Foreword: This is the final entry in a four part series by Fedinand Engelbeen. While the narrative is contrary to the views of many of our readers, it is within the framework of WUWT’s goal of providing discussion on the issues. You won’t find guest posts like this on RC, Climate Progress, Open Mind (Tamino), or Skeptical Science where a guest narrative contrary to the blog owner(s) view is not allowed, much less encouraged in a four part series.
That said, I expect this final entry to be quite contentious for two reasons. 1) The content itself. 2) The references to the work of Ernst Georg Beck, recently deceased.
As Engelbeen mentions below, this part was written weeks before, and readers should not get the impression that this is some sort of “hit piece” on him. Unfortunately, it simply worked out that the appearance of part 4 happens after his death, since I had been running each part about once a week. I had considered not running it, but I’m sure he would invite the discussion, and we’d have a lively debate. It is our loss that he will not be able to. For that reason, I’d appreciate readers maintaining a civil tone in comments. Moderators, don’t be shy about enforcing this. My thanks to Ferdinand Englebeen for his hard work in producing this four part series. – Anthony
About background levels, historical measurements and stomata proxies…
1. Where to measure? The concept of “background” CO2 levels.
Although there were already some hints of a “global” background CO2 level of around 300 ppmv in previous years, the concept was launched by C.D. Keeling in the fifties of last century, when he made several series of measurements in the USA. He found widely varying CO2 levels, sometimes in samples taken as short as 15 minutes from each other. He also noticed that values in widely different places, far away from each other, but taken in the afternoon, were much lower and much closer resembling each other. He thought that this was because in the afternoon, there was more turbulence and the production of CO2 by decaying vegetation and/or emissions was more readily mixed with the overlying air. Fortunately, from the first series on, he also measured 13C/12C ratios of the same samples, which did prove that the diurnal variation was from vegetation decay at night, while during the day photosynthesis at one side and turbulence at the other side increased the 13C/12C ratio back to maximum values.
Keeling’s first series of samples, taken at Big Sur State Park, showing the diurnal CO2 and d13C cycle, was published in http://www.icsu-scope.org/downloadpubs/scope13/chapter03.html , original data (of other series too) can be found in http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/literatur/keeling/Keeling_1955.doc :
Figure 1. Diurnal variation in the concentration and carbon isotopic ratio of atmospheric
CO2 in a coastal redwood forest of California, 18-19 May 1955, Big Sur St. Pk.
(Keeling, 1958)
Several others measured CO2 levels/d13C ratios of their own samples too. This happened at several places in Germany (Heidelberg, Schauinsland, Nord Rhine Westphalia). This confirmed that local production was the origin of the high CO2 levels. The smallest CO2/d13C variations were found in mountain ranges, deserts and on or near the oceans. The largest in forests, crop fields, urban neighborhoods and non-urban, but heavily industrialized neighborhoods. When the reciprocal of CO2 levels were plotted against d13C ratios, this showed a clear relationship between the two. Again from http://www.icsu-scope.org/downloadpubs/scope13/chapter03.html :
Figure 2. Relation between carbon isotope ratio and concentration of atmospheric CO2 in different air types from measurements summarized in Table 3.4
(Keeling, 1958, 1961: full squares; Esser, 1975: open circles; Freyer and Wiesberg, 1975,
Freyer, 1978c: open squares). All 13C measurements have not been corrected
for N2O contamination (Craig and Keeling, 1963), which is at the most in the area of + 0.6‰
The search for background places.
Keeling then sought for places on earth not (or not much) influenced by local production/uptake, thus far from forests, agriculture and/or urbanization. He had the opportunity to launch two continuous measurements: at Mauna Loa and at the South Pole. Later, other “baseline” stations were added, all together 10 from near the North Pole (Alert, NWT, Canada) to the South Pole, all of them working continuous nowadays under supervision of NOAA (previously under Scripps Institute), some 60 other places working under other organizations and many more working with regular flask sampling.
We are interested in CO2 levels in a certain year all over the globe and the trends of the CO2 levels over the years. So, here we are at the definition of the “background” level:
Yearly average data taken from places minimal influenced by vegetation and other natural and human sources are deemed “background”.
For convenience, the yearly average data from Mauna Loa are used as reference. One could use any baseline station as reference or the average of the stations, but as all base stations (and a lot of other stations, even Schauinsland, at 1,000 m altitude, midst the Black Forest, Germany) are within 5 ppmv of Mauna Loa, with near identical trends, and that station has the longest near-continuous CO2 record, Mauna Loa is used as “the” reference.
As the oceans represent about 70% of the earth’s surface, and all oceanic stations show near the same yearly averages and trends, already 70% of the atmosphere shows background behavior. This can be extended to near the total earth for the part above the inversion layer.
Measurements above the inversion layer.
Above land, diurnal variations are only seen up to 150 m (according to http://www.icsu-scope.org/downloadpubs/scope13/chapter03.html ).
Seasonal changes reduce with altitude. This is based on years of flights (1963-1979) in Scandinavia (see the previous reference) and between Scandinavia and California (http://dge.stanford.edu/SCOPE/SCOPE_16/SCOPE_16_1.4.1_Bishoff_113-116.pdf ), further confirmed by old and modern https://wiki.ucar.edu/display/acme/ACME flights in the USA and Australia (Tasmania). In the SH, the seasonal variation is much smaller and there is a high-altitude to lower altitude gradient, where the high altitude is 1 ppmv richer in CO2 than the lower altitude. This may be caused by the supply of extra CO2 from the NH via the southern branch of the Hadley cell to the upper troposphere in the SH.
From the previous references:
Figure 3. Amplitude and phase shift of seasonal variations in atmospheric CO2
at different altitudes, calculated from direct observations by harmonic analysis
(Bolin and Bischof, 1970)
From https://wiki.ucar.edu/display/acme/ACME :
Figure 4. Modern flight measurements in Colorado, CO2 levels below the inversion layerin forested valleys and above the inversion layer at different altitudes
As one can see, again the values above the inversion layer are near straight and agree within a few ppmv with the Mauna Loa data of the same date. Below the inversion layer, the morning values are 15-35 ppmv higher. In the afternoon, these may sink to background again.
If we take the 1000 m as the average upper level for the influence of local disturbances, that represents about 10% of the atmospheric mass. Thus the “background” level can be found at 70% of the earth’s air mass (oceans) + 90% of the remaining land surface (27%). That is in 97% of the global air mass. Only 3% of the global air mass contains not-well mixed amounts of CO2, which is only over land. These measured values show variations caused by seasonal changes (mainly in the NH) and a NH-SH lag. Yearly averages are within 5 ppmv:
Figure 5. Yearly average CO2 levels at different baseline stations plus a non-baseline station (Schauinsland, Germany, only values taken when above the inversion layer and with sufficient wind speed).
General conclusion:
Background CO2 levels can be found everywhere over the oceans and over land at 1000 m and higher altitudes (in high mountain ranges, this may be higher).
2. The historical data
2.1. The compilation by Ernst Beck.
Note: this comment was written weeks before we heard of the untimely death of Ernst Beck. While I feel very uncomfortable that this is published now, as he can’t react anymore on this comment, I think that one need to know the different viewpoints about the historical data, which is a matter of difference in opinion, and has nothing to do with what one may think about Ernst Beck as person.
What about the historical data? While I only can admire the tremendous amount of work that Ernst Beck has done, I don’t agree with his interpretation of the results. Not in light of the above findings of what one can see as “background” CO2 levels.
The historical measurements show huge differences from place to place, sometimes within one year, and extreme differences within a day or day to day or over the seasons for the same place. That there are huge differences between different places shows that one or more or all of these places are not measuring background CO2, but local CO2 levels, influenced by local and/or regional sources and sinks. This is clear, if one looks at the range of the results, often many hundreds of ppmv’s between the lowest and highest values. Modern measurements, sometimes interestingly done at the same places as the historical one’s, either don’t show such a wide range, and then can be deemed background for the modern ones and therefore the historical one’s must be inaccurate as method or there were problems with the handling or with the sampling. Others show huge variations also today, which means that neither the modern, nor the historical data are background.
