I’ve been getting a lot of requests to cover this story, probably 20 or so now with wonderings about “why haven’t you covered this yet?”
How quickly you all forget. WUWT was the very first to cover this story back on November 10th, 2009.
Everybody else in the media today is playing catch-up. So if you’d like to read the original press release and participate in the already ripe comments left then, see this WUWT story:
anon,
when I looked at that story about the fast pace of glacial melt in the 40s, I didn’t take it at face value. The reason is that the basic premise of the whole study is why did the glaciers melt faster in the 40s when the CRU temp DB “proves” that it was not as warm then. Then you read the climategate emails, and see the discussion of tamping down the “warm blip” seen in the temperature data in the 40s, and I just assume that the problem is that the CRU temp history is wrong, and it really was warmer in the 40s, and we don’t need to go looking for zebras when the hoof beats are perfectly explained by horses.
But, but , but
Willis Eschenbach (03:24:54) :
So although as you might surmise I am a suspicious SOB who doesn’t believe anything related to climate science without a very hard look, I am satisfied that the data coming from Mauna Loa are valid and can be relied on. See here for more information.
Is it reasonable to measure CO2 from the high atmosphere and in isolated areas only and then call it global CO2? Why not measure temperatures the same way then? Up on high mountains from down winds and call them global temperatures?
In addition, once I tried finding the publications of all those sources that track so nicely the Maona Loa curve, and I saw they were all Keeling and Somebody, a graduate student or a postdoc I suppose. It is like all those models coming out with “independent outputs”, imo. The independent checks by Beck, say another story, for example.
The “bubbles” may have that sort of resolution; but the gas within those bubbles represents a mixture of atmospheres over the firn densification time period. Law Dome does have one of the shortest firn densification periods of any of the ice cores I’ve seen data from and it does have far better atmospheric resolution than most most other ice cores.
The plant SI data still have far better resolution; which does not degrade as badly with depth and time of burial.
The ice cores do have the advantage of providing continuous records over 100’s of thousands of years. The plant SI are limited, so far, to a few scattered peat bogs and lacustrine depositional sequences.
The “momentary” image shows both polar areas (north and south) to have 20 to 30 ppmv less CO2 than the mid- to low-latitudes. That’s not a seasonal difference. NASA even says that the CO2 “is not well mixed in the troposphere”…
“Chahine said previous AIRS research data have led to some key findings about mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide. For example, the data have shown that, contrary to prior assumptions, carbon dioxide is not well mixed in the troposphere, but is rather “lumpy.” Until now, models of carbon dioxide transport have assumed its distribution was uniform.”
NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research
Stomatal densities don’t vary diurnally. Plants adjust stomatal density over time to obtain the most efficient CO2 respiration.
Furthermore, pine needles tend to be higher above Earth’s surface level than snow. The gas bubbles in the ice cores represent surface CO2 levels to an even greater degree than the plant SI do.
SI data over the 20th century match the instrumental CO2 data to a T… Wagner et al., 2005
I agree that local phenomena can seriously affect the SI. Kouwenberg discounted the ~390 ppmv CO2 maximum at ~400 AD in her Jay Bath (Pacific NW) reconstruction as being due to local vegetation changes because she could not correlate the high CO2 with warmer temperatures. She did eliminate volcanogenic sources though. When Kouwenberg published her reconstruction in Geology (Kouwenberg et al., 2005), the pre-800 AD portion of the reconstruction was omitted because it was assumed to be a local phenomenon. The full reconstruction only appears in her PhD thesis.
However, Kouwenberg, Kurchner, Wagner and the other pioneers of SI derivation of past CO2 levels are probably missing the “forest because of the trees.” They are looking for evidence of a pre-industrial coupling of CO2 and temperature. But they are looking for that coupling from the perspective of CO2 driving temperature changes. If they would step back and look at the whole forest, rather than a few trees… They would see that the SI CO2 maxima lag behind temperature maxima by 100 to 400 years.
