From the Oh noes, we’re almost doomed department:
For the first time in roughly 5 million years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere could top 400 parts per million in the Northern Hemisphere next month.
What Doyle Rice is writing about is this Tweet from Scripps:
399.72 parts per million CO2 in air
April 25, 2013http://t.co/5Q2FLbb4ix— Keeling_Curve (@Keeling_curve) April 26, 2013
Interesting how a single Tweet can become an entire news story, especially since Mauna Loa data still has a ways to go. It’s almost as if Doyle can’t wait for this to happen.
Expect a plethora of gloom and doom stories next month or maybe the month after when MLO hits 400.
Note that the seasonally corrected trend number has a ways to go and Doyle in his article cites the unofficial number, not yet released, and often corrected later:
As of Tuesday, the reading was 398.44 ppm as measured at Mauna Loa.
At Scripps, they are already gearing up for the announcement, trying to visualize what 400 PPM looks like. Apparently, it looks like a fossil skull (see their story below). For the average person, they won’t notice anything, pre 400 CO2 will look exactly to them like post 400 CO2, and just like the Y2K bug, it is nothing more than a number, and nothing will happen when that threshold is crossed. Though, if there is any severe weather anywhere in the world within that month, you can bet some fool (like Joe Romm) will try to link the two events.
From Scripps:
What Does 400 ppm Look Like?
As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, scientists look back four million years for answers on what to expect from climate
The Pliocene is the geologic era between five million and three million years ago. Scientists have come to regard it as the most recent period in history when the atmosphere’s heat-trapping ability was as it is now and thus as our guide for things to come.
Recent estimates suggest CO2 levels reached as much as 415 parts per million (ppm) during the Pliocene. With that came global average temperatures that eventually reached 3 or 4 degrees C (5.4-7.2 degrees F) higher than today’s and as much as 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) warmer at the poles. Sea level ranged between five and 40 meters (16 to 131 feet) higher than today.
As for what life was like then, scientists rely on fossil records to recreate where plants and animals lived and in what quantity. Pliocene fossil records show that the climate was generally warmer and wetter than today. Maps of Pliocene vegetation record forests growing on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, and savannas and woodlands spreading over what is now North African desert. Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were smaller than today during the warmest parts of the Pliocene.
In the oceans, fossils mark the spread of tropical and subtropical marine life northward along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Both observations and models of the Pliocene Pacific Ocean show the existence of frequent, intense El Niño cycles—a climatic oscillation that today delivers heavy rainfall to the western U.S. causing both intense flooding but also increasing the river flows needed to sustain salmon runs. The absence of significant ocean upwelling in the warmest part of the Pliocene would have suppressed fisheries along the west coasts of the Americas, and deprived seabirds and marine mammals of food supplies. Reef corals suffered a major extinction during the peak of Pliocene warmth but reefs themselves did not disappear.
Richard Norris, a geologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, said the concentration of CO2 is one means of comparison, but what is not comparable, and more significant, is the speed at which 400 ppm is being surpassed today.
“I think it is likely that all these ecosystem changes could recur, even though the time scales for the Pliocene warmth are different than the present,” Norris said. “The main lagging indicator is likely to be sea level just because it takes a long time to heat the ocean and a long time to melt ice. But our dumping of heat and CO2 into the ocean is like making investments in a pollution ‘bank,’ since we can put heat and CO2 in the ocean, but we will only extract the results (more sea-level rise from thermal expansion and more acidification) over the next several thousand years. And we cannot easily withdraw either the heat or the CO2 from the ocean if we actually get our act together and try to limit our industrial pollution–the ocean keeps what we put in it.”
Scientists can analyze the gases trapped in ice to reconstruct with high accuracy what climate was like in prehistory, but that record only goes back 800,000 years. It is trickier to estimate carbon dioxide levels before then, but in 2009, one research team reported finding evidence of carbon dioxide levels ranging between 365 and 415 ppm roughly 4.5 million years ago. They based their finding on the analysis of carbon isotopes present in compounds made by tiny marine phytoplankton preserved in ancient ocean sediments.
