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.
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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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4 billion (06:06:24),
You are ignoring the immense buffering capacity of the ocean. Despite past CO2 levels more than twenty times higher than todays — and remaining that high for over a hundred million years — the ocean pH never became acid.
See also: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
@ur momisugly Anne van der bom qusetion to Ron DeHann
“Do you have an explanation for the 0.7 degrees of warming since pre-industrial times? Since CO2 rose by 35%, according to prof. Lindzen’s paper, that should have been no more than 2 tenths of a degree. What caused the other 0.5 degrees?”
Lets assume this 0.7C degree of warming has been obtained by thermometers placed right around the globe over the sea everywhere.
Lets assume the figure is dead accurate.
Lets assume there was no little ice age.
The number is so small as to be meaningless.
The explanation on the above assumptions is natural variability.
If the above assumptions are wrong the rise is again meaningless.
I trust this helps. You will get a better answer from Ron or if you suffer from insomnia you could try our Gav.
Take care 😉
Anne van der Bom (04:16:49) : said
“Ron de Haan (02:53:56)
Do you have an explanation for the 0.7 degrees of warming since pre-industrial times? Since CO2 rose by 35%, according to prof. Lindzen’s paper, that should have been no more than 2 tenths of a degree. What caused the other 0.5 degrees?”
The temperature rose according to who? It merely continued its age old cycle of climate summit to climate valleys. Temperatures have oscillated since history began and if you start recording temperatures from the depths of the Little Ice age no one should be surprised when they subsequently rebound.
This continual temperature oscillation is well seen here.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/invisible-elephants/#more-5984
The only fingerprint man has on climate is the Urban Heat island effect.
tonyb
Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it.*
[*From George Monbiot’s home page.] Monbiot [doesn’t that mean “moonbat”?] will certainly hate this new Bristol study, which tells WUWT readers something they know already, and tells Monbiot readers something new.
See George crying about it here: click
John Galt (06:14:17) :
In – Methane emissions (includes cattle flatulence)
Another cheap shot by AGW (now under new marketing). Still a zero-sum game, as the cows simply replace the other animals that browsed, like the Buffalo. Every continent has their browsers, domesticated or otherwise, where there is vegetation. That hasn’t changed since the age of dinosaurs.
The big deal was identified over 150 years ago, when the flatulence problem was associated with political speeches that featured mouths that moved with little substance behind the words spoken… except for the onrush of hot air.
Pick up any newspaper from before 1900 and you’ll rapidly come across such portrayances. So, safe to conclude that the joke’s on the Agenda, which identifies itself as a hot air source that rises in offence.
Ferdinand
You know that I think that Callendar carefully selected the (lower) co2 records he wanted, because he wanted to prove his 1938 thesis. He later thought he had got it wrong. (As did Arrhenius to a laerge extent) Keeling picked up on Callendars figures but later admitted the old readings were more accurate than he thought at the time.
The human fingerprint on the total carbon cycle is tiny and should be overwhelmed in the official readings by the vastly greater impact of the natural component. We will never agree on this aspect but its fun arguing 🙂
Best regards
Tonyb
Another important carbon sink are vegetarians. The number of people becoming vegetarians has increased and this has a high correlation with the increasing sequestration. They consume the vegetables that have sequestered CO2 and the CO2 remains fixed in their bodies.
Re: Ron de Haan (20:38:50) :
This certainly is a bomb right in the core of the AGW Doctrine.
Not yet. The usual models (you may read: the ‘usual suspects’) project absorption capacity decline to become a factor only as of middle of this century. The finding in the article is not surprising at all.
Center or centre? So I went to my favorite English newspaper, the Daily Mail, clicked on “travel”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/index.html
and there it is:
“Center Parcs Longleat: where fresh air and pampering are simply spa for the course
Anna Melville-James
Anna Melville-James manages to schedule in a weekend catch-up with friends. But where to go for somewhere fun, relaxing and with everything on your doorstep? Center Parcs of course, a positive utopia of healthy living, where bicycle rides, tree hopping and pampering are all on offer. All she needs to worry about is finding her way around …read”
But then the Hadley C is a name, and English names are never, never pronounced the way they are written (just ask James Prescott Joule or Alec Douglas-Home).
You might notice that over 18 years CO2 was increasing about 9% in the atmosphere, and Plant life was increasing about 6% by volume.
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
Ferdinand Engelbeen: You’ve done a nice job trying to explain, but I must take issue with you on comments like this:
“The models on the other hand are programmed to show a saturation of the oceans and vegetation. In that case, the airborne fraction would increase.”
Be careful. Models consider that ocean sinks will become less effective over time, but that shows up in the future; this paper does not address the future, nor does it focus on the hints seen in the very recent past.
