen Grains Provide Evidence of Remarkably Warm Period in Antarctica’s History
Palynomorphs from sediment core give proof to sudden warming in mid-Miocene era
The ANDRILL drilling rig in Antarctica
For Sophie Warny, LSU assistant professor of geology and geophysics and curator at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, years of patience in analyzing Antarctic samples with low fossil recovery finally led to a scientific breakthrough. She and colleagues from around the world now have proof of a sudden, remarkably warm period in Antarctica that occurred about 15.7 million years ago and lasted for a few thousand years.
Last year, as Warny was studying samples sent to her from the latest Antarctic Geologic Drilling Program, or ANDRILL AND-2A, a multinational collaboration between the Antarctic Programs of the United States (funded by the National Science Foundation), New Zealand, Italy and Germany, one sample stood out as a complete anomaly.
“First I thought it was a mistake, that it was a sample from another location, not Antarctica, because of the unusual abundance in microscopic fossil cysts of marine algae called dinoflagellates. But it turned out not to be a mistake, it was just an amazingly rich layer,” said Warny. “I immediately contacted my U.S. colleague, Rosemary Askin, our New Zealand colleagues, Michael Hannah and Ian Raine, and our German colleague, Barbara Mohr, to let them know about this unique sample as each of our countries had received a third of the ANDRILL samples.”
Some colleagues had noted an increase in pollen grains of woody plants in the sample immediately above, but none of the other samples had such a unique abundance in algae, which at first gave Warny some doubts about potential contamination.
“But the two scientists in charge of the drilling, David Harwood of University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and Fabio Florindo of Italy, were equally excited about the discovery,” said Warny. “They had noticed that this thin layer had a unique consistency that had been characterized by their team as a diatomite, which is a layer extremely rich in fossils of another algae called diatoms.”
All research parties involved met at the Antarctic Research Facility at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Together, they sampled the zone of interest in great detail and processed the new samples in various labs. One month later, the unusual abundance in microfossils was confirmed.
Among the 1,107 meters of sediments recovered and analyzed for microfossil content, a two-meter thick layer in the core displayed extremely rich fossil content. This is unusual because the Antarctic ice sheet was formed about 35 million years ago, and the frigid temperatures there impede the presence of woody plants and blooms of dinoflagellate algae.
“We all analyzed the new samples and saw a 2,000 fold increase in two species of fossil dinoflagellate cysts, a five-fold increase in freshwater algae and up to an 80-fold increase in terrestrial pollen,” said Warny. “Together, these shifts in the microfossil assemblages represent a relatively short period of time during which Antarctica became abruptly much warmer.”
These palynomorphs, a term used to described dust-size organic material such as pollen, spores and cysts of dinoflagellates and other algae, provide hard evidence that Antarctica underwent a brief but rapid period of warming about 15 million years before present.
LSU’s Sophie Warny and her New Zealand colleague, Mike Hannah, sampling the ANDRILL cores at the Antarctic Research Facility.
“This event will lead to a better understanding of global connections and climate forcing, in other words, it will provide a better understanding of how external factors imposed fluctuations in Earth’s climate system,” said Harwood. “The Mid-Miocene Climate Optimum has long been recognized in global proxy records outside of the Antarctic region. Direct information from a setting proximal to the dynamic Antarctic ice sheets responsible for driving many of these changes is vital to the correct calibration and interpretation of these proxy records.”
These startling results will offer new insight into Antarctica’s climatic past – insights that could potentially help climate scientists better understand the current climate change scenario.
“In the case of these results, the microfossils provide us with quantitative data of what the environment was actually like in Antarctica at the time, showing how this continent reacted when climatic conditions were warmer than they are today,” said Warny.
According to the researchers, these fossils show that land temperatures reached a January average of 10 degrees Celsius – the equivalent of approximately 50 degrees Fahrenheit – and that estimated sea surface temperatures ranged between zero and 11.5 degrees Celsius. The presence of freshwater algae in the sediments suggests to researchers that an increase in meltwater and perhaps also in rainfall produced ponds and lakes adjacent to the Ross Sea during this warm period, which would obviously have resulted in some reduction in sea ice.
These findings most likely reflect a poleward shift of the jet stream in the Southern Hemisphere, which would have pushed warmer water toward the pole and allowed a few dinoflagellate species to flourish under such ice-free conditions. Researchers believe that shrub-like woody plants might also have been able to proliferate during an abrupt and brief warmer time interval.
