Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach Much of the current angst at the UN regarding climate has to do with the idea of “climate reparations”. These are an imaginary debt supposedly owed by the major CO2 emitting nations to the countries of the developing world. As the story goes, we in the industrialized world have been “polluting” the atmosphere with the well-known plant food CO2, and despite the lack of any evidence of any damage caused, we’re supposed to pony up and pay the developing countries megabucks to ease their pain. 
In that regard, I’ve spent the morning laughing at the results I’ve gotten from the Japanese IBUKI satellite CO2 data. It shows the net CO2 flow (emission less sequestration) on a 1°x1° grid for the planet. Their website describes the project thusly:
The Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite “IBUKI” (GOSAT), developed jointly by the Ministry of the Environment Japan, the National Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (hereinafter the Three Parties), is the world’s first satellite designed specifically for monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) from space.
The satellite has been in operation since its launch on January 23, 2009. The Three Parties will now publicly distribute the data of global CO2 fluxes on a monthly and regional basis for the one-year period between June 2009 and May 2010. These flux values were estimated from ground-based CO2 monitoring data and improved GOSAT-based CO2 concentration data.
It has been confirmed that uncertainties in CO2 flux estimates can be reduced by the addition of GOSAT data to the ground-based observations. This is the first concrete demonstration of the utility of satellite-based concentration data in the estimation of global CO2 fluxes.
It is expected that this progress in the field of global carbon cycle research will lead to more reliable climate change prediction and to the development of effective environmental policies for mitigating global warming in the future.
So why was I laughing? Well, let me unfold the story. First, here is the map showing the net emissions for 2010, the only full calendar year of data in the dataset:
Figure 1. Net emissions by gridcell, IBUKI satellite CO2 data. Click to embiggen.
Now, there are some interesting things about this map.
First, it appears to be pretty accurate. For example, if you look at the lower right part of Australia, you can see the two big cities of Sydney and Melbourne as red dots in the sea of blue.
Next, you can see that while the central Pacific is a net emitter of CO2 (yellow band from above Australia to South America), the intertropical convergence zone immediately north of that is a net absorber. I speculate that this is because of the large amount of rainfall in the area. Atmospheric CO2 dissolves in rain, which is why all rain is very slightly acid. This absorbs more CO2 than in the drier area to the south.
In addition you can see that the tropics emits about twice as much as the temperate zones per square metre … not what I expected.
Next, by and large where there are lots of humans there is a lot of CO2 emitted. Yes, there are also some areas where CO2 is being emitted without much human habitation … but generally, humans = CO2.
So … I figured I’d take the data and divide it up by country, to see how much CO2 each country either emits or absorbs. The answers were pretty surprising … Figure 2 shows the top 20 biggest net emitters of CO2.
Figure 2. Net emissions by country.
That’s where I started laughing … I can just see France demanding climate reparations from India, or the UK demanding reparations from the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo … It gets better. Figure 3 shows the top twenty sequestering nations …
Figure 3. Net sequestration by country.
Funnier and funnier … Sweden and Norway get to demand reparations from Russia, Finland can send a bill to the USA, while Australia can dun China for eco-megabucks.
Now … how can we understand some of these results? I will speculate, as I have no direct data … although it is claimed to be in the IBUKI datasets, I haven’t got there yet.
First, there are two big missing items in the previous standard CO2 accounting, sequestration and biomass burning. In most of the poor countries of the world, they are so ecologically conscious that they mainly use renewable energy for cooking and heating. And despite being all eco-sensitive and all these uncounted millions of open fires burning wood, twigs, and trash add up to a lot of CO2. Plus a bunch of pollution making up the “brown haze” over Asia, but that’s another question …
In addition, both India and China have huge permanent underground wildfires in their coal seams, spewing CO2 (plus really ugly pollution) 24/7. The other wild card is sequestration. In Australia, I speculate that it is due to the huge amount of exposed rock and sand. The mild acids in the rain and the dew dissolves the rocks and sand, sequestering the CO2.
