From CSIRO:
“What we learned is that in spite of droughts, floods, volcano eruptions, El Niño and other events, the Earth system has been remarkably consistent in regulating the inter-annual variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels,”
Tropical ecosystems regulate variations in Earth’s carbon dioxide levels
Rising temperatures, influenced by natural events such as El Niño, have a corresponding increase in the release of carbon dioxide from tropical forest ecosystems, according to a new study out today.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that a temperature anomaly of just 1ºC (in near surface air temperatures in the tropics) leads to a 3.5-Petagram (billion tonnes of carbon) anomaly in the annual CO2 growth rate, on average. This is the equivalent of 1/3 of the annual global emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and deforestation together.
Importantly, the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) study results provide scientists with a new diagnostic tool to understand the global carbon cycle as it undergoes major changes due to the influences of human activities.
NASA study co-author, CSIRO’s Dr Pep Canadell, said that the study’s 50-year analysis centred on temperature and rainfall patterns during El Niño years, when temperatures increase in tropical regions and rainfall decreases. An accompanying analysis assessed the effects of volcanic eruptions, which lead to decreased temperatures due to volcanic aerosols in the atmosphere.
“Our study indicates that carbon exchanges in tropical ecosystems are extremely sensitive to temperature, and they respond with the release of emissions when warmer temperatures occur”.
“Many processes involved in this response are the same as what is known as the carbon-climate feedback, which it is thought will lead to an acceleration of carbon emissions from vegetation and soils and into the atmosphere under future climate change.
“The observed temperature changes are more important than changes in rainfall in influencing concentration of atmospheric CO2“.
“Warming is the one thing that we know with most certainty will occur under climate change in the tropics, but there are still large uncertainties about the future precipitation in tropical regions,” says Dr Canadell, who is also Executive Director of the Canberra-based Global Carbon Project.
“What we have is a strong and robust coupling between seasonal variations in atmospheric CO2 growth and tropical temperatures over the past 50 years and this provides us with a key diagnostic tool to assist in our understanding of the global carbon cycle,” he said.
The team, led by Dr Weile Wang, analysed widely available data on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global air temperature between 1959 and 2011.
“What we learned is that in spite of droughts, floods, volcano eruptions, El Niño and other events, the Earth system has been remarkably consistent in regulating the inter-annual variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels,” said Dr Weile Wang, lead author of the paper.
The team used the NEX platform to analyse outputs from several global dynamic vegetation models to understand the mechanisms underlying the persistent coupling and the role of tropical ecosystems in the observed coupling.
The study highlights the importance of long-term observations of temperature and carbon dioxide, simple yet crucial, for improving our understanding of the Earth system.
What they found was, unlike in other parts of the planet, year-to-year changes in temperature over the tropics act in concert on both photosynthesis (absorption of carbon dioxide) and respiration (release of carbon dioxide), the two important mechanisms that naturally regulate year-to-year changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
“For example, a rise in temperature over the tropical regions results in a decline in photosynthesis as well as an increase in carbon losses through respiration, amplifying the temperature effect on carbon cycling” says Rama Nemani, Principal scientist for the NEX project.
The study highlights the importance of long-term observations of temperature and carbon dioxide, simple yet crucial, for improving our understanding of the Earth system.
The study was supported by NASA’s Earth Exchange project, the Australian Climate Change Science Program, and the Global Carbon Project.
Read more media releases in our Media section.
Wang A, Ciaisc P, Nemanid RR, Canadelle JG, Piaof S, Sitch S, Whitei MA, Hashimotoa H, Milesia C, Mynenij RB. 2013. Variations in atmospheric CO2 growth rates coupled with tropical temperature. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Joe says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:11 pm
“Surely, if CO2 is a strong driver of temperature then that much of an effect, especially in the exact part of the globe that should be most sensitive to it, would create an overwhelming positive feedback?”
Very astute of you. The answer is YES. Which is why we (well, you and I at least) know there can be no significant forcing of temperature by CO2.
CSIRO + models = Junk^2
“The team, led by Dr Weile Wang, analysed widely available data on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global air temperature between 1959 and 2011.”
They probably played for a minute with woodfortrees, then sat on their lard asses for 6 months and cashed in a 500,000 AUD grant?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/derivative/from:1979/normalise/plot/uah/from:1960/normalise
1 petagram = 1 gigatonne = 1 billion tonnes (American) = 1 milliard tonnes or 0.001 billion tonnes (British)
bw says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:30 pm
“One primary characteristic of Biology is that of internal self-regulation, aka homeostasis.
It’s not surprising (to biologists) that eco-systems on a planetary scale for billions of years have produced an environment that promotes self-regulating characteristics, ie negative feedback. James Lovelock has been saying this for most of his life.”
Which didn’t stop him from also cashing in big time as a latter day catastrophist, starting with his participation in the Endangered Atmosphere conference in Stanford, 1975, with Schneider, Holdren and Mead.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
What an intelligent double-faced crook.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:48 pm
“… 8 ppmv/°C change… over 100 ppmv/°C”
It is not a direct proportional relationship like this. Temperature modulates the natural flux rate of CO2 into the atmosphere, and that rate then accumulates.
