From the “if the government won’t visualize it, a climate skeptic will” department.
Guest essay by Erik Swenson
In July of 2014, NASA launched its most advanced carbon dioxide monitoring satellite, The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2). The first OCO burned up on launch. There has been a lot of anticipation regarding the data from this instrument. However, over a year after it launch, there has been little public information presented about its results. The only data made available by NASA has been images showing CO2 from an AGU14 session.
These images are shown below.
Figure 1: NASA-provided OCO-2 data for Oct 1 – Nov 11, 2014
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/mainco2mappia18934.jpg
Figure 2 NASA-provided OCO-2 data for Nov 21 – Dec 27, 2014
Source: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011700/a011788/F5a.png
Back in May 2015, there was a release of some visualized data showing mixing ratios of CO2 over the oceans:
For some reason, NASA has not chosen to publish any recent updates of the OCO-2 satellite data. Many people are interested in the data from OCO-2, but have not been able to access the information. NASA has now provided access to the raw data from OCO-2, but the data is in the HDF file format. No common commercial programs such as Excel can access this data in this form.
I have created a program to parse this data, and attempt to graph it in a form that closely matches the output of the NASA images. The data is available from 9/20/2014 – 9/22/2015 as of this writing. I have generated the plots in approximately 6 week intervals. It takes about that much data to cover most of the globe with observational data. You can see how the orbit path is from this NASA visualization story:
A few implementation notes.
The data from each sample is put into an array. Each point is added to the array as a circular blob. The center point of the circle has a weight of 1 for the averaging function. The remaining points in the circle are weighted in a decreasing manner from the center. This choice is based on the images from NASA which show circular artifacts.
All of the images use the same min/max scale of 380 – 415 ppm. This does not give the best dynamic range for each image, but it does present a good range over all of the images.
The NASA images are chopped beyond 60 degrees N and S latitude. I have chosen to show whatever data is there.
All data points are plotted from the OCO-2-Lite files regardless of warn_level. Warn_level is used to judge the quality of the sample. The OCO-2-Lite files say they are the “high-quality” samples, so I chose to use them all.
The data used for these images is from the OCO-2-Lite v7 data set. It can be accessed here:
https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov/#mission=OCO-2
Finished visualizations
The data here is presented without comment. I will leave it to others to decide what this data means. So, without further ado – here is the data I have processed.
Figure 3: Processed data from Oct 1 – Nov 11, 2014
Figure 3 is an attempt to match the first NASA image from Oct 1 – Nov 11, 2014 to see how closely my algorithm matches. Note that NASA has adjusted the data set multiple times since the release of the NASA image. The current version is v7. I am not sure what changes have been made in the data.
Figure 4 : Processed data from Nov 16 – Dec 31, 2014
Figure 5 : Processed data from Jan 1 – Feb 15, 2015
Figure 6 : Processed data from Feb 16 – Mar 31, 2015
Figure 7 : Processed data from Apr 1 – May 15, 2015
Figure 8 : Processed data from May 16 – Jun 30, 2015
Figure 9 : Processed data from Jul 1 – Aug 15, 2015
Figure 10 : Processed data from Aug 16- Sep 12, 2015
UPDATE: Eric Swenson provides this map in comments showing CO2 over the entire year from From September 2014 to October 2015 – Anthony
Also, reader “edimbukvarevic” provides this map of anthropogenic CO2 emissions for comparison:
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“Your desire to understand increasing levels of minutia is your worst enemy” Excellent! This is typical of bad scientists and especially AGW ones LOL BTW maybe there should be a warning “Paid AGW Troll” above for those who are.
Watching the battle unfold you can see a few obvious things have happenned.
1. Peer review integrity took a blow when the 97% number became gospel. Advantage CAGW.
2. Once peer review became corrupted, the rules changed and the debate became a free for all. Advantage CAGW
3. CO2 was ramrodded as a harmful substance despite failing to meet Daubert Test. See 1 and 2. Advantage CAGW
4. Climate skeptics were baited that they would have to disprove what was unproven. An impossible task. Advantage CAGW.
The baiting continues as well meaning skeptics try to go down the rabbit hole. Scientists are curious by nature and that curiousity has been used against them. Any level of uncertainty in their work is turned against them, when indeed that very uncertainty should have been applied to the proposed theory.
