An important new paper published today in Global and Planetary Change finds that changes in CO2 follow rather than lead global air surface temperature and that “CO2 released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2” The paper finds the “overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to 3) the lower troposphere,” in other words, the opposite of claims by global warming alarmists that CO2 in the atmosphere drives land and ocean temperatures. Instead, just as in the ice cores, CO2 levels are found to be a lagging effect ocean warming, not significantly related to man-made emissions, and not the driver of warming. Prior research has shown infrared radiation from greenhouse gases is incapable of warming the oceans, only shortwave radiation from the Sun is capable of penetrating and heating the oceans and thereby driving global surface temperatures.
The highlights of the paper are:
► The overall global temperature change sequence of events appears to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to 3) the lower troposphere.
► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5-10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
► Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
► Changes in ocean temperatures appear to explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
► CO2 released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO2, and changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
The paper:
The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature
- a Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1047 Blindern, N-0316 Oslo, Norway
- b Department of Geology, University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), P.O. Box 156, N-9171 Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway
- c Telenor Norway, Finance, N-1331 Fornebu, Norway
- d Department of Physics and Technology, University of Tromsø, N-9037 Tromsø, Norway
Abstract
Using data series on atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures we investigate the phase relation (leads/lags) between these for the period January 1980 to December 2011. Ice cores show atmospheric CO2 variations to lag behind atmospheric temperature changes on a century to millennium scale, but modern temperature is expected to lag changes in atmospheric CO2, as the atmospheric temperature increase since about 1975 generally is assumed to be caused by the modern increase in CO2. In our analysis we use eight well-known datasets; 1) globally averaged well-mixed marine boundary layer CO2 data, 2) HadCRUT3 surface air temperature data, 3) GISS surface air temperature data, 4) NCDC surface air temperature data, 5) HadSST2 sea surface data, 6) UAH lower troposphere temperature data series, 7) CDIAC data on release of anthropogene CO2, and 8) GWP data on volcanic eruptions. Annual cycles are present in all datasets except 7) and 8), and to remove the influence of these we analyze 12-month averaged data. We find a high degree of co-variation between all data series except 7) and 8), but with changes in CO2 always lagging changes in temperature. The maximum positive correlation between CO2 and temperature is found for CO2 lagging 11–12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months to global lower troposphere temperature. The correlation between changes in ocean temperatures and atmospheric CO2 is high, but do not explain all observed changes.
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orld construction worker;
Maybe somebody really good in math could say what that “increase” in “work” should be, but can that “work” be isolated and be measured?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes it can. Stefan and Boltzmann derived the SB Law equation from doing exactly that.
FerdiEgb says:
August 31, 2012 at 1:36 am
“Not refuted at all, see my previous comments…”
You admittedly don’t even know why the ratio is what it is. You just make after-the-fact rationalizations. Semi-plausible rational explanation is not proof, Ferdinand. Contrary-wise, though mainstream scientists do not recognize it as such yet, this is proof that humans are not the main driver of atmospheric CO2 levels.
“Sorry, measured in millions of samples taken by ships surveys over decades…
Inconsistent with this, therefore the assumptions made to arrive at the numbers and their error bars are invalid. It is merely an estimate which has been made with an eye to confiriming what is already believed, a.k.a., confirmation bias.
“The sinks in the biosphere and the ocean surface are known as measured/calculated…”
The sinks are not know with any accuracy at all. We have argued this same issue on several WUWT threads which were specifically related to new discoveries about sinks and sources. New ones are discovered with regularity.
“As far as I know, I always insisted that dCO2 lags dT…”
Hardly. You have argued that they are coincident, and that short term variations in CO2 are due to temperature. They are not. Short term variations in the rate of change of CO2 are coincident with temperature. Integrating an affine function of temperature then produces a precise replication of the CO2. There are no arbitrary constants which can be adjusted in the relationship which allow significant human influence to be added in, because the integrated CO2 estimate so obtained necessarily diverges from from the true CO2 record.
John Finn says:
August 31, 2012 at 2:23 am
“Could you not give us a single rough figure for the relationship. Because …..”
Right here.
“Now tell us what the temperature changes are that have ’caused’ these increases.”
It is not just the temperature change between 1982 and 1998. It is the total absolute temperature offset between current conditions and equilibrium conditions. My hypothesis for how this comes about is explained here.
wayne Job says:
August 31, 2012 at 6:39 am
The PPM of CO2 in our atmosphere will never amount to a hill of beans as far as it effects temperature, totally irrelevant. Man made global warming seems to be artifact of thermometers in inappropriate places rather than a few misplaced photons smooging up to CO2 molecules and warming the cockles of their heart..
