This new paper (in review at the discussions section) at Climate of the Past has some interesting approaches using
Oxygen 18 isotope records from benthic foraminiferas acquired in Deep Sea Drilling project (DSDP) on the Kerguelen Plateau off the coast of Antarctica and in the Cape Basin off the coast of Namibia. These drill holes provide
18O records with a resolution of order 10 000 yr across the Eocene-Oligocene boundary thus providing an excellent proxy for deep-ocean temperature.
C, for a doubling of pCO2. Where published values are in units
C/(Wm−2), the published value is multiplied by 3.7 for the purpose of this comparison. Note that Asten’s median value of 1.1 agrees with Douglas and Christy.
Estimate of climate sensitivity from carbonate microfossils dated near the Eocene-Oligocene global cooling
M. W. Asten
School of Geosciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia
Abstract.
Climate sensitivity is a crucial parameter in global temperature modelling. An estimate is made at the time 33.4 Ma using published high-resolution deep-sea temperature proxy obtained from foraminiferal δ18O records from DSDP site 744, combined with published data for atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) from carbonate microfossils, where δ11B provides a proxy for pCO2. The pCO2 data shows a pCO2 decrease accompanying the major cooling event of about 4 °C from greenhouse conditions to icecap conditions following the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (33.7 My).
During the cooling pCO2 fell from 1150 to 770 ppmv. The cooling event was followed by a rapid and huge increase in pCO2 back to 1130 ppmv in the space of 50 000 yr. The large pCO2 increase was accompanied by a small deep-ocean temperature increase estimated as 0.59 ± 0.063 °C.
Climate sensitivity estimated from the latter is 1.1 ± 0.4 °C (66% confidence) compared with the IPCC central value of 3 °C. The post Eocene-Oligocene transition (33.4 Ma) value of 1.1 °C obtained here is lower than those published from Holocene and Pleistocene glaciation-related temperature data (800 Kya to present) but is of similar order to sensitivity estimates published from satellite observations of tropospheric and sea-surface temperature variations.
The value of 1.1 °C is grossly different from estimates up to 9 °C published from paleo-temperature studies of Pliocene (3 to 4 Mya) age sediments. The range of apparent climate sensitivity values available from paleo-temperature data suggests that either feedback mechanisms vary widely for the different measurement conditions, or additional factors beyond currently used feedbacks are affecting global temperature-CO2 relationships.
Discussion Paper (PDF, 1101 KB) Interactive Discussion (Open)
Readers that have access to Climate of the Past can leave a short comment until 30 Nov 2012. You can also watch the open review process as editors and reviewers leave comments. Constructive comments are welcome.
Allan MacRae: October 7, 2012 at 5:47 am
“Please define “indicative value” in the context of this conversation.”
I used the word “indicative” in the sense of “showing, signifying, or pointing out”, etc. By which I mean that a high order polynomial alone does not ‘show, signify or point out’ anything of any significance in a long term data series. Instead it tends to act to smooth the longer term data and attach undue weight to more recent variations.
The UAH graph from your September 2008 post at ICECAP is a good case in point. At August 2008 it indicated rapid cooling, causing you to make the claim that “Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared!” (Perhaps this is one of the “successful predictions in climate and energy” you were referring to above?)
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/is_this_the_beginning_of_global_cooling/
george e smith says or quotes
compared to 0.1% p-p solar cycle TSI changes, which Leif rightly says don’t do much.
henry says
it appears now from my own investigations into this that slight changes in the EUV and FUV may in fact indeed be the cause of different reactions on top of the atmosphere involving HxOx, NOx and Ox which in turn result in more (or less) high energy being back radiated.
Namely, I have been able to correlate both the dip and the increase in maxima with changing ozone levels in both the NH and the SH. Ozone started its downward curve since the fifties and is now moving up since 1995/6, exactly at the same time when the speed of warming turned negative, e.g. see here,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/05/new-paper-on-climate-sensitivity-estimates-1-1-%c2%b1-0-4-c-for-a-doubling-of-co2/#comment-1103440
Henry@DWR54, Allan
last time I looked at UAH I could not make head or tail of the results;
there is no correlation whatsoever, which makes me wonder about the data itself.
