Controversial new climate change results
University of Bristol Press release issued 9 November 2009
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 should start to diminish as CO2 emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.
The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.
This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.
So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? “Not necessarily”, says Knorr. “Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed”.
Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published last week in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.
###
Here is the abstract from GRL:
Several recent studies have highlighted the possibility that the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems have started losing part of their ability to sequester a large proportion of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions. This is an important claim, because so far only about 40% of those emissions have stayed in the atmosphere, which has prevented additional climate change.
This study re-examines the available atmospheric CO2 and emissions data including their uncertainties. It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.
Knorr, W. (2009), Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613.
According to Pat Michaels at World Climate Report:
Dr. Knorr carefully analyzed the record of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and anthropogenic land-use changes for the past 150 years. Keeping in mind the various sources of potential errors inherent in these data, he developed several different possible solutions to fitting a trend to the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. In all cases, he found no significant trend (at the 95% significance level) in airborne fraction since 1850.
(Note: It is not that the total atmospheric burden of CO2 has not been increasing over time, but that of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere each year by human activities, about 45% remains in the atmosphere while the other 55% is taken up by various natural processes—and these percentages have not changed during the past 150 years)
Here is Figure 1 from the Knorr paper:
Figure 1. The annual increase in atmospheric CO2 (as determined from ice cores, thin dotted lines, and direct measurements, thin black line) has remained constantly proportional to the annual amount of CO2 released by human activities (thick black line). The proportion is about 46% (thick dotted line). (Figure source: Knorr, 2009)
The conclusion of the Knorr paper reads:
Given the importance of the [the anthropogenic CO2 airborne fraction] for the degree of future climate change, the question is how to best predict its future course. One pre-requisite is that we gain a thorough understand of why it has stayed approximately constant in the past, another that we improve our ability to detect if and when it changes. The most urgent need seems to exist for more accurate estimates of land use emissions.
Another possible approach is to add more data through the combination of many detailed regional studies such as the ones by Schuster and Watson (2007) and Le Quéré et al. (2007), or using process based models combined with data assimilation approaches (Rayner et al., 2005). If process models are used, however, they need to be carefully constructed in order to answer the question of why the AF has remained constant and not shown more pronounced decadal-scale fluctuations or a stronger secular trend.
Michaels adds:
In other words, like we have repeated over and over, if the models can’t replicate the past (for the right reasons), they can’t be relied on for producing accurate future projections. And as things now stand, the earth is responding to anthropogenic CO2 emissions in a different (and perhaps better) manner than we thought that it would.
Yet here we are, on the brink of economy crippling legislation to tackle a problem we don’t fully understand and the science is most certainly not settled on.
UPDATE: A professional email list I’m on is circulating the paper, read it here: Knorr 2009_CO2_sequestration
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bill, speaking of a truly amazing set of statements… you claim “the world is at stake”, along with other unreasonably alarming and unfounded statements.
The rest of us, however, are not so gullible.
Again, you’ve missed the entire concept of “credible”.
Do you have no understanding of the concept of credibility?
The Artic ocean is the big drain in the bath tub model. Every year ice covers the drain and the CO2 level rises. When the ice thaws, the exposed cold Arctic (and diluted) sea water absorbs the CO2 and the level falls. But over the longer time periods, the Arctic ocean has been getting warmer and thus reducing its ability to absorb so the long term change in CO2 levels is rising (independent of anthropogenic emissions). http://www.kidswincom.net/climate.pdf
WAG says that skeptics rely on models. That statement is not factual for a true skeptic. Scientific skeptics do not have a belief system; but the believers in catastrophic AGW certainly do. Skeptics simply say, “Convince us.” But rather than cooperate by providing their raw data and methods, climate alarmists withhold the information that they base their conclusions on. Naturally, skeptics are skeptical.
The cooling of the oceans is contrary to the CO2=AGW conjecture. There may be a tiny amount of anthropogenic global warming, but it is insignificant compared with the planet’s natural processes, which produce the overwhelming majority of CO2 emissions.
And even the total emissions of CO2, both natural and by humans, has not been sufficient to overcome the planet’s current cooling, indicating that the IPCC’s climate sensitivity number is grossly exaggerated, as is its claim of CO2 residence time.
