Guest post by Lance Wallace
The carbon dioxide data from Mauna Loa is widely recognized to be extremely regular and possibly exponential in nature. If it is exponential, we can learn about when it may have started “taking off” from a constant pre-Industrial Revolution background, and can also predict its future behavior. There may also be information in the residuals—are there any cyclic or other variations that can be related to known climatic oscillations like El Niños?
I am sure others have fitted a model to it, but I thought I would do my own fit. Using the latest NOAA monthly seasonally adjusted CO2 dataset running from March 1958 to May 2012 (646 months) I tried fitting a quadratic and an exponential to the data. The quadratic fit gave a slightly better average error (0.46 ppm compared to 0.57 ppm). On the other hand, the exponential fit gave parameters that have more understandable interpretations. Figures 1 and 2 show the quadratic and exponential fits.
Figure 1. Quadratic fit to Mauna Loa monthly observations.
Figure 2. Exponential fit
From the exponential fit, we see that the “start year” for the exponential was 1958-235 = 1723, and that in and before that year the predicted CO2 level was 260 ppm. These values are not far off the estimated level of 280 ppm up until the Industrial Revolution. It might be noted that Newcomen invented his steam engine in 1712, although the start of the Industrial Revolution is generally considered to be later in the century. The e-folding time (for the incremental CO2 levels > 260 ppm) is 59 years, or a half-life of 59 ln 2 = 41 years.
The model predicts CO2 levels in future years as in Figure 3. The doubling from 260 to 520 ppm occurs in the year 2050.
Figure 3. Model predictions from 1722 to 2050.
The departures from the model are interesting in themselves. The residuals from both the quadratic and exponential fits are shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Residuals from the quadratic and exponential fits.
Both fits show similar cyclic behavior, with the CO2 levels higher than predicted from about 1958-62 and also 1978-92. More rapid oscillations with smaller amplitudes occur after 2002. There are sharp peaks in 1973 and 1998 (the latter coinciding with the super El Niño.) Whether the oil crisis of 1973 has anything to do with this I can’t say. For persons who know more than I about decadal oscillations these results may be of interest.
The data were taken from the NOAA site at ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
The nonlinear fits were done using Excel Solver and placing no restrictions on the 3 parameters in each model.
FerdiEgb says:
June 6, 2012 at 2:40 pm
“Thus both in the biosphere as in the upper oceans the reaction processes involved for temperature changes and extra CO2 are largely independent of each other, even opposite for the oceans.”
The sequestration processes are still the same. And, that is what matters.
“But there is no physical or statistical law that says that the slope and offset must be attributed to the temperature influence.”
There is for the slope. And, it follows that there necessarily is for the offset to make it all match.
“Only marginally so: maximum 16 ppmv for 1°C…”
…of temperature differential. You do not know the temperature differential with the deep oceans, and how that changes as it upwells to the surface.
“Of course there is a dependence of Co on temperature, but that is a fixed one, not an eternal gliding one.”
Not when you have a long term variation in the thermal energy of the upwelling deep oceans. That is a very bold statement to make without any evidence at all. If there’s one thing we know about… well, everything, it is that it always changes.
“The second line needs a stop function when the new equilibrium setpoint would be reached:”
You’re just rearranging the deck chairs. Define Too = To – Coo/(k2*tau2). Now, you have dCo/dt = -Co/tau2 + k2*(T-Too). And, you reach the same conclusions.
You know I give little credence to the ice cores.
“That implies that tau2 is very short (as observed) and tau1 is relative long (as observed)…”
Not possible. Not observed. Then, you will not track the fine detail of the temperature change as here. That’s the whole problem.
richardscourtney says: June 6, 2012 at 2:32 am
I agree that “the system will continue to chase equilibrium in time and space”. Indeed, I said as much in my post at June 5, 2012 at 10:45 am where I wrote
The carbon system may be adjusting to a new equilibrium in response to a change such as the temperature rise, the anthropogenic emission, a combination of those two effects, and/or something else.
The rate constants of some processes of the carbon system are very slow so they take years or decades to adjust. Hence, any change causes the system to adjust towards a new equilibrium which it never reaches because the system again changes before the new equilibrium is attained.
But, again, that merely rewords my question. It changes my question to become
“Is the carbon cycle adjusting to a new equilibrium by not sequestering all CO2 emissions and, if so, why?”