OTOH
the mean average temp. of earth is a stupid variable to look at.
Namely, earth stores its energy, in its waters, in its vegetation, in its chemicals, in weather and in currents, etc. etc. so that what pops out (energy out) is bound to be full of unrecognizable patterns.
Better look at maximum temperatures, it is a much more reliable variable to look at and there should be records of those from the past that might be a lot more reliable than average temps.
(thermometers that got stuck on its max. will give you much more reliable result than having people record a temp. every 6 hours or so to give you a mean for the day.)
gymnosperm says:
October 7, 2012 at 7:49 am
This is very interesting. So the sink variability equals the sink rate and some years there will be hardly any absorbtion and other years it will absorb much of the human contribution? This seems very unstable.
For a natural process, the variability in CO2 rate of change is quite modest: individual processes may vary with 10-20% from year to year. The main fast processes for CO2 are the temperature influence on oceans surface layer and vegetation: while the continuous and seasonal flows are huge (some 90 GtC in and out of the oceans and some 50 GtC in and out of vegetation per year, that is good for 45 resp. 25 ppmv change within a year), the net result in the atmosphere is not more than some 5 ppmv/°C for the seasonal swings (mainly due to NH land vegetation) and 4 ppmv/°C for huge influences like the Pinatubo eruption and the 1998 El Niño. The main reason for a low influence probably is that vegetation and oceans work in opposite direction for the influence of temperature on CO2 levels…
HenryP says:
October 7, 2012 at 8:42 am
But since 1995 we turned negative on warming, i.e. it is cooling. So, by all accounts the CO2 should start leveling off now…especially there where it gets colder.
Seeing that none of stations are reporting this they must all be clowns who think that they can fool me…..
The CO2 levels should be leveling off, if and only if temperature was the cause of the increase. But as human emissions since 1995 reached an accumulated amount of some 70 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere (of which 35 ppmv still resides in the atmosphere), you need at least a drop of 4°C in average for all ocean surfaces all over the world to compensate for the human emissions… Not something that is observed…
Further, lots of CO2 stations work fully automatic, without any human intervention, except if one of the calibration gases has a problem, then all the data affected are recalculated. That may give a change in absolute value for the period involved, but that hardly changes the trend.
Raw data (calculated hourly averages of 10-second voltage samples from outside air and three calibration gases, including their stdv) are available from four baseline stations. And if you want to see that the calculations were right, on simple request they will provide you with the primary voltage data of the instruments (as I did receive for a few days).
Thus I don’t expect that anyone has a turnknob in his/hers hand to adjust the some 8 million raw measurements per year of any single station with some (even variable!) 0.00023 ppmv/hour.
But nobody will stop you if you want to do your own measurements on a bare rock somewhere in the middle of the oceans (or alternatively a desert)… Conrad in Germany and other countries has a reasonable resolution CO2 meter for 305 euro’s. Only needs to be calibrated against some well known CO2/air mixture.
DWR54 seems to be intellectually challenged on October 7, 2012 at 9:19 am
I wrote in 2008 at ICECAP: “Since just January 2007, the world has cooled so much that ALL the global warming over the past three decades has disappeared!”
This is not a prediction, it is a statement of fact for atmospheric temperatures at that time.
Repeating from above , here are some of our successful predictions:
We confidently wrote in 2002 at
http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the
alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
Since then there has been no net global warming, and perhaps some modest cooling.
We also predicted the debacle in green energy, where a trillion dollars of scarce global resources have since been squandered on alternative energy nonsense.
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
In comparison, every dire prediction by the IPCC and the global warming alarmist movement has failed to materialize. There has been no runaway global warming. Corn ethanol and other food-to-fuel programs are humanitarian, economic and environmental disasters. Grid-connected wind and solar power schemes have driven up energy costs, failed to provide useful additional energy, and have destabilized electricity grids.
