Mauna Loa hits 400 PPM of CO2, alarmists wail and gnash teeth, Earth survives

Does 400ppm really just an indicator of a long winter and late spring?

Myrrh says:
May 11, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Myrrh, as eric1skeptic sayd, look at any station where no volcano or vegetation is in the wide neighbourhood and you will find exactly the same curve, only with a small lag between the NH and the SH and different seasonal swings. The South Pole measurements were taken even before Mauna Loa, but lack a few years of continuous measurements, but these were infilled with regular flask samples. There is no volcano and no vegetation for thousands of kms…
If you really think that someone is manipulating all the data of all stations all over the world with an increase of 0.005 ppmv per day, then you should show me how it is possible to do that and without protest of anyone of the hundreds of people involved, even not after retirement…
Worldwide CO2 levels are the most reliable and rigorously controlled measurements I know of. One can only hope that one day temperature stations are as firmly quality controlled as the CO2 measurements are.

Lester Via says:
May 11, 2013 at 3:29 pm
It seems to me one problem with any cores taken from the antarctic ice cap is that the antarctic receives very little precipitation
Depends where the ice core is taken. The near coast ice cores like Law Dome receive 1.2 meters ice equivalent per year as snow. The bubbles are fully closed after some 40 years at 72 meter depth. In that period, most of the time, the pores are in open connection with the atmosphere which makes that the average age of the enclosed air is in average about 7 years older that in the atmosphere. The average resolution of these cores is less than a decade. The drawback is that these cores only go some 150 years back in time before reaching bedrock.
The far inland cores receive far less precipitation and their resolution increases to 600 years (Vostok) and 560 years (Dome C). But they go 420 and 800 kyr back in time.
Additionally, I don’t think that it has been proven that the trapped bubbles are representative of the ancient composition of the atmosphere as the solubility of CO2 in water is radically different than is the solubility of nitrogen and oxygen. Any process that depletes CO2 relative to N2 and O2 during the conversion of firn to ice would also result in a hockey stick.
There is an overlap of ~20 years between the Law Dome ice cores and direct measurements at the South Pole: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_sp_co2.jpg
There is some fractionation of the heavier molecules and isotopes, which increase near the bottom of the stagnant air in the firn (CO2: ~1% over 40 years), for which is corrected for.
And the smaller molecules (neon, O2) show a small deficit: they seem to escape just before bubble closing. CO2 seems too large to be influenced.
Measurements of CO2 nowadays are done by crushing the cold ice under vacuum and trapping any water vapour over a cold trap. Alternative, used to measure isotopic compositions, is sublimating all ice just under melting point, freezing everyting over cryogenic traps and measuring all components by cryogenic destillation. Both methods give similar results. So, water is no problem at all.
There is some very low migration of CO2 in ice cores over long periods, as is (theoretically) calculated from the Siple Dome ice core where some remelt layers were found. That implied that the resolution broadened from 20 to 22 years at medium depth and to 40 years at full depth (~40 kyr back in time). Not a big deal for “warm” coastal ice cores (-22°C). For the much colder inland ice cores (-40°C) like Vorstok and Dome C, that plays no measurable role, not even after 800 kyr…
More information at:
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8343.full
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3773250
http://icebubbles.ucsd.edu/Publications/closeoff_EPSL.pdf

eric1skeptic says:
May 11, 2013 at 6:19 pm
Myrrh says “They arbitrarily choose what they’ll call volcanic and what they’ll call “man made well mixed background”, and they don’t show any man made signature.” and “First it was controlled by Keeling/Scripps and son, now it is globally co-ordinated at government level since it became lucrative/political.” and “Gosh, it’s the Keeling Curve based on data only from ’94.. Jubany is surrounded by volcanic activity ..”