In Canada, Norway, Sweden and Finland, I’ve got to assume that it has something to do with being far north and having lots of forests … but there are still lots of unanswered questions.
Anyhow, that was my fun for the morning … someone should write all of this up for the journals, I suppose, but I always feel like I have to give myself a lobotomy to write standard scientific prose.
Anyone want to go co-authors with me and handle the writing and the submission?
And my congratulations to my Argentinian, Brazilian, and Australian friends for winning the carbon lottery, they can demand climate reparations from every other country on the planet.
My best to everyone,
w.
BONUS GRAPHICS: Someone requested white color at the zero level:
And here are the breakdowns by region …
THE USUAL REQUEST: If you think that someone is wrong about something, please QUOTE THEIR EXACT WORDS. I SHOUT BECAUSE THIS IS IMPORTANT. QUOTE THEIR WORDS so that we can all understand exactly what you are objecting to. If you object to a long comment and all you link to is the comment, that’s not useful. We need to know exactly what you think is incorrect, the exact words that you find to be in error.
CODE: It’s ugly, but it’s here. It’s an 18 Mb zip file including code, functions, data (NCDF files), and product sheet. I think all parts are there, ask if you have questions.
SPREADSHEET DATA: I’ve collated the country-level data into a CSV file here.
DATA: It took a while to find it, because it’s at another website. You have to register first. Afterwards, log in, click on “Product Search and Order”, and select L4A global CO2 flux.
PRODUCT SHEET: The details of the various CO2 products are here, from the same website, not sure if you have to log in first. It’s also in my zipped file above.
nickreality65 says:
July 6, 2014 at 4:46 am
The Japanese have had a CO2 satellite for 5 years? What does NASA hope to accomplish with another?.
Control over the data?
Thank you to Willis for another outstanding contribution!
You really make us think!
When I scanned the top twenty Carbon Dioxide producers, and saw no mention of South Africa, I thought you had somehow missed us out – I felt hurt and disappointed. After all, is this country not the evil, fossil-fuel guzzling, climate-changing monster of Africa? Did our President not go to Copenhagen in 2009, and graciously offer to reduce our Carbon Dioxide emissions by 34%, a voluntary gesture not required by any international agreements? And is our Treasury not planning to introduce a Carbon Tax next year? Our concerned government already has a vehicle tax in place to punish those who would drive a car with more than a predetermined amount of the ghastly pollutant coming out of its exhaust pipe.
We use coal to generate most of the electricity in South Africa, with our peak load hitting above 34 000 Megawatts on a cold winter evening. And our Sasol coal to liquid operation is described by green activists as the biggest single point source of Carbon Dioxide in the world. Somehow, being only number 35 on the list of global villains does not seem right….
Given South Africa’s industrial activity, and our use of fossil fuels, it seems almost unbelievable that countries around us with hardly any major energy infrastructure can be net producers of more Carbon Dioxide than South Africa. Among them are Angola, Mozambique and Zambia. I think Willis is correct about all the biomass being burnt for cooking and heating in Africa. And I think most environmentalists have been suckered into believing that it is OK to burn biomass, because it can be replaced. The big problem in Africa is that it is mostly not replaced! The removal of firewood in most southern African countries far exceeds what is put back, and that has the same net effect as burning fossil fuel.
Remember too that Angola and Mozambique are recovering from decades of civil war. Vast areas of bush that took over farmlands during the wars are being cleared to plant crops – in some cases these are marginal areas where farming is not a proposition, and after a few years the land is abandoned. This has happened on a large scale in Zimbabwe where land invasions have turned many well-vegetated game ranches into barren wasteland.
In some places (like the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces) South Africa resembles Europe more than any other part of Africa, and there are large areas of perennial agricultural crops as well as large commercial plantations of Northern Hemisphere pine trees and Eucalyptus from Australia. Tree planting has been done on a vast scale in South Africa and the greater city area of Johannesburg is reputedly the largest man-made forest in the world.
