Continued from part 1…
Guest Post by Caleb Shaw
I will now tell you what I’ve learned, so you can subject it to your kindly WUWT peer- review. I’m fairly certain I’ve gotten some of it wrong, because it doesn’t entirely make sense.
For the purposes of this paper we will imagine a place where snow falls at a great rate, builds up and compacts swiftly, and turns to ice with little bubbles, in only sixty years. We will begin sixty years ago, in the year 1951, on an icecap where the temperatures are always below freezing.
When snow first falls it is called, “Snow.” I find this very relieving, because Climate Scientists have more words for snow than an Inuit. Their official reason for this is to respect other culture’s words for “snow,” and to demonstrate political correctness, as in Climate Science that correctness is more important than the mathematical sort, and they are exceedingly respectful towards all cultures, except Yankees. (In fact I imagine their secret reason for creating the snow-jargon is to keep Yankee laymen like myself confused, hoping the confusion will keep us from butting in where we are not wanted. It is almost as if they are saying, “Yankee go home,” but two can play that game. With the exception of the single word “firn,” I will only use Yankee lingo.)
The snow that fell in 1951 was dry, and around 95% air, but wind whipped it around and it became the sort of packed powder that is around 90% air. At this point the snow is 1951 snow, and the air is 1951 air.
As seasons pass this snow gets buried deeper and deeper by successive snowfalls, as temperatures never allow thawing. As 1951 turns to 1961, and 1961 turns to 1971, the sheer weight of the snow overhead causes changes in the packed powder. Despite the fact temperatures never rise above twenty below, the snow behaves as if it had thawed, and becomes “firn,” which involves the snowflakes becoming crystals of ice too large to be called flakes.
As decades continue to pass and pressures build the firn becomes what Yankee call “gritty snow,” (like granulated sugar,) and then becomes “corn snow,” and finally becomes “candle ice.” Then, in the year 2011, with over 400 feet of snow overhead, we arrive at a momentous occasion, wherein the air in the ice, which once was able to move with some degree of freedom through the firn, is locked into little bubbles. Firn is firn no longer, and has stepped over the frontier and become ice.
I’m sure Climate Scientists have a word for this frontier, but I can only research so long before my computer freezes up, and therefore I’ll make up my own Yankee jargon, and call the boundary between firn and ice, “The Firnopause.”
It is at the Firnopause that the formerly free air suffers the indignity of an icy chastity belt clamping about its freedom, forcing it to become what Climate Scientists call, “pristine.” And pristine it must remain, eon after eon, until at long last a gallant Climate Scientist rides up and frees it from its deplorable condition. (Sorry about the purple prose. Unfortunately that is a prerequisite, in Climate Science.)
And that gallant Climate Scientist then discovers a remarkable thing. As you remember, the snow originally fell in 1951, so the ice around the bubble dates from 1951. However the air within the bubble dates from 2011. Somehow the air from 2011 has made its way down through over 400 feet of tightly packed snow, and all the air from 1951 has been booted out.
Accepting authority, I try to get my mind around this amazing natural phenomenon, and to think of what natural factors could have caused it to occur.
It can’t be the kinetic movement of air, for that higgiltypiggilty movement would not cause 1951 air to only move up, even as 2011 air only moves down. Even the most frenetic kinetic motion would create a mix of airs from all the years between 1951 and 2011, with air from 2011 the least likely to be down that deep.
It can’t be due to expansion and contraction of summer and winter air, because, once you move down ten feet into the firn, temperatures remain constant, and air neither expands nor contracts.
The best solution involves the difference between a huge 950 mb winter storm and a huge 1040 mb winter high pressure area. Before my computer froze I determined this was a difference between 13.778 psi and 15.084 psi. (I haven’t a clue what this means in terms of volume; the peer-review of WUWT will help me out, I’m sure.) However, because I prefer math to be simple, I will state there is a ten percent difference in volume between the same amount of air in a 950mb low and a 1040mb high.
This is a significant difference. Stand by a cave with a large chamber and a small entrance as barometric pressures falls, and you will feel a breeze blowing out.
A cave is actually a poor analogy for firn, for firn in effect has a large entrance which funnels down to smaller and smaller cracks and capillaries. However, just to shut me up, assume that, as a 950mb low gives way to a 1040 mb high overhead, air actually can be inhaled 10% of the way down into the firn.