Interesting article and would be more interesting if it weren’t for the anthropomorphisms on CO2 regulation and the use of units (petagram, etc) that sound really big and aren’t easily recognized.
This is the hallmark of a closed loop system dominated by negative feedback. A system that is remarkably stable despite significant impulses (upsets).
“What we learned is that in spite of droughts, floods, volcano eruptions, El Niño and other events, the Earth system has been remarkably consistent in regulating the inter-annual variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels,”
Owen in GA said:
July 23, 2013 at 12:27 pm
Mark and two Cats says:
July 23, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Earth’s self regulation of Carbon Dioxide is remarkably stable
————————————————-
Doesn’t that statement imply that the earth is sentient?
CO2 level is what it is; no “stable” or “unstable” level except what humans ascribe to it. Gaia isn’t desperately trying to balance out the CO2 man is contributing to the environment against some predetermined standard.
Maybe I am picking at nits, but it kinda bugs me when stuff like this creeps into the collective subconscious.
It doesn’t at all imply sentience. A level regulating amplifier isn’t sentient yet will keep an output level to within a small variance of levels dictated by its component specifications over rather large input swings. If the Earth system is taken as a whole, the biosphere response could be (overly simply) modeled as a regulating amplifier for CO2 (all other inputs – sun, nutrients, water being sufficient to support the growth). As with any regulating amplifier, it can reach oversaturation, but looking at the geological record, I don’t think we will be reaching any of the extremes seen in the past that did not oversaturate this system. In the Earth model sense however, the components seem to have evolved by chance (or selected by a creator for those of a religious bent) to achieve this effect It also seems to be a bit imperfect at its task, or else the CO2 levels would be absolutely flat.
Ok, so my electronics background is coming out again – I always seem to come back to amplifiers for my analogies.
—————————————-
“A level regulating amplifier isn’t sentient yet will keep an output level to within a small variance of levels dictated by its component specifications…”
An amplifier is built to a purpose dictated by its designer.
So if there are CO2 specifications that are being regulated for – it sounds like “intelligent design”.
“In the Earth model sense however, the components seem to have evolved by chance (or selected by a creator for those of a religious bent)…”
As an Agnostic, I cannot make any statement about chance/creator; I was just commenting on the observational bias of assigning a balance or imbalance to the CO2 level.
Thanks to those who answered my lay-person question about peta/giga!
Bart says:
July 23, 2013 at 1:01 pm
It is not a direct proportional relationship like this. Temperature modulates the natural flux rate of CO2 into the atmosphere, and that rate then accumulates.
The direct relationship the researchers found is ~3 ppmv/°C, if you take the temperature variation extremes as base (1992 Pinatubo and 1998 El Niño), you may get 4-5 ppmv/°C. But if you integrate the observed accumulation (which has very little to do with temperature), you get 2 ppmv/year which gives some 70 ppmv increase over the past 50 years for a few tenths of a °C or over 100 ppmv/°C…
When these guys get into small items, they forget they are negating the catechism of CO2-causes- warming (in this hypothesis, warming causes CO2!). So the tropics are the key, not the poles and we already know that SST can’t exceed 31C or it kicks in the “Thermostat” of clouds and thunderstorms.
Brazil’s weather – gee it’s cooler than you think.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Brazil
“There is little seasonal variation near the equator, although at times it can get cool enough for wearing a jacket, especially in the rain….Snow falls more frequently in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná and less frequently in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Espírito Santo. Temperatures in the cities of Belo Horizonte and Brasília are moderate, usually between 15 °C (59 °F) and 30 °C (86 °F), because of their elevation of approximately 1,000 meters (3,281 ft). Rio de Janeiro, Recife, and Salvador on the coast have warm climates, with average temperatures of each month ranging from 23 to 27 °C (73.4 to 80.6 °F), but enjoy constant trade winds. The cities of São Paulo, Curitiba, Florianópolis and Porto Alegre have a subtropical climate similar to that of southern United States, and temperatures can fall below freezing in winter.”
Here are 2 papers which probably show a part of this self-regulation.
Let’s just hope we don’t get runaway greening.
This appears to me to be confirmation of Professor Murry Salby’s findings on temperature controlling atmospheric CO2 content and thus the falsification of the hypothesis that CO2 controls temperature and further it should be the end of this part of the CAGW saga.
Ahh, but it is far worse than that you see, because if you tell an American something weighs 1 billion tons, they assume you are using the 1 ton = 2000 lbs unit and that would not be correct. Here you have to say metric tons every time or we will think you mean something about 4.4 times as massive as you actually mean. Sometimes folks in America forget there is such a thing as a metric ton, being as metric adverse as we are, so even saying metric ton won’t convey the meaning. I had forgotten about the “milliard” term, as I had only heard it as 1,000 million in the past.