CO2 lags behind temperature changes at the glacial-interglacial scale, at the Dansgaard-Oeshger/Heinrich/Bond (~1470-yr) scale and perhaps even at the PDO scale.
Sorry boys,
It is good to be sceptical, but there is a difference between being sceptical and simply rejecting data, only because you don’t like them.
I am a little tired of the repeating of always the same arguments, while with some search of the literature, one can find a lot of reliable information.
As already said before, Mauna Loa is NOT the only CO2 station of the world, the South Pole even started measurements even before it. And we have about 70+ stations measuring CO2 nowadays at places far away from huge sources.
10 “baseline” stations are used for “global” CO2 levels, continuously measuring CO2 from near the North Pole to the South Pole, with rigorous calibration: every hour three different calibration gases are used and every 25 hours a fourth calibration gas is used outside the range of the others to check problems with the calibration gases themselves. The procedures, which are used worldwide can be read for Mauna Loa here:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
All raw one hour average CO2 calculations are the average of 2×20 minutes of voltage measurements from 2 intake lines and 3×4 minutes of calibration gas voltage measurements. These data, together with the sd of the values within the past hour can be found (for four baseline stations) at:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/
Some data are flagged for deviations from what can be expected from the measurements. Even for the largest change in CO2 level due to seasonal impact, the change is far less than 0.1 ppmv per hour, which is the detection level. Thus if one sees a change of more than 0.3 ppmv in an hour, the data are flagged and not used for averaging. That is the case with downslope wind from the volcano, upslope wind in the afternoon, instrument malfunction etc. Volcanic vents in general show an uptick of about 4 ppmv, while upslope winds show a depletion of about 4 ppmv (only at Mauna Loa). Even if one uses all available data, there is no difference in average or trend with the “cleaned” data. Only most of the local outliers, not relevant for global CO2, are removed.
See the trend of the raw, uncorrected hourly measurements here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_raw.jpg
and compare that with the trend of the selected “clean” hourly measurements:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_selected.gif
So even if MLO is on a volcano and La Jolla Pier doesn’t use the data if the wind is from land side, and the South Pole has a lot of mechanical problems (what wouldn’t at -80 C), the raw or “cleaned” data just show the same trend, be it with a seasonal amplitude and a delay in altitude and between the NH and the SH, as most of the emissions are at ground level in the NH:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends.jpg
Some time ago I remember seeing a similar map showing NOx concentrations. The industrialized regions were immediately obvious.
The CO2 map shows no increased concentration over industrialized regions. Even with today’s increased CO2 levels natural sources appear to dominate.
Does this not suggest that today’s CO2 levels are determined by nature and not mankind?
David Middleton (14:50:35) :
It will be really funny when the “experts” figure out that 388 ppmv CO2 pretty well fits within the normal range of warm periods in the last 10,000 years. The ice core CO2 data make for a very nice 200- to 500-yr moving average; but they can’t resolve decadal- and century-scale changes. I would think that the fact that the AIRS data show polar CO2 to be ~30 ppmv lower than low- to mid-latitude CO2 would be a clue that the ice cores systematically underestimate global atmospheric CO2. Plant SI data accurately depict CO2 with nearly annual resolution over portions of the last 10,000 years. SI data over the last 60 years match the MLO data and they can be empirically tested.
David, this looks like interesting evidence, time for a WUWT post from you? – if you can please just explain it properly – incl. what is “plant SI data”? Your material also bears up what I’ve long suspected, that ice core CO2 measurements are much too low – not just because of being polar, but because there are multiple problems in the coring, handling, transporting, storing, and measuring processes. Technical issues that involve CO2 leak and more, not surprising considering the unique and hostile environment. This is not to rubbish ice cores, they provide wonderful data… if handled appropriately.
here is a section 1999 – 2002 of 10 CO2 measuring stations
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/3694/co2manytrends.png
Note the linear trends show 3 outliers Sary Taukum (land locked) south pole and baring head (both south southern hemisphere).