Richard
_________________
Hello Richard,
Again, it is late and I really don’t know if I’m answering your question or just rambling…
Jan Veizer’s 2005 paper (I’ve just emailed you and Willis a copy) may help – see this section on page 22:
COUPLING OF THE WATER AND CARBON CYCLES
The atmosphere today contains ~ 730 PgC (1 PgC = 1015 g of carbon) as CO2 (Fig. 19). Gross primary productivity (GPP) on land, and the complementary respiration flux of opposite sign, each account annually for ~ 120 Pg. The air/sea exchange flux, in part biologically mediated, accounts for an additional ~90 Pg per year. Biological processes are therefore clearly the most important controls of atmospheric CO2 levels, with an equivalent of the entire atmospheric CO2 budget absorbed and released by the biosphere every few years. The terrestrial biosphere thus appears to have been the dominant interactive reservoir, at least on the annual to decadal time scales, with oceans likely taking over on centennial to millennial time scales.
Interannual variations in atmospheric CO2 levels mimic the Net Primary Productivity (NPP) trends of land plants, and the simulated NPP, in turn, correlates with the amount of precipitation
(Nemani et al., 2002, 2003; Huxman et al., 2004) (Fig. 16). The question therefore arises: is the terrestrial water cycle and NPP driven by atmospheric CO2 (CO2 fertilization) or is it the other
way around? As a first observation, note that the “troughs” in precipitation and NPP coincide with the minima in sunspot activity (Fig. 16). As already pointed out, if a causative relationship
exists, it can only be from the sun to the earth.
During photosynthesis, a plant has to exhale (transpire) almost one thousand molecules of water for every single molecule of CO2 that it absorbs. This so-called “Water Use Efficiency”
(WUE), is somewhat variable, depending on the photosynthetic pathway employed by the plant and on the temporal interval under consideration, but in any case, it is in the hundreds to one
range (Taiz and Ziegler, 1991; Telmer and Veizer, 2000). The relationship between WUE and NPP deserves a more detailed consideration. In plant photosynthesis, water loss and CO2
uptake are coupled processes (Nobel, 1999), as both occur through the same passages (stomata). The WUE is determined by a complicated operation that maximizes CO2 uptake while minimizing water loss. Consequently, the regulating factor for WUE, and the productivity of plants, could be either the atmospheric CO2 concentration or water availability.
From a global perspective, the amount of photosynthetically available soil water, relative to the amount of atmos atmospheric CO2, is about 250:1, much less than the WUE demand of the dominant plants, suggesting that the terrestrial ecosystem is in a state of water deficiency (Lee and Veizer, 2003). The importance of the water supply for plant productivity is clearly evident from the NPP database that is a collection of worldwide multi-biome productivities, mostly established by biological methods (Fig. 20). The principal driving force of photosynthesis is Unquestionably the energy provided by the sun, with the global terrestrial system reaching light saturation at about an NPP of 1150 ± 100 g carbon per year Fig. 20). If the sun is the driver, what might be the limiting variable? Except locally, CO2 cannot be this limiting factor because its concentration is globally almost uniform, while NPP varies by orders of magnitude. Temperature, because of its quasi anticorrelation with The NPP (Fig. 16), is not a viable alternative either.
… continued
Myrrh says:
June 6, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Have just taken a closer look at Beck’s old website – looks like not being maintained – does that mean the work he had on it is unavailable? http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/
The late Ernst Beck past away a few years ago, a pity as I had years of nice discussions with him. Just before his death he published a new work, together with Francis Massen (meteorological station Diekirch, Luxemburg, see his work at http://meteo.lcd.lu/papers/co2_patterns/co2_patterns.html ) about a method to calculate the “background” CO2 levels in a particular place, if figures of wind speed are known. At sufficient wind speed, one sees an asymptotic approach to the “background” value. Unfortunately, the main series of interest, responsible for the 1942 “peek”, has few datapoints at high wind speed and still a wide range.
See: http://meteo.lcd.lu/papers/co2_background_klima2009.pdf
That was his last work…
Thank you Ferdinand.
I wonder where all his data files are. Perhaps his daughter has them. I’ve read people saying that he made them freely available whenever requested, so perhaps between all those the collection could be brought together.
Bart says:
June 6, 2012 at 5:14 pm
The sequestration processes are still the same. And, that is what matters.