That estimate made Earth’s last experience of 400 ppm a much more recent event than scientists have commonly thought. There has been broader consensus that carbon dioxide concentrations have been much higher than today’s but not for tens of millions of years. The assertion that Earth passed the 400 ppm mark a mere 4.5 million years ago has been supported by other analyses, many of which also concluded that the temperatures at that time were higher than previously estimated. These studies suggest that the traditional way scientists currently rate Earth’s long-term sensitivity to extra doses of CO2 might not sufficiently take into account the slower effects of climate change on the sunlight-absorbing properties of the planet, such as ice sheet melt and changes in plant cover on land.
What that means is that Earth might react even more strongly to the increases in CO2 measured by the Keeling Curve. Several prominent questions remain to be answered, though, before accurate scenarios can be created. The extreme speed at which carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing is unprecedented. An increase of 10 parts per million might have needed 1,000 years or more to come to pass during ancient climate change events. Now the planet is poised to reach the 1,000 ppm level in only 100 years if emissions trajectories remain at their present level.
“Our grandchildren will inhabit a radically altered planet, as the ocean gradually warms up in response to the buildup of heat-trapping gases,” said Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus.
– Robert Monroe
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Pete says:
400ppm, eh. Let’s see… that means that 99.96% of the atmosphere is NOT carbon dioxide.
clue for you: ozone is less than 10 ppm.
without it you’d be dead.
@janice_moore —
i don’t want to be your friend.
will you address the evidence i presented, instead of dancing away from it?
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
In your post at April 30, 2013 at 4:29 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/usa-todays-breathless-co2-announcement-not-quite-there-yet/#comment-1292741
you quote part of a statement I made in my post at April 30, 2013 at 3:46 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/usa-todays-breathless-co2-announcement-not-quite-there-yet/#comment-1292700
then you make an untrue assertion.
You write
But I DID NOT SAY THAT. Indeed, I said, and you did not copy,
As I explained (read my post, I have provided the link to it from this post)
1.
if the equilibrium balance between air and ocean concentrations is set by changing pH
2.
then at present there would be a net CO2 flux from the air into the ocean surface layer (and from ocean surface layer to deep ocean) because the present anthropogenic emission is to the air
3.
but if there were no anthropogenic emission to the air then there would be a net CO2 flux from the ocean surface layer into the air (and from deep ocean into the ocean surface layer) because there would be no additional input of CO2
4.
and the depletion of deep ocean CO2 would be completely insignificant because almost all the CO2 is in the ocean
5.
so the change in atmospheric CO2 would be the same whether or not the anthropogenic emission existed when the equilbrium concentrations of CO2 in air and ocean are set by reducing ocean surface layer pH.
This is NOT “impossible”. It is an adjustment of the system – by redistribution of CO2 within the system – in response to a change in equilibrium of the system induced by a change to the pH of the ocean surface layer.
Your conceptual problem seems to be that you think the anthropogenic emission of CO2 is so large that it dominates the system of the carbon cycle. But, in reality, the anthropogenic emission is a small addition to the CO2 in the total system (it is like adding water to the ocean by use of a bucket: the addition will always be relatively very, very small).
Richard
Stan W.:
re your rude post to janice moore at May 1, 2013 at 12:03 am.
It is clear that you don’t want friends so there was no need to say that.
And everybody will continue to ignore the irrelevant nonsense which you present until you address the evidence presented to you.
Richard
dbstealey says:
April 30, 2013 at 8:03 pm
Exactly right. The warmer global temperatures caused the rise in CO2, just like today.