For the period of time (1850 to now) considered by this paper, the various models with embedded carbon cycles don’t show much of any trend in airborne fraction, either. Nobody expected the oceans to reach saturation in 1980. For example, Le Quéré (an empirical work, not modeling) only found hints of a weakened ocean sink in the Southern ocean (not the total global sink) over the last few years.
So be careful to compare apples to apples, in terms of time frames.
Also, people need to remember that the most recent paper is not simply the last word, just because it’s most recent.
rbateman: Yes, the atmosphere used to have lots of CO2 in it, and it ended up as rocks, coal and oil buried underground. Those processes take more than a couple days.
This research was NOT conducted by a railway engineer heading a political pressure group run by the UN, so clearly this is NOT real climate science.
Obviously there is a big fat cheque from the oil companies that have paid to have this non-scientific climate denial published. I hope that the oil companies will be happy when we are all having to breathe liquid lava, the polar bear murdering [snip]!!!!
WOW! This alarmism is really easy to write isn’t it? That hardly took any thought at all!
Center as in Center Parcs is part of a trade name & is American in origin.
Centre as in town centre or Hadley Centre is correct in that sense.
DaveE.
Tim (20:30:12) :
I don’t mean to be dense or downplay the apparent significance of this, but aren’t we still looking at a pretty steadily rising atmospheric CO2 ppm, and isn’t that the causal factor in climate change, as per the global warmers?
I mean, if the warmers are right and increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 drive increasing temperatures, does it matter what proportion the anthropogenic fraction is? Isn’t the simple fact that CO2 ppm is rising enough?
Again, sorry to be dense, but can someone please ’splain it to me?
Tim,
Basically you are correct that there has been a steady rise in CO2, which by all accounts is a trivial gas as far as global warming comes into play ( I know based on what you have heard how can that be the case? ) The truth of the matter is that CO2 in and of itself has very minimal amounts of warming associated with it when compared to the heavy weights water and methane.
What the true culprit in AGW are the feedback effects that will take place because of CO2 ( which are theoretical and MAY occur though to date there is VERY little evidence of this being really probable ).
The reason this article is significant is that one of the hypothesis about why we have not caused huge warming to date ( by triggering massive feedback effects ) is because CO2 has not yet really hit the trigger ( it acts as a catalyst to cause all the trouble ) for the feedback loops to really get themselves amped up.
One of the reasons it is so important to stop emitting CO2 is because the natural ‘sinks’ the ocean and plant life that will dissolve or use the CO2 that is being emitted are about to be saturated, ergo CO2 will stop being a linear addition each year and explode upward, ipso facto, triggering MASSIVE warming through feedback loops.
This is of course a simplified explanation of the entire AGW debate simply illustrating why this report would hold any significance in the debate. The truth of the matter is neither side knows the truth, the science is not settled because to be honest we do not know how the entire system works. CO2 may in fact trigger a feedback effects with water vapor, but again there is no evidence of this to date. It will retain a limited bandwidth of radiative heat content but can only cause warming to a very limited extent. So the truth is you need to simply keep an open mind, search for truth and take explanations like mine as simply one person trying to explain a complex system as best they can. I am a layman when it comes to this having studied others work for years and can only tell you based on all that I have seen I believe CO2 will cause warming but no where near catastrophic levels and I actually think that most of that will be masked by natural rises and falls of temperature anyway. But look through and keep searching. Good hunting.
Alexej Buergin (07:07:16) :
Center or centre? So I went to my favorite English newspaper, the Daily Mail, clicked on “travel”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/index.html
and there it is:
“Center Parcs Longleat: where fresh air and pampering are simply spa for the course
Anna Melville-James
Anna Melville-James manages to schedule in a weekend catch-up with friends. But where to go for somewhere fun, relaxing and with everything on your doorstep? Center Parcs of course, a positive utopia of healthy living, where bicycle rides, tree hopping and pampering are all on offer. All she needs to worry about is finding her way around …read”
But then the Hadley C is a name, and English names are never, never pronounced the way they are written (just ask James Prescott Joule or Alec Douglas-Home).
FYI:
Center Parcs is a Dutch firm. Understandably, the Daily Mail calls it “Center Parcs” (which is the name the firm uses) rather than Centre Parks.
Douglas-Home is not an English name. The Douglas-Homes come from Coldstream in Berwickshire, which is part of Scotland, not England. (And, yes, Scotland is NOT part of England!)
Try “Cholmondeley” instead, if you want a funny English name.
“English names are never, never pronounced the way they are written…” Just how do you think the English pronounce names like Miller, Smith and Brown?
But if you asked a native of Liverpool or Birmingham how he pronounced the name of his city you would probably get an interesting reply.
