How far into the past can ice-core records go? Scientists have now identified regions in Antarctica they say could store information about Earth’s climate and greenhouse gases extending as far back as 1.5 million years, almost twice as old as the oldest ice core drilled to date. The results are published in Climate of the Past, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
Potential oldest ice study areas (Credit: Van Liefferinge and Pattyn)
By studying the past climate, scientists can understand better how temperature responds to changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere. This, in turn, allows them to make better predictions about how climate will change in the future.
“Ice cores contain little air bubbles and, thus, represent the only direct archive of the composition of the past atmosphere,” says Hubertus Fischer, an experimental climate physics professor at the University of Bern in Switzerland and lead author of the study. A 3.2-km-long ice core drilled almost a decade ago at Dome Concordia (Dome C) in Antarctica revealed 800,000 years of climate history, showing that greenhouse gases and temperature have mostly moved in lockstep. Now, an international team of scientists wants to know what happened before that.
At the root of their quest is a climate transition that marine-sediment studies reveal happened some 1.2 million years to 900,000 years ago. “The Mid Pleistocene Transition is a most important and enigmatic time interval in the more recent climate history of our planet,” says Fischer. The Earth’s climate naturally varies between times of warming and periods of extreme cooling (ice ages) over thousands of years. Before the transition, the period of variation was about 41 thousand years while afterwards it became 100 thousand years. “The reason for this change is not known.”
Climate scientists suspect greenhouse gases played a role in forcing this transition, but they need to drill into the ice to confirm their suspicions. “The information on greenhouse-gas concentrations at that time can only be gained from an Antarctic ice core covering the last 1.5 million years. Such an ice core does not exist yet, but ice of that age should be in principle hidden in the Antarctic ice sheet.”
As snow falls and settles on the surface of an ice sheet, it is compacted by the weight of new snow falling on top of it and is transformed into solid glacier ice over thousands of years. The weight of the upper layers of the ice sheet causes the deep ice to spread, causing the annual ice layers to become thinner and thinner with depth. This produces very old ice at depths close to the bedrock.
However, drilling deeper to collect a longer ice core does not necessarily mean finding a core that extends further into the past. “If the ice thickness is too high the old ice at the bottom is getting so warm by geothermal heating that it is melted away,” Fischer explains. “This is what happens at Dome C and limits its age to 800,000 years.”
To complicate matters further, horizontal movements of the ice above the bedrock can disturb the bottommost ice, causing its annual layers to mix up.
“To constrain the possible locations where such 1.5 million-year old – and in terms of its layering undisturbed – ice could be found in Antarctica, we compiled the available data on climate and ice conditions in the Antarctic and used a simple ice and heat flow model to locate larger areas where such old ice may exist,” explains co-author Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey, now at the University of Cambridge.
The team concluded that 1.5 million-year old ice should still exist at the bottom of East Antarctica in regions close to the major Domes, the highest points on the ice sheet, and near the South Pole, as described in the new Climate of the Past study. These results confirm those of another study, also recently published in Climate of the Past.
Crucially, they also found that an ice core extending that far into the past should be between 2.4 and 3-km long, shorter than the 800,000-year-old core drilled in the previous expedition.
The next step is to survey the identified drill sites to measure the ice thickness and temperature at the bottom of the ice sheet before selecting a final drill location.
“A deep drilling project in Antarctica could commence within the next 3–5 years,” Fischer states. “This time would also be needed to plan the drilling logistically and create the funding for such an exciting large-scale international research project, which would cost around 50 million euros.”
More information
This research is presented in the paper ‘Where to find 1.5 million yr old ice for the IPICS “Oldest Ice” ice core’ published in the EGU open access journal Climate of the Past on 05 November 2013. Please mention the publication if reporting on this story and, if reporting online, include a link to the paper or to the journal website.
Full citation: Fischer, H. et al.: Where to find 1.5 million yr old ice for the IPICS ‘Oldest-Ice’ ice core, Clim. Past, 9, 2489-2505, doi:10.5194/cp-9-2489-2013, 2013.
The other study mentioned in the release is by Van Liefferinge, B. and Pattyn, F.: Using ice-flow models to evaluate potential sites of million year-old ice in Antarctica, Clim. Past., 9, 2335–2345, 2013.