Right about the past, wrong about the present: the graph you provided only shows the variability around the trend, not the trend itself. The variability is mainly temperature induced (and partly by precipitation changes during El Niño’s), but the current trend can’t be caused by temperature: the effect of seawater temperature is not more than 16 ppmv/°C, but there is already 100 ppmv extra in the atmosphere above the temperature dictated equilibrium. Further, vegetation reacts the other way out. The real influence of 1°C increase thus is only 8 ppmv/°C over the past few million years, except for the past 160 years or so…
In perspective: human emissions plotted with the increase in the atmosphere, where the difference is what is net absorbed by nature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
richardscourtney says:
May 1, 2013 at 12:19 am
Richard,
My reasoning may have been a little to fast to be followed, but let us do it step by step:
if the equilibrium balance between air and ocean concentrations is set by changing pH
OK, all other things being equal, a lower pH of the oceans waters by some exogenic factor (like SO2 from undersea volcanoes) would increase the pCO2 of the oceans thus push CO2 from the oceans into the atmosphere until the pCO2(atm) and pCO2(aq) are back in equilibrium.
The relevant points are that the transfer of CO2 from the oceans to the atmosphere is at the cost of the carbon content, DIC, of the oceans surface layer and the levels in the atmosphere would increase, with or whithout human emissions.
then at present there would be a net CO2 flux from the air into the ocean surface layer (and from ocean surface layer to deep ocean) because the present anthropogenic emission is to the air
We see an increasing rise of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past 160 years or so. That may be (partly) caused by a change in pH.
A reduction of pH pushes more CO2 in the atmosphere and gives a reduction of DIC.
An increase of CO2 in the atmosphere (whatever the cause) pushes more CO2 from the atmosphere in the oceans and increases DIC.
“Equilibrium case” is that with increasing human emissions as much CO2 is pushed back into the oceans as was released by the reduction in pH. At that moment DIC isn’t increased or decreased compared to before the pH reduction.
But there is a measured increase in DIC. Thus more CO2 is pushed into the oceans than was released by the pH reduction. That proves that any exogenic pH reduction was not the cause of the increase in the atmosphere.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
I am replying to your post at May 1, 2013 at 2:06 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/usa-todays-breathless-co2-announcement-not-quite-there-yet/#comment-1293185
in response to my post at May 1, 2013 at 12:19 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/usa-todays-breathless-co2-announcement-not-quite-there-yet/#comment-1293095
Ferdinand, I know from past experience that you are not being deliberately obtuse.
I have tried to explain the matter in two different ways and you still ‘don’t get it’. I will try again.
You are only considering (a) the air and (b) the ocean surface layer.
I am considering the (a) air, (b) the ocean surface layer, and (c) the deep ocean.
n.b. You are ignoring the deep ocean.
As I said to you in the post you are replying
But you say in reply to that
No, nothing is ‘pushed’.
The carbon distributes in response to the equilibrium change. It takes time to distribute. And the new distribution provides an altered atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Hence, the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the ocean surface layer adjusts as an intermediary between the air and deep ocean. And the adjustment is not instantaneous so the DIC alters as the adjustment occurs.
As I explained, there are two cases; i.e. with the anthropogenic emission and without it.
Case 1.
With the anthropogenic emission the net flux during the adjustment is
air –> ocean surface layer –> deep ocean
Case 2.
Without the anthropogenic emission the net flux during the adjustment is
deep ocean –> ocean surface layer –> air
We are considering Case 1.
The atmospheric CO2 is continuing to increase and, therefore, if the equilibrium has changed – or is changing – then the transition to the altered equilibrium state is still happening; n.b. the transition to the altered equilibrium is now happening.
The DIC in the ocean surface layer will increase during the transition to the altered equilibrium (otherwise there would be no net flux from ocean surface layer to deep ocean). So, the increase to DIC does not prove anything because it is an expected effect.
I again ask for it be noted that I am NOT saying the alteration to pH has happened. I am pointing out that it may have happened. And there is no way to know whether or not it has happened. But if it has happened then it alone could be the cause of the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Richard
since there was an ice age at 7,000 ppm, I would sweat it. besides, if we could ever get summer going, co2 levels drop on their step up as the h hem greens in summer. Next year they can rejoice because it will get there and stay.. and the trend down in temps will continue anyway
By the way, that increase is 1.8/400 of 1/2500 of the atmosphere, which means the increase yearly of co2 is 1.8/1000000 of the atmosphere. This gets more frivolous by the day. When the earth greens in response to the natural warming that has occurred, this will level off, and since cooling is starting, there should be a decrease in 20-30 years, which would go hand in hand with colder times and less crop yields.
the spell check changed wouldnt to would in comment above. maybe if I could learn to spell….