There is no doubt that South Africa has established a very large Carbon Dioxide sequestering capacity in all of these environmental developments, a factor that is never mentioned in all the alarmist nonsense that we hear from our green activists and the MSM, who have done a fine job of persuading politicians that we are a thoroughly bad lot, and must take extraordinary steps to change our ways. We now have wind and solar farms springing up all over the place, and lots of eager consultants very keen to get into the carbon-taxing industry.
This fine contribution by Willis should make people around here stop and think. My students will certainly all get it as required reading; a number of them work for government and industry. I hope the Japanese will continue to put out their data so that we can have a number of years of observations for Willis to analyse!
Brilliant post Willis, Thanks. It shows the lemming type of mental behaviour when science and politics merge confirming the deadly green party line overseen by accountants all named Winston Smith (1984).
In my post of richard verney says: July 5, 2014 at 9:16 pm
I was commenting upon the ‘false’ accounting behind the claims that burning wood/biomass is carbon neutral. I observed:
“The lie rests within the claim that the bio mass absorbs during its own lifetime as much CO2 as it emits when burnt, such that it is CO2 neutral. That may apply to the planting of a new forest (ie., to forest land which before was simply barren land), but it is not applicable when you cut down a forest and replace an existing forest with a new forest. The old forest was already absorbing CO2 and would have continued to do so, if it had not been cut down. Accordingly, cutting down the old forest and replanting it so it grows back does not change the CO2 budget at all. Nature has, of course, already solved so many ‘problems’. If the government is truly concenrned about CO2 emissions and will not sanction new coal or gas powered generators without CCS, the simplest solution is to build a conventionally fueled generator (or keep an existing conventional fueld generator in service) and plant a new forest, ie., plant a forest on what is presently simply scrub land.
I believe that this ‘falsehood’ was based upon the assumption that young trees grow faster and therefore absorb more CO2. That assumption has always surprised me given the volume of a cylinder (such that a small increase in girth of an established tree involves more mass than a large increase in girth of a young sappling) and the canopy area of an established tree is far larger.(with presumably correspondingly more leaves). Recently, I saw a paper (unfortunately I have not got the reference) in which the CO2 absorption of young and old trees was compared and the conclusion of that paper was that old trees absorb just as much if not more CO2 than young trees.”
Having made that comment, I now see that WUWT is carrying a post on a recent paper dealing with this issue, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/06/big-trees-a-new-look-at-growth-factors/#more-112594
I am not certain that that was the paper that I had seen and that I was referring to, but that paper does support my view that the claim regarding biomass being carbon neutral is based upon ‘false’ accounting in that if the existing forest is not cut down it woukld in any event be absorbing C)2. accordingly cutting down a CO2 sink and replacing it with the exact same sink does not result in additional CO2 absorption that would be necessary to absorb the additional CO2 that burning biomass emits when compared to burning of coal or gas (the lower calorific value of biomass results in more quantity of biomass having to be burnt to produce any given unit of energy with result increase in CO2 emissions as a by product)>
This paper underlies the ‘scam’ that the green movement is forcing upon government to switch from coal to biomass..
I am not sure how to interpret this, because the interpretation the media has conditioned me to make refers to a wealth transfer from the industrialized nations (who are often times regarded as having ill-gotten gains) to the poorer countries.
However, if you look at Willis’ graph of Net CO2 emissions you will see that those of North America and Europe are offset by the ocean and Australia, and that it is Africa and Asia that are the biggest sources of CO2 and the industrialized countries that gain, or so it would seem.
Can you clarify what you meant?
Note, I think that the notion of reparations is supposed to be a wealth transfer allowing certain elites to skim off the top, so I have little sympathy for it. I am simply trying to understand what you meant.
Well, it is possible with this data to still support the notion of reparations from industrialized countries to the poorer countries of Africa and Asia, however, to do that would require taking a more positive view of CO2. After all, the poorer countries are helping the agricultural industries of the industrialized countries with their efforts at producing CO2.
Willis,
For fairness in comparing against the US, China and Russia, I would like to see your fig 2 redone, treating the EU as a single entity.
