It seems we didn’t reach 400PPM last week after all. The data has been revised. Ooops.
‘Carbon dioxide measurements in the Earth’s atmosphere did not break the symbolic milestone of 400 parts per million at a Hawaiian observatory last week, according to a revised reading from the nation’s climate observers.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revised its May 9 reading at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, saying it remained fractions of a point below the level of 400 ppm, at 399.89′
Source: LA Times
Oh well, there’s always next week…or maybe not, since spring in the Northern Hemisphere tends to reduce CO2 as plants suck up all that CO2 that some claim is not plant food.
Still time to get t-shirts though.
H/t to Marc Morano
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Well this is great for them. They’ll wait until it happens for real and celebrate all over again, ignoring that they look like fools for celebrating prematurely. The American public has a short memory anyway, nobody will notice.
Shades of Harold Camping…… The Co2 rapture has been rescheduled
Correction ( or maybe not, it is rather late 11.pm)
Its a good thing we’ve reached about 400 ppm, this puts us around the bottom end of the “safe” range of CO2 concentrations – judging by the history of the phanerozoic – which extends to a maximum of at least 7000:
http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/289/logwarmingpaleoclimate.png
The dangerous region is below 400ppm.
Guess the missing small fraction of a PPM of CO2 explains why it is still so abnormally cool this late in Spring in the Kansas City area. (Sarc off)
Imagine if we took traffic counts like they do temperature readings (or CO2 readings apparently), invisible traffic jams?. Or how about student head counts for schools, occupied hospital bed counts.
Yea, I sent the nurse around last week, she counted 200 occupied beds, but I’ve revised that figure down. We actualy had 180 occupied beds. What ?
Oh, and Mann was on Democracynow.org today explaining how we’re all going to be dead from hockey stickyness…
Bait and Switch. It’s what climatology is all about.
How clever. It means we can have another commotion about passing 400ppm next year.
To be honest, I like Paul Whitefield’s report better (made me laugh louder):
Global warming ruins SoCal Mother’s Day
News flash: Global warming hits California!
That’s right — the Golden State has become the Golden Baking State, with temperatures soaring into the triple digits. For example, in Johnny Carson’s “beautiful downtown Burbank” on Sunday, the thermometer hit 103 — hot enough to melt Ed McMahon’s smile.
And on Mother’s Day no less! Apparently it really isn’t nice to fool with Mother Nature.
You may think this is just a “heat wave.” But you’re wrong. This is Al Gore Vindication Day. This is climate Armageddon.
Read the rest of the comedy sketch here; http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-global-warming-california-heat-wave-20130513,0,6113996.story
mwhite says, on May 13, 2013 at 11:09 am, in part:
>“180 Years accurate CO2 – Gasanalysis of Air by Chemical Methods
>(Short version)”
>http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf
This is the Beck stuff. That has a shortcoming, shown well to exist in the
“Wisconsin Tower Story”. (Web search “Wisconsin Tower” CO2.) The
cited CO2 measurements were mostly over land with active biomass, which
alternates between CO2-courcing and CO2-sinking. The land tends to
sink CO2 when the sun is shining, and ground-level air tends to be
convecting with air from above that has CO2 close to “background”.
When the sun is down or it is cloudy, the land is usually sourcing CO2,
and there is usually little or no convection – so the land-sourced stays
close to the surface.
The result of this is that surface CO2 concentrations deviate upward
from “background” a lot more easily than downward.
jorgekafkazar (May 13, 2013 at 12:50 pm) At the same time that SH Spring is bringing salubrious weather there, raising oceanic surface temperatures and allowing more CO2 to be evolved, Fall is descending on the NH, killing leaves, and causing less CO2 to be used in photosynthesis, so CO2 goes up. And vice versa 6 months later. I suspect the more powerful mechanism is the oceanic temperature change.