“An understanding of this event, in the context of timing and magnitude of the change, has important implications for how the climate system operates and what the potential future response in a warmer global climate might be,” said Harwood. “A clear understanding of what has happened in the past, and the integration of these data into ice sheet and climate models, are important steps in advancing the ability of these computer models to reproduce past conditions, and with improved models be able to better predict future climate responses.”
While the results are certainly impressive, the work isn’t yet complete.
“The SMS Project Science Team is currently looking at the stratigraphic sequence and timing of climate events evident throughout the ANDRILL AND-2A drillcore, including those that enclose this event,” said Florindo. “A broader understanding of ice sheet behavior under warmer-than-present conditions will emerge.”
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In fact, it does work that way. Water vapour overlaps the frequency at which c02 takes heat. That means it absorbs heat where c02 doesn’t, and a change in c02 has no effect at htose overlapping frequencies. You’d have to multiply it by much more than 3, since c02 only absorbs heat in the subzero temperature frequency – which is why AGW depends on the greenhouse effect in the Arctic, where it is dry and cold. Its dry because it is so cold. Given the greater amplitude of warm temperatures globally, water vapour absorbs at that micron level where c02 doesn’t. ie, below 12 microns. The problem for c02 is that it can’t force anything, unless you take its ability to absorb heat from extreme cold as a climate forcing.
Joel Shore (16:30:10) :
I read your link a few years ago, so its nothing new…
There are many holes in radiative physics as applied to the climate. They don’t depend on intuition but observation and to scientific technique, properly speaking. The equation produces an absurdly high theoretical figure for normal temperature objects. It can be used in technology/electodynamics, but not in nature at *normal* temperatures, since it has different properties to earth, so the figures and values quoted are not wrong.
Thermal imaging equipment detects heat from 4-12 microns. This is the heat that the S-Botzmann law says should be re-radiated from the earth. It detects humans but not other inferred (from the S-B constant) radiative matter
getting back to c02, do you agree that biological fluxes of carbon are over ten times greater than the amount of carbon introduced to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning?
addendum: ten times greater over the course of a year
P Wilson: The fact that the biological fluxes of carbon are that large is irrelevant. Those are just exchanges between the atmosphere and the upper oceans and atmosphere and biosphere. The rate-limiting step is the transfer of the CO2 from the ocean surface to the deep oceans. What we are doing is injecting some CO2 that has long been locked away much more rapidly than it can go into the deep ocean. A portion of it is rapidly taken up by the upper ocean but then it saturates (and a smaller portion is taken up by the biosphere). But, the rest of the perturbation (about 1/2 of it) remains in the atmosphere…and most of it will remain there for hundreds of years, a not-insignificant-fraction for many thousands of years. And, that is why CO2 levels have risen by 100ppm since the start of the industrial revolution…to levels higher than in at least the last 750,000 years and likely several million years.
This is all accepted science. Of course, I don’t expect you to believe this any more than you believe any other accepted science that contradicts your ideology.
Joel, you probably did not mean to say “by subtracting T_2 from T_12” you end up showing the change in water vapor. You actually want to subtract T12 from T2 as the authors say. That way when water vapor increases and T12 decreases (since it gets absorbed by water vapor), then T2-T12 increases as the authors show in fig 2. That is their theory anyway.
You correctly point out: “T_12 can vary for two reasons. Either the temperature changes at a fixed effective emission altitude or the effective emission altitude itself changes”. But their paper shows T12 staying flat. Their model says that T12 should have increased if there were no moistening, so they conclude that there was moistening.
Increases in water vapor at any altitude would cause T12 to stay flat as T2 increased. You know this from your correct statements about opacity (it is independent of altitude). So to recap: T2 increased because ocean temperatures increased. Water vapor increased starting at low altitude; how much reaches UT depends on weather (mostly convection and subsidence). The authors model parameterized weather (assumptions in = results out) and the model says increased UT water vapor caused T12 to stay flat.
But although T12 is sensitive to water vapor in the UT, it is decreased by water vapor anywhere in the column. Also flat T12 can be measured with increased T2 with just that: flat T12 with increased T2 and no increase in UT water vapor. For example, concentrated convection would cool (and dry) the UT. Again the only thing that contradicts that possibility is their model. Their conclusion depends entirely on their model. HIRS cannot measure UT humidity without changes in T12 filtering, but also (very importantly) calibration to temperature and actual humidity (from radiosondes). T2-T12 is not UT humidity (I can’t say it any simpler).