The variation between outliers is approx 6 ppm
Also please read:
Willis Eschenbach (03:24:54) :
barry (17:27:30) :
Not very. [three links to “Some Are Boojums”…] Assuming you’re focussing on the extreme outlier (to put it charitably) views of Jaworowski in the canadafreepress article
Barry, I agree with much of what you write above. But not this. I looked into “Some Are Boojums” extensively. He has his knife into Jaworowski, just Jaworoski, nobody else, and his reasoning did not hold up to my further investigation. I read Jaworowski’s science paper that was written in 1992, at the time when Climate Science was starting to go off the rails. At this point in time, Jaworowski wrote a paper that is chock-full of good science, that merely notes in a pretty scientifically normal way the poor science elsewhere. But later, Jaworowski became so incensed and upset that his later writings tend to allow the science to be a little bit beggared (but not compromised) by his very understandable criticisms of the political process that he could see was swallowing the good science alive. At the very least, J could hardly avoid being the target of tarring and skewed representation, by the desmogblog generation.
This early paper was only in photocopied form, without the indexing that hyperlinks allows, that makes for much easier reading. I’ve typed it out and posted it here, with introductory notes and with co-author Segalstad’s blessing. I’ve actually incorporated the pictures used by “Some Are Boojums”, arriving at different conclusions.
In all this, I have arrived at different conclusions to Ferdinand Engelbeen, whom I still regard as a good friend and worthy opponent. Happy New Year FE!
Wansbeck (05:31:29) :
“Some time ago I remember seeing a similar map showing NOx concentrations. The industrialized regions were immediately obvious.
The CO2 map shows no increased concentration over industrialized regions. Even with today’s increased CO2 levels natural sources appear to dominate.
Does this not suggest that today’s CO2 levels are determined by nature and not mankind?”
This is a really good question and one that, until last night, I assumed to be a big arguing point and presumably in conflict only because of the ability of the Earth/plants to absorb CO2. However, the estimates I did for the ocean (see above) really got me thinking, so I’ll do similar ones here for the atmosphere and show that man has no measurable influence.
Global anthropogenic carbon, 2008 = 8 billion metric tons (Wikipedia)
STP Volume of atm (calculated in above post from Wiki/About.com data) = 2.86*10^27 Liters
This equates to 1.82*10^14 mol/yr of CO2. Diluting this uniformly into the atmosphere and assuming steady uptake & removal of all natural CO2 gives an expected CO2 rise from anthropogenic sources of only 0.0000031 ppm/yr.
This answer really, really bothers me. It’s an easy calculation to do, and anyone with freshmen-level chemistry, physics, or engineering can do it. Several of the data used for this calculation are far, far harder to calculate, such as the “height of a constant density atmosphere” and the “global anthropogenic carbon emissions”, yet these are readily calculated by atmospheric scientists. Because of this, I’m feeling like I calculated something wrong (someone please try to confirm these numbers). If I didn’t calculate something incorrectly, then it’s clear that the CO2 increase is not manmade (unless it comes from something other than direct emissions of CO2), and the simplicity of the calculation/results indicates that the scientists claiming global warming have been intentionally negligent, because I would assume that this is the first calculation one would do before making such claims about AGW.
Again, I would appreciate it if someone could verify these calculations or point me in a direction where someone else has, as they are very simple but if my result is correct, then it is clear that AGW is wrong AND that the scientists claiming AGW is real or grossly negligent or bold-faced liars.
Scott
Colorado State University
anna v, thanks for that link. It looks like a lot of the unknowns that are pointed out by E.M. Smith are model parameters or inputs. You could call that a lack of data, but I would say it is model inadequacy or model error. The modern data is precisely measured and well known and it seems to me that the model could be run and validated over the span of modern measurements.
I would like to fully support Lucy’s comments 06 39 53
both regarding Ferdinand and also the accuracy of the co2 data available pre Mauna Loa.
I went down this road two years ago completely independently of Beck and obatained Callendars archives where his selection of Co2 readings at the low end of the spectrum is very evident. He was a man with a theory and Keeling was very eager to follow the same route.