Nonsense, time to learn some physical chemistry!
Mosher has been saying a lot about the magical qualities of photons and their strange affinity for CO2 molecules, firstly Mosher I have yet to find a physical proof of a photon, talk of a photon hitting your eye and that enables you to see falls in the face that it is actually an electron that hits your eye and lets you see.
Time to read up on basic science, try the photoelectric effect for starters, that persuaded much more brilliant minds of the existence of photons. You’re wrong about the eye response too, a photon hits a receptor cell which then sends a synaptic response which in turn sends a signal to retinal ganglion cells this results in progressive amplification of action potential which is transmitted to the brain. Experiments have shown that the most sensitive cells (rods) are capable of detecting individual photons.
That would make the photon an electron, thus an electron at a lower level of energy than the electrons in the CO2 molecule would have a snowballs chance in hell of entering the CO2 molecule and heating it. Sadly heat flows one way, I could make a lot of money using my freezer as a welder if it did not.
Total nonsense.
R Taylor says:
August 30, 2012 at 1:54 pm
A lagging entity can have a significant effect on a leading entity only if it is empowered by voodoo, or perhaps “climate scientists” are suggesting that CO2 molecules travel at speeds faster than light.
Hardly, have you ever heard the squealing sound of ‘feedback’ in a PA system? The sound emitted by the speakers is picked up by the microphone and amplified and a louder sound emitted by the speakers which is then amplified and so on………
John Finn says: August 31, 2012 at 2:23 am
___________
Modern CO2 data collection at Mauna Loa started in ~1958.
Despite the huge quantities of manmade CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 did decrease year-over-year in some of the global cooling years from 1959-1974*.
Annualized Mauna Loa dCO2/dt has “gone negative” a few times in the past (calculating dCO2/dt from monthly data, by taking CO2MonthX (year n+1) minus CO2MonthX (year n) to minimize the seasonal CO2 “sawtooth”.)
These 12-month periods when CO2 decreased are (Year and Month ending in):
1959-8
1963-9
1964-5
1965-1
1965-5
1965-6
1971-4
1974-6
1974-8
1974-9
Phil. says:
August 31, 2012 at 9:03 am
“The sound emitted by the speakers is picked up by the microphone and amplified and a louder sound emitted by the speakers which is then amplified and so on………”
Sorry, but you have not hereby discovered the long sought after verification of transluminal speeds. Unfortunately, we still cannot create a warp drive through microphone feedback. Cause and effect still only flow in one direction. It’s a bit ironic – you squashed one guy’s pseudo-science in the preceding comment, then went on to advance your own in this one.
Allan MacRae:
At August 31, 2012 at 9:28 am you refute a falsehood by citing real world empirical data.
sarc on
Don’t you know that in climastrology model output refutes empirical data?
/sarc off
Richard
In all the talk of colder objects heating warmer objects by radiant energy, I don’t see anyone addressing the real reason it is impossible. Firstly, the 2nd law of thermodynamics pertains to averages. On average, a colder object (I will assume here that both objects are blackbodies for simplicity) cannot heat a warmer object above its own temperature. Instantaneously, when the colder object emits a photon toward the warmer object, and the warmer object absorbs it, the warmer object’s temperature increases.
But, it then releases another photon back at the colder object which cools the warmer object and heats the colder object back up. If they were exchanging equal numbers of photons, their relative temperatures would remain the same on average. But, the warmer object is releasing more photons, so it will cool and the cooler object will heat up, until both are at the same temperature, exchanging equal numbers of photons.
That is what happens for a system of two objects in isolation. Do we have such a system here? No. We have three objects: the Earth, its atmosphere, and the Sun. The Sun, being much hotter than the Earth, absolutely can heat it. It heats it to the point where incoming radiation and outgoing radiation balance. The Sun is an active power source. If you could turn off its fusion generator, then the Sun and the Earth would exchange photons until both were at the same temperature (again, an idealization, because there are other bodies, as well as deep space, involved in reality).
The atmosphere impedes the solar radiation from leaving the Earth. Thus, it makes it hotter not by its own power, but by modulating the sunlight absorbed by the Earth. So, while it is true that the colder atmosphere cannot heat the Earth by itself, it can influence the Sun to heat the Earth more than it already is.