But let us have a look at the compilation of historical CO2 measurements by Ernst Beck:
Figure 6. Compilation of historical data by Ernst Beck.
From: http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm
Beck only gives the yearly and smoothed averages and the instrument error. That doesn’t say anything about the quality of the places where was measured, thus which of these measurements were “background” and which were not. One may be pretty sure that measuring midst of London, even in 1935, would give much higher (and fluctuating) CO2 levels than near the coast with seaside wind. Moreover, a peak of some 80 ppmv around 1942 is hardly possible, but removing such a peak in less than 10 years is physically impossible. The total amount of CO2 involved is comparable to burning down one third of all living vegetation on land and growing back in a few years time. The oceans are capable of having a burst of CO2 with a sudden decrease of pH, but simply can’t absorb that amount back in such a short time span, even if the pH would go up again (and what should cause such a massive change in pH?). Therefore I decided to look into more detail at the peak period in question, the years 1930-1950.
2.2. The minima, maxima and averages
Here is a plot of all available data for the period 1930-1950, as used by Ernst Beck (plus a few extra I did find in the literature). These can be found at his page of historical literature:
http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/historical.htm
Figure 7. Minima, maxima and averages of historical measurements in the period 1930-1950
Not all measurements were published in detail. Several authors did provide only an average, without any indication of number of samples, range or standard deviation. But for those where the range was given, the results are widely varying. What is obvious, is that where the range is small, in most cases the average of the measurements is around the ice core values (Law Dome in this case, the values of three cores, two of them with a resolution of 8 years and an accuracy of 1.2 ppmv, 1 sigma). That is especially the case for the period 1930-1935 where several measurements were performed during trips over the oceans. And even most of the worst performers show minima below the ice core values.
And as one can see, the “peak” around 1940-1942 is completely based on measurements at places which were heavily influenced by local/regional sources and sinks. That doesn’t say anything about the real background CO2 level of that period. Moreover, the fact that the average of measurements at one part of the world is 600 ppmv and at the other side of the globe it is 300 ppmv within the same year, shows that at least one of them must be at the wrong place.
2.3. The accuracy of some apparatus
Some of the measurements were done at interesting places: Point Barrow and Antarctica, where currently baseline stations are established. Unfortunately, for these measurements, the portable apparatus was as inaccurate as could be:
Barrow (1948) used the micro-Schollander apparatus, which was intended for measuring CO2 in exhaled air (some 20,000 ppmv!). Accuracy +/- 150 ppmv, accurate enough for exhaled air, but not really accurate to measure values of around 300 ppmv.
The same problem for Antarctica (1940-1941): Accuracy +/- 300 ppmv, moreover oxygen levels which were too low at high CO2 (1700 ppmv), which points to huge local contamination.
2.4. What caused the 1941 peak?
The 1941 peak is heavily influenced by two data series: Poona (India) and Giessen (Germany). With a few exceptions, the results of Poona should be discarded, as these were mostly performed within and below growing vegetation, which may be of interest for those who want to know the influence of CO2 on growth figures, heavily influenced by CO2 production from soil bacteria, but not really suitable to know the background CO2 levels of that time.
Giessen is a more interesting place, as the measurements were over a very long period (1.5 years), three samples a day over 4 heights were taken. And we have a modern CO2 measuring station now, only a few km from the original place, taking samples every 30 minutes. Thus let us see what the historical and modern CO2 levels at Giessen are, compared to baseline places:
Figure 8. Historical data of Giessen, during a few days of extra sampling to measure diurnal changes.
Figure 9. A few days in the modern summer life of CO2 at Linden-Giessen compared to the raw data from a few baseline stations for the same days.
Data for Linden-Giessen are from http://www.hlug.de
Baseline stations hourly average CO2 levels, derived from 10-second raw voltage samples, are from ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/
These are all raw data, including all local outliers at Barrow, Mauna Loa, the South Pole and Giessen. It seems to me that it is rather problematic to figure out anything background-like from the data of Giessen, modern and historical alike. And I have the impression that Keeling made not such a bad choice by starting measurements at the South Pole and Mauna Loa, even if the latter is on an active volcano.
2.5. Estimation of the historical background CO2 levels.
Francis Massen and Ernst Beck used a method to estimate the background CO2 levels from noisy data, based on the fact that at high wind speeds, a better mixing of ground level CO2 with higher air masses is obtained (see http://www.biokurs.de/treibhaus/CO2_versus_windspeed-review-1-FM.pdf ). This works quite well, if you have a lot of data points with wind speeds above 4 m/s and a relative narrow range at high wind speeds. Here the “fingerlike” data range at high wind speed measured at Diekirch (small town in a shielded valley of Luxemburg):
Figure 10. CO2 levels vs. wind speed at Diekirch, Luxemburg.
Compare that to a similar plot of the historical data from Giessen:
Figure 11. Historical CO2 levels at Giessen vs. wind speed.
There are only 22 data points above 4 m/s, still a wide range (300 ppmv!) and no “finger” in the data at high wind speeds.
Further, the historical three samples of Giessen, taken in the morning, afternoon and evening already give a bias of some 40 ppmv (even the continuous modern sampling at Giessen shows a huge bias in averages). The afternoon measurements have a higher average than the morning and evening samples, which is contrary to almost all other measurements made in that period (and today): during daylight hours, photosynthesis lowers the CO2 levels, while at night under an inversion level, CO2 from soil respiration builds up to very high levels. And at the other end of the world (Iowa, USA) in 1940, CO2 levels of 265 ppmv were found over a maize field. Unfortunately, there are no measurements performed at “background” places in that period, except at Antarctica, which were far too inaccurate.
My impression is that the data of Giessen show too much variation and are too irregular, either by the (modified Pettenkofer) method, the sampling or the handling of the samples.
2.6. Comparing the historical peak around 1941 with other methods:
The ice core data of Law Dome show a small deviation around 1940, within the error estimate of the measurements. Any peak of 80 ppmv during years should be visible in the fastest accumulation cores (8 years averaging) as a peak of at least 10 ppmv around 1940, which is not the case (see Figure 7.).
Stomata data don’t show anything abnormal around 1940 (that is around 305 ppmv):
Figure 12. CO2 levels vs. stomata data calibration in the period 1900-1990.
From: http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2004-1214-121238/index.htm
And there is nothing special to see in the d13C levels of coralline sponges around 1940. Coralline sponges follow the 13C/12C ratios of CO2 in the upper ocean waters. Any burst and fall of CO2 in the atmosphere would show up in the d13 levels of the ocean mixed layer: either with a big drop if the extra CO2 was from vegetation, or with a small increase, if the extra CO2 was from the deep oceans. But that is not the case:
Figure 13. d13C levels of coralline sponges growing in the upper ocean layer.
2.7. Conclusion
Besides the quality of the measurements themselves, the biggest problem is that most of the data which show a peak around 1941 are taken at places which were completely unsuitable for background measurements. In that way these data are worthless for historical (and current) global background estimates. This is confirmed by other methods which indicate no peak values around 1941. As the minima may approach the real background CO2 level of that time, the fact that the ice core CO2 levels are above the minima is an indication that the ice core data are not far off reality.
3. About stomata data.
Stomata index (SI) is the ratio between the number of stomata openings to the total number of cells on leaves. This is a function of CO2 levels during the previous growing season (Tom van Hoof, personal communication). Thus that gives an impression of CO2 levels over time. As that is an indirect proxy of CO2 levels, one need calibration, which is done by comparing the SI of certain species over the past century with ice core and atmospheric CO2 measurements. So far, so good.