Joel, please don’t hockey stick the CO2 ice cores unless you can explain how CO2 in the vostok core is 1700 years old in 4000 year old ice without thousands of years of CO2 smoothing in all the cores. Don’t be fooled by the century-scale wiggles in old measurements, they are because the measurements are very inexact (along with being smoothed). Look at the “high res” cores from 100k plus years ago. Even more wiggles at higher res.
So no, you cannot say CO2 is the highest in a million years, only probably the highest since the ice age ended 10-20k years ago (which is what we expect) and before that the measurements are too smoothed to know if there were fluctuations above the present day values.
Here is the Vostok data: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/co2.txt
It is accepted science – agreed. However, what is not agreed is the fact that c02 varies spatially over regions, so there is often 100ppm more over tropical areas than over antarctic. Jarowski demonstrated 15 ice cores pre 1985 showed much higher co2 concentrations than today during the holocene, including Neftel, 1982. Beyer et al 2001 and Beck, 2007 also have shown higher co2 levels for pre-industrial periods, which are not at all arbitrary numbers, contrary to what you thought yesterday. When averaged they produce a higher c02 than today before the 19th century.
This paper published in 1955 averages pre industrial c02 at 365ppm
http://www.pensee-unique.fr/001_mwr-083-10-0225.pdf
although Dr Jaworowski maintains that ice cores do not fulfil the criteria of recording the true extent of co2 due to change in chemical composition – at deeply compressed levels air bubbles disappear.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
There are proxies from sediment cores which indicate elevated levels of c02 prior to the Industrial period: reflected in growth patterns in microscopic fossil shells found in fossil sediment cores. As their uptake of c02 increased, their level of dissolved carbonate increased, and this reflects in the proxy.
Past evidence from and evidence from stromatalytes, or else pores in leaves show a simiar c02 as today (oddly, some of the proxies that Mann uses).
When taken collectively, (including ice cores) they show that pre industrial c02 was not significantly different from today, and certainly below the geologic record.
Of course, there are papers contradicting this proxy data.
However, what ancient ice shows is a long delay between temperature and its response in the c02 correlation at every point in its plot.
this corresponds well to present day trends of increasing c02 and decreasing temperatures, and vice vera, over the last 150 years. (for all the reasons given about c02 in this thread) Regardless of anthropogenic emissions, we are at a natural high point in aerial c02 and temperature.
finally, as its 3.48am here in the UK, this paper – though only the synopsis, claims to prove the explanation for post 1977 warming. Its a peer reviewed paper from de Freitas, Bob Carter and John McClean.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/surge-in-global-temperatures-since-1977-can-be-attributed-to-a-1976-climate-shift-in-the-pacific-ocean/
One conclusion at face value, is that given the unreliability of *accepted* past proxies – accepted being synonymous with the official version of climate science – is that if c02 was a forcing of its own magnitude, and also forced the hydrological ghg, which is much greater, then we should theoretically be some 8C warmer than we are now globally
Thats where we disagree Joel – oceans have an infinite buffering capacity for c02 and oceans regulate atmospheric c02, which are governed by SST’s
P Wilson: The de Freitas, Bob Carter and John McClean does no such thing. In fact, they subtract off the trend before they do their analysis so the analysis can’t possibly tell them what is responsible for the trend. One of the authors, de Freitas admitted as much in a comment in the thread that you linked to ( Chris de Freitas (25/7/2009 at 16:08:44).
As for the oceans have an infinite buffering capacity for CO2, they are certainly not demonstrating that at the moment, as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise.
As for past CO2 levels, you can believe Beck and Jaworski if you want…and, in fact, I encourage you to tell any scientist or policymaker that you interact with about your opinion on this. I think it will be important in helping them to decide how seriously to take your opinions.
Imagining such CO2 fluctuations occurred in the past requires incredible contortions to explain how such large fluxes came about, how the averaging that occurred in the ice cores over the last 10,000 years was so magically around the 280ppm level, and how things magically settled down right when CO2 started to be measured accurately in the late 1950s, etc., etc.
Eric (skeptic): Yes, you are right that I stated the subtraction backwards. I don’t really understand your other major point, i.e., I don’t see why you think T_12 – T_2 will reflect water vapor through the entire column when the T_12 channel that is sensitive to water vapor in the altitudes from about 200 to 500 hPa, which sounds more or less like upper troposphere to me. (I am not sure exactly what the definition of “upper troposphere” is but 500 hPa is certainly already well above the boundary layer.
Joel, no magic needed for flat CO2 the last 10k years, it was relatively flat for 2k (law dome has only a few years or so worth of averaging in each reading) but before that we are in the vostok cores with just tiny amounts of annual snowfall and consequently horrible resolution. So probably flat but how about the dramatic rise from the last ice age, no overshoot? Linear, exponential? Lots of questions with no answers.