Myrrh, please explain why hundreds of other independent measurements worldwide have the same results. For example, http://www.avvelenata.it/papers/Sendai_CO2.pdf where Lampedusa island in the Mediterranean is not near any volcanoes. After reading section 2, Measurements, please explain how ‘arbitrarily choose what they’ll call volcanic and what they’ll call “man made well mixed background” and arrive at much the same curve as Mauna Loa in figure 2 in the paper. I would like to know specifically how these scientists cherry picked readings to produce the curve shown in figure 2, i.e. how do they produce the rise and how do they produce the wiggle. Please do not answer with more junk websites, analyze this scientific paper or give links to scientific papers.
Erik1skeptic – these are two different scenarios, two completely different locations. Mauna Loa is the poster child for the official AGW scare of global warming, there is a history of how it got to be that. By the 90’s it had been taken over by bigger guns than the personal agenda of Keeling and family loyalty, there was a co-ordinated orchestrated plan put into effect which included changing the consensus conclusion of the scientists working on the ’95 IPPC report – their considered opinion was that there was no discernible man made signal, but, the IPPC was created to push the meme that “man made cause of global warming” existed, read the small print. The majority of the scientists brought in by the IPCC didn’t understand that, they thought they were doing work for a real science body with UN ‘kudos’ and taking the question seriously, was made man made responsible?, concluded that no man made signal discernible – find your own damn links to exactly what was taken out. This was deliberately excised by Hougton/Santer and a quickly cobbled together non-peer reviewed garbled nonsense put in to justify the excising of the pukkha science consensus conclusion. Real scientists have resigned from the IPCC when they saw their work was being trashed. This is a fact of history in this now over a century of real science mixed with personal agendas, which is what I am exploring.
Now, I have shown enough from my own analysis of Mauna Loa, the sleight of hand trickery which it practices, to prove conclusively for myself that the consensus of the real scientists writing the ’95 IPPC report was correct in one aspect of “no man made signal discernible”. I concluded that the first time I read the Mauna Loa description of method and smelled a rat – I spent some time looking at the wind systems and the local abundant carbon dioxide production and saw that their method was merely arbitrarily choosing cut off points for what they then labelled “local volcanic pollution” and what they labelled “pristine well mixed background brought in by the trade winds unadulterated by local production” which measurement of “pristine well mixed background” wasn’t physically possible from the top of an active volcano surrounded by great volcanic production, other active volcanoes, venting, thousands of earthquakes a year in warm seas over a huge hot spot creating volcanic islands, even if such a critter as “well-mixed background carbon dioxide” existed.
You decide for yourself whether it’s possible or not.. I then began exploring the background history of the Keeling connection and found Timothy Casey’s piece, here’s the link again: http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
Not only as I’d previously concluded from looking at the properties and processes of carbon dioxide is there no such critter as “well-mixed background” so they couldn’t be measuring this at Mauna Loa or anywhere else contrary to Keelings unproven claim that it existed and could be measured from anywhere in the world, but there was skullduggery afoot with the claims that a fossil fuel combustion signal was discernible among volcanic production, it isn’t, not without specific fingerprinting to each individual volcanic source and the volcanic sources themselves had been excised from the cursory glance, and, this affected the measurements of other stations claimed to be “pristine” spots for measuring the unproven mythical Keeling “pristine background well mixed carbon dioxide”.
And as you gave me Jubany as one such “pristine” site I found that it too is surounded by active volcanic production. And, I pointed out that its depiction graph was not only impossible from the data collected which began in 94, but was the Keeling Curve which at cursory glance a) gave the impression it was from data collected by this team but also b) that it included the Argentianian collection data and they had been there from 1953, they didn’t give any of it while giving the impression it was included in the graph; which was the Keeling Curve and nothing to do with Italian data they gave or the Argentianian they didn’t.
So, you then gave me Lampadusa: http://www.avvelenata.it/papers/Sendai_CO2.pdf
Which again was set up in the early 90’s as had been Jubany, so it is reasonable to assume for the same reasons and by the same agenda as those who are now in control of the global narrative, who have been shown doctoring the conclusion of the 95 IPCC report, which organisation, look it up for yourself, had itself been set up to show that man made influence was “causing the rise in carbon dioxide” (and therefore to blame for “rise in temperatures”).
That does not mean that the team at Lampadusa, or Jubany, are producing anything but accurate measurements of what they are finding. But what are they finding? At Jubany it is clear they would have to take into account the surrounding volcanic activity, if they themselves were making the claim that their measurements were of this mythical unproven “pristine uncontaminated by local production well-mixed background carbon dioxide”, as did Keeling and continued from via Scripps before being taken over by the IPPC agenda drivers. I haven’t seen that the team at Jubany have made such a claim and so reasonably assume they are just doing the measurements and their work is presented as such by the now co-ordinating body as their page comes from who produced the trickery of showing the Keeling Curve as if attached to their measurements and who have not shown any previous data from the Argentinians. So, I am not questioning the accuracy of the Lampadusa team’s measurements, but looking at what they have found.
What I have found is they themselves have said where their carbon dioxide comes from, in the winds. The island itself is barren and though I haven’t checked to see if there is any underwater volcanic activity which as Casey points out has not only been deliberately ignored, but positively claimed is accounted for in the science fraud trickery of underestimation, it is clear from their work that the El Nino brought in an extra amount to what they were finding. I haven’t had the time to explore this in any greater depth. You asked me what I thought and I pointed this out because of the AIRS conclusion that they would have to study wind systems in the transportation of carbon dioxide.
I also pointed out that they mentioned the added flask at 2metres in ’97, which in true science tradition they were duty bound to mention so they did, which has to be taken into account in their analysis of “rise”. Anyway, without going further into exploring if there is any volcanic contribution to their figures, so going with their own analysis that the carbon dioxide they measure for all practical purposes comes in on the winds, I made the point, perhaps not clearly enough, [that they appeared to understand and so were saying], that the carbon dioxide they were measuring was coming from discrete sources, that they were not measuring “well mixed background”, but carbon dioxide being carried to them within the volumes of winds. As I had pointed out to you in the other study you brought into the discussion, that the local climate of one of the stations was stated to be affected by the winds coming from the Atlantic 80 ks distant.
Real scientists point out such things, real science knows that the wind doesn’t “ceaselessly turbulently mix up carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to create well-mixed background which is the same everywhere around the globe”, not least because it knows winds don’t cross hemispheres.., we don’t have “the same well mixed temperature around the globe”…, but knows carbon dioxide is carried in the winds themselves from one place to another, because it knows that winds are volumes of the real fluid gas air on the move created out of differential heating of volumes of air. [We were discussing this here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/05/tastes-great-less-incinerating/ ]
So, what they are saying at Lampadusa, is that if you want to know where their carbon dioxide comes from you have to look to the source which is the winds carrying it in as they say is clearly shown in the spike of 97/98 El Niño.
Wiggles are produced by natural variation, as we saw in the winter and summer differences of the US study. If there really was such a critter as the claimed “well-mixed background of carbon dioxide that can be measured anywhere” and “these stations in pristine unpolluted by local production show it”, there wouldn’t be any wiggles. Like the elaborate sciency sounding descriptions of the collection method at Mauna Loa, the seasonal variation wiggles distract from closer scrutiny of that claim.
The “well-mixed everywhere in the same proportion and accumulating for hundreds and thousands of years” is what got me interested in exploring all this, because their AGW explanations of why it was this were just so bizarre and contrary to the properties and processes of real world gases, and, I was being given this information by a PhD in physics who was teaching about gases at university level..
This fake fisics has been deliberately introduced into the education system, hence all the confusion in these arguments in the mix of people who still have traditional physics in their field, but may or may not know the basics from another field, arguing with AGW fisics which has completely altered the physical composition of the world around us. Only a week or so ago I came across a high school page which said that ‘real gases are different from the ideal but too complicated at this level so ideal better to explain the principles, and even not necessary at university level’ – the difference in gases used to be taught at junior school level, the first thing taught was they would separate out by weight under gravity, carbon dioxide and methane as heavier and lighter than air given as examples.. That’s how determined the interests which took this over in the 70’s, they began by teaching would be unspecialised teachers of juniors garbled fisics and silly proofs to demonstrate, a bottle of scent opened in the classroom and ink poured into water, and by the time these kids got to be PhD’s teaching at university level they believed without question that carbon dioxide and nitrogen and oxygen were ideal gases and would spontaneously diffuse into the atmosphere under their own molecular momentum to at great speeds miles apart from each other in empty space bouncing of each other in elastic collisions and so thoroughly mixing that it would take a great deal of work to separate them out again, like separating out again ink from the water it had been mixed in with..

Myrrh,
Where can I find this opinion about CO2 levels?
their considered opinion was that there was no discernible man made signal

Philip Mulholland says:
May 12, 2013 at 6:41 am
My take on Fred’s conclusion “It’s the Arctic Ocean not the Boreal Tiaga wot dunnit”
Except that Fred’s conclusion doesn’t fit with the simultaneous increase in 13C/12C ratio in the NH. That is from the preferential use of 12CO2 by plants leaving relative more 13CO2 in the atmosphere…
Most of the change BTW is in the mid-latitudes, but the Ferrell cell brings the depleted air masses to near the poles.

Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
May 12, 2013 at 5:03 am
Myrrh says:
May 12, 2013 at 2:59 am
Myrrh, you are hopeless. One can select the Mauna Loa data in such a way that they only use the highest values when the winds blow from the volcanic vents. That would give you an increase of 4 ppmv over the average. The average trend is an increase of ~2 ppmv per year. Thus after only 3 years the trend is already beyond any selection of volcanic enhanced data. We are currently 70+ ppmv over the measurements of 1959. How can that be reached by data selection?
Ferdinand, you are missing my point. I am trying to explain the sleight of hand magician’s trick here, initiated by Keeling and continued as the bank wagon acquired different drivers.
You are being distracted by the data and the sciency explanations from the claim they make which began with Keeling – “that carbon dioxide is a well-mixed gas in the atmosphere and the pristine background can be measured from anywhere”, and, specifically here, that “Mauna Loa is a pristine site for measuring this as it is uncontaminated by local production because it is high on the mountain top without vegetation around it measuring uncontaminated well-mixed background coming in high above all local contamination”.
If that were true, they would not have to chuck any of their data out..
What they are measuring is for the most part local volcanic carbon dioxide, even when they have arbitrarily decided what amount to call volcanic and what amount to call their claimed “uncontaminated background coming in high over Hawaii in the trade wind”, it’s all the same, they cannot separate out local.
And how can the South Pole data be manipulated, where hardly any outliers are found? See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_mlo_spo_raw_select_2008.jpg
Sorry Ferdinand, I really don’t have time to go into every example, I have explained the skullduggery involved here and it’s for you to tell me how all these places, how all these places, sing from the same hymn sheet to the extent that they they are so sure that none will examine what they are saying, they even blatantly and cynically give the Keeling Curve graph as if it directly relates to the data gathered at Jubany..
Further, I obtained my B.Sc. in chemistry begin 1960′s. I was teached that CO2 was a non-ideal gas. But that doesn’t change the fact that CO2 is well mixed within 2% of full scale in 95% of the atmosphere.
As long as you think that carbon dioxide is “well mixed in the atmosphere”, which you clearly do.., then you will keep missing the points I’m making. Your only ‘proof’ that carbon dioxide is “well-mixed” is the data of the stations, which I have gone to some considerable effort to show is not reliable for a variety of reasons.., and you explain it by some mangled sciency sounding stuff which you have picked up along the way and so are apparently deaf to any explanations I give of the real properties and processes of carbon dioxide, like, its 8-10 DAY residence time in the atmosphere in the Water Cycle, which Water Cycle is non-existant in the AGWScienceFiction’s Greenhouse Effect, like winds DO NOT CROSS HEMISPHERES, etc.
That you have decided carbon dioxide is “well mixed in the atmosphere after 40 years” is as unreasonable as the claims made by AGWSF that “carbon dioxide stays well-mixed in atmosphere accumulating for hundreds and even thousands of years because it is an ideal gas.” Carbon dioxide is moving up and moving down in convection and in the winds, when they stop and in the rain.
I have been working in a chlorine factory, once helping to develope a computer model to predict the behaviour of a chlorine leak with wind speed, direction and obstacles in the wind direction. In general, the dilution of such a leak is between the second and third power of the distance, as well in width as in height. Chlorine is 60% heavier than CO2. Despite that, it does mix with air and stays there, once mixed.
Hmm, we’ve have excellent reports here on WUWT about the gigo of the computer models used by “climate scientists”..
Instead here’s an example from real life and traditional physics which has to really understand the properties and processes of chlorine gas:
http://rense.com/general61/SCtraincrashkills8.htm
“A team from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived to investigate, and the Federal Railroad Administration said it was sending a 9-member team to assist the safety board investigators.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01
/07/national/07derail.html
ProMED-mail
promed@promedmail.org
“Chlorine gas is moderately soluble in water. It reacts with the moisture in the respiratory system to result in irritation of the respiratory system, the eyes, the nose, and almost any other mucus membrane. The irritation is prolonged in moist conditions. Chlorine may combine with the water to form hypochlorous and hydrochloric acid, which are intensely irritating.
“Chlorine gas is greenish-yellow and generally heavier than air, so it stays near the ground; without a wind, or in damp conditions, it is not immediately dissipated.”
Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
So, like real carbon dioxide heavier than air will sink and attracted to water in the atmosphere will come down in the rain, not like AGWSF’s imaginary ideal gases without mass and therefore no movement from relative weight because not subject to gravity and with no attraction therefore incapable of joining with water in the atmosphere…
“And as said before: in a 70 meter column of stagnant air (in firn), CO2 is enriched with about 1% at the bottom of the column after 40 years time. Thus how could CO2 separate from the atmosphere when winds, convection, turbulence mix everything everywhere during the same 40 years?
I have tried to explain that real gases have volume, weight, attraction and subject to gravity are the winds, winds aren’t something stirring up the atmosphere, but are parts of the atmosphere on the move. Winds are volumes of air on the move created by the differential heating of volumes of air, real gases expand when heated and so become less dense under gravity and so lighter than air they rise creating an area of low pressure, and as they rise they take away heat from the surface of the Earth into the colder heights where they give up their heat. In doing so they become colder and so condense, thus becoming more dense under gravity they create areas of cold high pressure and heavier than air will sink displacing air and flow into areas of low pressure: high because heavier, low because lighter – I’ve only just thought of that, it’s a good way to remember it – the mnemonics from meteorology are “hot air rises, cold air sinks” and “winds flow from high to low”. Now you know why..
This should make sense if you understand real gases under gravity which have volume and which can expand and condense and do so when heated or cooled, and, because they have mass have weight which means they can separate out from the mass volume of air of our atmosphere even at the same temperature when they are heavier or lighter than air, like carbon dioxide and chlorine heavier than air, more dense under gravity, will sink, and methane and water vapour lighter than air, less dense under gravity, will rise..
This is what convection means, and winds are convection currents. Volumes of fluid gas on the move. They flow from high to low and from hotter to colder, 2nd law, spontaneously, just like water always flows downhill, it takes work to change that. So, our main winds are created by the intense heating of land and water at the equator, from where they rise and flow to the cold poles, where they cool and sink and flow back to the equator, they do not cross hemispheres but stick to their own. Add in the spin of the Earth for the actual patterns created. See a good meteorological site…
Winds are also local and It is not always windy… Again Ferdinand, I am looking out of my window and this time there is a breeze, a light breeze and moving not just the tops of the trees I can see in my garden but gently moving the lower branches. When the wind stops whatever carbon dioxide is in that volume will begin sinking because heavier than air, it will come to the ground where the plants are waiting for it.. On a day like this I should light a small bonfire to distribute more carbon dioxide around my garden, as they up the levels in real greenhouses in the real world which works from traditional physics, which knows that visible light converts to chemical energy, sugars, not heat, and designs their lamps for photosynthesis accordingly..
This is a living dynamic Cycle, the Carbon Life Cycle, which includes the Water Cycle – AGWSF doesn’t have any of this. It can’t get winds or rain from its propertyless, processless, massless, non-existant ideal gas world – it can’t even create an atmosphere, but goes straight from the surface to empty space. So there is no sound in their world.
This difference has to be understood as these arguments are very much confused by the mix of traditional terms misused. The AGW world is physically impossible, they are climate scientists without any climate.
I hope you can hear what I’m saying.

gymnosperm says:
May 12, 2013 at 8:22 am
Keep always in mind that the human contribution is only about 5% of an enormous natural flux moving in many directions. It is pretty meaningless to argue that this 12C is ours and that 13C is not. How would we know who’s 12C it is? Who cares? It mixes very well and it is obviously increasing. We toss our 5% skewed to 12 into the machine and watch it hum. We measure the result and 12 is increasing. That’s all we know.
Not so difficult to know where the extra 12C is coming from: There are no other sources of 13C depleted CO2, except land plants decay. But the oxygen balance shows that land plants are currently more sink than source: the “greening earth”. All other natural sources (oceans, volcanoes, carbonate rock weathering,…) are higher in 13C/12C ratio than the atmosphere.
But there is a firm decrease of the 13C/12C ratio in the atmosphere and in the oceans surface layer, in lockstep with human emissions:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif

Myrrh said: So, what they are saying at Lampadusa, is that if you want to know where their carbon dioxide comes from you have to look to the source which is the winds carrying it in as they say is clearly shown in the spike of 97/98 El Niño….Wiggles are produced by natural variation, as we saw in the winter and summer differences of the US study. If there really was such a critter as the claimed “well-mixed background of carbon dioxide that can be measured anywhere” and “these stations in pristine unpolluted by local production show it”, there wouldn’t be any wiggles. Like the elaborate sciency sounding descriptions of the collection method at Mauna Loa, the seasonal variation wiggles distract from closer scrutiny of that claim.
Myrh, should the annual plant cycle have no effect then? The problem with your “wouldn’t be any wiggles if well-mixed” theory is doesn’t jive with the evidence. The early spring minimum in the NH coincides with minimum NH vegetation and it doesn’t show up nearly as much in the SH which can’t counteract it having a lot less land. Also the earth’s annual temperature wiggle matches up with the CO2 wiggle since earth is at perihelion (closer to the sun) in the NH winter (SH summer). The closeness to the sun produces a warmer global average temperature which produces a greater amount of CO2 in NH winter / early spring. The Italian study (Lampedusa) concluded that there was a strong correlation between global temperature and CO2 with a 3 month lag.
So there should be a wiggle from those two overlapping causes. If CO2 is well mixed there should be a matching (by date, not amplitude) wiggle most locations. The match is not perfect so mixing is not either. The origin of the sampled air at Lampedusa caused 4-5 ppm variation according to their text. But that is exceeded by the amplitude of the wiggle (10 ppm) and the amount of the rise. So cherry picking measurements using variations of that amplitude cannot explain the wiggle or the rise.

eric1skeptic says:
May 12, 2013 at 7:41 pm
My point is that the claim specifically says that carbon dioxide is rapidly and thoroughly mixed and can’t be unmixed and this is the same all over the globe and this background measurement is what is being measured and it is free of any local/seasonal variations because it mixes rapidly and thorougly. The claim is that high on top of the world’s largest active volcano surrounded by tons of volcanic activity from many nearby volcanoes also erupting, venting, earthquaking, above and below sea which is warm, and hot land so hot gases rise, there is no way that Mauna Loa is not measuring this coming down from its so call “pristine high above it all” station, and calling it non-volcanic is sleight of hand.