If the IPCC used the correct sensitivity number of 0.5 – 1.0, and the CO2 residence time of ten years or less, they would be forced to conclude that blaming CO2 for global warming is incorrect. In fact, there is no empirical evidence showing that an increase in CO2 is anything but beneficial.
The oceans are cooling, not warming, and when the ocean cools, it absorbs CO2: click
There is a direct correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and ocean temperature: click
AGW is so tiny that it can be safely disregarded; if AGW were at all significant, its effect would show up along with the [almost entirely natural] rise in CO2. But it doesn’t. AGW is so insignificant that it can not be independently measured.
It is fascinating to watch climate alarmists trying to blame the entire rise in CO2 on human activities, when even the IPCC and the U.S. Department of Energy state that human activities account for only about 3% of the planet’s total CO2 emissions. The alarmists know this, but they can not publicly admit it. If they did, they would be admitting that human activities are inconsequential to the climate.
WAG says: “Empirical proof of the AGW hypothesis would mean waiting 50-100 years and seeing how much the temperature has increased. Of course, by that time, it would be too late to do anything about it.”
What we’re dealing with here is a typical alarmist whose mind is already made up. Notice how WAG refers to 50 – 100 years in the future: “…seeing how much temperature has increased.” His assumption is that the temperature can only increase; he leaves no room for the possibility that the temperature may decline. That statement is unfortunately typical of the masses of uneducated folks who believe, rather than think.
tallbloke (06:52:14) :
John Finn (02:44:37) :
Only if you assume all else is equal. Which it clearly is not.
Right – so what has changed in the last 50 years which has resulted in an extra ~75ppm (or ~600 billion tons) of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere. Bear in mind that “the trees can’t get enought of it” to use your phrase.
carrot eater (06:28:54) :
My question: do you keep that thermal term during the interglacial, meaning, now? You shouldn’t, because that term is for a process that isn’t currently occurring. The thermal term is saying that the land and ocean are net sources, not sinks. But from your comments, I can tell you accept that the ocean is still a sink. So this is an inconsistency.
The dT (indeed difference in temperature) term works independent of the increase caused by the emissions (but causes the variability in absorption rate around the increase), even during interglacials, be it that the accuracy is less than over the full term 420,000 years of Vostok, due to the latter’s huge smoothing. The factor 4 is based on two temperature excursions in the past 60 years: the cooling by the 1992 Pinatubo eruption and the 1998 strong El Niño warming. The (few months) lagged change in CO2 uptake was 3-4 ppmv/K.
Pieter Tans of NOAA added the influence of precipitation to the equation (important for sequestration by vegetation) and found even a better fit for the variability of the uptake. But the temperature influence on CO2 uptake variability in general is short term: only one to a few years, whereafter the temperature returns to previous values. Only a sustained temperature change will give a sustained increase/decrease to a new CO2 level, with an elevated factor for longer periods.
See the second halve of:
http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf
For glacial-interglacial transitions (or even for the MWP-LIA-CWP) other long term changes do count in: changes in ocean flows, land occupation/release by/from glaciers, tree growth line changes,… That makes that the long term CO2/temperature ratio expands to about 8 ppmv/K, see the Vostok record (but also visible in the Law Dome record: ~6 ppmv change for ~0.8 K temperature change MWP-LIA):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
Thus indeed the temperature factor is needed even during interglacials, but that accounts mainly for the short term variability (+/- 1 ppmv) around the trend (+2 ppmv/yr). The about 1 K increase in temperature since the LIA is only good for maximum 8 ppmv of the 100+ ppmv increase we measure today…
supercritical (06:56:24) :
Looking at the Mauna Loa graphs, I have doubt over accepting that a signal of apparent annual fluctuation of atmospheric CO2 is due to vegetation behaviour in the northern hemisphere.
It is pretty sure that vegetation is the cause: the NH shows a much higher seasonal amplitude than the SH, where more ocean surface is present. The maximum CO2 levels are in spring of each hemisphere, just before new leaves start to grow and at minimum in late summer, when vegetation growth has reached its maximum. Even more important: the d13C (the 13C/12C) ratio in the atmosphere changes with the growth and decay of vegetation: vegetation growth uses preferentially the smaller 12 carbon, thus enriching the ratio for 13C. See the combined CO2 level / d13C level graphs here (3rd and 4th):
http://www.barrettbellamyclimate.com/page34.htm
The oceans as sink and source are much slower than vegetation changes in the mid-latitudes, the more that the oceans are slower in warming up and cooling down.