Bart, the sequestration processes are essentially the same, but with largely different coefficients. The reaction on temperature by trees e.g. is an upside down U-curve in growth (this CO2 uptake), which implies a temperature optimum, while the reaction in CO2 changes is quite linear within the constraints of the other variables. The reaction of soil bacteria in CO2 release for a temperature change is almost immediately, no matter the CO2 levels. The global reaction on temperature in first instance is very rapid, the reaction on increased CO2 levels is quite slow, just opposite of what your theory says…
There is for the slope. And, it follows that there necessarily is for the offset to make it all match.
That is curve fitting, not based on any real process. Indeed if the temperature changes, then the slope of that change will have an influence on the CO2 rate of change. But not necessary for the whole slope in rate of change. As the emissions show a similar slope, you can’t know which of the two has the highest influence. And that doesn’t imply any influence of temperature on the average height of the rate of change.
…of temperature differential. You do not know the temperature differential with the deep oceans, and how that changes as it upwells to the surface.
As the deep oceans have an enormous mass with little variation in temperature (around 5°C), only the surface temperature matters for extra CO2 releases, at 16 ppmv/°C…
At 5°C, the deep ocean waters are undersaturated in CO2, as happens at the sink places near the poles. The upwelling at the Pacific warm pool increases its temperature to oversaturation, thus pushing more CO2 out of the waters. But that is limited to the absolute temperature at the surface, not influenced by any temperature difference with the deep oceans. It may be influenced by changes in concentration of the deep ocean waters, but that is an entirely different matter.
Further measurements averaged over the oceans show (with some caveats) that the average pCO2 difference between the whole sea surface and the atmosphere is 7 microatm lower for the sea surface. Thus the oceans (including the deep ocean circulation) are a sink for CO2, not a source. See:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
and following pages.
Not when you have a long term variation in the thermal energy of the upwelling deep oceans. That is a very bold statement to make without any evidence at all. If there’s one thing we know about… well, everything, it is that it always changes.
Of course, temperature changes allways, but at an average temperature change, there is an average CO2 change. That follows from Henry’s Law for the oceans, countered by the reaction of the biosphere.
The thermal energy from the upwelling is peanuts compared to the thermal energy from the sun, which is what the temperature of the ocean’s surface dictates. But again, if there was some more or less upwelling from the cold deep oceans, that may influence the surface temperature at the place of upwelling, but that only gives a change of 16 ppmv/°C, no matter the flux (which is compensated at the sink place).
You’re just rearranging the deck chairs. Define Too = To – Coo/(k2*tau2). Now, you have dCo/dt = -Co/tau2 + k2*(T-Too). And, you reach the same conclusions.
You know I give little credence to the ice cores.
Come on, you again define To – Coo/(k2*tau2) as an indefinite influence of a temperature difference on CO2 levels, which has not the slightest bearing in any known natural process. Certainly not the oceans nor vegetation. Of course that gives the same conclusions, but based on a wrong premisse. The real world says that there is a definite change in CO2 for a definite change in temperature…
Oh, there is a lot of people out here who don’t like ice cores, because they don’t like the data…
Not possible. Not observed. Then, you will not track the fine detail of the temperature change as here. That’s the whole problem.
Have a look at:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:24/plot/gistemp/from:1959/scale:0.2/offset:-0.05
Then add 0.55% of the emissions rate of change (not possible in WFT)…
Indeed the temperature trend change seems to track the trend in rate of CO2 change, but if you have a fast reaction on temperature in the 1-2 years range, even that may be spurious and caused by the emissions.
Even better, look here:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:24/plot/gistemp/from:1959/scale:0.2/detrend:0.1
And then add 0.55 times the rate of change of the emissions…
FerdiEgb says:
June 7, 2012 at 8:32 am
You cannot just arbitrarily remove pieces of the temperature trend you do not like.
We are at an impasse. Again. You are dead set on making reality what you wish it to be, but it is not physically realizable. In time, you will learn that I am right. We will take it up again at another time.
Bart says:
June 7, 2012 at 8:51 am
You cannot just arbitrarily remove pieces of the temperature trend you do not like
You cannot attribute an arbitrary slope and offset of the temperature trend fully to the temperature influence, if another variable can explain these even better.
The more that the influence of a change in temperature is only a few years, as Pieter Tans showed. Your solution is physically impossible in other periods than the current, while mine covers all periods in the past and future.