The production of CO2 comes from warmer waters as you point out, but more importantly perihelion so the entire earth’s waters are warmer on average (along with the atmospheric temperature). But there is a lag. The warmer water comes first with perihelion in January. Then the peak in CO2 comes a few months later. I’m not sure which is mechanism is more powerful, but they overlap and may be hard to tell apart.
petermue says, on May 13, 2013 at 11:36 am:
>I still wonder why MLO data should be the measure of all things.
>It is also obviously, that CO2 content of the atmosphere is *not* well mixed.
>Looking for some CO2 land measurements I found those curious stations:
>An almost constant mean value here
>http://umweltluege.de/images/co2Puszcza-Borecka-Diabla-Gora-IOEP.png
I see irregularities being mainly upward deviations from the background
level reported by Mauna Loa and other sites reporting attempt at the
background level. See my recent previous comment about how surface
CO2 concentration deviations from atmospheric background are
disproportionately upwards.
>or a constant value of 341 ppm here
>http://umweltluege.de/images/co2beobulgaria.png
This is a mere 2 years. It’s easy to cherrypick a 2 year period. Note the
large swings compared to Mauna Loa report of “background CO2”- this is
typical of surface measurements without filtering for local surface CO2
deviating from a pattern of trend and pattern of local weather conditions
indicating that the CO2 concentration is close to that of the atmosphere
as a whole.
It is also easy to cherrypick for low readings. Surface CO2 concentration
deviating from that of the atmosphere as a whole is only generally mostly
upward, not exclusively upward. For example, vegetated areas don’t
always experience convection when they experience sunlight, or sufficient
daylight to make them CO2 sinks.
Both datasets are from the WMO WDCGG website.
Great, they get to take another run at it.
“Vince Causey says:
May 13, 2013 at 11:17 am
Praise the Lord – we’re saved!”
Phew. That nearly 1ppm less CO2 sure makes a difference. The doomsday clock has been reset. 🙂
That explains why the earth didn’t burn up last week.
Just wait till it hits 400ppm.
cn
Ken Gregory says, on May 13, 2013 at 1:39 pm:
>I update CO2 content and global temperatures from satellite
>measurement almost monthly for this graph on the Friends of Science
>website. It shows the seasonal CO2 variations.
>http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=453
I note that they appear as skeptic of manmade global warming, but
they cite Mauna Loa CO2 determinations.
Something else I note: They said, “The temperature spikes in 1998
and 2010 were caused by strong El Ninos, which are unrelated to
global warming.”
They would appear more balanced if they said that the 2000, 2008,
and 2011-2012 dips were caused by La Ninas, unrelated to lack of
global warming.
I can cite both a strong El Nino and a strong La Nina in the
1982-1986 stretch. I would want neutrality for these, unless limiting
comment to the century-class 1998 El Nino.
So, I advise filtering for all cited events, and estimating the true rate
of global warming as a result of increase of CO2. Also, consider that
there are some manmade greenhouse gases other than CO2, whose
atmospheric increrase was largely stalled in the 1990’s.
Also, consider a periodic natural cycle that shows up in long term
surface indices of global temperature, best-shown in HadCRUT3.
After that, figure out (or estimate) how much the CO2 increase is
warming the globe. The amount is more than zero, but I see a lot less
than advocates of existence of manmade global warming are expecting.
You mean we’re not doomed?
How disappointing.
~It reminds me of the withdrawal of US marines from Grenada. The BBC reported half had just left. the next day another half left. a few days later only half remained. This went on for about two weeks. Who says the USMC dont do things by halves. or the BBC.
March says, on May 13, 2013 at 1:56 pm:
>Celebration back on?
>According to SCRIPPs..
>http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/special-note-on-may-9-2013-reading/
>Special note on May 9, 2013 reading
>May 10, 2013 … May 10 Comment:
>NOAA has reported 400.03 for May 9, 2013, while Scripps has reported
>399.73. The difference partly reflects different reporting periods. NOAA
>uses UTC, whereas Scripps uses local time in Hawaii to define the 24-hr
>reporting period. If Scripps were to use same reporting period as NOAA,
>we would report 400.08 for May 9.
When will we get a monthly report of a whole month averaging 400-plus
PPMV CO2? I expect in 2014, maybe as late as 2015.