Don’t underestimate the force of soil bacteria: if you measure CO2 levels in a hole in the ground, it is easely at 1,000 ppmv and higher. A lot of fallen leaves in autumn are decayed in months to a few years, even in winter months (except at very low temperatures), while no or reduced photosynthesis happens…
We’re at al natural high point historically of c02. However, there are resolution problems associated with ice core measurements outlined by here:
http://www.co2web.info/np-m-119.pdf
more work needs to be done on past proxies v present readings, as if the thesis of Jaworowski is correct, then c02 in ice depletes to an equilibrium over time that doesn’t refect its real value at the time it was caught in ice – plus, its a reading from Antarctica which is only a limited geographical area.
Also, ice readings are made by crushing ice and measuring as rapidly as possible in a vacuum – which is dubious as a method, since the gases would *explode*. All indications are that real measurements are higher than ice measurements.
is also illogical to claim that the 3% of CO2 which humans put into the atmosphere accumulates over time to 30%, while the 97% of CO2 which nature adds to the atmosphere does not accumulate and in fact shrinks to 70% of the total.
In truth though, there is no way of measuring what happens to anthropogenic c02, and it becomes pure guesswork. When warm oceans heat cool air, then c02 and water vapour is expelled, yet AAnthropogenic c02 doesn’t fluctuate so easily. The best guess therefore is that the amount of AC02 in the atmosphere is its percentage of the total. It really depends on ocean surface temperatures, although it must be said that decay alone puts 30 times more c02 into the atmosphere than humans produce in a year, whilst oceans exchange c02 with the air 20 times as fast as humans produce it
above addressed to John Finn (08:56:48)
supercritical (06:56:24) :
Looking at the Mauna Loa graphs, I have doubt over accepting that a signal of apparent annual fluctuation of atmospheric CO2 is due to vegetation behaviour in the northern hemisphere.
I’ve had exactly this discussion here before. To me the drop seems too sharp for vegetation. It seems to be originating at the arctic circle, and is reaching minimum before the ice coverage reaches minimum (it seems out of sync with the ice!). Sary Taukum (centre of a continent) partially shows what I would expect for vegetation – CO2 falls from March to August but rises rather too quickly from August to November.
CodeTech (08:18:18) :
you claim “the world is at stake”, along with other unreasonably alarming and unfounded statements.
OK, apologies, the world is not at stake just many millions of lives – human and animal. The “world” will continue.
Do you have no understanding of the concept of credibility?
Yes- do you?
You say AGW cannot be proved. The data is faulty or missing
You say to warmists must PROVE AGW.
Your 1st statement makes the second impossible.
All I was trying to say is that a lot is at stake – money or lives.
You refuse to accept dangerous (not catastrophic) AGW and ANY “poofs” offered – the only safe option is for you to now prove that AGW will be harmless just so that we know the future is safe for our descendants?
Smokey (08:34:49) :
While I agree that the influence of increased CO2 levels on temperature is probably small, as a sceptic one need to be sceptical to every claim, whatever the source and whatever the consequences…
Thus (again…):
If the IPCC used the correct sensitivity number of 0.5 – 1.0, and the CO2 residence time of ten years or less, they would be forced to conclude that blaming CO2 for global warming is incorrect. In fact, there is no empirical evidence showing that an increase in CO2 is anything but beneficial.
The sensitivity indeed is correct for CO2 alone, the rest of the 1.5-4.5 K for 2xCO2, according to the IPCC, is based on far from proven (even disproven) amplifying factors in the models… Here we agree.
The CO2 residence time, there we disagree: the about 5 years residence time has nothing to do with what happens if you add extra CO2 (whatever the source) to the atmosphere. It is the period needed to exchange half of all molecules in the atmosphere with these of the oceans and biosphere. That in itself doesn’t add or abstract any amount of the total amount of CO2 molecules… The real decay is about 40 years (half life), far more than 10 years, but far less than the hundreds of years of the IPCC.
The oceans are cooling, not warming, and when the ocean cools, it absorbs CO2:
Yes, but your graph is for fresh water, seawater acts completely different, because of its salt content and biological life… And you forget the time frame (diffusion of CO2 in water costs a lot of time…).