But see you next time…
A standard geometric equation
y = a * x^(bx)
fits the data just as well with only two parameters, but that might no mean very much.
a = 3.1543228750649087E+02
b = 1.0073802042369474E-03
Minimum Error: -4.254266E+00
Maximum Error: 5.169439E+00
Std. Error of Mean: 8.579375E-02
James Phillips
FerdiEgb says:
June 7, 2012 at 10:28 am
“You cannot attribute an arbitrary slope…”
The slope IS NOT arbitrary. It is in the temperature data. And, the data trumps your wishful thinking.
Hi Bart,
One caution:
In my opinion, we don’t really KNOW what is happening in the climate system. We only have our hypotheses.
Ferdinand believes that human combustion of fossil fuels is the primary driver of increasing atmospheric CO2. He has his reasons, and has done a tremendous amount of work on this subject.
I believe the cause of increasing atmospheric CO2 is primarily natural. I have summarized my rationale above, at June 5, 2012 at 2:46 pm
I prefer my hypo because
1. My hypo is more consistent with Occam’ s Razor – whereas Ferdinand’s hypo requires opposing trend directions at different time scales in the system, mine does not, such that all trends are consistently in the same direction (temperature drives CO2) at all time scales.
2. My hypo is consistent with the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, from an ~800 year lag on the longer time cycle as evidenced in ice cores, to a ~9 month lag on the shorter time cycle as evidenced by satellite data.
3. I have yet to see evidence of a major human signature in actual CO2 measurements, from the aforementioned AIRS animations to urban CO2 readings ( although I expect there are local data that I have not seen that do show urban CO2 impacts, particularly in winter and locally in industrialized China.)
4. My hypo is more consistent with the Uniformitarian Principle.
However, my conclusions are based primarily on the balance of probabilities – my hypo is simpler, eliminates (or minimizes) apparent contradictions in the conventional model, and is faithful to the data and the most time-honored principles of scientific inquiry. But is still a probability, not a certainty.
Attempts to disprove my hypo seem to rely primarily on religious, rather than scientific bases, for example, the ~9 month lag of CO2 after temperature is waived away as a “feedback effect”. The “logic” here is they “KNOW” CO2 drives temperature, and therefore the observed phenomenon MUST BE a feedback. Right-o!
This “feedback” contention also requires that the same physical (climate) system is operating in OPPOSITE directions within the same time frame – my old boss used to caution people who took this approach, telling them they were “sucking and blowing a the same time”.
This word “feedback” seems to be a favorite in climate science – you may also recall that in the “mainstream climate debate”, large positive feedbacks need to be fabricated in order to demonstrate that the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 will cause catastrophic global warming. The complete absence of ANY evidence that such large positive feedbacks even exist does not seem to trouble the global warming alarmists – these large positive feedbacks are another tenet of the Church of Global Warming. No doubt the only thing that has prevents them from burning “deniers” at the stake has been the emission of even more deadly greenhouse gases. 🙂
Best regards to you and Ferdinand,
Allan
Bart says
June 7, 2012 at 10:28 am :
The slope IS NOT arbitrary. It is in the temperature data. And, the data trumps your wishful thinking.
OK, the slope is in the temperature data. That makes you think that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is completely caused by the increase in absolute temperature, compared to a baseline. Thus the human emissions play no role. But if the influence of temperature is limited to the change in temperature and limited in time (1-2 years), then the slope doesn’t say anything about how temperature influences the CO2 levels over longer term and then the human emissions play the most important role.
It is there that we differ in opinion.
But there will be a simple proof who is right in this case: if the current temperature standstill holds for a few years, or we even have a cooling, the rate of change would stay where it is or decrease, if you are right. If I am right, the rate of change will continue to increase together with the emissions, at least in the foreseeable future. Only if the temperature increases, then it remains unresolved.
The 1990 change in offset gives already an indication…
FerdiEgb says:
June 7, 2012 at 1:18 pm
“But if the influence of temperature is limited to the change in temperature and limited in time (1-2 years)…”
Not physically possible.
“But there will be a simple proof who is right in this case.”
Not really. We both agree CO2 will continue rising for the foreseeable future. Sea surface temperatures would need to decline by over 0.5 degrees for CO2 to start declining. We might see a visible decrease in slope, however, with the moderate cooling expected in the next 20-30 years.
Allan MacRae says:
June 7, 2012 at 11:48 am
IMO, the probability for human dominated atmospheric CO2 concentration is vanishingly small.