Please describe your successful predictions in climate and energy – cite references and use your real name – no more sniping from the shadows of anonymity.
Henry@ferdinand meeus
Thanks Ferdinand. I will think about what you said.
I hope you can understand why I am bit skeptic about the results coming from the AGW crowd, seeing as their livelihoods depend on it.
I remember that some gas labs used to measure CO2 in gases (like oxygen) at 4.26 um using an infra red spectrophotometer.
I wonder why we could not use that method for CO2 in air mixtures? Or is that the one Conrad is selling?
(BTW, myself, I am convinced that the CO2 does nothing to the climate. )
HenryP says:
October 7, 2012 at 1:05 pm
I remember that some gas labs used to measure CO2 in gases (like oxygen) at 4.26 um using an infra red spectrophotometer.
I wonder why we could not use that method for CO2 in air mixtures? Or is that the one Conrad is selling?
One of the problems with CO2 in air is that water vapour overlaps in several bands of IR. In the relative simple hand-held NDIR methods that is compensated for by measuring at two frequencies: where water is the only absorber and where CO2 is the main absorber, but disturbed by water vapour. The first band gives how much water is present and thus its influence on the CO2 band can be calculated and substracted. But that gives results with a resolution of not better than a few ppmv.
Most baseline stations remove water vapour over a cold trap and measure CO2, but also measure 2 or 3 calibration gases within the same hour. This makes the method more accurate to about 0.2 ppmv. This can be made fully automatic with quite robust equipment and a minimum of fine mechanical items and maintenance.
A few automated stations use GC for CO2, CH4 and other gases of interest. But these indeed need far more maintenance…
I’m wondering why someone doesn’t do laboratory experiments with CO2, H20 vapor and both in combinations and study those results. Maybe they already did, and walked away with more questions than they started with.
rbateman says:
October 7, 2012 at 3:44 pm
I’m wondering why someone doesn’t do laboratory experiments with CO2, H20 vapor and both in combinations
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm
Be sure to read the docs in the zip file containing the criticisms of the experiment as well.
davidmhoffer,
Thanks for posting that link. I have not read it in a while. Re-reading it was very worthwhile. Dr. Hug’s conclusions reflect current real world observations.
D Boehm;
Dr. Hug’s conclusions reflect current real world observations.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Only by coincidence. The criticisms in the zip file are fair in my mind.
Ferdinand says:
“The main reason for a low influence probably is that vegetation and oceans work in opposite direction for the influence of temperature on CO2 levels…”
So really the atmosphere and oceans work in opposite directions? In spite of the fact that there is quite a bit of pelagic “vegetation” in the oceans? This would make some sense for land plants as above some threshold temperature they are forced to shut down to avoid dehydration. But pelagic vegetation does not share this problem even though it interfaces with the atmosphere somewhat.
You may know but I can’t find the distribution of chlorophyll between the land and oceans. Biomass seems not a good proxy. Maybe at first order they are equal.
The sign of influence between the atmosphere and the ocean is very important because many of us are tripping over what we know of the air bubbles in the ice cores which are all atmosphere.
gymnosperm says:
October 7, 2012 at 9:33 pm
So really the atmosphere and oceans work in opposite directions? In spite of the fact that there is quite a bit of pelagic “vegetation” in the oceans?
An increase of temperature of ocean waters gives more release of CO2, due to less solubility of CO2 in seawater with elevated temperatures. On the other hand, biolife increases with higher temperatures in seawater, which removes in part CO2 from the surface layer and atmosphere, depending of exchange speed with the atmosphere and drop out of organic and inorganic residues out of the oceans surface layer. Precipitation plays no role for ocean plants, but play a huge role in land plants in some circumstances: an El Niño event increases temperature and plant growth in general, but gives drought to large parts of the equatorial rainforests, leading to extra CO2 releases.
