Via Lewis Page at the Register:
Some cheerful news on the climate change front today, as US government boffins report that ice breaking off the Antarctic shelves and melting in the sea causes carbon dioxide to be removed from the environment. This powerful, previously unknown “negative feedback” would seem likely to revise forecasts of future global warming significantly downwards.
“These new findings… confirm that icebergs contribute yet another, previously unsuspected, dimension of physical and biological complexity to polar ecosystems,” says Roberta Marinelli, director of the NSF’s Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program.
Full story here Also, from the National Science Foundation, a potential negative feedback as icebergs boost phytoplankton, removing more CO2 during the process.
Antarctic Icebergs Play a Previously Unknown Role in Global Carbon Cycle, Climate
Passage of icebergs through surface waters changes their physical and biological characteristics
In a finding that has global implications for climate research, scientists have discovered that when icebergs cool and dilute the seas through which they pass for days, they also raise chlorophyll levels in the water that may in turn increase carbon dioxide absorption in the Southern Ocean.
An interdisciplinary research team supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) highlighted the research this month in the journal Nature Geosciences.
The research indicates that “iceberg transport and melting have a role in the distribution of phytoplankton in the Weddell Sea,” which was previously unsuspected, said John J. Helly, director of the Laboratory for Environmental and Earth Sciences with the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Helly was the lead author of the paper, “Cooling, Dilution and Mixing of Ocean Water by Free-drifting Icebergs in the Weddell Sea,” which was first published in the journal Deep-Sea Research Part II.
The results indicate that icebergs are especially likely to influence phytoplankton dynamics in an area known as “Iceberg Alley,” east of the Antarctic Peninsula, the portion of the continent that extends northwards toward Chile.
The latest findings add a new dimension to previous research by the same team that altered the perception of icebergs as large, familiar, but passive, elements of the Antarctic seascape. The team previously showed that icebergs act, in effect, as ocean “oases” of nutrients for aquatic life and sea birds.
The teams’s research indicates that ordinary icebergs are likely to become more prevalent in the Southern Ocean, particularly as the Antarctic Peninsula continues a well-documented warming trend and ice shelves disintegrate. Research also shows that these ordinary icebergs are important features of not only marine ecosystems, but even of global carbon cycling.
“These new findings amplify the team’s previous discoveries about icebergs and confirm that icebergs contribute yet another, previously unsuspected, dimension of physical and biological complexity to polar ecosystems,” said Roberta L. Marinelli, director of the NSF’s Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program.
NSF manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, through which it coordinates all U.S. scientific research and related logistics on the southernmost continent and aboard ships in the Southern Ocean.
The latest findings document a persistent change in physical and biological characteristics of surface waters after the transit of an iceberg, which has important effects on phytoplankton populations, clearly demonstrating “that icebergs influence oceanic surface waters and mixing to greater extents than previously realized,” said Ronald S. Kaufmann, associate professor of marine science and environmental studies at the University of San Diego and one of the authors of the paper.
The researchers studied the effects by sampling the area around a large iceberg more than 32 kilometers (20 miles) long; the same area was surveyed again ten days later, after the iceberg had drifted away.
After ten days, the scientists observed increased concentrations of chlorophyll a and reduced concentrations of carbon dioxide, as compared to nearby areas without icebergs. These results are consistent with the growth of phytoplankton and the removal of carbon dioxide from the ocean.
The new results demonstrate that icebergs provide a connection between the geophysical and biological domains that directly affects the carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean, Marinelli added.
In 2007, the same team published findings in the journal Science that icebergs serve as “hotspots” for ocean life with thriving communities of seabirds above and a web of phytoplankton, krill and fish below. At that time, the researchers reported that icebergs hold trapped terrestrial material, which they release far out at sea as they melt, a process that produces a “halo effect” with significantly increased nutrients and krill out to a radius of more than three kilometers (two miles).
The new research was conducted as part of a multi-disciplinary project that also involved scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, University of South Carolina, University of Nevada, Reno, University of South Carolina, Brigham Young University, and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography research biologist Maria Vernet and graduate student Gordon Stephenson also contributed to the paper.
-NSF-
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
SteveE says:
April 1, 2011 at 7:13 am
Richard M says:
April 1, 2011 at 6:38 am
when the Earth comes out of an ice age, the warming is not initiated by CO2 but by changes in the Earth’s orbit….etc
——–
So, what you are advocating is that temperature increase preclude s CO2 emission – afcat conveniently ignored by the warmists because if THAT is the cause of rising temp, then increased CO2 is the EFFECT.
To return to your volcano CO2 issue – it is largely a moot point in the context of total NATURAL total Global CO2 output. What is the natural output of CO2 from oceans, land, etc? Answer, it is very very much bigger than anthropogenic CO2.
The volcano emissions are and will likely remain as a very indeterminate estimate because subsea volcanoes and seafloor spreading, etc, simply cannot be realistically estimated. Even the measurements for active volanoes are estimates – and until someone puts a fecking great cover over one of them and contains the erupted gas – it is entirely guesswork. Even then, different magma produces different types of eruption and erupted gas content – so, as a geologist, I can honestly say that any volcanic CO2 emission estimate could be plus or minus several hundred percent or even an order of magnitude higher or lower!
But, like I say, given the estimated (yet again) magnitude of ALL the other natural CO2 emissions, and the relative ‘drop’ that is man-made – it really doesn’t follow that such a small value can cause such a supposedly dramatic temperature increase. Consider if the oceans had a temperature ‘sneeze’ – the Co2 emitted (or sunk) would cause a massive atmospheric CO2 variation dwarfing anything man could achieve!
The Co2 warmist argument, and all the subsequent alarmism, is based on a ridiculously enhanced qualitative stance – when all logic dictates that when you look at it quantitatively (meaning man made CO2 to natural CO2) – such a CO2 sensitivity simply cannot exist.
tonyb says:
April 1, 2011 at 4:59 am
Does anyone have a clear and easy to understand graph/table that illustrates at what temperature/circumstances absorption of Co2 in sea water becomes outgasing?
I read somewhere that 26 degrees C is the opitimal temperature of sea water for maximum outgassing and that 7ppm of co2 are released for each 1 degree of ocean temperature increase (and presumably the other way round).
The temperatures of the sea around our part of the UK range from a low in a cold winter of 5C (more normally 8C) up to a maximum -if we are really lucky- of 20C (more usually 17C) in the summer. This depends greatly on the depth of the ocean.
So is the UK constantly outgassing or constantly absorbing or a mixture of the two?
It will only outgas if the atmospheric partial pressure is below the equilibrium value for that ocean temperature. Since the atmospheric [CO2] is going up at a rate of a couple of ppm/yr the ocean temperature would have to go up fairly fast to win the race and outgas.
Richard M says:
April 1, 2011 at 7:43 am
SteveE says:
April 1, 2011 at 7:13 am
Richard M says:
April 1, 2011 at 6:38 am
“When the Earth comes out of an ice age, the warming is not initiated by CO2 but by changes in the Earth’s orbit. The warming causes the oceans to give up CO2. The CO2 amplifies the warming and mixes through the atmosphere, spreading warming throughout the planet.”
SteveE, you just regurgitated the Milankovitch theory. You did leave out that initial glacial melting reduces albedo. However, your problem is this is a theory and does not match historic records in all cases. In other words … it is not yet proven to be fact, or at least there seems to be several other factors that influence the change.
Here’s something to think about. Since the early onset glaciers destroyed lots of forest and vegetation, why didn’t CO2 increase and stop the spread of glaciers? Hint … think water vapor.
The natural sources of CO2 are outgassing from oceans and decay of surface vegetation and substances in the soil. Colder oceans are able to dissolve more CO2, and this would make up for the lack of absorption by plants. If there are fewer plants growing, there are fewer plants decaying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
The Milankovitch theory explains the ice ages quite well. The triggering mechanism is physically well understood:
http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm
The timing matches up very well.
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/03_1.shtml
When Fourier analysis was applied to deep-sea records in 1975, it emerged that the oxygen-isotope series contained strong cycles with periods near 100,000 years, 41,000 years, and 23,000 years. These are precisely the periods expected if Earth’s orbital elements (eccentricity, obliquity, and precession) govern ice-age climates, as proposed by Milankovitch Theory. Thus, there could be no more doubt that orbital elements had to be considered as important drivers of climate on long time scales.
I’m not surprised you believe it to be fact. Your posts continue to show you generally repeat things you’ve read without much critical thinking applied. I think this is about as unskeptical as one can get and demonstrates why you believe in CAGW.
On the other hand skepticism gone wild descends into know -nothingism.
Most skeptics do not accept anything at face value. The fact that 80% of all peer reviewed science is shown to be wrong after just 25 years puts you on very shaky ground. (from a peer reviewed study)
I am skeptical of the validity of your peer reviewed study.
Laurence M. Sheehan, PE says:
April 2, 2011 at 1:31 am
If there were 400 ppm of carbon dioxide, then all of 40 molecules of CO2 would exist along with 99,960 molecules of almost entirely nitrogen (N2) and to a far lesser amount, oxygen (O2). If the portion of CO2 caused by humans was as large as 5%, all of 2 (two) molecules of CO2 amid 99,998 other molecules would be due to human activities. Those CO2 molecules must be magical indeed, to have “forcing temperature effects” on the other 99,998 molecules they are amid.
They are indeed, those 99,996 N2 molecules (and the associated O2 and Ar which you have included) are transparent to the IR radiation emitted by the earth whereas the CO2 is a strong absorber of that IR and therefore is the gas responsible for heating the atmosphere.
Phil. says:
April 2, 2011 at 8:12 am
“…CO2 is a strong absorber of that IR…”
Please define “strong”. Strong in comparison to what? Not, e.g., water vapor or methane. It is, in fact, a weak absorber of that IR affecting only a couple of narrow frequency bands.
http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/f/fd/Picard-no-facepalm.jpg Oh, my. You don’t say? Not to criticize Dr. Marinella, specifically, but rather those climate investigators who have, in their hubris, insisted that we know enough already to advocate enslaving the world in order to stave off certain disaster.
Any who have followed my comments here over the years will know that I have been saying that A) an equilibrium point for CO2 could never have been established without a strong negative feedback keeping it in the neighborhood of the equilibrium and B) the measured CO2 spectrum does not match that of the accumulated emissions very well across the board, and not at all in the fine detail. Therefore, the modern measured runup in atmospheric concentration is NOT due to anthropogenic inputs, and will settle out once whatever powerful natural processes are driving the increase are finished.
The arguments against me, when they were coherent, were essentially ad ignorantiam, i.e., that we don’t know of any feedback or source which could operate as I say they must. My reply: keep looking, you will find them, eventually. They must exist, because that is the nature of reality which scientific investigation has confirmed for centuries. This article shows that another feedback has been found. You may be assured that there will be others.
. Close tag. Hope that helps. Sorry.
REPLY: Please see this –
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/19/my-biggest-pet-peeve-on-running-this-blog/
Don’t know how the tags problem came about. Here is as intended. Wish there could be a preview…
Oh, my. You don’t say? Not to criticize Dr. Marinella, specifically, but rather those climate investigators who have, in their hubris, insisted that we know enough already to advocate enslaving the world in order to stave off certain disaster.
Any who have followed my comments here over the years will know that I have been saying that A) an equilibrium point for CO2 could never have been established without a strong negative feedback keeping it in the neighborhood of the equilibrium and B) the measured CO2 spectrum does not match that of the accumulated emissions very well across the board, and not at all in the fine detail. Therefore, the modern measured runup in atmospheric concentration is NOT due to anthropogenic inputs, and will settle out once whatever powerful natural processes are driving the increase are finished.
The arguments against me, when they were coherent, were essentially ad ignorantiam, i.e., that we don’t know of any feedback or source which could operate as I say they must. My reply: keep looking, you will find them, eventually. They must exist, because that is the nature of reality which scientific investigation has confirmed for centuries. This article shows that another feedback has been found. You may be assured that there will be others.
Bart says:
April 2, 2011 at 10:48 am
“These new findings… confirm that icebergs contribute yet another, previously unsuspected, dimension of physical and biological complexity to polar ecosystems,” says Roberta Marinelli, director of the NSF’s Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems Program.
http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/f/fd/Picard-no-facepalm.jpg Oh, my. You don’t say? Not to criticize Dr. Marinella, specifically, but rather those climate investigators who have, in their hubris, insisted that we know enough already to advocate enslaving the world in order to stave off certain disaster.
Any who have followed my comments here over the years will know that I have been saying that A) an equilibrium point for CO2 could never have been established without a strong negative feedback keeping it in the neighborhood of the equilibrium and B) the measured CO2 spectrum does not match that of the accumulated emissions very well across the board, and not at all in the fine detail. Therefore, the modern measured runup in atmospheric concentration is NOT due to anthropogenic inputs, and will settle out once whatever powerful natural processes are driving the increase are finished.
Your opinion of the contribution of CO2 to the atmospheric spectrum, is irrelevant to the question of whether humans are causing the increase in CO2.
Your logic regarding feedback is faulty. There are certainly process involving plants and ocean, which emit and absorb larger volumes of CO2 than industrial process invented by man. These processes have kept the concentration of CO2 between 180 and 280ppM during the recent ice age cycles lasting hundreds of thousands of years. Since the end of the last glaciation period, until modern times, CO2 concentrations have been very close to 280ppM.
The buildup in CO2 in the atmosphere since the industrial age has been about 1/2 of the emissions due to human industry. The negative feedback in natural systems is failing to prevent the rise of CO2 concentrations due to the addition of industrial sources. There is no doubt in the minds of scientists that the humans are the cause of the current buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere.
<iThe arguments against me, when they were coherent, were essentially ad ignorantiam, i.e., that we don’t know of any feedback or source which could operate as I say they must. My reply: keep looking, you will find them, eventually. They must exist, because that is the nature of reality which scientific investigation has confirmed for centuries. This article shows that another feedback has been found. You may be assured that there will be others.
The question is will they be positive or negative feedback and how big they will be. After 100 years of study of the carbon cycle it is pretty clear that the big ones have been discovered. The novelty of this subject discovery has been overstated by the scientists who did it. The direct observation of CO2 absorption phenomenon in the vicinity of icebergs is new, but the propensity of cold water to absorb CO2, and the effect of cold water on the ocean’s biological productivity has been known for a long time.
u.k.(us) says:
April 1, 2011 at 6:30 pm
eadler says:
April 1, 2011 at 5:22 pm
….”and the reason is that the Ozone hole has created a more windy environment,…”
=========
Please supply the data to support this statement.
If you are interested you can check out the link I gave, or google “ozone hole absorption co2 southern ocean” and look at the results. Since the actual papers written about this are behind a paywall, you will not get to see the data itself, unless you have a journal subscription.
“Your opinion of the contribution of CO2 to the atmospheric spectrum, is irrelevant to the question of whether humans are causing the increase in CO2.”
Indeed, it is. That would be why I made that comment in a separate post.
“Your logic regarding feedback is faulty. “
Mine is not.
“There is no doubt in the minds of [some] scientists that the humans are the cause of the current buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
And, what are their qualifications in the science of feedback systems? Mine are rather extensive, and have decades of real world application.
“After 100 years of study of the carbon cycle it is pretty clear that the big ones have been discovered. “
They haven’t. I’ve been over this argument so many times in this forum, I have no desire to go through it again. Watch and see what happens.
Ah, I see you confused my discussion of the absorption spectrum of CO2 with the power spectral densities of the measured and accumulated CO2 concentrations. Your confusion is understandable for someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of a PSD in systems theory. Just take it as a given that they are separate topics.
Or, the known mechanisms have been poorly quantified. That is another eminent possibility.
All good news, but only when the Antarctic/Greenland ice sheets do actually melt in large quantities, which may be a century from now. Since it will take close to 50 years for Antarctic sea level rise to reach global coastlines and about a decade for Greenland ice (except for the Canadian Maritimes, Maine, Boston, NYC, Washington DC, OBX etc.), plankton growth in those areas could be boosted, and cooler waters from melted ice absorb more CO2. Unfortunately, satellite and longer-term Seicchi disk measurements have indicated a drop of 40% in global phytoplankton populations in the past 60 years, and any iron increases will do little to nothing. Meanwhile, there is little benefit to agriculture when CO2 increases, since plants start to reduce their numbers of stomata thus limiting the release of both oxygen and water vapor as well as air capture of CO2. This means that rainforests could dry up. Still, the climate system is usually too complex for computer modelling and require the kind of hollistic processing that only humans really capable of thus far. Who knows, maybe there will be so many positive/negative feedbacks acting all at once and climate will swing back and forth as we fall into an ice age in several millenia.
Last time I posted here, you guys complained about my lack of providing any evidence. Links below:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phytoplankton-population
http://www.livescience.com/7296-plan-dump-iron-ocean-criticized.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303111624.htm
I think what you meant to say was: “Last time I posted here, I failed to provide any evidence, a lack which you guys justifiably pointed out.”
There. Fixed it for you.
AstroH says:
“… there is little benefit to agriculture when CO2 increases, since plants start to reduce their numbers of stomata thus limiting the release of both oxygen and water vapor as well as air capture of CO2.”
There is widespread evidence showing a direct cause and effect relationship between higher CO2 concentrations and plant growth:
click1
click2 [red line is CO2]
click3
More CO2 is greatly beneficial to the biosphere. I have plenty more charts like these if you’re interested. Just ask.
And regarding your links, the first is speculation based on limited evidence, the second is just speculation, and the third is a WAG assumption based on the argumentum ad ignorantium> fallacy. All in all, typical warmist pseudo-science.
Be kind. We’ve got him to the the point where at least he knows some kind of source is needed; the next step is getting him to discern quality. I have this same problem with my College English students. After driving home the need for sources, I then receive papers with references to Answers.com and Yahoo Answers. First I praise them for going getting the basic idea, and then I start training them to look for more substantive sources.
It’s a long, difficult process, but AstroH is at least on the first steps, so I think we should be more supportive. Gold stars, perhaps?
Steve Keohane says:
April 2, 2011 at 4:17 am
SteveE says: April 1, 2011
You do realize CO2 is at historic low levels for the planet, that the temperature does not change relative to CO2, and 2000-4000 ppm is what plants like as they evolved in those levels, and is therefore much more appropriate for the planet.
————–
You do realise you are not a plant don’t you, and didn’t evolve with CO2 levels of up to 4000ppm?
In all the calculations of warming due to CO2 increasing the greenhouse effect, I wonder if they are deducting the small natural increase in surface temperatures one might expect due to the increased density of the atmosphere that one might expect due to the increasing the portion of relatively heavy CO2 molecules. As the atmosphere becomes more dense, I would expect average surface pressures and temperatures to increase accordingly. At current CO2 concentration levels, I believe this should be a very small effect.
I will try that again…
In all the calculations of warming due to CO2 increasing the greenhouse effect, I wonder if they are deducting the small natural increase in surface temperatures due to the increased density of the atmosphere also caused by CO2. The progressive addition of relatively heavy CO2 molecules should cause a small net increase in the overall density of the atmosphere. As the atmosphere becomes more dense, I would expect average surface pressures and temperatures to increase accordingly. At current CO2 concentration levels, I believe this should be a very small effect.