Allan MacRae says:
June 7, 2012 at 11:48 am
I have yet to see evidence of a major human signature in actual CO2 measurements
I did give you the reference to the data of Diekirch, Luxemburg, where there is a clear difference in diurnal peaks during peak hours between Sunday and weekdays. But even if the human contribution is small and readily is mixed in the bulk of the natural changes, that doesn’t exclude that it may be the main cause of the increase.
Think about sea level gauges: the change in sealevel is completely dwarfed by the tides, not measurable at all. But still one can calculate the sea level change after some 25 years of data…
For the human influence, 3 years averaging is enough to filter out the fast temperature change influence.
This “feedback” contention also requires that the same physical (climate) system is operating in OPPOSITE directions within the same time frame
That the main effect is for temperature driving CO2 levels, doesn’t exclude the opposite effect of CO2 on temperature. As long as the effect is small (overall coefficient less than 1), there is no runaway effect. See the difference between a theoretical change in CO2 with and without feedback on temperature, even with a lag of CO2:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/feedback.jpg
What you get is that both temperature and CO2 levels end somewhat higher than without feedback for a finite change of the initial temperature driver.
Bart says:
June 7, 2012 at 6:36 pm
But if the influence of temperature is limited to the change in temperature and limited in time (1-2 years)…”
Not physically possible.
Never heard of Henry’s Law? Any finite temperature change of the ocean’s surface introduces a finite change in pCO2 of the seawater, thus needs a finite change in pCO2 of the atmosphere to bring everything back into dynamic equilibrium. The time constant to reach the new equilibrium is 1-2 years…
That doesn’t mean that at any time a new equilibrium would be reached, as the temperature changes continuously, but there is no unlimited change in CO2 for a constant offset in temperature.
We might see a visible decrease in slope, however, with the moderate cooling expected in the next 20-30 years.
Indeed, I was talking about the rate of change, not the absolute levels. The change in slope should be observed already in the next 2-3 years…
Pamela Gray says:
Anything as regular as this data says one of two things.
1. Manmade CO2 pump sitting next to the sensor and never shuts off and is exquisitely tuned to a rythmic increasing beat.
2. Artifact of the “fudge” factor part of the CO2 calculation.
Of these two scenarios, I think #2 has the greater chance of being the culprit. It is exceedingly rare for anything on Earth to be that regular (even if caused by human polution) unless someone fine tuned it to be that regular. It’s like finding a perfectly square rock in the mountains and finding out nature made it. Ain’t gonna happen. Chances are something that regular is wholly artifact. That a person can build a simple model to express the regularity of the signal is revealing, to say the least. Someone have the complete maths sequence for the CO2 calculation?
I’m starting to get suspicious of the Sun too. How come it rises and sets to a fixed timetable each day, year after year? And how come those warmist weather forecasters at the Met Office are supposed to predict the tides, which coneniently all take place to a fixed timetable. And what about the seasons, they’re a little too regular too for my liking.
I tell you the CAGW hoax may extend much further than we previously thought.
Ferdinand, as I’ve answered Richard’s question here the way I have, I’d like to just tidy up by answering a previous post of yours in another discussion on Mauna Loa where you reply to the same question from Joy:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/04/one-day-later-mauna-loa-co2-graph-changes-data-doesnt/#comment-30463
“The mass balance is the ultimate proof of the contribution of humans to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. As long as more is emitted than there is increase, there is no net addition from nature. That not all emissions are absorbed by the oceans/vegetation is a matter of process equilibrium: one need a driving force to push CO2 from the atmosphere into the oceans(/vegetation), which is only possible if the pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere (pCO2atm) is higher than the average pCO2 of the oceans. Thus levels in the atmosphere must go up first. The higher the pressure difference, the more CO2 is absorbed.”
Your reasoning comes from the fisics from AGW as I’ve given in my reply to Richard, claiming that the gases in the atmosphere are ideal and not real, (ideal and real technical terms, ideal is an imaginary construct and real is real world). As I’ve explained, in the the AGW Science Fiction world you’re arguing from, the ideal gases have no properties, no volume, no weight, no attraction, not subject to gravity. Your carbon dioxide doesn’t exist.
In the real world carbon dioxide is a real gas with volume and weight and attraction – in a real gas atmosphere comprising mainly of real gas molecules nitrogen and oxygen. What this means is that above us we have a huge heavy voluminous ocean of fluid gas, not empty space, that’s why we have sound*.