How can we determine which is leading at some events? CO2 releases from ocean water warming give a slight increase of 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere and opposite for cooling. CO2 releases/uptake from vegetation decay/growth give a huge drop/increase in 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere. O2 releases from ocean water warming are limited, but O2 use/release from vegetation decay/growth is substantial. The combination of both reveals the source of the CO2 movements as result of increased/decreased temperatures.
On seasonal changes, biolife is dominant: the huge growth of leaves/wood in spring/summer, mainly in the mid-latitude NH, removes so much CO2 from the atmosphere that the increase in water temperature can’t coop with that and CO2 levels drop (and the 13C/12C ratio increases). In the SH, the seasonal swings are much smaller, thus biolife in the oceans seems less influential in the seasonal changes than land plants.
On year-by-year changes, the oceans seems to be more dominant, as an increase in temperature shows an increase in CO2 rate of change, around the trend. Partially also as result of droughts in some events (El Niño) and light scathering in other events (Pinatubo eruption) on land plants.
Over very long term (ice ages, interglacials), the oceans are dominant too, but reduced by increased land area (less land ice) and more plant growth, both in the oceans and over land. While the solubility of CO2 decreases with 16 ppmv/°C, the ice cores show some 8 ppmv/°C over tenthousands of years…
[please post the link to the video again, but do not embed it ~mod]
As requested here is the link to 24 July 2012 Prog Salby lecture, hopefully without the embed
youtube.com/watch?v=ZVCps_SwD5w
the lecture shows CO2 follows temp not vice versa
jeremyshiers says
the lecture shows CO2 follows temp not vice versa
henry says
that is what I think as well.
looking at my graph for the drop in maximum temps.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
then it would seem that theoretically it has been ‘warming’ naturally since about 1927 until 1995 (energy-in) which to me makes the Keeling curve reasonable to understand, i.e. more heat in is more CO2 out (of the oceans).
But… that can only apply until about 2005 or thereabouts when cooling must have started to kick in (energy-out).
I wouldn’t trust the records from before 1927 unless someone can show me a certificate of a calibrated thermometer from before that time or unless they looked at maxima which is a much better parameter to look at than means. Means average temps. are very confusing (but that is what the AGW crowd wants you to be)
However,
Ferdinand Engelebeen says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/05/new-paper-on-climate-sensitivity-estimates-1-1-%c2%b1-0-4-c-for-a-doubling-of-co2/#comment-1103533
If he is wrong, the (current) records 2005-2012 are wrong. I do not exclude that latter possibility due to the fact many people’s jobs are on the line and a whole industry has been built on and around this CO2 nonsense. But this should be reasonably simple to prove; if like I said before, we (the “skeptics”) do our own testing with our own equipment. (perhaps Anthony has any ideas on this?)
I will also have a look if I can get hold of some equipment here (in South Africa) but I do not hold high hopes for that.
Possible title revision: Cause-and-Effect Continues to Confound Climate Commentators
Just in case anyoneis interested, CPD have an on-line comments feature. This allows others to put up comments aboutpapers that are up fordiscussion.
Asten only has 1 comment, but it is from some people who might know a bit about the subject:
The authors of one of the main studies Asten uses in reaching his conclusion, Pearson et al.
Link here: http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/8/C1879/2012/cpd-8-C1879-2012.pdf
General conclusion: They are deeply underwhelmed by Asten’s results. They go into quite a bit of detail as to why. Their general conclusion is that if one were to apply their data correctly then the range of CS values Asten should calculate is anywhere between 0.6 to 4.9 – such a broad range of values as to basically be useless. Their criticism spans a range of objections. But it seems to boil down to the fact that the period Asten examines is simply unsuited to this type of simplistic analysis – not enough detailed data and a period in climate history when a lot of complex factors were at play, making it very hard to extract a CS value from this period. They suggest another period around 3.3Myr ago that gives clearer results.