The general “consensus” appears to be that Antarctica is the Earth’s largest and one of its driest deserts, but even in that very dry place the slowest accumulating areas still receive at least 1inch pwe (precipitable water equivalent) per annum, at least as near as I have discovered. Although other areas may receive 6 inches or more annually, I will for the purposes of discussion use the 1 inch number as a continental average. Over 1.5 million years 1″/yr = 125,000 feet or 23.67 miles. At the temperatures common there 1 inch w.e. probably equals 1-2 feet of snow and even as highly compressed ice that 23+ miles of w.e. would likely represent something between 25 and 30 miles of ice sheet thickness, but although, except for a very limited coastal periphery, there has been no opportunity at all for the ice sheet to melt away, the Antarctic ice sheet has remained at an average thickness of about 1 mile, with the thickest segments at just over 2 miles. Given the conservative assumptions I’ve used and because it suits my sense of argumentative symmetry, I would suggest that it is quite likely that “97%” of the collective precipitation deposited on Antarctica in the last 1.5 million yrs is now gone, gone, gone. Some may have sublimated, more likely it has extruded out in those Manhattan, Rhode Island, or other geographical unit sized chunks that are routinely shuffled off into the waiting seas, but however it has gone its absence makes the assumption that you can take a drill rig out onto the Antarctic ice sheet at any point on the map and by dropping a shaft to bedrock capture a record of what happened at that location over any but relatively short, at least in geologic terms, timescales extremely dubious.
For 50 million euros I would expect them to find dark matter by the time they finish..
Having been a diver at one time in my life I always wonder about the pressure release and consequences relating to the trapped gasses when they bring the cores to the surface….suppose I should look it up.
I’d be more interested in ice cores with better resolution, i.e. quality, not length.
I don’t think this means what you think it means.
re: the Moshbot
Since Mosher is such an unmitigated genius (shall we say Soooper Geeenyus?), the Moshbot will soon become self-aware. When that happens, it will be easy to spot, since every post it makes will only be in response to actual Moshposts, and will always start with “Mosher you F%@ur momisugly#& moron!”
And so the mighty shall fall.
/parody
As your post documents, the data required much exertion to fit to the desired plots. But calling it “exerted” is still ungrammatical. <;P
Brian H says:
November 6, 2013 at 10:51 pm
As your post documents, the data required much exertion to fit to the desired plots. But calling it “exerted” is still ungrammatical. <;P
——————
exert – 1. To put to use or effect; put forth:
Excuse me, but I was the one who exerted (extracted) those three (3) statements from the quoted text …. “To put to use or effect” in my subsequent commentary.
dbstealey says:
November 6, 2013 at 9:02 am
“Causality shows that changes in temperature forces changes in CO2. Effect cannot precede cause, which is the alarmists’ basic premise: ”
———————————–
All natural emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere is a function of the temperature of the environment from which the CO2 is being outgassed.
The extremely low quantity of CO2 in earth’s atmosphere has no measurable effect on the temperature of the environment in which it exists.
——————
And a note regarding what:
Alberta Slim says:
November 6, 2013 at 9:15 am
—————–
I suggest you forget your “vacuum bottle with CO2” idea ….. and instead consider a real “money-maker” by starting a “home insulation” business and using the CO2 as the insulation that you install in the walls and ceilings. Give your customers a guarantee that it will keep their homes warm because …. “the UN IPCC said so”.
HA, all of the proponents of CAGW will surely be wanting you to insulate their abode.
Assuming you’re being serious, the word you were looking for is “excerpt”.
A bit late in the discussion, was yesterday at Murry Salby’s speech in London, House of Parliament. His reaction on my objections was rather evasive and I had no opportunity to ask further, because I wasn’t properly dressed (no tie!) to follow the organisers into the catacombs of the parliament buildings… But I have met a few interesting people like Piers Corbyn (one of the organizers) and Tallbloke.
But here a few reactions taking Janice Moore’s notes as base:
– Native (natural) emission of CO2 depends strongly on temperature.