So the line goes like:
1 petagram = 1 gigatonne = 227+ million tons (American)= 1billion metric tons (American) = 1 milliard tonnes or 0.001 billion tonnes(British). (though I have seen some movement in British circles to use the American numbers on this so who knows where that contamination will lead – tower of Babel anyone?)
All these English speakers who misunderstand each other worse because we all assume we know what the others are saying when the meanings of the words have subtle differences amongst the different populations. Then throw in the poor other natives language speakers who observe these conversations through their own translation filters. It is a wonder any of us can get a concept across at all. I had to look up CSIRO to see it was Australian before I realized DirkH was absolutely correct that I had mistranslated Australian to American.
Owen in GA @ur momisugly 12:50 – There are about 2.2 lb per kg, so your math could still line up to climate scientist standards. About an order of magnitude agreement seems to be a job well done.
Hate when I look at the fraction upside down…I should have written it down on paper first, I always do that when I type my math. Then I don’t catch my mistake until I try to actually use the figures and see there is way too much or way too little material.
Good catch!
“Warming is the one thing that we know with most certainty will occur under climate change in the tropics … ”
Uh-huh. But it isn’t happening. Seems to me this is modelling addiction talking.
But wait … ” … Canberra-based Global Carbon Project”. Grant money addiction talking as well?
Until recently, the polls indicated a wipe-out of their current benefactors, but that is now looking slightly less certain. They might “get well” after all ….
David Albert says:
July 23, 2013 at 1:40 pm
This appears to me to be confirmation of Professor Murry Salby’s findings on temperature controlling atmospheric CO2 content
Sorry to disappoint you. The not so recent findings of this research is only for the interannual variations, where fast responding temperature dependent processes are at work: ocean surface waters and plant uptake/respiration.
Not directly connected to what happens with slower processes which are pressure dependent: uptake by the deep oceans and uptake by plants in more permanent carbon storage (peat, browncoal, coal,…). Quite different, unrelated processes at work…
So to fix my post of 1:41 about the line…
we think there is 0.9 times rather than 4.4 times (makes more sense since people like to throw them around as though they are equivalent.)
and the line becomes:
1 petagram = 1 gigatonne = 1.1 billion tons (American)= 1billion metric tons (American) = 1 milliard tonnes or 0.001 billion tonnes(British).
I tell you: look at one fraction upside down and the whole conversion chain collapses.
Owen in GA says:
July 23, 2013 at 1:41 pm
What?
Let’s not make this more confusing that it absolutely has to be. I saw the word “tonnes”, not “tons”, so there is no confusion: a “tonne” is a “metric ton” or 1,000 kilograms, or 2,200 pounds. A “ton” is not 4.4 times as massive as a “tonne”; quite the contrary — it ss about 10% less massive.
Now the confusion over “billion” is really unfortunate — especially since we bandy that unit about so commonly in discussions of government spending.
“Britain and America: two great nations divided by a common language”. — variously attributed, but most like Geroge Bernard Shaw.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 23, 2013 at 1:19 pm
“The direct relationship the researchers found is ~3 ppmv/°C…”
Then, they do not understand how the system works, and you are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, and claiming the hole does not exist because you cannot do it.
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
July 23, 2013 at 1:56 pm
“Not directly connected to what happens with slower processes which are pressure dependent: uptake by the deep oceans and uptake by plants in more permanent carbon storage (peat, browncoal, coal,…). Quite different, unrelated processes at work…”
Sorry to disappoint you, but natural systems do not behave in this manner. We see none of the resulting phase distortion in the observations which would be required for such fast/slow delineations. The temperature fits the rate of change of CO2 like a glove. It is all you need to reconstruct CO2 in the last 5 decades.
Not really. Warming is the one thing most certain to occur under global warming in the tropics, but the good doctor Canadell has apparently missed the memo about avoiding any commitment to actual warming, lest the instrumental record prove uncooperative, so he did not properly reflect the latest consensus of 97% of climate scientists. He should have said:
There: at least as scarey and harder to falsify.
Almost as though the earth was organized that way :)…….
Bart says:
July 23, 2013 at 2:29 pm
Next round?
Then, they do not understand how the system works, and you are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, and claiming the hole does not exist because you cannot do it.
The seasonal and multidecadal to multi-millennial response of vegetation on a temperature increase is more uptake (reverse of ocean surfaces).
The interannual response of vegetation to an increase in temperature is a net release of CO2 (the same as for ocean surfaces).
Thus surely different processes at work…
Rest will be for tomorrow, need some sleep now…
bw says,
“Physicists have no clue how the carbon cycle works on a planetary scale because they ignore biology. Atmospheric evolution is a study of biology. ‘Earth’s atmosphere is entirely a product of biology’, except Argon which is geological. Water is the fluid that ties biology to geology.”
Very nice bw. Perhaps there is something to be gained by a complete picture of Carbon and CO2 and not looking at those in a sort of one dimensional way. To say that CO2 does one thing and one thing only.
My shorthand for the situation. Carbon is Life. CO2 is Life. H2O is Life. These 3 elements: C, H, and O are central to Life. Have they and their common compounds gone rogue?