RR Kampen: Pretty much. The press release was over the top, so it got people all excited. The actual paper isn’t all that exciting.
If anybody wants to know what the models actually say, have a look at Fig 7.13 in the IPCC FAR, WG1. It takes a couple seconds to figure out what’s going on.
The dotted black box represents the historical range for airborne fraction and ocean fraction. You’ll note that this paper by Knorr agrees with that black box. You’ll also note that most of the models start out in or near that black box (and are consistent with Knorr) at 2000. Two of the models are way off, and obviously need more work; three others are iffy. The models then move to higher airborne fractions by 2100; this paper by Knorr makes no claim about 2100.
Note that the models don’t agree with each other much on the 2100 values. Models with integrated carbon cycles are still a new thing, and clearly need more work. More understanding on the effect of warming and chemistry on the different sinks is needed.
Richard111 (00:05:47) :
Google algal blooms. Seems to be an unprecedented rise in ocean algae blooms causing havoc to bird life. I am not a scientist, but I don’t think algae and ocean acid can exist at the same time.
Rich, algae will grow in a very wide range of pH levels. Trust me, I know.
Signed
Mike aka Sonicfrog – Pool and Spa guy for almost 20 years!
I think the most insteresting part of in the graph is the last decade.
If we trust the data, it seems that the annual increase in astmospheric CO2 is actually decreasing. Annual emissions of CO2 on the other hand are growing rapidly.
If this trend continues, I don’t think the proportion of 46% suggested in the study will hold for the future.
Also, the largest annual increase in atmospheric CO2 according to Mauna Loa was in 1998. Surprising?
carrot eater (08:02:43) :
The press release was over the top
Aren’t they all? One might expect to see some small trend though (with the big assumption that this paper is correct).
have a look at Fig 7.13 in the IPCC FAR, WG1
As you say, there’s a wide diversity in the models presented (though I note with a little amusement that the Hadley Centre coupled climate-carbon cycle general circulation model is way off :-)). But with only 10 years to compare, it’s hard to draw any real conclusions.
The idea that anthropogenic emissions have a long half life in the atmosphere is a fudge factor in the models that makes increasing emissions consistant with rising concentrations. The major sinks that are closest to any source (natural or man made) are the cold relatively pure water droplets in clouds and fog. How long does it take for a large fraction of CO2 to travel a kilometer or two and saturate cold clouds? I expect it’s a matter of days rather than years and is strongly dependent on the amount of condensable water near the sources. This hypothesis is consistant with the observation that background levels with seasonal variations factored out are relatively constant from pole to pole.
Yarmy: Would I expect to see some small trend? Not necessarily. Keep in mind that Knorr’s work was looking at the long scale, over 1850-now; zoom out that far over the past and I don’t think anybody would expect to see much trend. Zoom in on the last decade, and maybe I’d expect to see some slight hint of a change, I don’t know.
This paper, more than anything, seems to refute Canadell et al, so we’ll see how they respond. I don’t think it has any bearing on the work of Le Quéré, who found uncertain hints of a change in the southern ocean’s effectiveness over the last decade.
The Hadley Centre’s model is an outlier for the 2100 prediction; it’s starting at a reasonable place for 2000. The University of Maryland model is way off even at 2000; I don’t know what’s going on there. Time will tell on this aspect, and presumably the coupled carbon cycle in the models will be improved over time as well.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (03:11:41)
Read the links, thought provoking – shall trawl the net as well – thank you Ferdinand.
4 billion (06:06:24) : What is the doubt about Ocean acidification? it is simple chemistry. CO2 + H2O –> H2CO3 The Oceans are absorbing more CO2, nobody disputes that, as it absorbs CO2 the simple reaction described above occurs, simple chemistry. So it shouldn’t be any surprise.
Now you were asked to produce a graph to substantiate your hypothesis. Evidence does help. Still, here is the simple chemistry missing from your chemistry:
In the oceans overall, there is always a surplus of calcium ions (Ca++) ready to absorb extra CO2. The little molluscs are everywhere, wrapping up any hint of excess in their shells. Moreover, all the animal and plant life in the oceans need CO2 – again, it is the most fundamental, basic, vital food. Anyone suggesting anything else is a bad scientist. Every bit of CO2 we can get is precious to the biosphere and I hate Al Gore for forcing on people the lie that it is a pollutant.
Earth used to have a HUGE quantity of CO2 in its atmosphere – until the molluscs turned it into limestone, and the trees turned it into coal. But ocean acidification – nah, ask the coelacanths, who may well have been around when CO2 was ten times its present level, four thousand ppm.
There are a lot of people missing the point of this paper. What it says is, yes there is statistically more CO2 but that CO2 isn’t building up. It’s being absorbed as fast as we emit it.
The drain is bigger than the faucet.