There is a direct correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and ocean temperature:
Yes, but that is only 4 ppmv/K on short term, or +8 ppmv since the LIA, far from sufficient to explain the 100+ ppmv increase…
Further, with 21 years smoothing over a period of 20 years, like Endersbee did, one can find a correlation between near everything with a trend. But if you expand the graph over the past century, it is clear that the correlation is (near) entirely from the accumulation of the emissions (not smoothed at all!) and the correlation with temperature is even negative for several periods (including the current one if you shrink the smoothing):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
P Wilson (09:37:49) :
As already meantioned earlier, what Jaworowski says is physically simply impossible and in general the opposite of what he says.
Etheridge in 1996 supplied a detailed investigation of three ice cores at Law Dome, where all objections of Jaworowski were refuted. They used three drilling methods (wet and dry), measured CO2 in firn and ice (no difference at closing depth) and there was an overlap of 20 years with the South Pole measurements. There is no depletion of CO2 in ice cores over 800,000 years (the most recent record) and cracks in the ice core evidently lead to too high levels, never too low. Or how can one measure 180-280 ppmv in ice core bubbles if the outside world contains 380 ppmv?
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
In the rest of your remarks you are confusing what circulates through the atmosphere (which is a lot) with what is one-way addition. Even if the amount circulating through the atmosphere over the seasons is 1,000 times higher than the human addition, that doesn’t add one molecule, kg or ppmv to the total quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere, as long as as much CO2 is removed as added by nature. In fact more is removed by nature than is added. Thus nature as a whole adds nothing, zero, nada (in quantity!), to the atmosphere…
Ferdinand, are you sure you’re not mixing up different posts? For example, I never mentioned a CO2 residence time of 5 years [“…the about 5 years residence time has nothing to do with what happens…”].
I posted this chart of peer reviewed papers, and commented that the CO2 residence time seems to be around 10 years or less — not the 100 years claimed by the IPCC.
And you are saying that this chart only applies to fresh water? Or only to salt water? Are you saying that CO2 is not soluble in one or the other? I’m not trying to argue, I’m just trying to understand your comments.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (04:46:04) :
That is a very incorrect model. It is a straight integration, like a sink with no drain.
Think of it this way. Go to your nearest lavatory and close the drain most of the way, but with a little room for outflow. Turn on the water and allow it to reach a steady state level. Now, bump up the inflow 3% (just tap the knob or lever or whatever you have). Does the sink overflow? No. As the sink fills, the increase in pressure increases the rate of outflow proportional to the amount in the sink. It is a negative feedback, and it will force a new steady state level which is 3% greater (measuring the appropriate parameter) than the old level.
carrot eater (05:04:25) :
“But if that’s what you want it to do, you should do what you say and actually write it as a term that’s linear with time: man term = (some slope)*t.”
What for? I already described its characteristics. It is a functional variable. That you did not recognize it is due to your failure to pay attention to what was written in your rush to judgment.
“I see you wanted to say this term was roughly equal to 0.03 * u, which might be roughly true for now, but if you actually solve your differential equation, you’ll end up with a constant man-made inflow, not one that’s linear with time.”
No, no, no. I said it could be bounded up to the present time by 0.03*u. That means that, whatever its effect, it is less than or equal to what you get by putting in 0.03*u.
“Instead, you tried to half-way describe the physics of the transfer in there, by saying the outflow was proportional to C, and ended up with something unphysical.”
That is the most common linear feedback, and the type of action which is indicated by figure 1. If you were familiar with feedback systems, you would really be nonplussed by your own argument here. I am. See the reply to Ferdinand above.
“For the fun of it, that solves to – C = (Co – u*tau)(exp(-t/tau)) + u*tau – C starts at Co, and then exponentially decays to u*tau.
No…. groan. You are assuming Co is greater than u*tau. In fact, we have no idea what Co is – it is assumed to be in the infinite past. The steady state value of C is u*tau. It has been u*tau for eons. It will always be (in this scenario) u*tau.
Ferdinand Engelbeen: Ah, so your temperature term is there to cover the short-term wiggles in the atmosphere’s absorption rate due to volcanoes and El Ninos. I see how you follow Peter Tans’ analysis, and I feel better about it. I’m still curious how you define dT, though – can you define that more clearly? It is T(t) minus what?