That scenario, in and of itself says that (and this really is “settled” science) all things being equal, the addition of a homogenous “greenhouse” gas to a planet heated by a nearby star will tend to increase the equilibrium temperature of the planet. But, all things are not equal, as the atmosphere of the Earth is not homogenous, and there are feedback responses from the Earth’s climate system which tend to mitigate the response. It is in those latter qualifications that the weaknesses of the AGW theory are to be found, not in the fundamental postulate of “greenhouse” warming.
“The Sun is an active power source. “
Having an active power source is what changes all the rules. Every day, millions of people use their microwave ovens to heat food. Once the food is heated, you can put your hand on the magnetron cover, and you will find it is quite cool. How did this cooler object heat the food? It did it by modulating the energy from the source electricity. It is that energy which heated the food, not passive radiation from the magnetron assembly itself.
@John Finn,
What role does convection play? You have not mentioned that important form of heat transfer which dominates at the surface through the troposphere. Convection removes excess heat from the surface, not radiation.
Of course radiation ultimately cools the planet by releasing it to space, but I fail to see how it is any more important than convection when discussing the movement of heat from the surface to above the troposphere. It seems convection spoils the party of the greenhouse effect.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/self-regulation-of-the-climate-system-by-deep-cumulus-convection/
talk of a photon hitting your eye and that enables you to see falls in the face that it is actually an electron that hits your eye and lets you see.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Oh. My. God.
Does cold ocean water hold more CO2 than warm?
“davidmhoffer says:
August 31, 2012 at 8:39 am
orld construction worker;
Maybe somebody really good in math could say what that “increase” in “work” should be, but can that “work” be isolated and be measured?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes it can. Stefan and Boltzmann derived the SB Law equation from doing exactly that.”
Under “Steak House” Condition”?
Bart says:
August 31, 2012 at 9:29 am
Phil. says:
August 31, 2012 at 9:03 am
“The sound emitted by the speakers is picked up by the microphone and amplified and a louder sound emitted by the speakers which is then amplified and so on………”
Sorry, but you have not hereby discovered the long sought after verification of transluminal speeds. Unfortunately, we still cannot create a warp drive through microphone feedback. Cause and effect still only flow in one direction. It’s a bit ironic – you squashed one guy’s pseudo-science in the preceding comment, then went on to advance your own in this one.
Really? So you believe that positive feedback can not occur?
Eric H. 6:38 am,
The amount of increased heating in the oceans depends on several factors besides CO2 increase. Feed-backs such as cloud changes also affect the final trend. I think feed-backs such as cloud changes tend to reduce the CO2 alone effect, but this is actually the big issue in the AGW debate. However, this issue is not resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. If CO2 were the only factor, there would be an increase in ocean temperature until the radiation balance was restored at a slightly higher temperature than before the CO2 increased. The number generally accepted is about 1 to 1.2 C increase per doubling of CO2 (but in fact it may be somewhat smaller, based on some models). However, this would be a very near surface increase, along with surface atmosphere increase, and would be much smaller with increasing depth in the oceans.
Bart says:
August 31, 2012 at 8:57 am
As said many times, the correlation between temperature changes and rate of change changes is impressive, but that doesn’t say anything about the cause of the trend. Even if you detrend the temperature, the correlation remains the same. Thus the trend itself can be mostly from the (small) temperature trend, as you think, or it can be from the human emissions, as I think.
You have a theory, which essentially says that the human emissions are rapidely absorbed, while natural emissions are the cause of the trend. Any theory must be conform all known observations. If a theory violates even only one observation, the theory is rejected. Now, your theory violates several observations, but you refuse to acknowledge that. Your defense now is that the observations are wrong, because you are sure that your theory is right based on one graph, which is in part right (the variability part), but completely bogus for another part (the trend part), as the latter is based on an arbitrary bias and factor, simply said, curve fitting.
Hardly. You have argued that they are coincident, and that short term variations in CO2 are due to temperature. They are not. Short term variations in the rate of change of CO2 are coincident with temperature.
Bart, I always said that the CO2 change is temperature change dependent, on all time scales, from seasonal to multi-millenial. On very short term, leading to about 4 ppmv/°C change, on very long term to about 8 ppmv/°C. There are no natural processes which produces 70 ppmv in 50 years time, with only an offset of a few tenths of a degree C.
There are no arbitrary constants which can be adjusted in the relationship which allow significant human influence to be added in, because the integrated CO2 estimate so obtained necessarily diverges from from the true CO2 record.