Big deal. That is only 40 feet, and leaves you with 360 feet to go, for 2011 air to be at the Firnopause in time to be clamped into little bubbles. Furthermore, as soon as the 1040 mb high starts to move off and pressures fall, the 2011 air gets exhaled out.
Obviously we need to discover a way to inhale the 2011 air down, and exhale all the pre-2011 gas out. Fortunately Climate Science is much like undone homework; if you have no excuse you can always make one up.
Therefore, to be helpful, I have invented the concept of “grabacules.” Grabacules are yet-to-be-discovered, gravity-activated, kinetic bonds on the sides of fresh air, but worn off the sides of stale air. Because they are gravity-activated, 2011 air slides freely downwards through the firn, but grabs onto the ice when any power tries to move it back up. In essence 2011 air stands aside for pre-2011 air, (which lacks grabacules,) to pass, and then moves downwards again the next time downward forces come into play. The 2011 air moves like an inchworm, moving foreword, grabbing, and moving foreword again.
Pretty cool theory, aye? Isn’t Climate Science wonderful!? (And if you think that idea is good, you should have heard my excuses for undone homework. A breathless hush would fall in the classroom, as I arose to speak…)
The problem with my admittedly brilliant idea is that the inch-worm gets shorter and shorter. Moving 10% of the way to your goal can never get you to your goal. Up at the surface of the firn, a huge change in atmospheric pressure may shove the 2011 air 40 feet downwards, but 100 feet from the firnopause the same change only moves the 2011 air 10 feet towards the goal, and 10 inches from the goal it only moves an inch towards its goal.
According to my layman’s calculations that is as far as the 2011 air gets, for by then it is 2012, the 2012 Air starts downwards, and the 2011 air, its grabacules all shot to heck, has to U-turn and start back upwards to make room for the 2012 air.
This leaves a space of nine inches the 2011 air never gets to. This is a very important space, for it is this air which is actually is incorporated into the little bubbles. If this air isn’t 2011 air, what is it?
First we must have a name for this nine inches, just above the Firnopause, and I suggest it be called the Yankeeopause, (named after me, of course.)
It is in this nine inches which a factor so tiny it is unseen, up at the surface, becomes glaringly apparent. It is a factor I call “Spongeosis.”
We all know that, when you squeeze a sponge, water comes out. The exact same thing happens when you squeeze snow, which is 95% air, and wind up with the Firnopause ice, which is at best 10 % air. The difference is that with a sponge you squeeze out water, but when you squeeze snow you squeeze out air. Where is that air to go? Nowhere but up.
This very weak, nearly imperceptible flow is unseen at the surface, where changes in barometric pressure have veritable tides of air inhaling and exhaling through the firn, but down in the quiet and still depths of the Yankeeopause, this flow is all there is. Like the bow-wave of a boat, it moves just ahead of the freeze-up at the Firnopause, and consists of the very last bit of air squeezed from the snow. It never holds air from above, and rather consists of a great many years worth of air all slowly pushed ahead like snow before a plow. Some of the air may be centuries old, and when a part of the Yankeeopause’s blended air gets left behind as a bubble in ice at the Firnopause, the CO2 level in that bubble will not represent any particular year, but rather an average. All peaks and valleys in the CO2 record will be smoothed out. The firn, in the end, has been a great equalizer.
And that is the end of my story, which I have told for your entertainment. It flies in the face of the desire of Climate Science, which is to move 2011 air down to inclusion in tiny bubbles at the Firnopause. However it’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
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R. Gates says:
November 3, 2011 at 12:12 pm
“Never even seen snow, and don’t wish to? Quite sad on both accounts. Snow is one of the most wonderful things that water makes of itself…”
—————-
R. Gates,
. . . . other than veddy veddy dry Plymouth Gin Martinis, of course.
John
Enneagram says:
November 3, 2011 at 6:17 am
It is advisable to remember a few facts:
CO2 follows temperature, not the other way.
______
It would be more advisable not to simplify this relationship. It is not always one way as sometimes temperature does indeed follow increases in CO2.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
“The coastal ice cores contain quite an amount of salts (ordinary salt, but also carbonates) blown in from the sea (as salt spray). ”
Nice try, but not supported by the data. Have you looked @ur momisugly Figure 3 yet?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/CO2_diffusion_in_polar_ice_2008.pdf
It clearly shows no spike in Ca (nor normally high enough levels) to consider sea spray relevant when the CO2 spikes to greater than 700 ppm. Besides that, look at the ECM, even the spikes are RO quality water. Nope, no sea salts there.
Next explanation: “CO2 was removed from other layers above it.”
Again, nice try, but nope, all the layers above it shown in figure 3 are actually above or @ur momisugly normal. Hmmm, strange that scavaging and replacing CO2 meltwater magic.
Want to try again? Where did the excess CO2 come from?
Ok, let’s make it easier. Let’s say they rightfully expected 16k ppm(umol/mol) but then why only 700 ppm in the ice core? Does the ice only capture a fraction of the available CO2?
R. Gates;
It would be more advisable not to simplify this relationship. It is not always one way as sometimes temperature does indeed follow increases in CO2.>>>
True. Clear evidence that the two are not directly correlated.
Own goal! Gates scores another!
It makes my day when scientists that should know better state that water and ice are not compressible. My ice 9 detector went off scale. Bulk modulus of water 2.2 E9 N/M*2, bulk modulus of ice 8.8 E9 N/M*2 (roughly).
There are also some allotropic forms of ice.
“The age of the gas in an occluded air bubble is less than the age of the surrounding ice. This age difference (the so-called Δage) depends on temperature and the amount of snowfall. The value of Δage can range from a few hundred years to several thousand years.”
http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/research/drill_analysing/cutting_and_analysing_ice_cores/analysing_gasses/firn_zone/
SteveE
Your posts at November 3, 2011 at 7:30 am and November 3, 2011 at 7:59 am each claim to be answering my post at November 3, 2011 at 4:38 am.
But your posts do not answer either of the points made in my post; viz.
1. Observed variability of atmospheric CO2 at localities indicates that local CO2 sequestration can easily absorb all the natural and anthropogenic emission at each observed locality, and this falsifies the hypothesis that recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration (e.g. as measured at Mauna Loa since 1958) is a result of about half the anthropogenic emission accumulating.
And
2. The radiative greenhouse effect results from actual concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere and not some hypothetical ‘background’ concentration, so if the CO2 concentration is high by day and low by night at localities then that has a direct effect on the magnitude of any putative radiative greenhouse effect.
The fact that you make two posts which purport to address my post but ignore what I wrote strongly suggests that you think my points important so you want to discredit them but cannot.
And your statement saying;
“These are clear indications of massive contamination of CO2 measures with industrial/human sources.”
is plain daft. The effect of “human sources” on the atmospheric concentration is what the measurements are intended to determine: the effect is NOT “contamination of” the “CO2 measures”.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
November 3, 2011 at 4:38 am
Richard, indeed we have had this discussion again and again over the years…
In summary:
At many localities the atmospheric CO2 concentration varies by hundreds of ppm between day and night. This indicates that local CO2 sequestration can easily absorb all the natural and anthropogenic emission in that locality.
That is not the case. If you look at the modern local data of Giessen (one of the pillars of the 1942 “peak” of the historical data), the night increase is not compensated by the day absorption from photosynthesis. The reason: at night there is often less/no wind, which makes that much more CO2 from (soil/vegetation) respiration and human sources remains in the atmosphere. During the day, wind speed is higher and solar heat gives more vertical movements, which mixes the air layers up to more height. That makes that the CO2 levels at ground level in average are 40-50 ppmv higher than above 200 m and higher. Thus ground level CO2 over land is anyway positively biased. And highly variable. The Giessen samples were taken at 7 AM, 2 and 9 PM. That alone gives a 40 ppmv bias, compared to “background” CO2 (the latter represents over 95% of the atmosphere) and high variability as the 7 AM and 9 PM samples were taken at the moment that the highest changes in CO2 level are measured: 15 minutes later or earlier would give different results… Thus the historical data from Giessen are completely worthless to know what the CO2 levels in the bulk of the atmosphere at that time were.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
and the differences of CO2 levels with height over land (Cabauw, Netherlands):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/cabauw_day_week.jpg
So, when considering an anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 concentration one needs to explain why the local sequestrations do not dominate. and
Indeed, the seasonal variations also indicate that local sequestration can easily cope with all the natural and anthropogenic emission.
The local sources and sinks do dominate locally, that is in less than 5% of the atmosphere over land. The sum of all local movements ends up in the bulk of the atmosphere where it is visible as an increase over the years. The huge exchanges caused by the temperature changes over the seasons (mainly in the NH) are visible too. The result is that the seasonal changes near zero out over a year, with a net absorption of about 2 ppmv. Humans emit 4 ppmv per year. Thus nature can’t cope with the human emissions, or it would absorb all 4 ppmv…
Furthermore, the radiative greenhouse effect results from actual concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere and not some hypothetical ‘background’ concentration.
You can use Modtran to see what the effect of elevated CO2 near ground is. Even a tripling to 1000 ppmv in the first 1000 m above ground level doesn’t (theoretically) increase the temperature with more than 0.1°C. Thus the real increase to 500-600 ppmv at night for the first few hundred meters is simply unmeasurable…
aaron says:
November 3, 2011 at 4:55 am
Ferdinand, Liquid water in Antarctic glaciers.
That report is about water under the basal ice. The last tens of meters of any glacier are at near zero temperature, due to earth warmth, where the glacier isolates the escape. Thus there you can find water. In the case of Antarctica probably even millions of years old. Despite of its isolation, that is full of microbial life… The bulk of the ice core at Vostok is at -40°C, there is practically no liquid water present, except around dust particles…
John Whitman says:
November 3, 2011 at 5:35 am
Based on your about quote could you please give me references to exact passages in the talks or papers of Prof Jaworowski where you think he says there is “migration of CO2 from low levels to high levels.”?
Of course, he doesn’t say that literally, but he implies that:
From:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
After decompression of the ice cores, the solid clathrates decompose into a gas form, exploding in the process as if they were microscopic grenades. In the bubble-free ice the explosions form a new gas cavities and new cracks[4]. Through these cracks, and cracks formed by sheeting, a part of gas escapes first into the drilling liquid which fills the borehole, and then at the surface to the atmospheric air. Particular gases, CO2, O2 and N2 trapped in the deep cold ice start to form clathrates, and leave the air bubbles, at different pressures and depth. At the ice temperature of –15oC dissociation pressure for N2 is about 100 bars, for O2 75 bars, and for CO2 5 bars. Formation of CO2 clathrates starts in the ice sheets at about 200 meter depth, and that of O2 and N2 at 600 to 1000 meters. This leads to depletion of CO2 in the gas trapped in the ice sheets.
First, the opposite process, of clathrate decomposition, indeed happens at different pressures. Thus O2 and N2 clathrates decompose long before CO2 clathrates decompose. Thus if open cracks are formed, the internal pressure would lead to the escape of relative more N2 and O2 than CO2, leading to too high readings of CO2 levels. Not too low (clathrates violently decompose under vacuum at measuring time, that gives no problems for the measurements).
Second, if CO2 clathrates decompose much later than O2/N2 clathrates, the cracks formed by O2/N2 new formed gas are already under near the same pressure as the outside world. As CO2 clathrates decompose there is very little increase in pressure, as CO2 is only 0.02-0.03 % of the previous atmosphere.
Third. Even if all of the above doesn’t hold and all clathrates are decomposed back to the ancient air composition before cracks occur, the current outside atmosphere is at 390 ppmv (360-370 when most ice cores were measured), while one measures 180-300 ppmv in the bubbles. Thus, or the original CO2 level was much lower and is already enriched by the outside CO2 levels, or CO2 escapes preferentially faster than O2/N2 under the high internal pressure, which is highly unlikely as CO2 is far more retained by the water layer on the ice/air boundary than O2/N2, thus again leading to too high CO2 levels. And once that the internal and external pressures are the same, the higher outside CO2 level would migrate to the inside…
Fourth, as the ice cores are relaxed during at least a year, there is plenty of time for migration in and out the ice core, if cracks play any role at all. In general, where real cracks are encountered, one always find too high CO2 levels, never too low, and in many cases one finds drilling fluid in the cracks.
Moreover, repeated measurements many years later with better equipment show the same CO2 levels as before, not higher or lower…
Gail Combs says:
November 3, 2011 at 9:17 am
Actual Studies using a “wet method” (melted ices) and a “dry method” (crushed ice) done before the 1985 “Revisionism” showed there was less CO2 in the bubbles and more CO2 in the ice.
Actually the analytical world evolved since the early days of the first ice core drillings. The wet method retained too much CO2 in the liquid, therefore it is completely abandoned. The new sublimation technique evaporates everything and thus measures CO2 in bubbles and ice, but the crushing technique shows the same levels of CO2, although measuring only the CO2 in the bubbles (and what was sucked out of the pores in the ice).
Caleb says:
November 2, 2011 at 7:53 am
OK, now for some fun.
I have made it clear elsewhere that I’m not a scientist. I lacked the discipline necessary for science, and have an unruly imagination. I chose “The Arts,” and not “The Sciences.”
I have great respect for true scientists, and would never be so rude as to tresspass on their territory, but they started it. By that I mean Climate Scientists left the strict confines of science, and tresspassed on my turf, which is the land of fiction, as opposed to fact. If they are going to so rude as to come horning into my landscape, well, I am going to defend my space.
🙂 Not being a scientist I also decided that they having encroached on my turf… I’ve become quite fascinated by the fantasy world they’ve created, the atmosphere empty space where all molecules, except water, are without volume and zip around at tremendous speeds bouncing off each other and thoroughly mixing but not interacting because they have no attraction to each other and no weight so carbon dioxide defies gravity and accumulates for hundreds and even thousands of years forming a blanket, and so on. So I don’t look to these for information, but there are real scientists here and I expect someone will be able to explain what is puzzling me about ice core samples.
So, carbon dioxide and water in the atmosphere have an irresistable affinity for each other in rain, fog, snow, dew, so stuff rusts, pure clean rain is carbonic acid. What we have is carbonic acid to add to the mix in these ice cores, isn’t it?
What are they actually measuring then? If they’re crushing up these samples to get the carbon dioxide trapped in air bubbles these must somehow be not of the snow which was formed to ice in these layers because carbon dioxide as a gas didn’t exist in them, it’s all frozen carbonic acid, right? Are they also measuring any changes in the level of this carbonic acid in the ice as they have measurements for other concentrations of acids which came down in the snow? Or does this carbonic acid change back to water and carbon dioxide somehow?
davidmhoffer says:
November 3, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Your response discredits leaf stomata, and two sentences later you quote the lack of correlated leaf stomata to discredit Beck.
Leaf stomata data have their problems, because they measure land CO2, with a bias. That bias can be accounted for by comparing the stomata index data to the ice core data and direct measurements over the past century. But even that gives results +/- 10 ppmv. The stomata data should be used with caution further back in history, as nobody knows how the land bias changed over the centuries by climatic changes (e.g. wind direction during the LIA) and landscape changes (like marshes to forests, sea to polders, industrialisation,…). But a change of 80 ppmv around 1942 is as much change as over the full period 1900-2000. That would be visible as a sink of stomata index below the full scale of the graph I referenced. Thus if the stomata data have any value, they show that there was no 80 ppmv peak CO2 level in 1942, not even one of 10 ppmv.
Further, the sediment cores you quote, just as the ice cores, are lousy from a resolution perspective. Data with a resolution of 30 to 60 years or more just isn’t going to capture a rise and fall in CO2 over a 15 year period.
I agree that the resolution of sediments is even worse than from ice cores back in time, but that doesn’t change the average. If they show 180 ppmv during 90,000 years, then either there was much variability and levels were both (much) higher and (much) lower (the latter not that good for plant life on land), or there was little variability and some plant species even then would have problems.
Further, the highest accumulation ice cores (2 out of 3 Law Dome cores) have a resolution of about a decade, sharp enough to detect a peak of 20 ppmv during one year or 2 ppmv during 20 years. Thus a peak of 80 ppmv spread over several years would be measurable in these cores and a lot of others, even with lower resolution.
the amount of CO2 released due to [SH] ocean warming would be quite out of proportion to the “average” temp increase.
That makes it even worse. If only the SH oceans were responsible, then the temperature increase needed would be 13°C as 70% of the oceans is in the SH. But that didn’t happen, the whole oceans increased at maximum 1°C since the LIA. That is good for a 16 ppmv increase, according to Henry’s Law or 8 ppmv in real life (as vegetation takes more away at higher temperatures)… Even if you combine all possible sources, it is near impossible to give such a peak in CO2.
Moreover, we have had several periods of temperature increase, decrease, increase, flat temperature by now. CO2 levels show a not so good correlation with temperature over time, only a good correlation with increase speed… During decreasing temperatures (1945-1975), the CO2 levels further increase and as we have a flat temperature in the past decade, the CO2 levels increased as never before…
I think if you stop trying to prove Beck wrong, and start to consider all the possible drivers that would have resulted in a CO2 spike that correlates to the temperature spike that correlates to the “divergence problem”, his results aren’t that much of a stretch at all.
If skeptics would stop defending the indefendable work of the late Ernst Beck and Jaworowski, they would be more accepted on other items which are by far more debatable, like the real (lack of) influence of CO2 on climate…
If two independent proxies plus direct measurements in high resolution ice cores don’t show any 1942 peak at all and a peak of 80 ppmv is implausable as increase and impossible as decrease in such a short period and all direct measurements since 1960 don’t show any huge variation at all for any natural changes (including sea surface temperature, vegetation changes, volcanic eruptions), then in my informed opinion there was no 1942 peak in CO2 levels…
John West says:
November 3, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Nice try, but not supported by the data. Have you looked @ur momisugly Figure 3 yet?
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/CO2_diffusion_in_polar_ice_2008.pdf
It clearly shows no spike in Ca (nor normally high enough levels) to consider sea spray relevant when the CO2 spikes to greater than 700 ppm. Besides that, look at the ECM, even the spikes are RO quality water. Nope, no sea salts there.
I had looked at that figure, seems quite logical that if you have percolation of water through the ice layer, that it will take some CO2 with it, especially if slightly alkaline. Anyway more than in pure water (the Ca values are low but not zero…). And you don’t know how many snow layers were passed before the water was refrozen. Refreezing itself also increases the CO2 level in the remaining, much fewer, bubbles, as the water contains far less O2/N2 than CO2, even if there was no or little enriching underway.
But that all makes no difference in the results: based on the calculated migration, the theoretical broadening of the resolution is at maximum 10% at near 300 m depth (2.74 kyr old) and at full depth (60-70 kyr) the resolution is 100% wider. No problem at all, as that means 22 year averaging at 2.74 kyr gas age and 40 year averaging at 60 kyr gas age…
For the much colder Vostok and Dome C ice cores, the broadening of the resolution is simply unmeasurable.
Richard
Your reply to my post November 4, 2011 at 12:46 am doesn’t answer either of the points I made;
1. Yearly averages of atmospheric CO2 in isolated locations show low variability demonstrating that high variability measures shows contamination and hence are incorrect.
2. Beck’s analysis which you seem to base most of your argument around is clearly wrong.
The work done by Beck is widely discredited as the papers which his analysis is based on include wildly unrepresentative CO2 measurements made in cities. We know these give false measures of the globally averaged atmospheric CO2 levels since the scientists who made them point out that CO2 measures are 40 ppm higher in the afternoon than in the morning and higher on windless days compared to windy days. These show that the measurements are contaminated by industrial/human sources. If you think this is daft try taking a sample on Park Lane at 6pm and tell me that’s a representative sample of the global atmospheric CO2 content.
The fact that you reply to both my posts but fail to address any of the issues that I raise suggests that you simply can’t defend the work done by Beck and his high variable CO2 measurements.
Myrrh says:
November 4, 2011 at 3:38 am
So, carbon dioxide and water in the atmosphere have an irresistable affinity for each other in rain, fog, snow, dew, so stuff rusts, pure clean rain is carbonic acid. What we have is carbonic acid to add to the mix in these ice cores, isn’t it?
Snow at the high elevations of Antarctica is formed at about -80°C. Not much water there on the surface of the flakes, not even at the average -40°C when it deposits on the surface. Thus there is little absorption, if at all on the snow. Accurate CO2 measurements are done with water vapour removal over a cold trap at -70°C. That removes most of the water below the detection limits of CO2 measurements, without affecting the CO2 levels…
SteveE:
I write so others are aware that I read your childish post at November 4, 2011 at 6:09 am
Your two posts at November 3, 2011 at 7:30 am and November 3, 2011 at 7:59 am each claimed to be answering my post at November 3, 2011 at 4:38 am. but talked about other things: anybody can see that.
And the fact that you made two replies to my post proves you knew your first reply was an inadequate response to what I wrote.
Address what I wrote or – if you want – make your silly assertions (e.g. contribution of anthropogenic CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentration are “contamination” of atmospheric CO2 measurements). But do not pretend your silly assertions are a response to what I wrote.
Richard
Ferdinand:
The rates of change to seasonal variations prove that local sequestration can easilly cope with the total of natural and anthropogenic CO2 emissions. We have debated this data so often that the sensible thing is for you to admit it instead of us going through all the information again.
Richard
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
“Seems logical”, well then let’s just stop using observation and experiments and just go with what seems logical.
The Calcium is in the single digit parts per BILLION range, essentially nothing. For comparison sea salt has about 400 parts per million. Typical fresh water is in the ppm range not single digit ppb range. “The calcium concentration of water varies from 1 to 135 mg/L across the USA and Canada. Most spring waters were found to have a relatively low calcium concentration, with an average of 21.8 mg/L.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2488164/
Since mg/L is ppm, surely you can see that <10 ppb is actually very very LOW, such that we're back to the solubility of CO2 in fresh water ~ 4 ppm.
That sounds like something that could be tested experimentally. Do you have any data to back it up?
My questions are pertaining to the data and some assumptions made without basis not the results and conclusions (yet). They present data that clearly shows a large and rapid spike in CO2 captured in the ice core, claim incorrectly that this is due to high solubility of meltwater and incorrectly allude by reference that the meltwater is seawater and posit a huge “expected” CO2 value from an assumed 278 ppm atmosphere. You seem to be avoiding the questions, here they are again:
Where did the “excess” CO2 come from?
If there really should have been 16k ppm as was “expected”, then why did the ice only capture 700 ppm?
Richard,
You claim my post is childish and that I make silly assertions in another attempt to divert from the fact that you have based your whole argument around flawed analysis by Beck. My previous posts made no claim to have answered your two points, purely pointing out that parts of your post were wrong, yet you used this to try and change the direction of the discussion away from the points that were raised:
1. Yearly averages of atmospheric CO2 in isolated locations show low variability demonstrating that high variability measures shows contamination and hence are incorrect.
2. Beck’s analysis which you seem to base most of your argument around is clearly wrong.
The fact that you have replied once again and fail to address either of the issues that I raise suggests that you simply can’t defend the work done by Beck and his high variable CO2 measurements. The reason you can’t defend it is because it is simply wrong.
Ferdinand;
That makes it even worse. If only the SH oceans were responsible, >>>
Clearly, you missed the point. Let me try again:
1. the “average” temperature of the earth increased considerably during that time period.
2. the NH warmed, and the SH warmed MORE.
3. So, the amount of CO2 released due to warming of the oceans would have been consideably higher than simply taking the average for the globe. The NH contributed, AND the SH contributed. While the NH contributed less than what the “average” would suggest, the SH contributed several times what the average would suggest.
4. You’ve once again attempted to constrain the rise in CO2 reported by Beck by arguing against the existance of a single source. I never argued a single source. I argued that there are multiple sinks and sources and they are all subject to change, and if cycles from multiple sources coincided so as to reinfirce each other instead of cancelling each other, then the amount of CO2 measured by Beck becomes quite plausible.
Richard S Courtney says:
November 4, 2011 at 7:24 am
The rates of change to seasonal variations prove that local sequestration can easilly cope with the total of natural and anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
As said several times in the past: that doesn’t prove such thing. Seasonal variations are the result of temperature changes. That gives a huge, but rather fixed release and fixation of CO2 as well as in the oceans as in vegetation. If the temperature changes, the amount released or absorbed changes. If there is no temperature change, there is hardly any change in CO2 release/fixation.
The seasonal variability of the combined oceans and vegetation is about 5 ppmv/°C. As the global temperature varies about 1°C over a year (mainly due to the NH land temperature), the global variation over the seasons is not more than 5 ppmv within a year.
The year by year variability is about 4 ppmv/°C. There is a good correlation between the year by year variability of temperature and the variability in CO2 increase (in fact in CO2 sequestering).
The emissions currently are at 4 ppmv/year continuously, thus in 2-3 years, the emissions by far exceed the natural variability.
Thus the natural rate of change over the seasons copes with temperature changes but far less (about 50%) with extra added CO2.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 4, 2011 at 4:26 am
davidmhoffer says:
November 3, 2011 at 12:09 pm
Your response discredits leaf stomata, and two sentences later you quote the lack of correlated leaf stomata to discredit Beck.
Leaf stomata data have their problems, because they measure land CO2, with a bias. That bias can be accounted for by comparing the stomata index data to the ice core data and direct measurements over the past century. But even that gives results +/- 10 ppmv. The stomata data should be used with caution further back in history, as nobody knows how the land bias changed over the centuries by climatic changes (e.g. wind direction during the LIA) and landscape changes (like marshes to forests, sea to polders, industrialisation,…). But a change of 80 ppmv around 1942 is as much change as over the full period 1900-2000. That would be visible as a sink of stomata index below the full scale of the graph I referenced. Thus if the stomata data have any value, they show that there was no 80 ppmv peak CO2 level in 1942, not even one of 10 ppmv.
SteveE says:
November 4, 2011 at 6:09 am
Richard
Your reply to my post November 4, 2011 at 12:46 am doesn’t answer either of the points I made;
1. Yearly averages of atmospheric CO2 in isolated locations show low variability demonstrating that high variability measures shows contamination and hence are incorrect.
2. Beck’s analysis which you seem to base most of your argument around is clearly wrong.
The work done by Beck is widely discredited as the papers which his analysis is based on include wildly unrepresentative CO2 measurements made in cities. We know these give false measures of the globally averaged atmospheric CO2 levels since the scientists who made them point out that CO2 measures are 40 ppm higher in the afternoon than in the morning and higher on windless days compared to windy days. These show that the measurements are contaminated by industrial/human sources. If you think this is daft try taking a sample on Park Lane at 6pm and tell me that’s a representative sample of the global atmospheric CO2 content.
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I think both these have views about Beck because of their preconceptions, their own biases. Beck makes perfect sense in my world where CO2 is local, the ‘background well-mixed’ an illusion, where levels fluctuated during the day depending on wind and photosynthesis, so for example, calm days will have higher levels because carbon dioxide being heavier than air will always sink displacing air unless work is being done to alter that, and so on.
Caleb’s article is amusing and nicely written, but on this occasion I have to disagree with the doubts he casts as to the ability of air to diffuse from the surface down into packed snow.
Experience from my teenage years of formative sociopathy included throwing stink-bombs (glass ampoules with some sulphurous solution) in public places – in those days stink-bombs could be bought from joke-shops, nowadays the health and safety frauleins would never allow it. It was remarkable to observe how fast the odour would diffuse through still air – much faster than we could run for example.
So diffusion is fast – phenomena such as diffusion at the atomic level are in the realm of quantum mechanics where bizzare and unexpected things happen routinely where our empirical observations from the everyday world are of little value. Talk of grabacules etc. show that it is hardly worthwhile trying to visualise what happens at the atomic-quantum level. Air molecules have no difficulty at all diffusing into any and every available space at high speeds. For all we know, individual CO2 molecules could be quantumly smeared over a range of depths.
davidmhoffer says:
November 4, 2011 at 8:04 am
It doesn’t matter much if only the SH oceans warmed, or the NH or both: the average temperature of all oceans increased with 0.2°C in the period 1935-1942 and decreased 0.1°C in the period 1942-1950. That is good for a worst case increase of CO2 in the atmosphere with 3.2 ppmv and a decrease with 1.6 ppmv in the “peak” period.
Of course there was the 1940-1945 war, which destroyed a lot of houses, some vegetation, etc. Even if 5% of the world’s vegetation was destroyed, that would give not more than 15 ppmv extra, but even 5% is way too high for what was really destroyed (and regrowths fast)… And not visible in the 13C/12C record, as that would give an enormous drop in ratio.
Volcanoes? Even the largest eruption of the last 60 years, the Pinatubo is inversally visible in the CO2 record, as the temperature drop did sink more CO2 in the oceans than the Pinatubo emitted. I am not aware of more volcanic activity in the period 1935-1942.
Thus there is not the slightest indication that there was an enormous source at work during seven years and an enormous sink thereafter…