This is often a problem when one tries to draw conclusions from very preliminary work. To all those commenters here that seem to have just accepted the results of this study without looking any deeper into it, go and read the reply from Pearson et al. It provides an interesting case study in to how the relatively simple level at which many climate science topics get discussed in the blogosphere can lead many people to reach faulty conclusions based on insufficient information.
Sites such as WUWT andmany others are really only engaged in a simplistic shadow play. The actual nuts and bolts details of climate science is very seldom reported on the blogosphere. It’s probably too large, complex and nuanced to be boiled down to the level that non-scientists on blog’s can grasp. So the simplified version of science that is the actual currency of the blogosphere often has very little to do with the reality of the actua lscience that is out there.
Glenn Tamblyn condescendingly says on October 11, 2012 at 1:52 am
“Sites such as WUWT and many others are really only engaged in a simplistic shadow play. The actual nuts and bolts details of climate science is very seldom reported on the blogosphere. It’s probably too large, complex and nuanced to be boiled down to the level that non-scientists on blog’s can grasp. So the simplified version of science that is the actual currency of the blogosphere often has very little to do with the reality of the actual science that is out there.”
________
From Glenn Tamblyn’s previous comments, it is clear that Glenn is a fervid disciple of the global warming alarmist movement.
Perhaps the only objective measure of one’s scientific and engineering competence is one’s predictive record.
To date, the predictive record of the IPCC and the global warming alarmists is a litany of failure. All their scary predictions of runaway global warming and wilder weather have failed to materialize.
The global warming alarmists have NO predictive record, and they have NO credibility in climate science OR in energy. They have squandered a trillion dollars of scarce global resources on voodoo science and worthless “alternative energy” schemes.
____________
Some of Glenn Tamblyn’s wacko comments, from
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/19/quote-of-the-week-the-hilarious-epic-fail-of-dana-nuccitelli/
Here is Glenn Tamblyn (Skeptical Science author/moderator) secretly conversing with his SkS pals on their off limits forum and saying “we need a conspiracy to save humanity”. The Viet Cong comparison is a nice touch too. There’s talk of convening a “war council” too.
____________
Glenn says:
And this isn’t about science or personal careers and reputations any more. This is a fight for survival. Our civilisations survival. .. We need our own anonymous (or not so anonymous) donors, our own think tanks…. Our Monckton’s … Our assassins.
Anyone got Bill Gates’ private number, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson? Our ‘side’ has got to get professional, ASAP. We don’t need to blog. We need to network. Every single blog, organisation, movement is like a platoon in an army. ..This has a lot of similarities to the Vietnam War….And the skeptics are the Viet Cong… Not fighting like ‘Gentlemen’ at all. And the mainstream guys like Gleick don’t know how to deal with this. Queensberry Rules rather than biting and gouging.
..So, either Mother Nature deigns to give the world a terrifying wake up call. Or people like us have to build the greatest guerilla force in human history. Now. Because time is up…Someone needs to convene a council of war of the major environmental movements, blogs, institutes etc. In a smoke filled room (OK, an incense filled room) we need a conspiracy to save humanity.
Allan MacRae says
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/05/new-paper-on-climate-sensitivity-estimates-1-1-%c2%b1-0-4-c-for-a-doubling-of-co2/#comment-1106783
Henry says
Good comment. Put all the dirty linen of such people on the wash line so we can have a good (scientific) look at that as well..
Like I said before, they even put a lot of my pension money on this alternative energy nonsense and with so much at stake, for such a lot of people: it makes me wonder and doubt the results of CO2 stations currently reporting to us. I think you will find some there are some crooks there as well. They could not possibly reporting that CO2 is going down because that would cost them their own jobs.
We therefore desperately need (an) independent CO2 station(s) reporting to us, skeptics.
Any ideas from anyone on this?
Hello Henry,
Temperature decreased from ~1940 to ~1975, even as fossil fuel CO2 emissions increased strongly and atmospheric CO2 increased moderately.