[But “which would not go” does not appear to be what you want said. ??? Mod]
Joseph Bastardi:
Thankyou for your posts at May 1, 2013 at 3:25 am and May 1, 2013 at 3:28 am.
I write to draw attention to them.
They state the trivial importance of the recent CO2 rise and the minute nature of the rise. Thankyou.
Richard
Joseph Bastardi says:
May 1, 2013 at 3:28 am
Let me both agree with what you just said; and at the same time, disagree with your apparent conclusion and its related extrapolation into the future.
1. Let us agree that there is significantly more CO2 in the atmosphere right now than in the past (before 1950..) This increased CO2, plus the natural warming that is continuing upward at a cyclical 60 year rate since 1750, mean every plant on earth is growing faster, stronger, higher, wider, and longer with more leaves than before 1950.
If so, the earth’s land areas are going to be significantly greener (darker) than before 1950, and thus their albedo SHOULD BE darker. The increase in temperature over land can be explained entirely by a darker “earth” and its increased absorption of sunlight into the now darker areas. (If albedo decreases from 0.38 to 0.375, does not more energy get absorbed?) True, “CO2 did it” but CO2 did NOT “do it” by the today’s popular CAGW theory, but simply because more sunlight is being absorbed. (Thus, even with a “quieter sun” land temperatures SHOULD level out higher than before, but sea temperatures will change very very little because increased chlorophyll (seaweed, etc) does not change seawater total absorption as dramatically as increased trees, brushes, and grass do on land. A darker earth is absorbing more energy from a quieter sun, so temperatures level out at a higher level.)
The increase in INLAND sub-arctic polar area temperatures is also explained, and the increase in temperatures on the slightly warmer Antarctic peninsula can be explained: It is NOT arctic sea temperatures that have increased recently (though none by as much as NASA-GISS claims) but inland Canadian temperatures hundreds of kilometers from the Arctic Ocean – but only hundreds of meters from ten billion trees that are all now growing 27% faster, taller, and deeper. So, we should be seeing higher temperatures in central Canada.
Now, to disagree: Why would you expect any trend to a colder climate to “balance out” or to level out? Only if today’s 2000-2015 temperatures ARE the peak to our climb up from the Little Ice Age would we see future temperatures go down. Otherwise, we would have a steady increase from the LIA up for 420 or 460 years: So the peak would be later: 1650 + 460 = 2110.
But – to predict any future peak based on the Roman Warm Period high to the Dark Ages minimum to Medieval Warming Period high to the LIA minimum to a future high, do we not first have to establish WHEN each earlier period WAS at its peak or trough, then establish what the 60 year short cycle is on top of that long term cycle?
Forget for a moment we don’t know what causes either a long term or a short cycle in the climate, but we would need to know “when” the previous cycles were before we can predict the next cycle peak,
Ferdinand Engleband has claimed that my temperature dependent solubility of CO2 in sea water was wrong and that Henry’s law held.
I claimed no such thing. Temperature is the controlling factor but partial pressure was not much of an influence due to the small partial pressure change of the CO2, 390-400ppmv within the overall atmospheric mix. Temperature is more important than this small partial pressure change. As temperature falls so solubility increases. I did not say Henry’s law did not hold only it was a very small part in this case.