Giles Slocum demolished Callendars work very elegantly in 1955
http://www.pensee-unique.eu/001_mwr-083-10-0225.pdf
As it says in the paper referenced above, various printed books-which I have seen- considered around 400ppm at the beginning of the 20th century to be normal. Co2 had been regularly measured as an ordinary part of life since Saussure in 1830. Elizabeth Gaskill wrote of co2 levels in cotton factories in her novel ‘North and South’ and the Britsh govt had been well aware of levels since around 1850. They legislated in 1889 to keep it below certain limits in factories. These limits were monitored by the UK factories inspectorate.( a fearsome regulatory body)
So high co2 levels in the atmosphere at around 350-400ppm were considered normal, they were measured regularly by many very fine chemists and patented analysing machines came into being to ensure compliance with the factories Act.
If asked whether I believe direct Co2 measurements taken at the time by some of the finest scientists of the day, or proxies by way of tree rings and ice cores taken in the supercharged political atmosphere we have today, I am afraid my money is on the former.
Callendar deliberately selected low Co2 values and we live with those consequences to this day. Sorry Ferdinand 🙂
Tonyb
It would seem that IPCC and alarmists are not part of the scientific “consensus” when it comes to CO2 residence time from what this chart implies…….If their models are indeed based on 100 plus year residence time of CO2 molecule then one could conclude that model temperature predictions are very suspect.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/09/the-liberal-attack-on-science-acorn-style-the-ipcc-fabrication-of-atmospheric-co2-residency-time.html
Bart (17:50:22) :
Ferdinand Engelbeen (15:37:42) :
From your link:
5.1:
No matter how high the natural seasonal turnover might be, in all years over the previous near 50 years, the natural CO2 sinks were larger than the natural CO2 sources… Thus it is impossible that natural sources were responsible for (a substantial part of) the increase of CO2 in the past 50 years.
This is non sequitur. The sinks will always expand to the level needed to counter the current forcing from whatever source. That is the nature of an equilibrium in a feedback system. All you have proven is that the known sinks are larger than the known natural inputs.
Bart (17:50:22) :
Ferdinand Engelbeen (15:37:42) :
From your link:
5.1: This is non sequitur. The sinks will always expand to the level needed to counter the current forcing from whatever source. That is the nature of an equilibrium in a feedback system. All you have proven is that the known sinks are larger than the known natural inputs.
5.1 This is the heart of the matter: as long as the natural sinks are larger than the natural sources, nature adds nothing, nada, zero, to the total mass of CO2 in the atmosphere. No matter how much circulates during a year through the atmosphere (the turnover), it is the balance of your account at the end of the year which makes that you have a loss or a gain. The individual flows are not known to any high accuracy, but the balance at the end of the year is known: that is the difference between the emissions and what is measured in the atmosphere.
In this case the only gain is from human emissions. Without them, there would be a loss. As long as we add 8 GtC/yr into the atmosphere and we see only half of it as increase, there is no other important source of extra CO2 active, or we should see an increase of more than 8 GtC/yr in the atmosphere. The only small extra addition is from temperature: about 8 ppmv caused by the warming with about 1 K since the LIA, but the total gain is about 100 ppmv, while we have added over 200 ppmv CO2.
5.2 About ice cores:
The (Law Dome) ice core CO2 levels and the CO2 emissions for the period 1900-1959 have about the same ratio as for the period after 1960 with more accurate measurements:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_1959.jpg
I haven’t plotted the data before 1900, as there were far less emissions and the signal/noise ratio may be problematic.
The trend of CO2 in the ice cores for the past few centuries is here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_000_3kyr.jpg
and there is little change in the previous 10,000 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_010kyr.jpg
A real, not fabricated, hockeystick this time, from different ice cores, measured by different people in different labs from different organisations in different countries.
And compare that to the timing of the reverse d13C hockeystick from coralline sponges in the upper ocean waters:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
What do you think that caused the exact parallel change of d13C and CO2 in ice cores (and atmosphere)?