But that is limited by Henry’s law to maximum 16 ppmv/K (not x ppmv/K/year as Salby and others here think). It is an equilibrium reaction: a temperature increase of seawater increases the pressure of CO2 in the oceans to escape (with 16 microatm/K), that increases the influx of CO2 from the equatorial upwelling deep ocean waters and decreases the uptake by the polar sinking waters. Thus an increase of 16 ppmv in the atmosphere will fully restore the previous fluxes of before the temperature increase:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
– Net CO2 emission has .63 correlation with temperature
Right, but that is for the short term (2-3 years) variability, not for the slope in the increase over time. Moreover, it is a correlation with the variability in sink capacity, not in emissions. Salby doesn’t show the human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere in the same graph with the same units. That is here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Thus his net “emissions” are in fact the “airborne fraction” of the human emissions, that is what rests from the human emissions (as mass), minus the net natural sinks.
– CO2 evolves like the integral of temperature, i.e., it is proportional to the cumulative net emission of CO2 from all sources and sinks.
That is curve fitting: by choosing the right offset and factor, one can always fit a linear slope.
In reality, there is no such influence of temperature if you plot the derivative of temperature without an arbitrary offset and factor on Wood for Trees.
The full slope is caused by the slightly quadratic increase of human emissions, which is about twice the slope of what is seen in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em3.jpg
Simply said: all the variability (and thus the correlation) is caused by temperature, while the full slope in the derivative is from human emissions. Of the 70 ppmv increase since 1960 at maximum 4 ppmv is from the temperature increase.
– CO2 levels in ice change over time (due to natural modification and to measurement error)
Sorry, but that is wishfull thinking: Because of his theory, there must be migration in the ice. But as migration does flatten the peaks, it doesn’t change the average. A factor 10 peak “shaving” would mean that the rest of the measurements in reality were much lower, thus much lower than the 180 ppmv measured (even negative), effectively destroying all life on earth during a 90 kyr long glacial period… And there are not enough bacteria in ice to eat all that CO2 away (worst case 1 ppmv!).
There is no measurable migration of CO2 in the ice cores, or the CO2/temperature ratio would decrease with each glacial/interglacial/ transition 100 kyr further back in time.
Measurement accuracy and repeatability of same places in one ice core: 1.3 ppmv (1 sigma); between different ice cores for same average gas age and very different ice conditions: less than 5 ppmv between averages of the measurements.
So, I don’t think that Murry Slby is right…
Dave Wendt says:
November 6, 2013 at 1:59 pm
That is the reason that they were looking at domes of ice: that are the places with least disturbance of the lowest layers due to ice flow. The only problem is that the lowest layers are the thinnest, which makes ice layer dating (and worse air bubble dating) is increasingly more difficult. I suppose that 1.5 million years is the real limit…
Allan MacRae says:
November 6, 2013 at 4:23 am
Since CO2 lags temperature at all measured time sales, does “climate sensitivity to CO2” (defined herein as “macro” ECS, see below*) even exist on Earth?
Since CO2 leads temperature over the past 50 (/160) years, there may be a “climate sensitivity to CO2”, but as the end of the previous interglacial showed, a CO2 drop of 40 ppmv had no measurable effect on temperature or ice sheet formation:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/eemian.gif
where deltaT shows the temperature (from deuterium in the ice as proxy) and delta 18O is measured in N2O of the gas phase as a proxy for ice sheet formation.
The temperature was already at a new minumum and ice sheet formation at a new maximum before CO2 started to drop…
Samuel C Cogar says:
November 6, 2013 at 6:11 am
And if there is a lot of water (H2O) vapor in the air at the surface where the snow is accumulating then I also have to assume that the CO2 ppm in the air at the surface is ….. “anyone’s guess”.
Antarctica is a dry desert, there is very little water left in the atmosphere at -40°C (the average temperature of the Vostok ice core). Moreover the solubility of CO2 at 0.0004 bar in fresh water is extremely low and doesn’t play a role, even when it would be raining (maybe only measurable in the first meter of air without wind)…
There is an overlap of ~20 years between the high accumulation (1.2 meter ice equivalent/year) Law Dome ice cores and the direct measurements at the South Pole 1960-1980:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_sp_co2.jpg
Alan the Brit says:
November 6, 2013 at 7:02 am
I seem to recall reading somewhere, & it may have bee on Doug L Hoffman’s Resilient Earth site, that not only do the bubbles diffuse over time reducing the level of CO2 measured, but that losses occur (as they do with everything) during the drilling process reducing the gas readings further!