And, when would we get our first year averaging 400-plus PPMV? That
will probably be 2016, maybe 2017. When will we get our first year with
every month averaging 400-plus PPMV? I expect that to be 2018, maybe
2019.
What is CO2 likely to be at 2030? I expect around 430 PPMV, maybe
lurching towards 450. And what is global climate likely to be then? I
expect close to 1997-to-now average, maybe Antarctic warming a little
and maybe Arctic cooling a little after 2012. The CO2 increase will
probably hardly or almost overcome a natural cycle downturn, as I see it.
And when the natural cycles re-uptick from ~2035 to ~2070. CO2 will
probably be above 500 PPMV before 2070, and may push or surpass
600 PPMV around 2080. I expect maybe 1 degree C warming from the
recent warm decade, mostly in the 2035-2080 stretch.
As for tipping points: I see earth history and atmospheric physics
indicating that the feedbacks get less positive as the world warms in
interglacial temperatures. I even see the feedbacks going negative
as the world warms towards its historical higher temperatures.
Now that we have Antarctica centered close to the South Pole, I
see 1200 PPMV of CO2 having low chance of destroying most of
its year-round ice cover.
The Americas continents getting connected around 3 million years
ago, as said in a different thread, may be a factor.
“Oh well, there’s always next week…or maybe not, since spring in the Northern Hemisphere tends to reduce CO2”
—
All the alarmists hyperventilating over this news might just push CO2 over 400 despite the advent of spring.
I have always wondered why CO2 is taken in close proximity to a CO2 producing exhaust pipe. IT really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense except for the local area to do this..
I am surprised we dont do it out in the ocean on a marker away from such things to get a more static level of atmospheric mixtures.
Bill H says:
May 13, 2013 at 9:32 pm
I have always wondered why CO2 is taken in close proximity to a CO2 producing exhaust pipe. IT really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense except for the local area to do this..
In fact, the measurements with the new very accurate NDIR method started at the South Pole, about one year before Mauna Loa. But because they lack a few years of continuous measurements (but infilled them with regular flask samples), Mauna Loa has the longest continuous record.
It is quite simple to detect if there is local contamination downwind from volcanic vents at the station: that causes a high variability within an hour. The criteria for volcanic contamination used are:
CO2 SD 1.0 ppm; wind direction sector 135°-225°; wind speed 1.35 m s-1.
In 1994 there were 24 hours influenced by volcanic vents, in 1995, 9 hours.
http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/websites/www.cmdl.noaa.gov/publications/annrpt23/chapter1_1.htm
Seeing the graphs of Mauna Loa over the last days, the 400+ ppmv looks as an outlier and probably caused by volcanic vents. Volcanic contaminated data are excluded from daily, monthly and yearly averages. Probably the reason that NOAA didn’t make the 400 ppmv official…
– first of all here is a direct link to the LA times story
– Some idiot posted about this 3 days ago on Bishop-Hill unthreaded — ME
I had been closely watching the Keeling twitter feed. So on Friday morning I was astonished to see that BBC was reporting the that Thursday level had gone above 400ppm. I then saw the BBC were quoting NOAA not Scripps, which is strange cos they are using the same instruments. That’s when I first saw that Special note @March mentioned (so it is not a case of “Celebration back on” cos the figures were revised down after then.)
– but it is a bit fuzzy how from the same instruments 2 different organisations can give 2 different readings. They say it is not as straightforward as all being due to timezone “The difference partly reflects time zone differences. ”
-I wrote : ” but that same page gives information about how they are having difficulty with the measuring equipment. So no wonder they are not giving any info on the margin of error. Seems to me CO2 is around 400ppm, but may not certainly be above 400ppm”
– but I also wrote : “I predicted that Co2 might not reach 400ppm this year
but I forgot that in Climate Science figures can be magically ADJUSTED upwards after the event” ..wrong about the direction of adjustment
– latest figs from NOAA
– Keeling’s latest figs are on their Twitter feed
..both figures tend to be about 72 hours late for some reason