Machiavellia would be proud to know that his principles have been used to new heights.
Possible counter strategy.
Stop being baited.
Look to reestablish the independent foundation of peer review. Just the simple fact that the data you are using cannot be validated continues to undermine honesty.
Don’t fear anonymous trolls. Being able to identify spurious attacks is practice. It will make the honest skeptic better at the war they are engaged in.
Even if we non-cognoscenti don’t (or can’t) fully appreciate the message in the OCO-2 data, we can be sure of one thing: If the data matched prior expectations of rising Anthropogenic CO2 emissions being the climate control knob, as evaluated by the subject matter experts at NASA and NOAA /ESRL, then this OCO-2 data would have been major news 4-6 months ago. That it didn’t tells us that the OCO-2 data does not fit the CO2 CAGW hypothesis.
That comment is rather cynical, although I understand why it is made.
I think that the first results, probably came as an unexpected surprise to NASA since the first release data was not on its face pointing to CO2 being driven by the developed nations, and in effect clearly demonstrated that the natural carbon cycle overwhelmed manmade emissions. The press release was therefore muted, and had that data shown a large human finger print, you are right that one would have expected a press release emphasising the role of human emissions on CO2 and climate change.
However, I consider NASA is correct that at the minimum a complete annual cycle is required before one can draw meaningful conclusions, and we have now only got that. But even now the results are far from clear because of resolution issues, and the fact that manmade CO2 only accounts for about 3 to 4% of the annual CO2 cycle such that manmade emissions are being swamped by the natural cycle and are therefore difficult to detect.
It is going to be difficult to present this data to the public, because the public are unaware that manmade emissions are such a small part of the natural carbon cycle. How many of the public know that ants and termites emit more CO2 than man? Do we really know the ant & termite population? May be this has increased these past 50 years.
I can foresee that this data is very difficult to present because warmists have already won the mindset of the public that man is responsible for the CO2 in the atmosphere, and they will not wish to cast doubt on that mindset.
I am curious, no matter how much the aCO2 levels go up wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume they wouldn’t have gone up quite so far without our contribution? Or is that too simplistic?
I’ll bite, but please use a hook without a barb. It’s less painful.
The current scientific methods (including data) have become suspect because the previously relied upon peer review validation process has been compromised.
Whose data do we trust ?
Why should they be trusted ?
I’m with you. I have no idea what to trust when it comes to the official data. Whether we are talking aCO2, sea level, global temperature, sea ice, albedo, energy balance and don’t let’s get started about weather events. There always seems to be an agenda running and that of “the establishment” is it is getting hotter because of manmade CO2 and that means everything will be horrible.
Doesn’t it seem a bit odd that warmer means catastrophe and nothing good can come from that. The only solution is to ration energy and that can only be done by a strong central authority. That such an agenda was reinforced by the entirely political award of a Nobel Peace Prize, given to an entirely political organization called the IPCC and a very political politician called Al Gore must surely have raised a few BS detector cells. Then you see the likes of Mann, Trenberth and Shukla pretending that they got a scientific Nobel Prize for being hardcore AGW proponents which was not only BS but rather pathetic in that it was a political prize anyway.
We on the skeptical side of this matter are not up against science but rather face an onslaught of political spin. We get caught up in minutiae as has been pointed out upthread and think that we must fight every battle while the war just goes on around us.
That was the point of my earlier question and you have rightly put your finger on the essence of this battle. What data can you trust?
Very well written historical summary.
That was my comment that got upthreaded.
I’m new to blogging so thanks for teaching me that term. Yes, in the meantime avoid the rabbit hole. It distracts finite energy and effort.
You have some power left. Not much, but it will be essential power to wield when one of the countries who has to pay, objects.
The first strategy for objecting will be that the data is not independent. It’s the lowest hanging fruit and similar to any event where somebody is told to “pay up”.
If I had to guess, I would say the seeds of independence are stronger in Aussieland. It wouldn’t take much to organize and execute the Society for Data Validation.