Knorr handled the same issue by tossing in terms proportional to the ENSO index and some index of volcanic activity (see his Eqn 1). He didn’t provide graphs to show whether tossing in those parameters helped fit the wiggles.
I’m still a little perturbed by the fact you’re using the same term for very different physical processes, but the fact that you change the constant actually acknowledges that it’s two different terms, active at different times, I think.
Amusing, bill.
However, it’s the responsibility of someone crying “wolf” to show there is, in fact, a wolf before expecting the townspeople to come running with pitchforks and torches.
I see no wolf, bill. I see some restless sheep, and rumors of wolves, but… no wolf.
Bart:
“What for? I already described its characteristics. ”
Describing it in words doesn’t help if you don’t write it into your model. If you say the manmade emissions are increasing in time, your model has to reflect that. You wrote the manmade emissions term as a constant, so that’s how the model will treat it. So after you solve your model, don’t expect your results to reflect the fact the emissions rate is increasing over time.
“That is the most common linear feedback, and the type of action which is indicated by figure 1. If you were familiar with feedback systems, you would really be nonplussed by your own argument here.”
I write such equations in my day job. I’m not bothered by the sight of a term like that; I’m bothered if you write a model that doesn’t make any sense. If you were trying to crudely describe, say, transport into and out from the ocean, I could deal with you writing dC/dt = -k(C-C*), for example, where C* would be the concentration at the ocean surface. Assuming the atmosphere is well mixed beyond some boundary layer. Of course, I’d also then need differential equations for the ocean.. and it grows from there.
If you’re happy ignoring the details of the physics and just treating the inflow as a constant, you should do the same for the outflows.
“No…. groan. You are assuming Co is greater than u*tau. In fact, we have no idea what Co is – it is assumed to be in the infinite past. The steady state value of C is u*tau. It has been u*tau for eons. It will always be (in this scenario) u*tau.”
I am not assuming anything; the math works regardless of which is greater. The curve goes up or down, and levels out at u*tau. But that’s irrelevant. Wow, you actually think that movement is corresponding to something physical that happened in the past, at the beginning of the earth? That your inflow into the atmosphere has been a constant since the beginning of the earth? I don’t know what to say. This really should be a sign to you that your model is just unphysical.
US research plane measures gas over Otago (here in new zealand) Measurements from the ground will eventually be able to be compared with satellite data covering huge areas, as well as recordings from the research flights.
The Lauder site is part of the global total carbon column observing network of 14 key sites worldwide, helping scientists better understand the global carbon cycle
The purpose is to find out how the atmosphere is structured, and the distribution of greenhouse gases,” said Harvard professor SThe aircraft was making the second of five trips travelling from pole to pole. Tomorrow it will stop over at Christchurch, then fly a loop over the Southern Ocean before returning to New Zealand .The information will help climate modellers trying to understand Earth’s future climates.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/us-research-plane-measures-gas-over-otago-3135601
P Wilson, and many others:
“is also illogical to claim that the 3% of CO2 which humans put into the atmosphere accumulates over time to 30%, while the 97% of CO2 which nature adds to the atmosphere does not accumulate and in fact shrinks to 70% of the total.”
Why is the carbon cycle so difficult to grasp? Yes, there are huge amounts of CO2 that go into the atmosphere naturally. That’s OK, because an equally huge amount of CO2 leaves the atmosphere naturally. On net, they pretty much cancel out. It’s analogous to a dynamic equilibrium.
Smokey: “I posted this chart of peer reviewed papers, and commented that the CO2 residence time seems to be around 10 years or less — not the 100 years claimed by the IPCC.”
You’re comparing apples to oranges. The residence time of an individual molecule is not the same as the persistence of an accumulation in whichever sink.
Smokey (10:12:47) :
Ferdinand, are you sure you’re not mixing up different posts? For example, I never mentioned a CO2 residence time of 5 years [“…the about 5 years residence time has nothing to do with what happens…”].
I posted this chart of peer reviewed papers, and commented that the CO2 residence time seems to be around 10 years or less — not the 100 years claimed by the IPCC.
The 5 years residence time is from one of the papers in the link (based on the 14C decay). But all items listed (5-15 years) are about residence time (see the sidetext: “the time that CO2 resides in the atmosphere before being recycled by the oceans”). Thus that is average recycling time, that doesn’t add or extract any amount of CO2 to/from the atmosphere, it only exchanges a lot of CO2 between atmosphere, biosphere and oceans. Not a single one of these studies is about what is important: How long does it take to reduce an extra amount (thus mass, whatever its origin) of CO2 in the atmosphere. That is important for the greenhouse effect, not how much is exchanged each year… That is what the IPCC means, they talk about a complete different “mass decay” residence time, not a “molecular exchange” residence time…
But note that the IPCC figures are way too high, as Peter Dietze showed: the mass decay half life time for CO2 is about 38 years, far less than the 100 years of the IPCC, but much longer than the about less than 10 years in the list.
And you are saying that this chart only applies to fresh water? Or only to salt water? Are you saying that CO2 is not soluble in one or the other? I’m not trying to argue, I’m just trying to understand your comments.
The CO2 solubility chart applies only to fresh water. Seawater can contain a lot more CO2 that fresh water. Not only temperature but also pH, concentration of salts and biological activity all play a role in the partial presure (difference) of CO2 in seawater compared to the atmosphere. See Feely e.a. at: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml and following pages.
From that source:
Thus the simple solubility chart of CO2 in fresh water doesn’t apply to what happens in real circumstances for seawater…
Ferdinand,
Could you now tell us roughly; at a simple level of circa 1: 50 for fresh water, what is the equivalent for seawater?
Ferdinand Engelbeen
jarowowski goes through 15 processes that occur in ancient ice to alter its capture process of real amount, and you only document two. Solubility in water is certainly one of them. Given that proxies exist that show elevated c02 at various timescales across the hemispheres other than in Vostok or the Law dome then there’s still much doubt that ice at 420,000 years old gives the exact measure of aerial co2 at each year or decade over those 420,000 years.
given that there are 1000gts of c02 at ocean surfaces alone and 38,000gts at intermediate and lower depths, then nature can add .. For the Anthropogenic part, that gets lost in the flux. Its like adding 30ml a day to your 1 litre a day drinking water
“You wrote the manmade emissions term as a constant, so that’s how the model will treat it.”
What??? I wrote it as a functional variable. Just like “C”. Is C a constant in my equations? Nooo, it isn’t. I used words – these little squiggly lines you are staring at, but which apparently make little impression on you – to define what that figure represented.
“I could deal with you writing dC/dt = -k(C-C*), for example, where C* would be the concentration at the ocean surface”
So, subsume the kC* term into the “u” variable. There is no loss of generality. Are you being willfully obtuse?
“I am not assuming anything; the math works regardless of which is greater. The curve goes up or down, and levels out at u*tau.”
No kidding? But, your objection was: “and then exponentially decays to u*tau” You could have as easily said “and then grows to u*tau”. It doesn’t matter. We are talking about steady state behavior.
“But that’s irrelevant.”
No news there.
“Wow, you actually think that movement is corresponding to something physical that happened in the past, at the beginning of the earth? That your inflow into the atmosphere has been a constant since the beginning of the earth? I don’t know what to say. This really should be a sign to you that your model is just unphysical.”
I am trying to be civil, so I am not going to say what I think of this. This is completely irrelevant. I am looking at steady state dynamics and simplifying the model to a level in which general conclusions of typical behavior may be drawn. This argument appears to be over your head. Please do not comment anymore. I’m not going to reply. You are either too… not going to say it… or you are just being argumentative.
addendum. If nature added nothing to the existing c02 levels then the last 420,000 years would be a flat line.. Oceans regulate c02 however, to the nth degree. as far as we know, at the moment, there is precious little AC02 in the atmosphere. It could be 1% or 3%. We just don’t know.
whoops. I forgot to say (in a hurry).. that 30 ml of water does actually does accumulate over time by 3ml per year. whilst the 1 litre you drink doesn’t. that means you’ll reach a tipping point after 10 years, then one will be one for
oh finally: if ice cores are correct, and air contains, or contained a tiny fraction of c02 then during periods when it was noticably warmer than today seem to suggest that c02 has no noticable effect on temperatures, or else ice core measurements understate real c02 by some 500ppm (if we believe c02 is a radiative forcing that alters the climate of the planet)