For the water vapor calculation you have to calibrate for temperature. In meteosat they do this regularly (every 20 seconds I think) so they can account for any rise or fall in UT temperatures which is what they are reading when they read the 6 um channel (roughly similar to HIRS channel 12). Likewise if T12 rises it is due to UT temperature rising or water vapor falling, without knowing UT temperature you don’t know which. The model is the author’s way of determining that water vapor rose since T12 stayed roughly constant as T2 rose.
The cooling and drying of the UT is what matches the radiosondes (granted not perfect). The authors dismiss them with one sentence and another reference to a paper with no title. Why couldn’t they put titles in their bib?
Joel, here’s another more detailed paper using a similar process: T2, T12 and a model. Their model comes from radiosonde measurements and other satellites. rain.atmos.colostate.edu/research/pubs/berg1999.pdf I am still reading it, and will comment more later.
Joel Shore (13:02:46)
proxies, for the tall and short of it .
the levels of c02 recorded from 1810 to 1957 and beyond – to the present don’t show much difference in amplitude when taken as direct measurements. In fact, they’re remarkable in their similarity – given regional variations
When Antarctic ice core figures alone are imposed as prior to 1957, as the measure of c02 levels then different data techniques are being used that give a a different result.
Here’s how professor Jaworowski explains it:
“Determinations of CO2 in polar ice cores are commonly used for estimations of the pre-industrial CO2 atmospheric levels. Perusal of these determinations convinced me that glaciological studies are not able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill the essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition the air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion, is not met, as even the coldest Antarctic ice (down to –73oC) contains liquid water[2]. More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice[3].
One of these processes is formation of gas hydrates or clathrates. In the highly compressed deep ice all air bubbles disappear, as under the influence of pressure the gases change into the solid clathrates, which are tiny crystals formed by interaction of gas with water molecules. Drilling decompresses cores excavated from deep ice, and contaminates them with the drilling fluid filling the borehole. Decompression leads to dense horizontal cracking of cores, by a well known sheeting process. After decompression of the ice cores, the solid clathrates decompose into a gas form, exploding in the process as if they were microscopic grenades. In the bubble-free ice the explosions form a new gas cavities and new cracks[4]. Through these cracks, and cracks formed by sheeting, a part of gas escapes first into the drilling liquid which fills the borehole, and then at the surface to the atmospheric air. Particular gases, CO2, O2 and N2 trapped in the deep cold ice start to form clathrates, and leave the air bubbles, at different pressures and depth. At the ice temperature of –15oC dissociation pressure for N2 is about 100 bars, for O2 75 bars, and for CO2 5 bars. Formation of CO2 clathrates starts in the ice sheets at about 200 meter depth, and that of O2 and N2 at 600 to 1000 meters. This leads to depletion of CO2 in the gas trapped in the ice sheets. This is why the records of CO2 concentration in the gas inclusions from deep polar ice show the values lower than in the contemporary atmosphere, even for the epochs when the global surface temperature was higher than now. ”
so its unlikely that huge fluxes occurred. Regional differences in c02 occur although what we do nowadays is average them out to form a global average
Joel Shore (13:02:46)
regarding the title of the paper any the said person’s response… Are you reading the same words as are written in that entry of 16:08:44? or just a personal interpretation?
P Wilson says:
Yes, there are some regional variations. However, the variations that you get close to the ground near major urbanized areas are not representative of the CO2 levels across the globe further up in the troposphere, which is what matters most radiatively. Here is a map of CO2 levels in the mid-troposphere recently made by NASA: http://geology.com/nasa/carbon-dioxide-map/ I think Anthony even did a post on it and while somewhat of a big deal was made about how the variability is larger than expected, the fact is that it ain’t that large…Look how the entire scales goes from 376 ppm to 386 ppm.
Any heat that is intercepted by c02 takes place in the first 10 metres from the ground, which is where any warming takes place. After that the saturation window closes. Pay more attention to whats being written on the threads.
Also that link doesn’t provide any information as to how much c02 at ground level over vostok. It states that “Patterns of carbon dioxide distribution were also found to differ significantly between the northern hemisphere, with its many land masses, and the southern hemisphere, which is largely covered by ocean. ” The figures involved seem entirely consistent with pre industrial values taken by direct measurement nonetheless
nb. I should have said, temperatures at mid troposphere tend to be around -30C and decrease with altitude. If that is where the “radiative forcing” – as you describe it – is the most important, then its thermodynamically impossible that -30C can maintain a positive thermal surface temperature. This only re-inforced what I said earlier about the fact that since the ghg model isn’t working at the surface, climatologists look elsewhere for it at higher elevations. Thats when the model falls onto even more implausible territory.