The main problem of the SI is the same as for many historical measurements: the vegetation of interest grows by definition on land, where average CO2 levels may vary within certain limits for one period of time, but there is no guarantee that these limits didn’t change over time: the MWP-LIA change might have been caused in part by changes in the Gulf Stream away from NW Europe, this bringing less warm wet air over land, even changing the main wind direction from SW to E. That may have introduced profound changes in type of vegetation, soil erosion, etc., including changes in average CO2 levels near ground over land.
Further, land use changes around several of the main places of sampling might have been enormous: from wetlands and water to polders and agriculture, deforestation and reforestation, all in the main wind direction, as all happened in The Netherlands over a full millennium.
Conclusion:
Stomata index data may be useful as a first approximation, but one shouldn’t take the historical levels as very reliable, because of a lack of knowledge of several basic circumstances which may have influenced the local/regional historical CO2 levels and thus the SI data.
Steven Mosher,
“I’m amused that when it comes to work like this, they drop their skeptical approach entirely. why is that.”
We should all be sceptical. I believe Beck’s data reveals local variations, as Englebeen has shown, similar to the way locality can effect station temperature readings. Confirmation bias? Absolutely. But doesn’t that also apply to both sides of the AGW debate?
Francisco;
But do we know what atmospheric CO2 levels represent equilibrium with the oceans at current temperatures?>>
That is precisely the topic of Annti Roine’s paper which you just managed to paraphrase. He (she?) concludes 140 to 160 I believe, but as with all things science, it is more complicated than that.
http://www.antti-roine.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=73
davidmhoffer says:
September 24, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Some more details following what I already wrote to Tony…
1. Global temperature fluctuations are very pronounced at the poles and almost non existent in the equatorial regions. NASA/GISS, Hadcrut and others all show the same thing when you break them down by latitude.
2. An increase in global temperatures does not cause out gassing from the oceans to the atmosphere per se. Since the equatorial regions are stable temperature wise, they outgas based on what is delivered to them via ocean circulation from colder regions. The polar regions on the other hand, still absorb CO2 when the temperature goes up, but they absorb a lot less than they would have, resulting in a build up of CO2 in the atmosphere.
1. Agreed
2. The main removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is at the THC sink place, where water temperatures are just below zero. There is a shift in THC sink rate between summer and winter and there may be a shift in place where the THC sinks, just away from the ice cover, but I don’t think that the total area of the THC sink rate is much different with not too large changes in global/hemispheric SST.
So let’s consider certain factors on a decadal scale. If one looks at the hemispheres, they aren’t just in opposition to each other annually, but over longer time periods as well. Check out ice extent for example, and in most cases it is in decline in one hemisphere while increasing in the other both seasonaly and on a decadal scale. The same is true for temperature in that the warming and cooling trends of the hemispheres over a period of decades are mostly in opposition to each other. I say mostly, because it isn’t always true.
The opposite action of the SH/NH oceans is mainly on seasonal scale, but the warming over the years is mostly parallel, with the exception of 1940-1950 where the SH shows a sharp drop and a sharp rise after that, while the NH is relative flat 1940-1980 and rises after that. But as already said to Tony, the rise 1960-2000 is double the 1940 peak, while is proven that the oceans since 1960 are net sinks for CO2, not sources.
While the SH was well below normal and the NH was well above normal from about 1930 to 1960, there was a very interesting time period, that correlates exactly to Beck’s results, when both experienced warming. NASA/GISS shows that the area 64N to 90N warmed one degree, and 64S to 90S warmed 4 degrees between 1930 and 1940. They both then cooled from 1945 to 1953, then resumed their more normal pattern of one cooling while the other was warming. Awful coincidental when one looks at Beck’s graph. So let’s put that all together with the original points I raised.
Agreed, but one would expect a doubling of the peak in the period 1960-2000, compared to 1930-1940, if SST was the main driver, as both hemisphere SST’s go up.
Moreover, other proxies don’t show anything abnormal in the period 1930-1950. Neither stomata data (with their own problems, but a peak of 80 ppmv would give an enrmous drop in stomata index), nor coralline sponges: if the extra atmospheric CO2 did come from the oceans (either surface or deep), that would tremendously increase the d13C level of the ocean mixed layer, but all we see is a smooth decrease in d13C level in ratio with the low d13C fossil fuel use.
The sudden and very rapid warming evident in the temperature record would have resulted in a massive reduction of CO2 absorption in the key polar regions. At the same time, large temperature increases for those few years would no doubt have driven back the snowline on mountain tops and polar regions, exposing in a very short time period decayed biomass that had been under snow cover for years, perhaps decades or centuries, releasing large quantities of CO2. Consider also the snow melt itself. How much snow that would have otherwise been stable melts when the 64S to 90S temperatures surge by 4 degrees in just a few years? I don’t know, but my expectation is a considerable amount and the CO2 trapped would consequently also (though not entirely) be suddenly released. So the surge suddenly doesn’t seem all that unlikely. What of the absorption that followed?
You forget that most of the vegetation (as well on land as in the oceans) increases its activity when temperatures increase (except in very dry places…). That is what can be seen over the seasons as a drop in CO2 in spring-summer and a release of CO2 in fall-winter. The average global short-term ratio of oceans+vegetation is 4 ppmv/°C, for the 1930-1940 period the global SST increase is about 0.3°C, that would give an increase of 1.3 ppmv CO2. Hardly visible in the ice cores. The above ratio is based on the Pinatubo eruption and the 1998 El Niño, both excursions of about 0.6°C down and up. Of course, the regional temperature/CO2 changes might be much larger near the poles, but the total surface reacts like that.
As unlikely as you seem to think it is, it seems very plausible when one considers the above factors and then extrapolate to the next phase. From 1945 to 1953 the polar regions were both cooling instead of following their usual pattern of being in opposition to one another. Consider that this happened immediately following the sudden warming of both regions. What happens to the atmospheric CO2 as a consequence?
For starters, cooling scrubs a lot of moisture out of the atmosphere in the form of rain and snow. That rain and snow takes CO2 with it. At the same time, the colder temperatures cause an increase in the absorption rate of the ocean surface in the polar regions in particular. But there is one more factor, and it is a whopper.
As stated earlier, the equatorial regions outgas CO2, and are relatively stable temperature wise. So one would assume that the amount of CO2 out gassed would also be stable. Not so. The CO2 has to come from somewhere, and the source is CO2 absorbed in the colder polar regions. So what might the phase delay be between CO2 being absorbed at the poles, circulating to the equator, and then being out gassed? I’m no oceanographer, but a few years seems very plausible. In brief then:
The delay between the THC sink and upwelling is about 800 years, not short term…
Cooling means less evaporation, thus less rain and snow scrubbing CO2 (as far as that happens, rain falling down also releases much of its CO2)…
1. During the 80 ppm peak in Beck’s graph, the polar regions were both working to increase CO2 levels instead of cancelling each other out.
2. Sudden warming of several degrees in polar regions would have released large amounts of CO2 from melted snow and exposed biomass.
3. During the decline in Beck’s graph, the polar regions were both working to decrease CO2 levels instead of cancelling each other out.
4. Massive amounts of moisture would have been scrubbed from the atmosphere, taking CO2 with it.
5. Out gassing from the equatorial regions would likely have fallen sharply as the water from the polar regions with far less than normal CO2 levels would have just been reaching the equatorial regions in that time frame.
1. Agreed, but that is not different now since 1960.
2. Agreed, but temperatures in moderate latitudes were going up too, increasing the uptake by vegetation.
3. Agreed.
4. Disagree, as colder means less water circulation. The overall residence time for water vapour is only a few days, thus adjustment to temperature changes is only a few days too, which means that the remainder of the CO2 “peak” over 10 years has less influence from scrubbing out.