5.3 Will be answered in another comment
5.4 Is meant for the period before the atomic bomb testing: carbon dating had to be adjusted for the dilution of 14C in the atmosphere by the burning of essentially 14C free carbon from fossil fuels.
5.5 There are only two relative fast sources of CO2 in the atmosphere: the oceans and vegetation decay (volcanic being a minor source and in the recent decade rather quiet). Oceans as main source are impossible: d13C level is too high. Vegetation is impossible: more growth than decay, because of the oxygen balance. So what other fast source(s) are left?
5.6 The increase in DIC is important, and the pCO2 difference between the atmosphere and the oceans: the average flow is from the atmosphere to the oceans, not the other way out.
Wilson (17:50:38) :
Ferdinand Engelbeen (17:11:21) :
So how about fumaroles? How much co2 do they put into the atmosphere per annum?
It is hard to catch up with all comments…
From a lnown skeptic:
“However, a paper by Nils-Axel Morner and Giuseppe Etiope, published in the journal ‘Global and Planetary Change’ in 2002, estimated that the lower limit for global volcanic degassing of carbon dioxide at around 300 million tonnes per year. By comparison, Gregg Marland and his colleagues at the U.S Dept. of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center have estimated that 26,778 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were emitted by human use of fossil fuels in 2003. Therefore, although Morner and Etiope did describe their estimate of carbon dioxide emissions from volcanoes as “conservative”, it is less than 2 per cent of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide from human use of fossil fuels.”
Even the Pinatubo eruption caused a decrease of CO2: the cooling caused by the aerosols was more important for CO2 uptake than the extra CO2 emitted by the volcano…
The title of this post actually has nothing to do with the claim of the study. The research states that the proportion of human-induced CO2 emissions which are absorbed might remain constant, which has nothing to do with the fraction of atmospheric CO2 remaining constant (since the emissions increased).
I have posted this query a few times, and have yet to see any theories. According to this clip of the AIRS data (link below), April in the NH has the highest concentrations of CO2. Pause the video on April each year. I notice in the west, Canada, Alaska and the northern tier of the US have the highest concentration for the year during April. WHY? The oceans might be warming slightly from sun exposure, but it seems to be over land. It’s way colder than we thought and the CO2 frost is sublimating? Don’t think so. The spread of Vernal Bonfires celebrations into snowy climes to celebrate the return of daylight? I give up!
http://tinypic.com/m/2l9dea/1
Ok, I found the problem in my calculations, both for the ocean and the atmosphere. I had messed up the conversion from km^3 to L in both my ocean and atmospheric volumes.
Thus, both are in the 10^21 L range, not 10^27 L. This makes a huge difference for the atmospheric stuff…anthropogenic numbers for the atmosphere would be 3.1 ppm/yr. However, the “practical” difference for the ocean doesn’t really change. If we pumped all of the 2008 emissions directly into the ocean and it all converted to carbonate, the carbonate concentration would increase at 0.14 micromolar/yr. Thus, to change the carbonate concentration of the ocean by 1% would still require a full 175 years assuming no biological or chemical compensation/buffering/dampening. Consequently, these basic calculations still support the article–nature’s natural uptake of CO2 is nowhere near its capacity.
Sorry for any confusion from the mistakes in my earlier posts. 🙁
Scott
I’m sorry not to have read all the comments chain; it is too massive for me now. But I did note a continuing concern for CO2 residence time. The Wikipedia article on carbon dioxide once manifested a very interesting graph of atmospheric C-14 concentration in the wake of global atmospheric nuclear testing. Since the testing stopped at a clear demarcation, it was possible to see the decline in the isotope (due to chemical absorption by natural processes, not to inherent radioactivity), which I recall to be an e-folding time on the order of 5 years. Unfortunately, the article is now a battlefield under truce and this graph has been deleted.
As an aside, I think it has to be recognized that the global warming issue (among others) is a test that invalidates the fundamental premise of Wikipedia (that unaccountable, anonymous, unqualified, unproctored editors can compile the wisdom of the ages).
If the airborne fraction in percentage has been the same for about 60 years, and even if the absolute number has been increasing, would this then mean that all the deforestation really hasn’t had as large an impact on co2 as one is led to believe? What with mother nature still being able to recycle most of the co2 any way.
Seems odd to me, but then again more co2 does support more green stuff. :p
Ferdinand
“It is good to be sceptical, but there is a difference between being sceptical and simply rejecting data, only because you don’t like them.”
Let’s be clear that’s exactly what Callendar and Keeling did. And that’s what you do too when you discuss Beck’s work or the stomata data. It’s very easy to reject a paper as “not reliable” when you don’t trust the accuracy of the measurement methods and you know that lot’s of people know the conclusion they want and get there by assumptions. But that’s a sword that cuts both ways. As you know, there are very few climate papers that stand up to close scrutiny – an awful lot is grounded on handwaved assumptions and finished by poor stats. And the number of arbitrary fiddle factors used in this game is astounding.
Your own arguments rest on two main bits of evidence; the C12/C13 fractioning and the ice core data. As Spencer showed you, the first argument fails quite easily when you do a simple control test. The second rests on a few cores from the Antarctic. AFAIK the Arctic data doesn’t support the hypothesis and the stomata work contradicts it. We also know – because they tell us – that the different CO2 station data are all calibrated against each other. And we know too that researchers in this field are prone to cherry-pick data that fits the paradigm and thusly find signals in the noise. As for the CO2 being well-mixed, well I always suspected that was overly simplistic and it hasn’t yet been proven – the AIRS people saying it isn’t true but remaining cagey.
The entire set of carbon source and sink calculations are innumerate. Of course the error bars invalidate every calculation. Literally we don’t know if any of the sources or sinks are plus or minus. As you pointed out, you have to assume it from subtracting the stuff we put out from the stuff that’s measured by the Keeling franchise. Your argument that this net rise can’t be from the warming sea is based on extrapolating from Antarctic proxies for heaven’s sake. Why even assume that what happens in the Antarctic reflects the rest of the globe? Oh yes I remember – because CO2 is well-mixed.
The skepticism exists because everything done in this area is questionable. That a warming sea is pronounced to be a net sink, in contradiction of both nature and of other team arguments elsewhere, is only further evidence of just how easy it is for climateers to pull arguments straight out of their rear end and call it evidence.
Anthony,
Thanks for “running” this bombshell again. The initial impact did not sink in for me the first time as the rerun did.
It seems to me that those who disagree with the “bombshell” term either don’t understand the importance of thoroughly understanding this subject before imposing draconian measures or they want to hide the fact that the AGW story (especially tipping point) does not hang together too well when one tries to understand the residence time and build up mechanism of CO2. Clearly the science is not settled on this subject as evidenced by the fact that there is a widely divergent range of “opinions” on how long CO2 hangs around even from AGW advocates (50 years to thousands).
I was recently referred to Archer’s papers by a noted scientist and upon reading his recent works was appalled to learn that anyone would cite Archer’s computer efforts as sufficient to justify the “tipping point” warning.
see
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2008.tail_implications.pdf
To claim a tipping point Archer seems to indicate
that the CO2 absorbtion capability of the oceans, etc can only deteriorate due to “overloading” but never increase (tipping point!!) . Archer even critizes the IPCC as being too conservative (short). Of course this is contridicted by the subject Bristol paper. Conventional science would suggest that the absorption would increase as the partial pressure is increased since the driving force increases.
I wonder if anyone peer reviewed all the assumptions in his computer program. The more one looks into the issue the more one realizes how complicated and diverse the mechanisms really are and how difficult it would be to create a comprehensive computer model .
Almost 50 years of engineering experience (including exposure to less complex computer models) lead me to be skeptical about any computer simulation of complex systems without understanding all the asumptions, boundary conditions and fudge factors. My experience with those who develop computer models of complex systems are well intended but they are niave about the accuracy of the product. It would be nice if Archer et. al. laid out these in their papers for discussion.