Also, the direct measurement technique includes up to 1957. The most notable spike in c02 elevations was in 1940 at 438ppm average
P Wilson:
I can’t keep track of everything you say that is wrong. This is simply wrong.
Frankly, you have no clue how the theory works that you are even arguing against. And yet, you honestly believe that you somehow know more than the people who understand it. I am simply dumbfounded.
The way things work is this: Much of the infrared radiation from the earth is absorbed by the atmosphere. When it is then re-emitted, it is re-emitted by the atmosphere according to the Steffan-Boltzmann Law at the temperature in that region of the atmosphere. Since the temperature decreases with height in the troposphere and the amount of radiation goes as T^4, that means less radiation gets emitted.
The effect of increasing greenhouse gases is to increase the effective radiating level of the emission that escapes into space. And, because the increase in altitude means the temperature is lower, less radiation is emitted and the earth is no longer in radiative balance, i.e., it is absorbing more energy from the sun than it emits back out into space. As a result, the atmosphere heats up until radiative balance is once again restored (although this can take a long time because of the thermal inertia of the oceans).
And, this isn’t all theoretical musings. How do you think NASA came up with that map of the CO2 levels in the mid-troposphere? They do it by remote sensing, i.e., by looking at the radiation in bands where CO2 absorbs and emits. If the process of absorption and re-emission was not occurring according to the well-understood radiative physics, their instruments would not work!
By the way, here is a description of how the AIRS instrument that made that map of CO2 in the mid-troposphere works: http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/how_AIRS_works/ You can click on the “detailed description” for more details. There is also a publications database under the science tab, where one could presumably get even more information.
I cannot emphasize enough how ridiculous it is to claim that radiative physics doesn’t work the way that scientists think it does. If it didn’t, these instruments would simply not work…It is as simple as that!
Hi Joel,
There are quite a few papers on using satellite measurements to calculate UTWV accurately. Here is an older one but I think it explains what they are doing pretty well: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~salathe/papers/GOESpaper.html There are at least three ways to calculate UTWV starting with just two measurements like HIRS T12 and T2.
First you can use other measurements to derive a temperature profile or at least a UT temperature corresponding to T12. That way you can subtract out the temperature component of T12 (and more importantly, its changes).
Second you can develop a model, line by line from the earth’s surface to the satellite to determine the absorption in the two channels due to WV. That requires some assumptions about UTWV versus the column but the model is fairly precise since it is only for the small box you are currently measuring.
Third you can do what Soden did and use a simulation to determine the UTWV, then confirm with the measurements. You’ll notice that method is never used for real time UTWV measurements in any of the papers. But Soden was obviously not trying to accurately simulate any particular box accurate at any point in time (which is impossible), but the atmosphere as a whole over many years time for which a GCM is a valid approach.
There are undoubtedly other methods to determine UTWV that I have not figured out. But the common factor in all of them is that the measurement in T12 has two components: the UT temperature (over a fairly wide range of altitudes and the surface or boundary temperature minus the column WV (particularly the UTWV). If the UT temperature changes, T12 changes. If UTWV changes, T12 changes. It is impossible to know which changed without the other information from (1) measurements (2) model, or (3) the GCM as Soden used.
Joel Shore (07:11:03)
The way to measure c02 is not by the heat it emits but its chemical composition, since the heat footprint in the middle troposphere is non-existent. Thats why the temperature is -30 to -45C. C02 simply doesn’t intercept heat after the 1st 10 metres from land surface level. The point then is that they are picking up other ambient heat from another source and calibrating accordingly.
It is physically impossible to increase radiation escaping the earth, as ghg’s are not heat sources. see above for steffan boltmann explanation and why it is so absurb to apply to the climate.
According to this law, radiation is supposed to leave in the 4-12 micron bandwidth, which is the same emitted by humans.
So something is quite remiss about the methods of detecting heat, and what heat is being detected in the middle troposphere.
I’ve explained this several times on this thread
Eric (skeptic): I am confused by your recent post because you start off the discussion mentioning T12 and T2 in the first paragraph but then never mention T2 again. I agree with you that T12 can change for two different reasons and that you thus need more information to discriminate between changes due to UTWV and changes due to UT temperature. However, that is what I think the T2 data is for. Or, as Soden explains it: