Carbon, on the uptake

I think that the study of gases ‘trapped’ in ice core samples is akin to reading tea leaves…you can see whatever you want to see.

There were less plants and trees during periods of maximum glaciation. And apparently this comes as a surprise. Where do the universites find these geniuses?

What is interesting here is the apparent if perhaps only partial about turn by Philippe. What has extra piquancy is the absence from his co-authors’ list of Pep Canadell and Mike Raupach of us Australians’ rather dubious CSIRO, not to mention Corinne Le Quere, of guess where, UEA-CRU.
Why are they missing in action?

Ferdinand, What about the way CO2 levels dropped after Pinatubo & Cerro Hudson. Couldn’t the same ash fall on oceans have happened back then?

charles nelson says:
November 21, 2011 at 12:12 am
I think that the study of gases ‘trapped’ in ice core samples is akin to reading tea leaves…you can see whatever you want to see.
Sorry, I disagree. Some skeptics don’t like the ice core CO2 data (or even the current atmospheric CO2 data), because they are one of the cornerstones of the AGW scare. But that are real data. The problem is in the interpretation by some to make it a scare…

“The researchers, led by Dr Philippe Ciais of the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environnement near Paris, ingeniously combined measurements of isotopes of atmospheric oxygen (18O) and carbon (13C) in marine sediments and ice cores with results from dynamic global vegetation models, the latter being driven by estimates of glacial climate using climate models.”
Since you have an ingenuous combination of 18O from ice bubbles with 13C from ocean sediments mixed with results from dynamic vegetation models driven by glacial climate estimates from yet another climate model, who could possibly question this impressive results?
I think the most profound discover here is that plant matter does not decompose while under many hundred meters of basically permanent ice. Now who could have ever guessed that but a child? /sarc
So it goes on and on… until someone proves by detailed replication that Dr. Miskolczi’s findings are in fact incorrect and the infrared thickness of our atmosphere is not, to a meaningful degree, a constant, I’m staying put, that additional CO2 does not in fact warm this planet in the least, and this paper, as so many, is logically incorrect in it’s conclusions. For Ferenc Miskolczi’s papers have show this thickness has not budged a bit in the last sixty years with real data from real instruments and using real atmospheric science methods, nary a model involved. And yet he is the one scientist completely ignored. That to me is what is so amazing and something too deep for a child to understand, and should not be understood, for it is the purest deception that most adults cannot even fathom.

“Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and the increase of its abundance in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is the main cause of future global warming…”
And it was all going so well until this point….
At least in future, the numpties wishing to get their degrees in climate “sciences” at UK universities will have to pay a bit more for their edgerkayshun.
Oh, wait…..its better than we thought!
How many different flavours can they apply to this crap? How many times can they repeat the “its worse/slower/faster/higher/lower/whatever” phrase without breaking into hysterical embarrassed laughter?

The authors suggest that this inert carbon should have been buried in the permanently frozen soils and large amounts of peat of the northern tundra regions.
And from wikipedia
Large areas of organic wetland (peat) soils are currently drained for agriculture, forestry and peat extraction. This process is taking place all over the world. This not only destroys the habitat of many species, but heavily fuels climate change. As a result of peat drainage, the organic carbon that was built up over thousands of years and is normally under water, is suddenly exposed to the air. It decomposes and turns into carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released into the atmosphere.
And with the carbon credit lunacy,
Burning peat fuel can lead to carbon offsets. Under ISO 14064, as defined by the Canadian Standards Association, material used to displace coal can generate carbon credits

“Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and the increase of its abundance in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is the main cause of future global warming. In past times, during the transition between an ice age and a warm period, atmospheric CO2 concentrations changed by some 100 parts per million (ppm) – from an ice age value of 180 ppm to about 280 ppm during warm periods.”
Errr, what future global warming? Is this before or after the next Ice Age? Seems a very definitive statement if you ask me, “is the cause of future global warming”! Yet again they’re delving into the crystal ball gazing game. As others has pointed out too, how come it is a sensational discovery that there were less plants around in the Ice-Age than in an interglacial? Brilliant, not.
Now that the master of the gaffs, Prince Philip, has stuffed Charlie boy over windmills being useless, I suspect that the “future global warming” will remain where it has largely been stuck, in puter models! For the record, I am a monarchist for the present incumbent of Buck House, she who has served this nation well in her 59 years – may she reign on & hopefully we might get a referendum on by-passing the greenie buffoon Charles, & have his son put on the throne instead, otherwise we should just abolish the monarchy:-)

I think the person is saying that we have to be careful to keep on pumping out C02 and stopping those green things from causing another ice age. It doesn’t take much to tip us into an ice age, and we better make sure we don’t get too much carbon sequestration from those nasty plants.
Fortunately, when things get cold, the plants stop growing, and they stop carbon sequestration. Thus, the good C02 from volcanoes and such can pull the planet out of an ice age, since fortunately the plants are mostly dead.

Richard Verney ponders the implications for climate sensitivity as the authors assume most of the glacial cycle warming (and current ‘warming’) is due to CO2 or other greenhouse gases: in fact, the 100 ppmv CO2 changes of the glacial cycle (180-280) have much the same radiative forcing implications as the 100 ppmv of the past industrial period (280-380) – because the RF/concentration of CO2 curve flattens out and becomes almost linear at these values. The RF in both cases is computed to be about 2.5 watts/square metre. There are two forms of expression for climate sensitivity – one is the relation of Temperature to ppmv; the other is the expected change in T for a ‘doubling’ of the post-glacial pre-industrial level of 280ppmv (to 560) expected around 2050 at current rates of increase. The RF for the latter is calculated at 3.7 watts/square metre.
I am in no position to evaluate the accuracy of the RF calculations – but at least nowadays they are performed by an internationally agreed computer code (HIGHTRANS) rather than the old USAF private enterprise model (MODTRANS) upon which IPCC relied for the the first models and generally was very shy about referencing.
However, the RF is generated by the supposed downwelling infra-red and is calculated (for reasons I as a biologist cannot fully comprehend – any physicists out there please enlighten!) at a substantial height in the atmosphere. Those rays have a long way to go to get to the surface – encountering shifting clouds, water vapour and aerosols on the way. Thus, a factor is used – known as lambda, to get the T at surface from the RF at altitude. HERE is where all the uncertainty lies.
Values for lambda started out with IPCC 1990 report as 0.8. That was the consensus.
Thus if you consider the shift out of an ice-age, of 100 ppmv and 2.5 watts, and lambda at 0.8, you derive a contribution from CO2 of 2 degrees (T = 0.8 x 2.5). Which is 40% of the observed shift globally of 5 Celsius. Accordingly, the carbon cycle response to warming and deglaciation was regarded as ‘amplifying’ the natural process (assumed due to changes in insolation driven by orbital and inclination shifts in the earth’s relation to the Sun – though many scientists are a bit sceptical there is enough power in that shift).
However, doubts have arisen as to the the value of lambda. By 2007, IPCC experts (e.g. Kieth Shine) were suggesting it might be as low as 0.4 – thus halving the CO2 contribution to deglaciation to 1 Celsius or 20%.
If this is right, then the climate sensitivity of ‘doubling’ at 3.7 watts, comes down to 1.48 Celsius, well under the 2 Celsius ‘alarm’ level.
Thus – the investigation of the glacial changes merits further work – if the sensivity can be further refined.
BTW: the other method of calculating sensitivity gave figures simply in terms of degrees Celsius per pppmv…..and the literature contains values that are quite absurd, often giving no reference to where the ppmv values lie on the concentration curve (for example, the curve rises steeply such that the first 50 ppmv accounts for most of the forcing and then tapers off due to the log relation above 150 ppmv and by 200ppmv becomes virtually linear). You can find values quoted from 2-14 ppmv per degree without reference to the base line – which would give 7-50 Celsius for the post-agricultural phase from 280-380, when we have seen only 1 Celsius. Such a simplistic approach to the deglaciation would give about 20 ppmv per degree Celsius – assuming all the shift was caused by CO2, which nobody would support. The current consensus in glacial studies still lies around the 40% mark – which for the linear part of the curve, would leave us with about 50ppmv per degree Celsius – and hence a future warming from ‘doubling’ of about 5 degrees Celsius. This needs revising within the bounds of current estimates to about 100ppmv per degree….in line with IPCC’s mid-estimate of future temperatures. But in my own view, sensitivity as measured in ppmv is not helpful.
There ought to be a statistical test for assessing the reality of the amplification claimed in the deglacial process. As we know, CO2 does not instigate the change in T, and lags the peak of T by as much as 1000 years. My colleague, Jackson Davis, has attempted to correlate the rate of change of T with the rate of change of CO2 and additionally, whether the amplitude of CO2 is correlated with the rate of change. The correlation is very small, implying a very low climate sensitivity to CO2 and no significant amplication. We are still wrestling with very resistant reviewers to get this finding published.
If our analysis has merit, then we are dealing with a very low sensitivity value – in particular, since the RF is presumably real, a very low ‘lambda’ factor. Only one researcher has suggested a low enough value…..Herman Harde at the Helmut Schmidt University at Hamburg has a poster in Geophysical Rsearch Abstracts 13 (2011), but his methodology is not yet clear. If Lambda is as low as 0.1, as he suggests, this would be in line with the lack of correlation between rate of T change and CO2 in the glacial record and would also mean that the industrial periods 100ppmv/2.5 watts would deliver a 0.25 Celsius ‘global warming’ component – which i think is about right (in line, for example with John Christy’s estimate of 75% natural component of the 1 degree rise observed, and my own estimate in ‘Chill: a reassessment of global warming theory, which was based on the satellite data and radiation budgets for the 1980-2005 period where the excess surface flux is about 4x the computed RF from CO2).
This would mean that the doubling sensitivity (280 to 560) is about 0.4 Celsius. It also mean that the post 1950 warming – standing now at about 0.4 Celsius, and coincident with about 100ppmv and 2.5 watts producing 0.25 Celsius could be seen as 62% driven by CO2 (with an assumption that little of the warming remains to be seen from ocean uptake and release – which I think the data tends to show). Thus, the IPCC statement that ‘most’ of the recent warming is man-made, could be true – yet the overall expectation of greater future warming is false. However, equally true is that all the pre-1950 warming (also about 0.4 C) is natural – which their models actually do show!).The next 180 ppmv will deliver slightly less as the curve flattens….at most another 0.5 Celsius.
Of course, what this also means is that natural ‘variability’ (the current modelling community does not think in cycles), has the power to overide the weak CO2 effect – and that accounts for the current 15 year standstill. My own view is that the glacial cycles are not driven primarily by changes in insolation – rather by changes in wind patterns which are themselves related to cyclic solar magnetic/UV relationships. My reason being that ice-core data show changes which are too rapid to be explained by insolation or thesholds related to them. The Greenland ice-cores from 50kyr to 30 kyr BP show this beautifully, with clear Fibonacci series in the peaks of temperature – also a phenomenon not readily explained by Milankovich cycles.
If the solar cycle now turns down – as it seems to be doing, and cycle 25 comes in very low, we should see the proof of all of this analysis and hypothesis….if the CO2 effect is as weak as many of us believe, it will get colder.