Those that demand you pay will challenge the Society. You want that because it traps them back into your playing field.
Thanks Knute. I understand what you are saying and will take some time to figure out the next step.
Final thought while you are mulling. Paying money is where the rubber meets to road. This is where science will go to international court as subject matter experts. Case law hasn’t changed concerning how that expertise gets validated. It gets reviewed via daubert factors/Frey test.
There currently is not a well respected independent data validation organization. The market will drive the need for one.
Thinking ahead.
Data without interpretation is not that useful. There is too much one-sided interpretation of these data. Show me a learned paper that fairly weighs multiple hypotheses to reach a considered conslusion.
franktrades
You ask
Ask and ye shall receive.
Here you are
Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005).
It reports attribution studies that have used three different models to emulate the causes of the rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the twentieth century. These numerical exercises are a caution to estimates of future changes to the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The three models used in these exercises each emulate different physical processes and each agrees with the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration. They each demonstrate that the observed recent rise of atmospheric CO2 concentration may be solely a consequence of the anthropogenic emission or may be solely a result of, for example, desorption from the oceans induced by the temperature rise that preceded it. Furthermore, extrapolation using these models gives very different predictions of future atmospheric CO2 concentration whatever the cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Each of the models in this paper matches the available empirical data without use of any ‘fiddle-factor’ such as the ‘5-year smoothing’ the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses to get its model to agree with the empirical data.
So, if one of the six models of this paper is adopted then there is a 5:1 probability that the choice is wrong. And other models are probably also possible. And the six models each give a different indication of future atmospheric CO2 concentration for the same future anthropogenic emission of carbon dioxide.
Data that fits all the possible causes is not evidence for the true cause. Data that only fits the true cause would be evidence of the true cause. But the above findings demonstrate that there is no data that only fits either an anthropogenic or a natural cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Hence, the only factual statements that can be made on the true cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration are
(a) the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have an anthropogenic cause, or a natural cause, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural causes,
but
(b) there is no evidence that the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has a mostly anthropogenic cause or a mostly natural cause.
Hence, using the available data it cannot be known what if any effect altering the anthropogenic emission of CO2 will have on the future atmospheric CO2 concentration. This finding agrees with the statement in Chapter 2 from Working Group 3 in the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (2001) that says; “no systematic analysis has published on the relationship between mitigation and baseline scenarios”
It is to be hoped that the OCO-2 data will resolve the matter.
Richard
franktrades,
As Richard did show, there are several theoretical solutions to the question which is the cause of the increase in the atmosphere. Some are near fully human, some are all natural and some are a mix of both.
What is important is that the theoretical solution matches the observations. Even if only one observation is violated, that theory should be discarded. The simple conclusion is that only the near full human cause matches all observations. The all natural source violates not one but all known observations while the mixed solutions are in between, but all violate one or more observations. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
In the case of OCO-2 the main problem for this and previous satellites is resolution: human emissions are only some 6% of the total in-out flux of natural CO2. Even if the latter are more sink than source, it will be a hell of a job to detect the human contribution in the huge natural fluxes.
This will come as a great shock to most alarmists who are quite ignorant of the relative size of human contirubtion and assume that it is clear, obvious and beyond question that all we pump out stays in the atmosphere and is the cause of “the problem”.
If Erik’s extraction is verified and highest annually averaged content is over the unpopulated far north of the North Altantic, that is going to shake a few assumptions.
Ferdinand:
Above in this thread here YOU WROTE asking Erik Swenson
And Erik Swenson provided the plot of the data over a full year here.
My response to that is here and says
And I added this post script
You now say
That has to be one of the lamest post hoc excuses on record.
Richard
Richard,
At the first occurrence of the 6-weeks plot of the OCO-2 data, there was an enormous hype amongst skeptics that this showed that there human emissions were near non-existent. My reaction then was 1) wait for a full year, 2) I doubt that the satellite’s resolution is good enough to show the human contribution, which is only 0.01 ppmv/day. Even if concentrated in 10% of the earth’s surface, that will be a hell of a job.