Mod: I think Mr Bastardi may be referring to the ‘would’ in this which should be wouldn’t:
” Joseph Bastardi says:
May 1, 2013 at 3:25 am
since there was an ice age at 7,000 ppm, I would sweat it. besides, if we could ever get summer going, co2 levels drop on their step up as the h hem greens in summer. Next year they can rejoice because it will get there and stay.. and the trend down in temps will continue anyway”
[Makes sense. However, we will make no change until Mr. B confirms your assumption. Mod]
RACookPE1978
The global tremperature is very noisy and somewhat meaningless. Here is CET, the most scrutinised instrumental record on earth which dates to 1660. I reconstructed it using a great deal of contemporary observational material, crop records, science papers etc back to 1538.
http://climatereason.com/Graphs/Graph01.png
The temperature has been rising since that date. My latest research indicates that the period 1490 to 1540 appears to be very similar to todays temperatures so presumably any trend line would disappear. So you have your 460 years as the CET turned down drastically in 2000 as can be seen in the Met office records
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
My inclination is to think that a temperatutre tha thas been rising for 460 years is likely to resume its upwards path but I can’t predict the future, only highlight the past. What is certain is that GISS from 1880 was merely a staging post for temperature rise and not the starting post.
tonyb
Isn’t it obvious? i think Turnkey Home is good
I just have to thank Stan W. for his humorous comments. Jumps in making idiotic claims and then runs away with his tail between his legs.
Not only that, if there really was energy going into the deep oceans that is where it would stay. The average temperature of the oceans is 3.9C and the atmosphere is 15C. Since Stan claims to be such a physics expert he should realize that heat flows from warmer to cooler objects. That means burning every last ounce of fossil fuels on the planet would end up heating the deep oceans by at most a couple of tenths of a degree. The energy would just stay where it is at those depths. IOW, Stan is actually claiming there is no possible catastrophe from increased CO2. Any greenhouse warmth will be absorbed in the oceans where it will have almost zero impact.
johnmarshall says:
May 1, 2013 at 4:56 am
Ferdinand Engleband has claimed that my temperature dependent solubility of CO2 in sea water was wrong and that Henry’s law held.
I claimed no such thing. Temperature is the controlling factor but partial pressure was not much of an influence due to the small partial pressure change of the CO2, 390-400ppmv within the overall atmospheric mix. Temperature is more important than this small partial pressure change. As temperature falls so solubility increases. I did not say Henry’s law did not hold only it was a very small part in this case.
Henry’s Law includes both the pressure term and the temperature term (via the T dependency of the Henry’s Law coefficient). The influence of the partial pressure is linear so a change of 10ppm is about a 2.5% change. The influence of temperature is the reciprocal of temperature so a change of 0.1K from 288K amounts to a ~1% change. So you appear to have the controlling influences reversed, both parameters are important.
As posted earlier:
The temperature dependance of kH is given by:
kH(T)=kH(298)*(2400(1/T-1/298)) =29.41*(2400(1/T-1/298))
richardscourtney says:
May 1, 2013 at 3:06 am
You are ignoring the deep ocean
Indeed, simply because any changes between the deep oceans and the atmosphere needs many centuries to get a new equilibrium. Further, the deep ocean exchanges are always via the surface. Even at the upwelling places where deep ocean water comes on the surface of the Pacific equator, DIC is increasing… That is completely in contrast to an eventually decrease in pH of the deep oceans. We don’t know much of the changes in the past, but pH changes in the mass of the deep oceans don’t occur that fast, so we may assume that any change to a lower pH in the recent centuries still exist today.
But let us assume that the increase in the atmosphere is caused by a reduced pH in the deep oceans.
In that case, in first instance, the lower pH of the deep oceans will lower the pH of the mixed layer near the surface, or nothing happens in the atmosphere. That means that anyway DIC of the mixed layer must have decreased over time. But as DIC increased at least since 1984, according to the longest series at Bermuda (BATS), at least halve of the increase in the atmosphere since 1850 (50 ppmv increase since 1984) is not from the oceans.
Further, 13C/12C ratio measurements on coralline sponges in the same area as BATS, show a decline since about 1850 in complete lockstep with the decline in the atmosphere and human emissions. That too shows that the change is from the atmosphere into the oceans and not reverse, as any substantial release of CO2 from the oceans would increase the 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere.
So, there is no reason to assume that the other halve of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere pre 1984 is caused by a pH drop in the (deep) oceans.