In the engineering community one would never (unless it is government funded) build a plant (even a pilot plant) without a full evaluation of these factors. Unfortunately the day of judgment soon arrives in the enginnering community that never occurs in the academic community and mistakes might cause dismissal.
I learned a lot about CO2 from the posts on this article by many of the accomplished posters and thank everone especially the insights of the following:
TIM CLARK (11:05:58) :
…”1. Someone stated that 45% of anthropogenic CO2 releases remain in the atsmosphere. I believe the poster confused isotopic analysis with absolute quantity, as the US Department of Energy analysis determined that only 4% of the increased Anthr.. releases remained in the atsmosphere causing the increase to ~ 380 ppm. Therefore, Chris, increasing Anthro.. [pCO2] induces increased plant (or ocean organism) growth, period. But increasing plant growth and subsequent decay returns increased amounts of CO2 back into the atmosphere. The sequestration of the 96% of mans’ releases is either captured in urban structures, oceanic cycles, long-lived species (trees, shrubs) or in increases in soil organic matter (which is increasing). How much in each is debated, but a .05% increase in carbon sequestered in the soil could account for all of it. Increased soil organic matter also leads to imcreased biomass (sequestration) as numerous beneficial processes are correlated to OM, ie. nutrient availability, water infiltration and retention, reduction in compacted soil root impedance, etc. IMHO, the significance of this study is humans increasing CO2 contributions are still being sequestered at the same proportionate rate. Logically then, more is being sequestered each year. Plant response indicates this will continue in the same fashion at least up to 700ppm. …
Finally the other point that troubles me most, as an engineer, is the claim by the AGW folks that CO2 emissions from biofuels is OK since it is “renewable” while emissions from fossil fuels is “bad”. Hopefully someone can enlighten me but if you believe Archer et al. it seems to that the source of CO2 does not matter at all. Archer et. al. would like to make you believe that nature treats
manmade CO2 emissions differently than “natural”. Enlightenment is appreciated.
Again thanks, Anthony.
There are large daily variations of CO2. You can see 150 ppm change at 2 meters and 20 ppm change at 81 meters. Look at the preliminary results from Helsinki area:
http://testbed.fmi.fi/Meetings/HTBworkshop20070412/2-6_HTB20070412_Uusimaa.pdf
Testbed.fmi.fi is an interesting site for other points of view as well as. Consider, for example, appropriate UHI corrections in a small town like Helsinki.
JamesG (09:22:09) :
Hear, Hear.
Else known as “what he said”.
An interesting article that makes mention of WUWT, from Skeptical Science.
Thursday, 31 December, 2009
Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?
The ‘airborne fraction’ refers to the amount of human CO2 emissions remaining in the atmosphere. Approximately 43% of our CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere with the rest being absorbed by carbon sinks. But is the airborne fraction increasing? A paper published in November 2009 found no statistically significant trend (Knorr 2009). Anthony Watts labeled this result the “Bombshell from Bristol” – A potentially devastating result for anthropogenic global warming. Was it such a shock? The 2007 IPCC verdict on the airborne fraction was “There is yet no statistically significant trend in the CO2 growth rate since 1958 …. This ‘airborne fraction’ has shown little variation over this period.” (IPCC AR4) I’m not sure the move from “not much happening” “to “still not much happening” warrants the label “bombshell”.
Rest of the article: [URL]http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-the-airborne-fraction-of-anthropogenic-CO2-emissions-increasing.html[/URL]
“Michael J. Dunn (08:54:58) :
…Wikipedia article on carbon dioxide once manifested a very interesting graph of atmospheric C-14 concentration in the wake of global atmospheric nuclear testing. Since the testing stopped at a clear demarcation, it was possible to see the decline in the isotope (due to chemical absorption by natural processes, not to inherent radioactivity), which I recall to be an e-folding time on the order of 5 years. Unfortunately, the article is now a battlefield under truce and this graph has been deleted…”
It’s still available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14
It looks to me that the half-life is around 70 yr (so e-folding ~50 yr), but that’s for CO2 in the upper atmosphere. It would be a lot shorter for CO2 produced at ground level where the major sinks are.