5. Disagree, the THC circulation time is much longer.
tree ring data ceased following global temperatures somewhere between 1950 and 1960.
Although this is far OT, tree rings start to diverge around 1960 at some places, after 1980 at other places and some don’t diverge. There is no influence visible of some 80 ppmv CO2 extra (and relative higher temperatures) around 1940 in tree ring series, as far as I know, but I haven’t looked into that topic in detail. I don’t think that this supports the 1940 peak, if one expects an extra growth from extra CO2…
davidmhoffer says:
September 25, 2010 at 7:58 am
That is precisely the topic of Annti Roine’s paper which you just managed to paraphrase. He (she?) concludes 140 to 160 I believe, but as with all things science, it is more complicated than that.
http://www.antti-roine.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=73
——————–
We should hope he or she is wrong. Because if such low concentrations represent equilibrium at current temperatures, and they eventually come to be, most life on earth will be in enormous trouble, to say the least.
I don’t suppose there is any reliable way of deriving what the equilibrium should be straight from physical principles.
Charles S. Opalek, PE says says September 25, 2010 at 7:14 am
Well, the reality is that Gaia has been reducing CO2 in the atmosphere in lockstep with the increase in solar output to protect us all.
Then of course, we evil humans came along and upset the balance. The AGW crowd are simply trying to get us to see the evil of our ways and the sacrifices in our standard of living (and the monetary compensation the AGW crowd are seeking) are small compared to the benefit to us all.
davidmhoffer says:
September 25, 2010 at 6:42 am
The first category relates to the accuracy and suitability of the measurements Beck used. As you demonstrated, there are a considerable number of issues which bring many of the measurements in Beck’s data into question. This came up in a blog I was following and Beck lost his temper and made some remarks that made him sound frankly, a bit looney.
I had the impression that Ernst Beck believed that all chemical methods were equally accurate, while e.g. the micro-Schollander apparatus, as described in one of the historical papers on his own website clearly indicated that the accuracy was +/- 150 ppmv. Unfortunately that apparatus was used at Barrow, which is a very good place to measure, one of the baseline stations nowadays is there.
Hopefully his work is in the hands of colleagues or family members and we will eventually see it because he did in fact have answers as to how he removed data that was suspect for the very reasons you mention in your article.
I hope that it will be published too, as I like to see the new data. But I fear that if you remove all the suspect data, that not much is left in the 1935-1945 period…
The second matter in your argument relates to ice core data which does not reflect the spike in Beck’s graph. I corresponded on this matter as well with Beck, and he had some pretty good theories which he was intending to travel to somewhere (Vlostok?) with a colleague to gather additional data to either prove or disprove his theory.
Again, he was already ill and I don’t know if this occurred or not. The point however is that Beck had some compelling reasons why the spike he showed would not, in fact could not, show up in the ice core record. While he never shared the detailed calculations with me, he did explain his position. I hesitate to paraphrase it here because much of it was over my head and he had to dumb down some of the answers. I shall do my best however because his answers have merit and perhaps colleagues or others with more in depth knowledge can fill in the gaps. Any discrepancies between Beck’s actual position and my explanation are purely errors on my part.
In brief, Beck’s perspective began with how ice cores are formed. Snow falls in layers, each new layer compacting the ones below it. After a number of years, there is enough pressure from the weight of the snow to turn the bottom most layer into ice. Until then, the snow is porous and can exchange gases with the atmosphere. The lattice structure of snow traps water within it, and even ice has unfrozen water within the lattice structure. As a consequence, the ice core doesn’t show the CO2 levels from the year the snow fell, it shows the CO2 levels that the snow was exposed to during the course of being compressed into ice. I asked what a fair estimate of the resolution was, and got an answer well over my head. The dumbed down version was at best 30 years and at worst 200 years depending on a number of factors. In brief, the resolution of the ice cores is insufficient in his opinion to show the brief spike in his results. Again, this was to be part of the paper he was working on along with his explanation of how he analyzed historical CO2 data. Beck also surmised that as snow is compacted to ice, air pockets in the snow, which would be reflective of current CO2 levels as they would equilibrate to the atmosphere, not the snow they were trapped in that fell decades previous, would form bubbles and under sufficient pressure, clathrates. So any given sample of ice would have CO2 trapped within it from various time periods and various forms; bubbles, clathrates, water trapped in the lattice structure and so on. I asked how one would differentiate CO2 from a bubble versus CO2 from water trapped in the lattice structure of a snow flake eventually compacted to ice over a period of years and he answered something to the effect of “exactly!”. My impression was however, that he had thought of some mechanisms for quantifying this, and that was part of his intended trip to Vlostok to obtain the ice samples he would need.
Regardless if he was able to make that trip or not, or what happened to any data that resulted, one has to admit that his points have merit. My reading of the ice core data is that there is a known phase delay between the age of the ice and the age of the CO2 trapped within it. It makes considerable sense that a process which captures CO2 through the formation of ice over a period of a few decades would at best show the spike in Beck’s data only if it had lasted for at least 30 years. It did not.
Different ice cores show quite different resolution. The fastest accumulation ice cores, 2 out of 3 Law Dome cores have a resolution of only 8 years, more than fast enough to show any peak of 20 ppmv lasting only 1 year, thus anyway would show a Gaussian peak of 80 ppmv over 20 years… The ice age – gas age difference is not important, only the time needed from start closing to full closure of all bubbles is important. That depends of the local accumulation rate, which is 1,2 meters ice equivalent at Law Dome down to a few mm for Vostok (with a resolution of about 600 years).
Water is (except around salt/dust inclusions) completely absent below -30°C (Vostok is at -40°C) and only forms a thin layer (a few atoms thick) at -20°C (Law Dome) at the ice-air border. Inbetween ice crystals, the ice structure is deformed, but hardly “liquid”. The possibility of CO2 to hide there (or to migrate) is very, very low at -20°C and virtually absent at -40°C.
Clathrates are formed at a certain pressure and temperature, but after drilling, the ice is allowed to relax at low temperatures (mostly on site below the surface) for up to a year, which decomposes most of the clathrates. And at measurement time, vacuum is applied while grating the ice, which effectively decomposes any remaining clathrates.
Thus all together, we have ice core data which are reliable enough and have a sufficient resolution to detect any peak even far lower and with a shorter duration than the 1940 peak according to the historical data. And no proxies of any kind show something special in the same period…
@Engelbeen
“Moreover, a peak of some 80 ppmv around 1942 is hardly possible, but removing such a peak in less than 10 years is physically impossible.”
The normal seasonal variation at Mauna Loa is on the order of 8-10ppm (last 5 years) and that’s riding on top of a consistent annual rise of nearly 2ppm. Evidently pumping 12ppm CO2 in or out of the atmosphere is a routine annual occurrence.
There are lots of things that happen which cause the ratio to change between living CO2 producers (fungi, bacteria, and animals) and consumers (plants). Given the annual carbon exchange between living things and atmosphere is some 50ppm or more an imbalance of plus or minus 10% or so in global plant mass which persisted for a decade or two would cause an 80ppm background change. It might not even be terribly noticeable by eyeballing anything as 90% of the food chain would still be conducting business as usual.
During WWII hundreds of oil and fuel tankers with 5 million gallons or more each were sunk all over the Atlantic and Pacific. Thousands of other large merchant and military vessels went down too taking their fuel tanks to the bottom with them. One commenter in a BP spill thread here on WUWT here said tarballs littered east coast beaches into the 1950’s such that they kept a can of gasoline handy to scrub it off their feet after a day at the beach. Imagine the havoc that must have wreaked on the global ocean ecology, its bottom and surface chemistry, and gas exchange characteristics. Major volcanos would have the same disruptive effect and for all we know major solar magnetic field disruptions could do it too.