There is no measurable diffusion in ice cores, but one has made estimations of a probable migration in ice cores, based on the accumulation of CO2 near remelted/refrozen layers in one coastal ice core:
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3773250
the theoretical migration makes that the about 20-year resolution at medium depth broadens to 22 year and at full depth (70 kyears back in time) to 40 years. Not a big deal. The theoretical migration in the much colder inland ice cores is negligible.
Think again about losses during drilling etc.: One measures 180-300 ppmv in ice cores. The external air during drilling, extraction and measurements had 350-380 ppmv CO2. In what direction would any migration go?
Much more interesting is that we could have in that core a 1.5 M yr record of Solar Activity
As has been mentioned on WUWT in the past — Solar Activity correlates with the flux of galactic cosmic rays entering the earth’s atmosphere — as measured real-time by neutron and muon flux.
This bombardment of the atmosphere also produces two key radio isotopes C-14 and Be-10
C-14 is not useful much beyond 50k yrs (about 10x the half life of 5,730 years)
Be-10 on the other hand has a half life of 1.39 × 106 years so it should be good for the oldest ice cores anyone can retrieve
I forgot to mention that the big picture trend over the last 3 million years has been one of deepening glaciation. From 3 Mya to 1 Mya there were glacial-interglacial cycles every 41 kyrs. For the last million years it has been every 100 kyrs, the longest and weakest Milankovich orbital cycle, reflecting a weakening ability of the climate to pop up to the interglacial attractor. The next transition will be to permanent glaciation, possibly for several million years.
Canman says:
November 6, 2013 at 8:10 am
“There’s a lot of crappy things done in climate science, but finding new data is not one of them.”
That’s ridiculous.
If the cost is immense and the data is useless then finding more data is of course very crappy.
Climate science is all about wasting millions collecting endless useless measurements to decipher and speculate over.
Allan MacRae says:
November 6, 2013 at 4:23 am
Since CO2 lags temperature at all measured time sales, does “climate sensitivity to CO2” (defined herein as “macro” ECS, see below*) even exist on Earth?
Ferdinand Engelbeen says: November 7, 2013 at 1:44 pm
Since CO2 leads temperature over the past 50 (/160) years, there may be a “climate sensitivity to CO2″, but as the end of the previous interglacial showed, a CO2 drop of 40 ppmv had no measurable effect on temperature or ice sheet formation
Allan again:
Ferdinand, thank you for your insightful response. I think we are in general agreement with one exception (thankfully, we are not discussing the Mass Balance Argument).
With respect, I disagree with the portion of your above statement that states “CO2 leads temperature over the past 50 (/160) years”.
Instead, I suggest that atmospheric CO2 rose with temperature for the period circa 1975 to 2000, but the ONLY signal in that modern data record is that CO2 lags temperature by about 9 months. This “CO2 lags temperature” signal is apparent all the way back to 1958, when modern CO2 measurements began at Mauna Loa, and I suggest it would extend back for countless millennia IF we had quality CO2 and temperature data.
Furthermore, there are two known periods, from circa 1940 to 1975, and circa 2000 to present, when atmospheric CO2 increased and average global temperature either fell or remained about the same. Accordingly, as you also state at “the end of the previous interglacial”, there was no measurable impact of CO2 on temperature, and there was a measureable impact of temperature on CO2.
I suggest that these observations all demonstrate that CO2 lags temperature at ALL measured time scales, and thus the hypo that CO2 significantly drives temperature is falsified, and the hypo that temperature (among other factors) significantly drives CO2 is demonstrated to be true.
I have previously stated (typically pre-2008) that climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2, as expressed by ECS, is much less than 1dC. Since my work in January 2008, I suggest that climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 (“macro ECS” as defined above) does not even exist on Earth.
Conclusions:
The future cannot cause the past. Atmospheric CO2 does not drive temperature. Temperature (among other factors) drives atmospheric CO2.
