From a Rutegers press release
Rutgers researchers find a ‘great fizz’ of carbon dioxide at the end of the last ice age
Relevance for geo-engineers: What fizzed once, can fizz again
Imagine loosening the screw-top of a soda bottle and hearing the carbon dioxide begin to escape. Then imagine taking the cap off quickly, and seeing the beverage foam and fizz out of the bottle. Then, imagine the pressure equalizing and the beverage being ready to drink.
Rutgers marine scientist Elisabeth Sikes and her colleagues say that something very similar happened on a grand scale over a 1,000 year period after the end of the last ice age – or glaciation, as scientists call it.
According to a paper published recently in the journal Nature, the last ice age featured a decrease in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and an increase in the atmospheric carbon 14, the isotope that guides scientists in evaluating the rate of decay of everything from shells to trees.
In recent years, other researchers have suggested that some of that carbon dioxide flowed back into the northern hemisphere rather than being entirely released into the atmosphere in the southern hemisphere.
Sikes and her colleagues disagree. Their data, taken from cores of ocean sediment pulled up from 600 meters to 1,200 meters below the South Pacific and Southern Ocean, suggest that this “de-gassing” was regional, not global. This has important implications for understanding what controls where and how CO2 comes out of the ocean, and how fast – or, to put it another way, what tightens or loosens the bottle cap.
Carbon dioxide and carbon 14 in the atmosphere and ocean are on opposite ends of an environmental pulley. When the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, the level of carbon 14 drops, and vice versa. That’s chemistry and ocean circulation. Biology also helps, because photosynthesizing organisms use carbon dioxide, then die and take it with them to the bottom. During the last ice age, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was lower because much of it was trapped in the bottom of the oceans.
The ventilation of the deep Southern Ocean – the circulation of oxygen through the deep waters – slowed considerably during the last ice age, causing carbon dioxide to build up. Sikes and her co-authors report that, as the ice began to melt, the oceanic bottle cap began to loosen, and the carbon dioxide began to leak back into the atmosphere. Then, as warming intensified, the cap came off, and the carbon dioxide escaped so quickly, and so thoroughly, that Sikes and her colleagues could find very little trace of it in the carbon 14 they examined in their samples.
Eventually, just like the carbonated drink in a bottle, equilibrium was established between the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the carbon dioxide in the ocean. Today, the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere has been rising in the past 200 years pushing the levels in the ocean up. Human activity is responsible for that rise and the rise of other “greenhouse gases.” Some people have suggested we can pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and force it back down to the bottom of the oceans by manipulating the biology – growing algae, for instance, which would increase photosynthesis and send carbon dioxide to the bottom when the organisms die. But Sikes’ results suggest that global warming could eventually result in another great fizz.
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Human activity is responsible for that rise and the rise of other “greenhouse gases.”
Well, that puts that little fairy tale to bed.
Except they have no way of knowing that current CO2 levels are caused by natural outgassing from stored CO2 under the oceans or not. When will science start separating GUESSWORK from well formed extrapolations again??
Well, now I have actually read the paper. This is a beautiful example of “press-release science” where the actual science is mangled until it is unrecognizable.
The paper is fairly technical and rather speculative, and concerned with how changes in wind and currents during deglaciation in the Southern Ocean may have caused release of CO2 by causing CO2-rich deep water to upwell to the surface. Parts of the argument seem plausible, but there isn’t really enough data to tell much for sure.
The relevance for AGW and “geoengineering” is approximately zero.
Bill Illis says:
“It took 7,000 years for CO2 to increase from 185 ppm to 270 ppm. There are no sudden spikes upward.”
How do you know that? That far back each ice-core measurements is “averaged” over many centuries. As a matter of fact stomatal index measurements suggests that there was rather sharp changes e. g. at the beginning and end of Dryas 3.
@tty
‘Bill Illis says:
“It took 7,000 years for CO2 to increase from 185 ppm to 270 ppm. There are no sudden spikes upward.”
How do you know that? That far back each ice-core measurements is “averaged” over many centuries. As a matter of fact stomatal index measurements suggests that there was rather sharp changes e. g. at the beginning and end of Dryas 3.’
He obviously think the smoothing is the norm and that all the spots on the plot is on that line. I’d just call him to be like retarded and be done with ‘im.
I thought the standard theory for the end of the ice-age was that CO2 built up until the world warmed. Now its that the world warmed and caused a build-up of CO2.
For some reason, I keep seeing a vision of dragster race track, with the cart in one lane, and the horse in the other, both revving up waiting for the light…
RE: Main Article: Fizzing out with Rutgers “Some people have suggested we can pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and force it back down to the bottom of the oceans by manipulating the biology – growing algae, for instance, which would increase photosynthesis and send carbon dioxide to the bottom when the organisms die.”
This may be a major ‘be careful what you wish for’ situation. If some specially bred, super CO2 consuming organism ever gets out of control, and spreads throughout the ocean, we could end up facing a global crop suffocation event. I sure hope no one is in a bio-lab right now happily working away on his own little project to stop global warming.
Layne Blanchard says:
August 25, 2010 at 10:32 pm
……as another 10M of our money is spent to study a pointless issue….
You just cut to the chase. NOM!
tty says:
August 26, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Bill Illis says:
“It took 7,000 years for CO2 to increase from 185 ppm to 270 ppm. There are no sudden spikes upward.”
How do you know that? That far back each ice-core measurements is “averaged” over many centuries. As a matter of fact stomatal index measurements suggests that there was rather sharp changes e. g. at the beginning and end of Dryas 3.
——-
I’m just using the actual numbers. I did not make the measurements myself.
I have ALL the CO2 and temperature estimates going back in time at the highest resolution that is available. When I say ALL, I mean ALL of the published ones going back hundreds of millions of years.
The Dryas Events are interesting . What is most unsual is that the Climatologists focus on the Younger Dryas event while the earlier Older Dryas event was far more important in terms of the temperature change and reversal of the trend. In neither case, however, does CO2 make a sharp turn upwards or downwards despite the rapid-significant change in the temperature trends.
Ref – Tamara says:
August 26, 2010 at 8:36 am
Very interesting.. do you suppose that perhaps most of the problems the scientific community is experiencing, to include various ‘scientific’ publications and comic books, can be laid at the feet of PR types who don’t know what they’re talking about and are writing PR’s that make scientists sound like idiots? I’ll bet with a big grant someone could take 10 years and come up with a three page study on this.
But then there’s the same problem again, the PR twit that types up the PR on the study would blow it and no one would understand what the study said. Catch -22!