Atmospheric CO2 even decreased in some 12-month intervals, such as 3 of 12 such intervals in 1965 and 3 of 12 again in 1974. Details below.
Perhaps we will see this annualized CO2 decrease again, IF we see significant global cooling.
____________
Annualized Mauna Loa dCO2/dt “went 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
Data Source (2008 version of):
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Allan says
Perhaps we will see this annualized CO2 decrease again, IF we see significant global cooling.
henry says
you still seem to have some doubts about that
I was recently on holiday at a resort where we often go
with computer tablets telling us the weather and even giving me stats I was amazed to find that temps. dropped on average 10 degrees C compared to a year ago and even the sea water was at least 2 or 3 degrees cooler from what I knew it should be….at this time of the year (when we always go)…
then I say to the family: it is cooling…globally…
I even have my graph to prove it…
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
then everyone says
but why is nobody reporting it?
you tell me?
could it perhaps have something to do with (a lot of) money?
Relying too much on satellites (where you cannot go inside to re-calibrate) could also be a factor…
as to the CO2 data
I don’t know why they would use Hawaii as a measuring point;
it is a very volcanic island (lots of CO2 there going up naturally, in big squirts, I am sure)
so our starting point would be… what… exactly?
on top of that we still have those crooking the results…..
(sorry, but I have become very skeptical, true, but I hope you see that I have my reasons)
Hi Henry,
The decline in CO2, if it occurs , will depend on the magnitude of cooling and the natural delays in the system. I think there is more than one time-cycle (and associated delay of CO2 after temperature change) at work.
I tend to believe the satellite temperatures because I have corresponded sporadically with Roy Spencer and John Christy for years. Also there is the RSS interpretation.
Re CO2, there are so many measurement stations around the world and they correlate quite well so I tend to believe them as well.
The surface temperatures, on the other hand, exhibit a strong warming bias.
Regards, Allan
Henry@Allan
I can do an estimate of the cooling from my own dataset;
it is not that I do not trust others, it is just that I trust myself better.
The parameter that is important to watch is the drop in maxima, in degrees C/annum as it follows on a perfect curve. I estimate from the sinus wave curve on the maxima that we are now nearing the bottom at an average rate of about -0.035 degrees K per annum for the next 6-8 years. That would be a drop about 0.3 degrees K by 2020.
So far, on the maxima we have dropped 0.2 degrees K since 2000, but don’t forget we came from an average of +0.036 38 years ago to -0.016 for the past 12 years.
On the means we also dropped about 0.2 degrees K since 2000, looking at my own data set.
(Hadcrut 3 says it is -0.1 K; UAH says: …..? = too much noise to say anything at all)
I would therefore say that on the means we will now drop as fast as we are dropping on the maxima.
(I hope it is not more than that)
So, what we on earth are looking at is a total drop of about -0.5 degrees K from 2000 – 2020.
Do you think that is a lot?
(my sun laughed at me when I showed that the walls in our house differ by about the same 0.5)
HenryP says: October 12, 2012 at 8:15 am
“So, what we on earth are looking at is a total drop of about -0.5 degrees K from 2000 – 2020. Do you think that is a lot?”
___________
Well actually Henry, 0.5C of global cooling IS significant, in that it will reverse essentially all the warming that has occurred since the NOAA weather satellites were first launched in 1979, which is approximately when the recent warming cycle started (Earth warmed by about 0.5C from ~1975 to ~2000). There was modest global cooling from ~1940 to ~1975, so global average temperatures, if your prediction is correct, will actually be COOLER in 2020 than they were circa 1940.
So if your prediction is correct, Earth will have experienced net COOLING since 1940 in spite of a huge increase in fossil fuel emissions, and that should finally discredit the (imo already fatally flawed) hypothesis that supports catastrophic global warming mania. Sensible people will conclude that climate sensitivity to increased atmospheric CO2 is insignificant (near-zero) and recent temperature variations are predominantly natural in origin. No doubt the global warming alarmists will shift seamlessly to the hypo that CO2 causes global cooling.