Best personal regards, Allan
Allan MacRae says:
November 7, 2013 at 7:47 pm
Allan, we have been there before: the current increase in CO2 is not from temperature but from human emissions. Temperature is fully responsible for the fast variability seen in the data, but that is a transient reaction of not more than 4-5 ppmv/K over seasons to 2-3 years short term year by year variability. The long term response of CO2 to temperature (over millennia) is not more than 8 ppmv/K. But we see an increase of 70 ppmv over the past 50 years for a small increase of temperature of less than 0.5 K. That is physically impossible as Henry’s law shows maximum 16 ppmv/K to reach a new equilibrium and vegetation in general is an increasing sink with higher temperatures (and more CO2).
It would be a very special response of CO2 to temperature that gives 4-5 ppmv/K over short term, over 100 ppmv/K for medium term and again 8 ppmv/K on (very) long term, eating away the medium term increase of CO2…
Moreover, the drop of ~0.8 K in temperature between the MWP and LIA shows a drop of not more than 6 ppmv (with a lag of ~50 years) lasting a few hundred years in the Law Dome ice core which has a resolution of ~20 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
The problem with the attribution is that there is practically no short term variability in human emissions, only a near monotonic (slightly quadratic) increase over time. That makes that the short term variability in CO2 rate of change (in fact the variability in sink capacity) caused by temperature variability is dominant in the variability and thus the correlation, even if it has a minor contribution to the trend…
Best regards,
Ferdinand
In response to:
Jeff Alberts says:
November 7, 2013 at 7:16 am
——————————————
I was not looking for a word to use. “Exert” came to mind and I usedd it.
Like I told someone else the other day, ….. with your “pickyness” you also would have had a Grand Field Day iffen you had been around 40 or so years ago and was reading some of my written commentary on the functioning and diagnostics of computers and their peripheral equipment.
HA, we were coining lots of new words that didn’t exist in a dictionary …. as well as creating completely new definitions for words that were in the dictionary.
Discrediting and/or faulting my spelling and verbiage use DOES NOT discredit my science.
Here in Australia, new ice core drilling (Which will take 5 years to extract and being conducted on Australian territory in Antarctic) will, apparently, prove high CO2 drives ice ages. (I can’t find a link to the newscast but that was the thrust of the article).
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 7, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Antarctica is a dry desert, there is very little water left in the atmosphere at -40°C (the average temperature of the Vostok ice core). Moreover the solubility of CO2 at 0.0004 bar in fresh water is extremely low and doesn’t play a role, even when it would be raining (maybe only measurable in the first meter of air without wind)
——————————-
Can you cite supporting evidence that the CO2 ppm quantity in the air at the surface in Antarctica during snowfall accumulations is UNAFFECTED by the potential “noise” caused by the snowflakes themselves. If not, then your argument is void.
And ps: bout every raindrop that falls to earth contains CO2 in the form of carbonic acid.
And if “there is very little water left in the atmosphere” in Antarctica …. then why this, to wit:
—————-
While in Antarctica, two balloons are launched every day at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC to measure temperature, pressure relative humidity and wind between 20 and 30km high. http://www.climantartide.it/osservatorio/index.php?lang=en
Re Allan MacRae says: November 7, 2013 at 7:47 pm
Ferdinand Engelbeen says: November 8, 2013 at 1:38 am
Allan, we have been there before: the current increase in CO2 is not from temperature but from human emissions.
Allan again:
Ah Ferdinand, now we are back to the Mass Balance Argument (MBA), which for newcomers is about the cause (source) of increasing atmospheric CO2.
I specifically excluded discussion of the MBA from my previous post because, while it is of great scientific interest, I strongly suggest that in the global warming policy debate it does not matter – it is, perhaps shocking to some, irrelevant!
Why? As discussed above, climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 (ECS) is demonstrably insignificant or even nonexistent – therefore the only impact of increasing atmospheric CO2 is beneficial – to plants, the environment and humanity. In fact, atmospheric CO2 at this time is too low, dangerously low for the longer term survival of carbon-based life on Earth.
More Ice Ages, which are inevitable unless geo-engineering can prevent them, will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations on Earth to decline to the point where photosynthesis ceases. This would devastate the descendants of most current life on Earth, to which, I suggest, we have a significant moral obligation.