In the real world atmosphere lighter gases rise through air (Air, the fluid gas ocean above and around us), and heavier than Air gases sink. Methane which is lighter than air will always rise, Carbon dioxide being one and a half times heavier than air will always spontaneously sink, displacing the lighter air around it, unless work is being done such as wind, heat, and, being heavier than air will not spontaneously rise into the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide being a real gas and not the ideal gas without properties of the AGW Science Fiction world, does have attraction – it and water vapour have an irresistable attraction for each other – that’s why all rain is carbonic acid, all pure clean rain is pure clean carbonic acid. Carbonic acid is being spontaneously formed wherever there is water and carbon dioxide together in the atmosphere – that’s why your iron garden furniture rusts outside, because all humidity in the air, all fog, dew, and so on is carbonic acid. Carbon dioxide therefore is fully part of the Water Cycle, it is constantly being rained back to Earth whenever it is not sinking because heavier than air in between being moved around by wind.
That is the Carbon Life Cycle, as fully part of the Water Cycle and Carbon Dioxide in its own right heavier than Air, sinking back to Earth from fires, volcanic eruption etc.
There is no way that ‘anthropogenic’ Carbon Dioxide is separate in process or properties from any naturally produced or naturally going into sinks; there is no ‘accumulation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere’.
Impossible.
p.s. *
To understand that the atmosphere around us is not ’empty space full of ideal gas molecules zipping around at great speed bouncing off each other and so thoroughly diffusing’, but a heavy, weighing a ton on your shoulders, voluminous fluid ocean of real gas molecules, subject to gravity and going nowhere fast, you have to leave your fictional world behind and get back to real world physics:
Sound: http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/01/sound-waves.html
“Note that air molecules do not actually travel from the loudspeaker to the ear (that would be wind). Each individual molecule only moves a small distance as it vibrates, but it causes the adjacent molecules to vibrate in a rippling effect all the way to the ear.”
Have you stepped back through the looking glass?
“Note that air molecules do not actually travel from the loudspeaker to the ear (that would be wind). Each individual molecule only moves a small distance as it vibrates, but it causes the adjacent molecules to vibrate in a rippling effect all the way to the ear.”
Allan MacRae says: @ur momisugly June 5, 2012 at 9:42 pm
…..The CO2 sequestered in thick beds of limestones, dolomites, coal, lignite, peat and petroleum all over the planet was once, I presume, part of Earth’s atmosphere.
I also assume that over time, continued sequestration of atmospheric CO2 in these sediments will ultimately lead to atmospheric CO2 concentrations that are too low to sustain photosynthesis.
Barring an earlier natural catastrophe, will this mechanism lead to the end of life on Earth as we know it, as photosynthesis shuts down and the food chain fails?
____________________________
That is the real point that needs to be gotten across to everyone. That is the real catastrophe involving CO2 not global warming.
I figure humans mining coal and oil is natures way of releasing CO2 back to the atmosphere and preserving all “the endangered species” threatened by CO2 starvation. “The endangered species” is much of the plant and higher level animal life forms. Just an increase of 150 to 200 ppm of CO2, as assumed by the CAGW crowd, has had a major effect on increasing the food supply for plants and therefore animals.
richardscourtney says: @ur momisugly June 6, 2012 at 3:24 am
…….
Thanks for telling of your tries in validating the Mauna Loa data. I can not say I am surprised at what you relate. Dr. Zbigniew Jaworski treatment shows that it is not and has never been about “Science”
Another point that is often over looked is the major change in vegetation in the USA and Europe over time. Because of the demand for fire wood for heating much of the USA and Europe and elsewhere was clear cut during the Little Ice Age. You can walk through the woods in New England and see the old stone walls from the time when much of New England was farm not forest. The introduction of coal for heating, meant forest were no longer cut for firewood. Wood burning was the predominant global energy source until about 1880 when the use of coal was necessitated by wood depletion engendered by rising population pressures coupled with an increased demand for high energy density sources for nascent manufacturing enterprises. The time period prior to this was known as the “little ice age” (1300-1850) ~ 500 years of “cooling”. I wonder what the sea surface temperatures were?