Mosher: “I find it funny that people who doubt a temperature series because it only has 5000 stations”
5000? I’ve looked at GISTEMP. Less than 10% of their stations actually have current temperatures.
What a shill.
Henry Pool says:
September 25, 2010 at 12:31 am
So, I reckon that an awful lot more than 0,01% was added to the atmosphere since 1960 due to human activities.
What puzzles me now is that nobody on any of the climate bloggs investigates, talks or writes about this increase in humidity – it is as if this does not happen or is not happening or it is considered completely inconsequential compared to the increase in CO2. That, to me, is completely incomprensible.
The increase in humidity from human activities is about 0.1% of the total circulation of water vapour, if I remember well. The increase of water vapour (if the precipitation rate in the Arctic may be used as base) in the atmosphere is about 6% over the past 60 years. Thus the temperature increase is far more important than the direct human contribution. This is included in the climate models, as positive feedback, as more CO2 gives higher temperatures and these give more water vapour, which increases the temperature somewhat further. The increase in water vapour seems quite right for the lower troposphere, but is absent where all models expect the highest increase: in the upper troposphere of the tropics (the “hot spot”).
Thus water vapour sometimes is discussed, but in general as feedback for CO2 increase. Sometimes overblown, as is the case for Europe, where water vapour increases (caused by a positive NAO) may be responsible for the increasing temperatures in NE Europe. That is far more than a feedback would imply. See the discussion of the Philipona paper at RC:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/busy-week-for-water-vapor/
With my comment at #22 and more comments from Raypierre and Philipona below that.
Dave Springer says:
September 25, 2010 at 10:41 am
The normal seasonal variation at Mauna Loa is on the order of 8-10ppm (last 5 years) and that’s riding on top of a consistent annual rise of nearly 2ppm. Evidently pumping 12ppm CO2 in or out of the atmosphere is a routine annual occurrence.
There are lots of things that happen which cause the ratio to change between living CO2 producers (fungi, bacteria, and animals) and consumers (plants). Given the annual carbon exchange between living things and atmosphere is some 50ppm or more an imbalance of plus or minus 10% or so in global plant mass which persisted for a decade or two would cause an 80ppm background change. It might not even be terribly noticeable by eyeballing anything as 90% of the food chain would still be conducting business as usual.
One need to make a differentiation between the back-and-forth cycle and what can be released or removed beyond the cycle.
The cycle involves large quantities of CO2 which in one season are captured and in another season are released again. That is mainly by the growth and decay of mid-latitude forest leaves and wood. A change in temperature and precipitation will influence this somewhat, but even at current high temperatures, the pre-1990 near break-even rate increased to only some 1.2 GtC/year extra CO2 uptake.
The 1940 peak implies a change of 160 GtC in less than 10 years up and 10 years down or 16 GtC/year average up and down. The total carbon mass involved is about what is present in 1/3rd of all land vegetation. That is practically impossible and not seen anywhere.
Further such huge changes in land (or sea) release and uptake would give an enormous impression on d13C levels, which is not seen at all, even not in high resolution (2-4 years) coralline sponges.
Theoretically much is possible, but several observations show that it didn’t happen.
tonyb says:
September 25, 2010 at 7:31 am
Would the ocean around both our cool shores be a greater sink in January than it would be in say April?
As the SST in January is average 1°C cooler than the April temperature, the sink rate in January will be higher than in April, all other influences being equal (wind speed as the most important, but biolife not to be forgotten).
Francisco says:
September 25, 2010 at 6:47 am
Since the oceans hold many many times more CO2 than the atmosphere, it seems that any increase in atmospheric CO2, say a doubling, would have to be (eventually) almost entirely absorbed by the oceans to regain pressure equilibrium, even taking into account the modest degassing from a slight increase in temperature, if it were to occur. The only question is how fast the absorption would be. I imagine the absorption rate should increase as the pressure unbalance increases. Also, this absorption would have a nearly insignificant effect in ocean CO2 concentration. But do we know what atmospheric CO2 levels represent equilibrium with the oceans at current temperatures?
If we may use the equilibrium rates from the Vostok ice core (recently extended with the Dome C 800,000 years record), the we should be around 290 ppmv at the current temperature. The sink rate indeed increases with the difference between current and equilibrium CO2 level, but the real pCO2 difference between atmosphere and ocean mixed layer is only 7 ppmv in average, see Feely e.a. at:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
which btw disputes the figures of Antti Roine.
The small difference is because the mixed layer follows the atmosphere within about 1.5 years. But the main CO2 sink into the deep oceans at the THC sink place shows a difference of ~240 microatm.
Ferdinand says: 1) The increase in humidity from human activities is about 0.1% of the total circulation of water vapour, if I remember well. 2) The increase of water vapour (if the precipitation rate in the Arctic may be used as base) in the atmosphere is about 6% over the past 60 years. Thus the temperature increase is far more important than the direct human contribution. This is included in the climate models, as positive feedback, 3) as more CO2 gives higher temperatures and these give more water vapour, which increases the temperature somewhat further
Sorry Ferdinand
1) nobody can possibly calculate the extra water vapor being added to the atmosphere due to man’s continued erection of shallow dams and pools.
2) are we sure about that 6% increase in humidity (worldwide)? How do you separate that which is man made and that which is natural (due to global warming )?
3) as posted here earlier, nobody has yet proven to me that the net effect of CO2 is warming rather than cooling
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/24/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-4/#comment-491160
@Engelbeen
Biologically active carbon in land biota (vegetation, soil, detritus) is over 2000gt. A 160gt change up or down is 8% of it. So you are saying that a change in terrestrial carbon reservoir of less than 1% per year up or down for ten consecutive years is “practically impossible”? Is that another one of your “impressions”?
Henry Pool says:
Sorry Ferdinand
1) nobody can possibly calculate the extra water vapor being added to the atmosphere due to man’s continued erection of shallow dams and pools.
2) are we sure about that 6% increase in humidity (worldwide)? How do you separate that which is man made and that which is natural (due to global warming )?
3) as posted here earlier, nobody has yet proven to me that the net effect of CO2 is warming rather than cooling
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/24/engelbeen-on-why-he-thinks-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-4/#comment-491160
1) The 0.1% was directly from energy use (fossil fuel burning and cooling towers from power plants), not including the surface evaporation from dams etc… On the other side, many wetlands were drained and cultivated, rivers were straightened and narrowed, but irrigation again added to the overall evaporation. Hard to calculate the amounts involved.
But as 70% of the surface are oceans, I suppose that SST is the main driver for humidity in the air and precipitation, hardly influenced by some extra human input…
2) The 6% increase is only based on the increase in discharge of Arctic rivers. I have no idea if that is applicable to global water circulation. But it is anyway an indication of the increase of water circulation within the polar circle with increasing temperatures there.
The global satellite record is probably still too short to give any firm conclusions. Models (more or less confirmed by observations) assume a constant relative humidity with increasing temperature. See
http://www.dgf.uchile.cl/~ronda/GF3004/helandsod00.pdf
And look at the Final Remarks
3) No comment on this, I haven’t studied that in detail, only did see that the models overestimate the influence of (cooling) aerosols, thus overestimating the influence of GHGs and the lack of influence of a drop of 40 ppmv CO2 at the end of the previous interglacial, which also points to a low influence of CO2.
Dave Springer says:
September 26, 2010 at 12:30 am
Biologically active carbon in land biota (vegetation, soil, detritus) is over 2000gt. A 160gt change up or down is 8% of it. So you are saying that a change in terrestrial carbon reservoir of less than 1% per year up or down for ten consecutive years is “practically impossible”? Is that another one of your “impressions”?