My above conclusion, I suggest, puts the Mass Balance Argument into perspective. You could be correct about the MBA, or your able opponent Richard Courtney could be correct. I don’t know, and as I stated above, it really does not matter for current CO2 abatement policy, since increasing atmospheric CO2 can only benefit the environment, plants and animals, including that interesting subspecies to which Richard, you and I belong.
Returning to the MBA (because it IS scientifically interesting), I wonder if you have ever quantified the clearing and burning of the rainforest in Brazil and the Far East, which has been done to produce biofuel feedstocks of sugar cane and palm oil. I wonder if in fact this foolish and destructive clear-cutting and burning of the rainforest for nonsensical “green energy” biofuels is a more significant source of increased atmospheric CO2 than the combustion of fossil fuels.
In addition to the quantities of CO2 involved, there is also the observation that fossil fuel combustion typically occurs in close proximity to humanity and the plants that we co-exist with, and it has been suggested that CO2 is sufficiently rare and heterogeneously distributed that it is quickly consumed by plants close to its source, when present in excess amounts and when the growing season permits.
As I have stated previously, the humanmade CO2 signature is notably absent in urban environments such as Salt Lake City, where the only observable CO2 signature is natural, despite significant local humanmade CO2 emissions. Conversely , satellite data has shown significant increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations in areas of clear-cut rainforest.
Finally, if I can digress from the scientific for a moment, the clear-cutting and burning of rainforest for biofuel feedstock is another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Greens were clearly responsible for the initiation of this outrage against the environment – a perverse and destructive effect contrary to what was originally intended. This is what happens when you let scoundrels and imbeciles drive the school bus.
Since about 1990, the Greens have been a highly destructive force, causing great damage to humanity and the environment.
I suggest that as a society we can do better, very much better.
Best personal regards, Allan
phlogiston says: @ur momisugly November 7, 2013 at 4:00 pm
I forgot to mention that the big picture trend over the last 3 million years has been one of deepening glaciation….
It has also been a trend of larger oscillations with the cold periods getting ever colder.
5 million years
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/Five_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev.jpg
65 million years
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/65_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev.jpg
(From Jo Nova)
Those graphs make “Global Warming” sound like a donkey’s rear end! (Having donkey’s I can tell you you really don’t want to hear that.)
Ferdinand Engelbeen says:
November 8, 2013 at 1:38 am
Allan, we have been there before: the current increase in CO2 is not from temperature but from human emissions. Temperature is fully responsible for the fast variability seen in the data, but that is a transient reaction of not more than 4-5 ppmv/K over seasons to 2-3 years short term year by year variability. The long term response of CO2 to temperature (over millennia) is not more than 8 ppmv/K. But we see an increase of 70 ppmv over the past 50 years for a small increase of temperature of less than 0.5 K. That is physically impossible as Henry’s law shows maximum 16 ppmv/K to reach a new equilibrium and vegetation in general is an increasing sink with higher temperatures (and more CO2).
————————-
I agree with what Allen stated at/on: November 7, 2013 at 7:47 pm
And so does the facts, evidence and Keeling Curve (Mona Loa) data record ALSO agrees with what Allen stated.
For the past 55 years the data record shows that there has been a STEADY and CONSISTENT bi-yearly average 6 ppm decrease in atmospheric CO2 following the Vernal equinox and an average 8 ppm increase following the Autumnal equinox ….. as well as a STEADY and CONSISTENT yearly average 1 to 2 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2.
See REF graph @ur momisugly http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/keelingcurve.gif
The above verbiage defines a …… “seasonal adjustment” with a “yearly” increase in CO2 ppm.
And there has been nothing STEADY and CONSISTENT about humans or their activities during the past 55 years.
And you are correct about the 71 ppm increase over the past 49 years as defined on the above cited KC graph.
But you are absolutely incorrect with your assertion as to the physically impossibility regarding Henry’s Law …… because Henry’s Law doesn’t give-a-hoot what your highly questionable average increase in/of near-surface air temperature(s) is/are.
Ferdinand Engelbeen, you have made a SERIOUS mistake by neglecting to INCLUDE the past 50 years of yearly average increases in the temperature of the ocean’s waters.
Henry’s Law knows what it is doing so don’t be using it as a “whippingboy” as a means to justify CAGW “junk science” claims.