Human emissions don’t disappear in space, thus must be absorbed somewhere. That implies that any natural + halve of the human emissions must be absorbed somewhere and that the natural sinks, wherever they are, must be larger than the natural emissions. Thus temperature variations have an influence on the sink rate, not the source rate…
It is the total absolute temperature offset between current conditions and equilibrium conditions.
Your theory is that the current increase is caused by the return of deep ocean waters which were enriched in CO2 during colder times in the past. It is entirely possible that the current upwelling is enriched in CO2, but the influence of e.g. a 1°C cooling during the LIA enriches the downwelling waters with not more than 16 microatm. When that is upwelling, that increases the CO2 pressure of the (local) surface waters with not more than 16 microatm again. If the atmosphere increases with ~8 ppmv, that brings everything back into equilibrium: the outgassing in the equator decreases and the absorption near the poles increases, the net result being that source and sink fluxes are the same as before the extra CO2 upwelling.
Thus the current 70 ppmv increase since 1960 is only possibly from the far past, if the levels were about 140 ppmv higher or the earth’s average temperature was ~9°C colder…
The correlation between global temperatures (anomalies) and changes (accumulations) in atmospheric CO2 is very remarkable. Many forget, it’s not changes in global temperatures (warming or cooling) but temperature levels that cause changes in CO2. There is also a global temperature level (or whatever we’re measuring with the global temperature indices) at which d(CO2)/dt = 0. Lower than this, the change gets negative (decline in atmospheric CO2).
It’s like a pump, when it’s warm, it pumps the CO2 out of the oceans (and other reservoirs) and when’t it’s cold, vice versa.
Jeff Koenig says:
August 31, 2012 at 10:26 am
“Does cold ocean water hold more CO2 than warm?”
Quite substantially. That is why soda in an open can goes flat rapidly if you leave it in the open, but can keep for days if you put it in the refrigerator.
GHE, is of course far from sure. The heat transfer problem at the surface and at TOA is not solved. On the face of it, CO2 cooling effect is more likely. Non-radiative fluxes dominate at the surface and at TOA there’s only radiation. CO2 emits, but the cooling effect is probably not significant. The bulk of the atmosphere (N2 and O2) insulates, the radiatively active gases cool the atmosphere by radiating to space. Then there’s clouds…
Stephen Wilde, August 31, 2012 at 6:49 am
Stephen, you make claims that have no basis in radiation heat transfer. I would be glad to discuss the issue with you. The simple fact is that the only source of energy absorbed by the oceans is short wavelength sunlight (neglecting volcanoes and internal Earth heating), and the temperature it goes to is based only on the ease in which that energy is removed. The ways it is removed are NET long wave radiation from the surface, evaporation from the surface, and conduction followed by convection to the atmosphere. An instant changer in CO2 would only affect NET radiation out, so the water would warm a small amount to increase all methods of energy removal until a new equilibrium level is reached. Notice the use of the word NET with radiation. Back radiation reduces NET radiation, but never directly heats the water. It only slows loss of energy.
Well I have a problem with their well mixed global CO2 plot; a more noise free signal one could not hope to find in ‘climate’ data. That p-p annual signal looks to be less than 5 ppm, and it is known that the ML signal is about 6 ppm. So everything south of Hawaii, is going to have less than 6 ppm p-p, but in the arctic, north of around +60 degrees Lat, the CO2 p-p signal is more like 18-20 ppm.
So I don’t find their CO2 graph to be representative in any way. But it does show that 5 ppm down step happening in five months, or about 1 ppm per month, ort more than 3 ppm per month in the arctic.
So the present 120 ppm excess CO2 could be gone in three or four years at that rate. So much for 200 year residence times for CO2.
Allan MacRae says:
August 31, 2012 at 9:28 am
Despite the huge quantities of manmade CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 did decrease year-over-year in some of the global cooling years from 1959-1974*.
The overall CO2 releases in the period 1959-current increased from about 2.5 GtC/year to 8 GtC/year. The natural variability didn’t change much in amplitude over time and is about +/- 2 GtC/year around the trend, which increased from ~1.3 GtC in 1960 to ~4 GtC nowadays. Thus it is entirely possible to find some 12-month periods in the early period where there was a net sink of CO2, not an increase, as good as periods where almost all of the emissions remain in the atmosphere (as mass). But the emissions inventory is only known for full calendar years, which all show a net increase over the past 50+ years…
In the first decades since the start of the industrial revolution, the natural variability certainly was larger than the influence of the emissions, since about 1900, the average increase over a decade is already above the natural noise and since 1960 even 2-3 years are sufficient.