Don’t mix up changes in reservoirs with changes in fluxes… If you want 16 GtC/year increase and decrease, that needs a change of some 15% in soil bacteria activity or an opposite 15% change in vegetation growth (wood + detritus) or a mix of both over a period of 10 years up and 10 years down. Only as result of a temperature change of some 0.3°C. Since that period, we have an increase of 0.6°C, which shows a similar increase in CO2, which is proven not from vegetation, as the temperature (or CO2) increase led to a net absorption of about 1.2 GtC/year in the biosphere, opposite to what allegedly happened in 1940.
And nothing happened with the d13C level around 1940, except for the steady decline caused by the use of fossil fuels.
Again my “impression” is based on scientific facts…
Ferdinand
Has any study been done on the effects of wide scale aerial irrigation on Co2 levels? It is common to see jets of water pumping high into the air and thereby(presumably) Co2 as well, whilst also increasing hunidity in the air around it.
tonyb
Ferdinand,
Thanks for your clear and concise answers to the issues I raised. I do have some quibbles with some of them, but I also have a commitment to the matriarch of my household in regard to the completion of a concrete pad at the back of the house. Global warming, having failed to provide the promised extension to the concrete pouring season, I fear this may be my last weekend before to complete the pad before temperatures become too cold around here to do so. So allow me touch on just a couple of things:
1. You advised that if Beck was aware of the limits of the data he was using and eliminated those measurements which could not be relied on, it would leave so few measurements that nothing meaningful could be achieved. Not so. You proceed on the assumption that the known problems with the data could not dealt with to arrive at valid calculations. Check out this article by Francis Massen on combining wind speed measurements with CO2 measurements to arrive at accurate background CO2 measurements.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/guest-post-a-simple-tool-to-detect-co2-background-levels-by-francis-massen/
Note that Massen colaborated with Beck on this paper, and that this was not the only technique that Beck used to derive accurate results from otherwise innacurate data. The variety of technicques and approaches, tested against real world measurement, were a big part of the paper he was working on and brought a considerable amount of the data you assume should have been discarded into a proper analysis.
2. You dismissed my point about sudden warming releasing CO2 being counter balanced by uptake from the biosphere. On a long term basis certainly. Allow me to expand on the short term issue.
During a cooling period, snow lines advance, covering dead biomass. The assumption that this dead biomass just freezes is incorrect. The assumption that the snow layer is just snow down to the ground is also incorrect. When teaching kids about winter camping and how to build a quinzzy (sort of like an igloo, but constructed of loose snow piled up and then hollowed out), one of the things to show them is the thin layer of ice, usually just a half cm or so above the ground, which formed during the first snowfall of the year. The fluffy snow on top is insulation, the heat latent in the ground during the first snow melted some of it, which then refroze as a layer of ice as the ground lost its own heat and fell below the freezing temperature.
Beneath that layer of ice you will frequently find that it is microbially active. Decaying processes continue, though at a much slower rate, and are mostly locked beneath the snow by that thin layer of ice. Spring wheat (planted in the fall) gets a massive jump on the growing season because it is germinated early enough to take advantage of the moisture from snow melt instead of waiting for the first rains after seeding, and because that snow melt carries nutrients from decaying biomass from the whole winter.
So let’s apply what happense seasonaly as the snow line extends and retreats to a warming globaly of several degrees in extreme temperate and arctic regions over a very short period of time. Snow lines would retreat rapidly, exposing decayed biomass that had been locked under snow and ice for decades, perhaps centuries, much of it microbially active for a very long time, releasing to the atmosphere in a matter of months what had been collecting for decades or longer.
The biosphere would of course increase uptake, but there would be a susbtantive delay, it would take many years for the biosphere to absorb that pulse. The oceans however, would have no such challenge. As Annti Roine contends, the uptake of the oceans sky rockets as the equilibrium pressure between the atmosphere and the oceans diverges.
http://www.antti-roine.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=73
Ferdinand wrote
quote
Moreover, a peak of some 80 ppmv around 1942 is hardly possible, but removing such a peak in less than 10 years is physically impossible. The total amount of CO2 involved is comparable to burning down one third of all living vegetation on land and growing back in a few years time.
unquote
I’d be interested in some workings through of that statement — in very simple terms.
It’s interesting to see the coincidence of this ‘impossible’ peak with the SST peak in the Hadcrut graph — coincidental, that is, if one rejects the Folland and Parker bucket correction. Of course, it may just be chance.
If one looks at wind speed records for the same time period, there is an interesting excursion of up to 7 m/s (from memory: I can’t trace the FOA paper which is filed as an image rather than as a document and which was primarily concerned with fish stocks) in the North Atlantic with lesser excursions in the SA, NP and SP in that order. This latter paper is what made me decide that the Folland and Parker correction is untrustworthy and that the abrupt rise and fall of SSTs around the 39-45 period are real and not an artefact of measurement.
Two excursions may be coincidence: so too, of course, might be three, but that’s not the way to bet. There is a high probability that something happened which disturbed the oceans during that period and as such I cannot agree with your cavalier dismissal of changes as physically impossible. If, as I have postulated, the changes are due to disruption of the nutrient flows in the upper ocean, then the response of the oceanic biosphere is possibly enough to produce huge swings both in production and isotope pumping.
I lack the knowledge to suggest an experiment which would show oceanic primary production over the critical period — it would have to be far ocean production as I suspect the primary cause would not show up in coastal waters which are well mixed by wave action and fed by land run-off. Similarly, I have reservations about shallow sea relevance — well out to sea is where the problems would show. Or not, of course.
The dismissal of unfortunate data, as you do to Beck’s graph above, is all too common in climate science, explaining away rather than explaining. If the scientists who cannot explain the warming and cooling episodes of the last 70 or so years had not decided to correct anomalies away, then I would have much more confidence in their overall findings.
Oceanic primary production is around 50 billion tons of carbon per year. In the last 60 years the phytoplankton population has fallen by 40%. Something is going on. I’d expect the change to show — compare 40% of that 50 billion with the change in humanity’s production over the same period.
JF
davidmhoffer says:
September 26, 2010 at 11:17 am
1. You advised that if Beck was aware of the limits of the data he was using and eliminated those measurements which could not be relied on, it would leave so few measurements that nothing meaningful could be achieved. Not so. You proceed on the assumption that the known problems with the data could not dealt with to arrive at valid calculations. Check out this article by Francis Massen on combining wind speed measurements with CO2 measurements to arrive at accurate background CO2 measurements.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/guest-post-a-simple-tool-to-detect-co2-background-levels-by-francis-massen/
Note that Massen colaborated with Beck on this paper, and that this was not the only technique that Beck used to derive accurate results from otherwise innacurate data. The variety of technicques and approaches, tested against real world measurement, were a big part of the paper he was working on and brought a considerable amount of the data you assume should have been discarded into a proper analysis.
The data in the period 1930-1935 taken during cruises over the North Atlantic Ocean show a small range and the averages are around the ice core values. That are data in “background” environment. None of the data in the period 1935-1943 were taken in “background” places and all show an enormous range and high averages, but still the minima are below or near the ice core values. This should already give a warning about the value of the measurements.
Moreover, averages from measurements taken at different places in the same year also show huge differences: in e.g. 1940 from around 250 ppmv to 600 ppmv. Current differences between stations from near the North Pole to the South Pole don’t differ with more than 5 ppmv for yearly averages (15 ppmv for monthly averages, including the seasonal differences)…
Then 1944 again shows oceanic measurements with an average this time even below the ice core value.
As the minima are probably taken either at high wind speed or in the afternoon with more turbulence, these approach the background better than the averages. But in fact one should better discard them all.
The two series which give the highest contribution to the 1941 peak are Poona (India) and Giessen (Germany). Most of the data from Poona were taken under and in between growing vegetation. There is no way to compare or translate that to real background levels of that time. The Giessen data are more interesting (1.5 years, 25,000 samples), as these were taken 3 times a day at four different heights.