You see, we even haven’t used the mass balance argument…
johnmarshall says:
May 1, 2013 at 4:56 am
I claimed no such thing. Temperature is the controlling factor but partial pressure was not much of an influence due to the small partial pressure change of the CO2, 390-400ppmv within the overall atmospheric mix.
Sorry, misinterpreted what you said. If it was only over the past 10 ppmv, you are right for all practical purposes. My points were intended for the full change over the past 160 years…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Thankyou for – as you point out – not side-tracking the discussion onto the mass balance argument in your post at May 1, 2013 at 6:51 am.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/usa-todays-breathless-co2-announcement-not-quite-there-yet/#comment-1293353
However, you are now agreeing what I said but seem to be unaware of that.
You now say
Yes! That is what I said in my post you are answering which is at May 1, 2013 at 3:06 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/30/usa-todays-breathless-co2-announcement-not-quite-there-yet/#comment-1293226
But you are trying to use that as an excuse to ignore the interaction between the ocean surface layer and the deep ocean. Please read what I wrote. It is not admissible to pretend a part of the system does not exist when considering a change to the system.
Then you say
Why? It is not relevant in any way to the hypothesis under discussion.
We are discussing the putative effect of a change to ocean surface layer pH as a result of sulphur ions arriving at that layer following their emission by volcanism centuries ago.
And the sponge data confirms what I said: i.e. the net fluxes in response to the altered equilibrium would be from air to ocean surface layer and from ocean surface layer to deep ocean.
Please read my post you are answering.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
May 1, 2013 at 7:09 am
But you are trying to use that as an excuse to ignore the interaction between the ocean surface layer and the deep ocean. Please read what I wrote. It is not admissible to pretend a part of the system does not exist when considering a change to the system.
Really? But that’s exactly what you do when you compare anthropogenic CO2 emissions to natural emissions and pretend the sinks don’t exist!
richardscourtney says:
May 1, 2013 at 7:09 am
We are discussing the putative effect of a change to ocean surface layer pH as a result of sulphur ions arriving at that layer following their emission by volcanism centuries ago.
Please explain what a ‘sulphur ion’ is, as a chemist I’ve never heard of such a thing. Once you’ve clarified that we can discuss your hypothetical mechanism for pH change at the surface. Bear in mind though that the pH change at the surface is a result of [CO2] increase, not vice versa.
When rain falls through the atmosphere it absorbs CO2 and forms a mild carbonic acid. This acid enters the soil where it disolves limestone. After a series of reactions the dissolved calcium from the limestone forms calcium hydroxide which flows down the rivers into the ocean. There are huge quantities of calcium hydroxide put into solution in the ocean by this process. This raises the pH. The absorption of CO2 lowers the pH. However, the factors that establish pH are complex and include salinity of the ocean. The computation of pH in the ocean is done by a computer program. pH also varies with depth in the ocean. The upper warm layer of the ocean has a pH that is approximately one above the balance of the ocean. The explanation that I have seen for this difference is the photosynthesis that takes place in the ocean’s surface removes CO2 and raises the pH.
Phil.:
I am copying all of your egregious post at May 1, 2013 at 7:18 am so everybody can see what I am refuting.
I have NEVER done that, NOT EVER.
But I will relate to what you refer as demonstration to others of your behaviour.
I wrote as part of a post on another thread
Phil. said that was “disingenuous” because – he said – I should have written
That, of course, changed the subject.
I talked about the potential of the anthropogenic emission to cause “Armaggedon” (i.e. catastrophe).
Phil. ignored the subject of that potential threat and switched it to “a net natural sink effect” (i.e. the carbon cycle).
I was NOT “disingenuous” by mentioning the asserted threat of the anthropogenic emission. And the “sinks” were not relevant to what I said. They were only relevant to the subject which Phil. would have preferred me to have raised.
And he has the gall to come here and to pretend that I “compare[d] anthropogenic CO2 emissions to natural emissions and pretend[ed] the sinks don’t exist”.
Even by Phil’s trolling standards, this is low.
Richard