Bart says:
August 30, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Kasuha says:
August 30, 2012 at 1:19 pm
…the temperature was not that dramatically lower than today and the CO2 concentrations were not so steadily (and definitely not at such rate) growing throughout the holocene…”
It’s a puzzle. Consider this simple thought experiment.
Suppose that temperatures were dramatically lower during the Little Ice Age, so that ocean waters downwelling to the depths at the time contained significantly more CO2 than today’s surface waters do.
Suppose those waters started rising to the surface again around the turn of the 20th century. As the waters heat to surface levels, they release that stored CO2. Since the waters currently downwelling are relatively CO2 depleted, it starts to accumulate at the surface and outgas to the atmosphere, in proportion to the difference between surface temperatures now versus surface temperatures then.
You would do well to study Henry’s Law (c=k*p).
The CO2 dissolved in the surface waters during the LIA which were at a lower temperature but also the partial pressure of CO2 during the LIA was about 60% of today’s. According to Henry’s Law the amount of CO2 is linearly dependent on pCO2 whereas the dependence on temperature is non-linear (van’t Hoff equation: k(T)=k(To)*exp(C(1/T-1/To). Equilibrium pCO2 doubles for a 16K increase in seawater temperature so your thought experiment fails because the upwelling seawater from the LIA still is undersaturated because the atmosphere it encounters on return to the surface is now higher. So not only did you fail to consider the dependence on pCO2 but you assumed a linear dependence on temperature which is incorrect.
Jeff Koenig says:
August 31, 2012 at 10:26 am
Does cold ocean water hold more CO2 than warm?
See the solubility graph here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/20/basic-geology-part-2-co2-in-the-atmosphere-and-ocean/
The graph is for fresh water, which can hold far less CO2 than seawater, because the latter has a higher pH and contains buffer salts (carbonates, boron). In general, the equilibrium between seawater and the atmosphere changes with about 16 ppmv in the atmosphere for a change of 1°C in seawater.
FerdiEgb says:
August 31, 2012 at 10:55 am
“Even if you detrend the temperature, the correlation remains the same.”
Nature has no ability to “detrend” the temperature. It must act on it as a whole.
“Any theory must be conform all known observations.”
To the degree that the observations are rock solid. It does not have to conform to observations which are themselves very dicey.
“…which is in part right (the variability part), but completely bogus for another part (the trend part), as the latter is based on an arbitrary bias and factor, simply said, curve fitting.”
It cannot be right in part for one and not for the other, as the same scale factor matches both perfectly. There is no reason to dismiss the need for a bias and scale factor. The bias of the temperature anomaly itself is arbitrary, based on an agreed-upon baseline. And, of course there is a coupling constant between temperature and CO2 – at the very least, you have to match up units.
The trend in dCO2/dt is not an artifact of the bias and scale factor. It exists quite independently. Likewise, the trend in temperature. When you scale and offset the temperature anomaly to match the CO2 rate of change, and integrate that, the trend integrates into a quadratic, i.e., induces curvature. That curvature is precisely what is needed to match the two series, CO2 and the integrated scaled temperature anomaly. If you add human inputs into that integration, you will change the curvature, to the point that the output no longer matches it. Thus, this is a quantity which is not added arbitrarily in, but results from the need for the scale factor to match the variations, and when you do that, there is no more room to put in a significant contribution from human inputs.
“There are no natural processes which produces 70 ppmv in 50 years time, with only an offset of a few tenths of a degree C.”
My hypothesis explains this. It isn’t just the few tenths of a degree in 50 years time, it is degrees of change in the centuries of time since ocean water downwelled at lower temperatures than today when it is upwelling again.
“That implies that any natural + halve of the human emissions must be absorbed somewhere and that the natural sinks, wherever they are, must be larger than the natural emissions.”
Or, it implies natural minus a little + all of the human emissions are absorbed somewhere. This is a semantical game you are playing. Carbon is carbon. It gets sequestered no matter its source.
“When that is upwelling, that increases the CO2 pressure of the (local) surface waters with not more than 16 microatm again.”
It will not be in equilibrium until equivalent global climate conditions which prevailed at the time it downwelled prevail again. Until then, it will keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere continuously.