I have commented on the Massen/Beck method in the introduction here (chapter 2.5). The method may work, under condition that there are enough datapoints at high wind speed (over 4 m/s) and a “fingerlike” pattern. These conditions are not met for the historical data from Giessen: only 22 datapoints over 4 m/s still with a range of some 300 ppmv. It is impossible to deduce the real background CO2 levels from such a range, see Figures 10 and 11.
Moreover, there are questions about the reliability of the Giessen data, as the (modified) Pettenkofer method used there may give results up to 50% too high. And further the afternoon data in average are higher than the morning and late evening averages. That is contrary of what is found near everywhere current and historic alike for (semi) rural data: at night CO2 levels are highest (inversion layer, plant respiration), in the afternoon lowest (photosynthesis, turbulence).
2. You dismissed my point about sudden warming releasing CO2 being counter balanced by uptake from the biosphere. On a long term basis certainly. Allow me to expand on the short term issue.
During a cooling period, snow lines advance, covering dead biomass. The assumption that this dead biomass just freezes is incorrect. The assumption that the snow layer is just snow down to the ground is also incorrect. When teaching kids about winter camping and how to build a quinzzy (sort of like an igloo, but constructed of loose snow piled up and then hollowed out), one of the things to show them is the thin layer of ice, usually just a half cm or so above the ground, which formed during the first snowfall of the year. The fluffy snow on top is insulation, the heat latent in the ground during the first snow melted some of it, which then refroze as a layer of ice as the ground lost its own heat and fell below the freezing temperature.
Beneath that layer of ice you will frequently find that it is microbially active. Decaying processes continue, though at a much slower rate, and are mostly locked beneath the snow by that thin layer of ice. Spring wheat (planted in the fall) gets a massive jump on the growing season because it is germinated early enough to take advantage of the moisture from snow melt instead of waiting for the first rains after seeding, and because that snow melt carries nutrients from decaying biomass from the whole winter.
So let’s apply what happense seasonaly as the snow line extends and retreats to a warming globaly of several degrees in extreme temperate and arctic regions over a very short period of time. Snow lines would retreat rapidly, exposing decayed biomass that had been locked under snow and ice for decades, perhaps centuries, much of it microbially active for a very long time, releasing to the atmosphere in a matter of months what had been collecting for decades or longer.
The biosphere would of course increase uptake, but there would be a susbtantive delay, it would take many years for the biosphere to absorb that pulse. The oceans however, would have no such challenge. As Annti Roine contends, the uptake of the oceans sky rockets as the equilibrium pressure between the atmosphere and the oceans diverges.
http://www.antti-roine.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=73
Nobody says that the biomass stops emitting when it is freezing. CO2 levels go up in (the NH) winter, because of ongoing decay by bacteria, despite cooling oceans, which absorb more in winter. But (fortunately) the figures of Antti Roine are wrong, as the measured (!) average difference in pCO2 between atmosphere and oceans is only 7 microatm, not over 100 microatm. I don’t know what is wrong with his figures. See:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
Further, the mixed layer of the oceans only needs about 16 GtC from the 160 GtC extra in the atmosphere to get again in equilibrium (within about 1.5 years), thus is not the main buffer, while the exchanges with the deep ocean are limited and according to you even more limited as the THC sink place warmed up…
Las but not least a sudden release of 160 GtC organics would decrease the d13C level of atmosphere and ocean mixed layer enormously (the calculation gives a drop of near 3 per mil in the atmosphere, that would be somewhat less in the oceans), which is not seen in tree wood, ice cores, coralline sponges or anything else. Neither is the CO2 increase of 80 ppmv itself seen in fast accumulating ice cores or in any proxy (including a growth spurt in tree rings).
The resolution of coralline sponges is 2-4 years the accuracy is +/- 0.1 per mil d13C.
In summary: the 1940 “peak” is solely based on measurements taken at places which show enormous (diurnal and random variability), thus which were (and still are) unsuitable for background measurements. The peak is not confirmed by any other observation or proxy. To the contrary.
A couple of more comments
1) IF CO2 from underwater volcanoes were a major source of CO2, this would imply a pH profile in the oceans which is NOT seen
2) The question about the coke effect is interesting in the sense that there is much more ocean in the SH than in the NH. That implies that the maxima would be observed in SH summer
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
I cannot resist stating my two cents on CO2.
I have often said that if we measured temperatures the way the Keeling school measures CO2 we should be doing it in “pure places”, like ravines at the top of the mountains at night far away from sources of heat.
I will take another tack.
Why are we interested in CO2? Because it is a greenhouse gas.
What else is a green house gas? H2O.
How do we measure it? By measuring humidity.
Do we go to the deserts to measure humidity, far away from water sources?
If CO2 acts as a type of “blanket” it is the average CO2 versus height in the atmosphere that is important. Not the “pure” background on the top of mountains and in ice regions.
Therefore, Beck’s compilations are highly relevant to the effect CO2 has on heat retention ( greenhouse effect) where humans live, and thermometers measure, at 2meters, certainly not in the arctic and antarctic and at 4000 meters. And Beck’s compilations tell us that CO2 has been as high in previous times , when temperatures were low, as now . Mauna Loa measurements are relevant to Mauna Loa.
We need detailed satellite measurements of average CO2 versus height over the globe, and we have to wait in order to get a long enough time sequence.
Now if the objective is to accuse humans of an increase in CO2, the Mauna Loa curves do not prove it, because correlation is not causation. The logical sequence that would tie the two up has many parameters and many holes in the form of lack of knowledge bridged with hand waving. Particularly suspicious is the “well mixed” hypothesis and also the available satellite graphs do not support it well.
It can well be that humans are increasing measurably CO2 and at the same time CO2 has a small effect in the greenhouse effect, commensurate to its ppm. It cannot be nailed down with this method.
Ferdinand
here is an interesting result from an experiment I did for you.
I have a swimming pool, ca. 50 m2
I filled it up to mark last week monday. Today, a week later (monday), I filled it up to mark again. I now read the meter before and after filling up.
I used 2,506 m3 (= 2506 liters) in one week. This is how much water evaporated in one week.
Note the parameters where this result applies:
no clouds, clear blue skies (for the whole week)
max. temps during the day, 31 -34 degrees C
the average water temp. in the pool was 25-26 degrees C
Compare this with my patrol (gas) consumption. I use ca. 40 liters of patrol/ month.
That is 10 liters in week
Do you understand now why I am saying that everyone in the agw crowd is barking up the wrong tree? (assuming there is something to bark about, i.e. that global warming is real and not part of a natural process)
Now look at everywhere in the world (e.g India, China, USA, Europe) where they have dams and are busy building new dams. Surely, the implications of my simple result are enormous.
Julian Flood says:
September 26, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I’d be interested in some workings through of that statement — in very simple terms.
It’s interesting to see the coincidence of this ‘impossible’ peak with the SST peak in the Hadcrut graph — coincidental, that is, if one rejects the Folland and Parker bucket correction. Of course, it may just be chance.
If one looks at wind speed records for the same time period, there is an interesting excursion of up to 7 m/s (from memory: I can’t trace the FOA paper which is filed as an image rather than as a document and which was primarily concerned with fish stocks) in the North Atlantic with lesser excursions in the SA, NP and SP in that order. This latter paper is what made me decide that the Folland and Parker correction is untrustworthy and that the abrupt rise and fall of SSTs around the 39-45 period are real and not an artefact of measurement.
Two excursions may be coincidence: so too, of course, might be three, but that’s not the way to bet. There is a high probability that something happened which disturbed the oceans during that period and as such I cannot agree with your cavalier dismissal of changes as physically impossible. If, as I have postulated, the changes are due to disruption of the nutrient flows in the upper ocean, then the response of the oceanic biosphere is possibly enough to produce huge swings both in production and isotope pumping.