Another point people do not take into account is the effect on US agriculture of the “New Deal” policies restricting the amount of land that could be planted and the Soil Conservation Act passed in response to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
This makes an interesting backdrop to Beck’s graph of historic CO2 measurements from 1826 to 1960 where Callender cherry picked the lowest results to represent the “background” CO2. ( close-up ) The Last two graphs are thanks to Lucy Skywalker
(Some think the blip in 1940’s in the Beck graph could be due to the oilslicks from WWII. )
Myrrh says:
June 8, 2012 at 4:38 am
Carbon dioxide being one and a half times heavier than air will always spontaneously sink, displacing the lighter air around it, unless work is being done such as wind, heat, and, being heavier than air will not spontaneously rise into the atmosphere.
It will. I don’t know where you live, but here in Europe we frequently see Sahara sand settled on our cars (the same for the West Coast of the US for sand from the Chinese/Mongolian deserts) if the wind is from that direction. That travels thousands of kilometers. Even if it is hundreds times heavier than air or CO2. The difference in specific mass between CO2 and air is only 1.5 times not hundreds, thus once mixed in, it may be transported over hundreds of times longer distances than sand, thus simply all over the world.
Further, CO2 is measured near ground (where it may be pure CO2 or pure air or anything in between), but from about 500 m above land and over the oceans, there is near as much CO2 near the surface as at 4,000 m high as up to 20 km height (measured by satellite, balloons, airplanes)…
According to what you believe, the measurements at Mauna Loa or the South Pole should show far less CO2 values than near ground, which is not the case at all.
The only cases where CO2 stays (temporarely) near ground is if huge upwelling occurs at once, then the wind or simple convection has not the time to mix that CO2 in. Or in caves where CO2 can build up if more is produced than is removed. Or in ice cores, where the CO2 in the stagnant part of the air/ice column increases with about 1% near the bottom in a period of 40 year, called the “gravitational fractionation” (for which is compensated in the CO2 measurements of the ice bubbles).
See further:
Brownian motion at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion
and about CO2 measurements at height:
http://www.mendeley.com/research/co2-columnaveraged-volume-mixing-ratio-derived-tsukuba-measurements-commercial-airlines-17/
and here a lot of them:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
check there the airplane data e.g. from Rarotonga (500-6500 m) and look at the (lack of) differences…
Gail Combs says:
June 8, 2012 at 11:25 am
(Some think the blip in 1940′s in the Beck graph could be due to the oilslicks from WWII. )
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Julian Flood’s theory re temps which I first learned about in his post first link below, and I’d just been looking at BEck’s work on CO2 spikes which had the same spike and looked for more info on the Kriegesmarine theory and found Julian’s first post about this in 2010 – I posted to let him know of the Beck data (second link) and also put into that post what I take to be Julian’s first post on the subject on WUWT.
Just realised I was so delighted to find that link with Beck’s work, I didn’t look for his original post about this on Judith Curry’s blog. But will now have to wait until after dinner.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/03/shocker-the-hansengiss-team-paper-that-says-we-argue-that-rapid-warming-in-recent-decades-has-been-driven-mainly-by-non-co2-greenhouse-gases/#comment-1000669
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/03/shocker-the-hansengiss-team-paper-that-says-we-argue-that-rapid-warming-in-recent-decades-has-been-driven-mainly-by-non-co2-greenhouse-gases/#comment-1000861
Pamela Gray says:
Someone have the complete maths sequence for the CO2 calculation?
I have received two days of raw voltage data from Pieter Tans on simple request. Using the calculations as outlined in the guidelines at:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html#instrument
one can implement that in Excel.
After the calibration of the instrument each hour, the previous (2×20 minutes 10-second snapshot) voltage values can be translated into CO2 levels. These are averaged to obtain the average and standarddeviation over the past hour. The averaged hourly data (+ stdv) are available on line for four baseline stations at:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/
My comparison of the raw voltage data with what was stored is here for one hour of data:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/mlo_raw_v_2006_11_17_00h.xls
I calculated that for the full two days and simply found that the hourly average data reflected the 10-second sampling. Thus if you think that the data are manipulated, I don’t know where that should have happened.
Myrrh says:
June 8, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Besides the problems by using unreliable data from heavily contaminated places, Beck’s high CO2 values around 1942 are not confirmed by any other CO2 (or d13C) proxy I know of. Including stomata data, the other posterchild to haunt the ice core data…
But the main problem is the speed with which it should have happened. While a few thousands volcanoes all spuwing lots of extra CO2 are remotely possible to give a 80 ppmv increase in only 7 years, there is no sink on this world which can absorb 80 ppmv CO2 within 7 years, if Beck’s CO2 peak was true. If you know of such mechanism, I am very interested…