Very interesting:
I would think that normalizing based on population would provide first order information on natural vs anthropogenic carbon dioxide sources and sinks.
And am I correct in assuming that the theoretical greenhouse effect is an upper atmosphere well mixed process and there is no way to correlate local carbon dioxide sources and sinks to local temperature?
Thanks again, Willis.
Also, thanks to Ferdinand Englebeen and Greg Goodman for their comments.
Richard Sharp: It is all about the efficiency of managing one’s national resources. This is directly related to the quality of education and the mental freedom the citizins of such nations have. CO2 has very little to do with it, in relation to “damage” to our dear atmosphere, I have said this before: In 1972 without a shred of scientific evidence at one of the UNEP opening meetings in Nairobi I heard several bankers and accountants discussing best ways to tax the polluting CO2 gas. Anyway we live in revealing times, therefore things will be sorted out pretty soon.
As as already been said twice, we cant see clearly (or at all, here and there) what’s going on in Europe.
MattS
Ed Hoskins did a post here on this subject yesterday which included the EU as one entity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/04/message-to-the-president-data-shows-co2-reduction-is-futile/
tonyb
@John Ledger
Hi. Long time. You are right about the number of sinks RSA has created including vast forests in eastern Mpumalanga and KZN. Swaziland has three large forestry areas all 100% planted. The wattle around manage has far outgrown the expanding population’s ability to chop it for fuel. Geoffrey Winkler told me he travelled 80,000 miles on horseback in the Transkei planting tree where there used to be nothing but bald green hills.
Peter Forbes’ grandfather used to see elephant herds 25 miles wide moving up the coastal plain where the N4 crosses to Maputo and in their absence the trees proliferated.
Angola has a small population and massive biomass production but a lot is tropical and it is clear that the net CO2 from tropical areas that are not soaking wet is high. Wet seems to be more neutral.
South Africa has so many trees now it is hard to remember that the traditional name for the highveld is ‘the tree-less place’. Dr Billy Mollison advocated planting bands of trees north-south from Nelspruit to Joburg to increase the rainfall in summer. There is about 70-80,000 sq km of wattle there now. That’s new. Gum trees were only introduced in numbers in 1912.
Lastly the farmers of South Africa grow huge amounts of crops which are exported carrying carbon with them. There seem to be lots of expanding sinks.
From the article:
“…the world’s first satellite designed specifically for monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) from space.”
I knew about atmospheric carbon dioxide but I didn’t know that methane came from space!
🙂
I would sure like to see two (2) different graphics of that “Net CO2 Flux 2010” Figure 1 map, …. one (1) for the 7 months when the Northern Hemisphere is experiencing Fall and Winter (Oct 2009 thru April 2010) …. and the 2nd one for the 5 months when the NH is experiencing Spring and Summer (May 2010 thru Sept 2010).
The “start” point of the two (2) above stated time periods pretty much correlates with the “switch” points of the bi-yearly 6 ppm avg. cycling of the atmospheric CO2 ppm as denoted by the Keeling Curve Graph.
Thus, I would like to know if said 6 ppm of CO2 is visible on the newly created maps of “Net CO2 Flux” by comparing for any obvious differences between the two.
One of the things that I am curious in knowing is if that “yellow band from above Australia to South America in the central Pacific” …. shifts farther north and south of the equator in the new graphics.
I fear that these data, and the data soon to be obtained from the NASA OCO-2, do not tell us what we need to know. If they are merely measuring localized CO2 concentration, what does that tell us?
A narrowly focused source area will show up having heavy concentration. But, so might a narrowly focused sink area, as it draws more CO2 to it from surrounding areas. A patch of area which shows up “red” in the plot might well be entirely self-contained, with equal source and sink activity.
And, keep in mind that the net imbalance over a year is quite small, so there is a very small SNR over a single year for the signal we are looking for. And, the SNR for a very broad sink or source area is tiny, too.