I lack the knowledge to suggest an experiment which would show oceanic primary production over the critical period — it would have to be far ocean production as I suspect the primary cause would not show up in coastal waters which are well mixed by wave action and fed by land run-off. Similarly, I have reservations about shallow sea relevance — well out to sea is where the problems would show. Or not, of course.
The dismissal of unfortunate data, as you do to Beck’s graph above, is all too common in climate science, explaining away rather than explaining. If the scientists who cannot explain the warming and cooling episodes of the last 70 or so years had not decided to correct anomalies away, then I would have much more confidence in their overall findings.
Oceanic primary production is around 50 billion tons of carbon per year. In the last 60 years the phytoplankton population has fallen by 40%. Something is going on. I’d expect the change to show — compare 40% of that 50 billion with the change in humanity’s production over the same period.
To begin with: I suppose that the 0.3°C SST peak around 1940 is real.
If that peak was the cause of the 80 ppmv rise and decline, then we should see a 160 ppmv rise from the 1960-2000 rise of 0.6°C in SST, where temperatures after 1985 are even higher than at the 1940 SST peak.
But even with the real increase of some 55 ppmv / 110 GtC in the atmosphere (and about 11 GtC in the oceans mixed layer) since 1960, the oceans were a net sink for atmospheric CO2 over the entire period 1960-2000.
Then NPP in the oceans is one part of the equation: temeprature and NPP gives the fluxes between atmosphere and deep oceans at one side and ocean mixed layer at the other side. The NPP increases in the mid-latitudes in summer, thanks to temperature increases, but that also depends of winter storm mixing with the deep ocean layers, and thus increasing nutritients (CO2 is not the limiting factor in the mixed layer), but that all doesn’t say anything about the net exchanges between the oceans mixed layer and the atmosphere and deep oceans.
Temperature is the most important influence on CO2 fluxes: Most of the back and forth exchanges of CO2 between air and water are caused by regional temperature changes over the seasons: a change of 10°C between summer and winter SST over the mid-latitudes is a huge difference. Besides that, there is a smaller permanent flux between the upwelling at the warm equator waters and the sinks near the poles. Both together are good for some 90 GtC exchange back and forth between oceans and atmosphere over the seasons. The average was rather in equilibrium in pre-industrial times, but nowadays shows a net sink around 2.5 GtC/year. Thus while the seasonal and permanent exchanges are huge, the net changes are relative small. As the net changes are what gives the changes in CO2 level in a reservoir, only huge more permanent changes in temperature will give more permanent changes in CO2 levels.
Something similar for NPP: the NPP is mainly from plankton, both as organic matter as from calcite formation by some species. Again, most of what is bound at one side is released in the same reservoir: plankton is at the base of the food chain, but most of the chain grows and dies or is used and exhaled in the mixed layer, thus doesn’t contribute to changes in CO2 level. See the (rough) indications in the NASA diagram:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/Images/carbon_cycle_diagram.jpg
While the NPP is about 50 GtC/year, only 10 GtC drops out of the mixed layer and goes into the deep. If the NPP halved, that would influence the whole chain, and theoretically halve the drop out of carbon out of the mixed layer, decreasing the take up of the oceans and thus increasing the increase rate caused by fossil fuel use. But reality is different:
The idea of increasing the NPP by iron fertilization was tested somewhere (don’t remember the source), which indeed increased plankton growth, mainly increased fish stock, but didn’t give more drop out of carbon out of the mixed layer. Thus even if there was a real drop of 40% in NPP, that doesn’t imply a reduction in CO2 sink rate…
At Bermuda, there was continuous monitoring of NPP, pCO2, DIC, pH,… of the North Atlantic Ocean. See:
http://www.bios.edu/Labs/co2lab/research/IntDecVar_OCC.html
The winter storms and temperature changes over the Atlantic cause a year by year variability of +/- 0.3 GtC.
See: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5602/2374
The extra severe (winter) storms around 1940 may be responsible for an extra uptake of 1 GtC (0.5 ppmv) over several years, which would explain the small drop in CO2 levels in the Law Dome ice core of that period. But the winter storms only explain a drop (of a few ppmv), there is no explanation for a 80 ppmv peak…
See further about the impossibility of a 80 ppmv peak and drop in my previous answer to davidmhoffer…
anna v says:
September 26, 2010 at 9:51 pm
I cannot resist stating my two cents on CO2.
I have often said that if we measured temperatures the way the Keeling school measures CO2 we should be doing it in “pure places”, like ravines at the top of the mountains at night far away from sources of heat.
I will take another tack.
Why are we interested in CO2? Because it is a greenhouse gas.
What else is a green house gas? H2O.
How do we measure it? By measuring humidity.
Do we go to the deserts to measure humidity, far away from water sources?
If CO2 acts as a type of “blanket” it is the average CO2 versus height in the atmosphere that is important. Not the “pure” background on the top of mountains and in ice regions.
Therefore, Beck’s compilations are highly relevant to the effect CO2 has on heat retention ( greenhouse effect) where humans live, and thermometers measure, at 2meters, certainly not in the arctic and antarctic and at 4000 meters. And Beck’s compilations tell us that CO2 has been as high in previous times , when temperatures were low, as now . Mauna Loa measurements are relevant to Mauna Loa.
We need detailed satellite measurements of average CO2 versus height over the globe, and we have to wait in order to get a long enough time sequence.
Now if the objective is to accuse humans of an increase in CO2, the Mauna Loa curves do not prove it, because correlation is not causation. The logical sequence that would tie the two up has many parameters and many holes in the form of lack of knowledge bridged with hand waving. Particularly suspicious is the “well mixed” hypothesis and also the available satellite graphs do not support it well.
It can well be that humans are increasing measurably CO2 and at the same time CO2 has a small effect in the greenhouse effect, commensurate to its ppm. It cannot be nailed down with this method.
Dear anna v,
I expected your reaction already much earlier…
A few points, as we have discussed this a few times in the past:
– Temperature is not “well mixed” in the atmosphere, neither is water vapour, while CO2 is well mixed in 95% of the atmosphere. Only in the few hundred meters over land near huge sources and sinks, one can find any CO2 level, changing over minutes, diurnal, or over longer time frames. Averaging these values doesn’t help, as in general there are huge local/regional biases present.
– Well mixed doesn’t mean that everywhere at every moment all levels are equal. That would be right if there were no sources and sinks at work. As some 20% of all CO2 of the atmosphere is removed and readded, that is seen in the measurements as (modest) seasonal changes. Plus a NH-SH lag, due to reduced mixing of air masses between the hemispheres.
Despite that, yearly averages all over the world in 95% of the atmosphere are within 5 ppmv. See figures 3-5 in the introduction.
– CO2 levels are less important at the first few thousand meters, as water vapour is the most important GHG there and largely overlaps the CO2 bands. The higher one comes, the more (relative) important CO2 becomes, as water vapour rapidely drops to very low levels with height.
– Even if the first 1,000 m over land was permanently at 1000 ppmv, that hardly influences temperature rise: the absorption at that level would give a direct increase (without feedbacks) of 0.1°C in temperature over land, or 0.03°C globally. That is all. In reality, the levels in average are even lower, thus the errors by not including the higher levels in the first 1,000 meter over land are negligible.
– Beck’s compilations only give a clue what the CO2 levels locally were in Giessen or Vienna or Philadelphia, not of global CO2 levels, except if taken over the oceans. As good as the temperature measurements in towns are influenced by the surroundings and should be discarded for global averages. For temperature, that has a real local impact, but local/regional higher CO2 levels have hardly any impact on temperature. Thus why should one use them at all? You shouldn’t use temperature measurements over a hot asphalt parking lot for global averages either…
– Mauna Loa and other baseline stations show levels which are near the same in 95% of the atmosphere, thus near global. And all the items shown in the 4 part series are more than sufficient proof of human emissions as cause of the increase. If you know of an alternative explanation which fits all observations, I am very interested…