I fear this may devolve into a large scale exercise in confirmation bias. Meanwhile, human inputs race ahead ever higher, while the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 continues to stall with temperatures.
The ministy of truth will not be pleased. So I hope you will find someone to co-write that paper. This will be a killer for the climate justice department.
From JAXA on meaning of Ibuki:
http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2008/10/20081015_gosat_e.html
The green smear (mentioned above) across the N. hemisphere on early Ibuki flux data map reflected (seasonal) net absorption for July 2009 in many middle and upper latitude sub-continent regions of the N. Hemisphere.
However,
http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2012/12/20121205_ibuki_e.html
FrankK says:
July 5, 2014 at 11:12 pm
Frank, I’ve said a number of times, I never get my science from lectures, for several reason. First, they are waaaay to slow, I find them incredibly boring. Second, it’s hard to go back and check what they said before. Third, video is a passive medium, where you just turn off your brain and let the info soak in … not good for science. Fourth, they are either unreferenced or poorly referenced. Fifth, they tend to lead to anonymous people making ridiculous claims …
As a result, I’ve passed up many invitations to see Salby’s video. If he wants to get it out there, he should write it up.
My “analysis is somewhat flawed”? I love guys like you, that wave their hands, don’t provide a scrap of actual data, and claim I’ve made some unknown mistake.
Frank, SCIAMACHY measures the CO2 percentage in the atmosphere. The IBUKU satellite measures the net local emission/absorption of CO2. These are very, very different things.
Next time, don’t turn off your mind and watch video, it’s obviously impairing your scientific judgement.
w.
Bart says:
July 6, 2014 at 11:12 am
No, it will not. Sink areas will show up with lower CO2 concentration, we know this from observations over for instance farmland.
Sink areas does not “draw” CO2 for surrounding areas, they just remove some of the CO2 from the air in the sink area, which results in an area with air depleted of CO2.
/Jan
Jan Kjetil Andersen says:
July 5, 2014 at 11:51 pm
Anyone who thinks there can be “any meaningful talk of compensation between nations” regarding reparations based on CO2 is either a congenital idiot, a deluded green, or a rent-seeker. The idea that there are more meaningful or less meaningful ways to talk about reparations based on CO2, when we have no evidence that CO2 is anything but beneficial, is an insult to science.
w.
Greg Goodman says:
July 6, 2014 at 12:03 am
Thanks, Greg, but I’ve been using the Mac for over 500 posts on WordPress to date, and I’ve only had that problem happen once before.
w.
Bart says:
July 6, 2014 at 11:12 am
I do agree with you that measuring CO2 concentrations, as the satellite does, and calculating CO2 fluxes from these concentrations is rather questionable. But as usual, I disagree with your last graph:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em4.jpg
The sink rate caused by the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere still is too small to absorb all human emissions and still is largely within natural variability.
The natural variability is entirely caused by the influence of temperature variations on the growth and decay of (tropical) vegetation, which can be seen in the opposite rate of change variation of CO2 and δ13C:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
data from Wood for Trees and Carbon Tracker for the δ13C measurements at Mauna Loa.
As one can see: the temperature rate of change drives the CO2 rate of change and the δ13C rate of change both with a lag. Temperature variability is not the driver of the slope, as there is no slope at all in the temperature rate of change, while there is in the CO2 and δ13C rate of changes.
Temperature itself also is not the driver for the slope in CO2 or the CO2 rate of change: the short term variability is the result of temperature variability on vegetation, but the longer term trend in vegetation is opposite: more uptake with higher temperatures…
That means that two separate processes are at work: temperature variability which causes the CO2 uptake variability by vegetation, but a separate process that increases the CO2 level over time. Not so difficult to know what that is in my opinion…
That’s just amazing. Africa net contributor to CO2 emissions almost as much as North America and Europe put together!
It’s time for Africans to consider deindustrializing…
Such are the marvels of the CO2 footprint religion.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
At July 6, 2014 at 12:25 pm you say to Bart
Well, it could be many things, but the most likely is transition from the Little Ice Age (LIA).
Richard