Now we have a (near) full year of data. There are some near impossible anomalies like the “emissions” in the NE Atlantic (where the largest CO2 sink is) and some strange absence of extra CO2 emissions in the Pacific, despite an emerging El Niño. The former may be an artifact of a seasonal bias: a lack of data in the Nordic winter. The latter remains. Still some explanation from the OCO-2 people needed.
That some parts of the earth are net emitters and others net sinks has nothing to do with the capacity of the processes involved to capture any extra CO2 emitted by volcanoes or humans. Most of these processes are temperature induced (as well as the seasonal as the 1-3 year disturbances). Such processes don’t increase their inputs or outputs with increased pressure, as can be seen in the hardly changed seasonal amplitude over the past 55 years. Only pressure dependent processes can, which results in extra uptake in oceans and plants.
Thus your
This confirms the indication of the system dynamics that the “sinks” can – and do – easily sequester all the trivial additional emissions from anthropogenic sources.
is not based on the observations from OCO-2, as you have no idea how flexible the natural systems are to absorb some extra CO2 injection, whatever the source.
Ferdinand:
That is laughable.
1.
Before you saw the annual plot you claimed it “would show the net emitters and sinks over a full seasonal cycle”.
2.
When you saw the annual plot shows “the net emitters” are not discernibly anthropogenic you claimed “Even if the latter are more sink than source, it will be a hell of a job to detect the human contribution in the huge natural fluxes.”
3.
If the “human contribution” is so small that you cannot discern it then it is not rational to claim the “human contribution” is overwhelming the system.
Richard
And so it goes, and then it goes some more.
How many researchers, desperate to DO research see a set of data and a chance to dive down the rabbit hole ? They make the proposal, get the funding, perpetuate the interest in the pursuit of unicorns.
All the while they know 97% was a lie, but dive into the fray to apply their narrow skill set.
But I can make sense of your unicorn patterns.
Please, please fund me.
Richard,
– I did question the possibility of the OCO-2 satellite to detect the human input already when the first results were published. See here.
– I claimed “it would show the net emitters and sinks over a full seasonal cycle”, but combined with the previous remark, probably not fine enough for the human emissions. I should have expressed that explicitly to avoid reactions like yours…
– If the “human contribution” is so small that you cannot discern it then it is not rational to claim the “human contribution” is overwhelming the system.
That claim is not based on the satellite measurements, it is based on the mass balance and all other observations like 13C/12C ratio, 14C bomb spike decay, process characteristics,…
It is not because the satellite’s resolution is not fine enough that you can claim that the natural sources and sinks can easily cope with human emissions. All what the satellite shows is that there are huge natural sinks and sources, which was known for a long time, but the satellite makes it more specific where these are (be it with some questionable results).
I suppose that the satellite measurements still don’t use the possibility of focusing on specific areas, which would enhance the resolution. Let us wait for these results if that shows the human contribution…
Ferdinand:
I, too, cautioned people to wait for a full year of OCO-2 data before making a judgement. But your and my past cautions are NOT relevant to the present discussion.
In this thread you said a plot of OCO-2 data over a full year “would show the net emitters and sinks over a full seasonal cycle”. When provided with the plot you waffle about its resolution because it does NOT support your contention that the emissions from human sources are overwhelming the system to cause the recent increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Richard
Richard,
You are a master in deliberately misinterpretation of what someone says if that suits your purpose.
Again, with the first data a year ago I warned already that the resolution of the satellite was probably not enough to detect the human input. Maybe it gets better, as the satellite can focus over an area of interest over a longer period, but I have the impression that that feature was not yet used.
The satellite does show the main areas of net release and uptake, with some surprising results, which need clarification, as that conflicts with local measurements like the NE Atlantic “release” at the highest CO2 sink place of the world and the lack of release in the warm equatorial waters with an emerging El Niño.
Human emissions can’t overwhelm natural emissions or sinks for the simple reason that they are only some 9/150 = 6% of natural emissions/sinks. They overwhelm the difference between natural sinks and sources which is only +/- 2 GtC/year (+/- 1 ppmv) around a net sink of -4.5 GtC/year (-2.15 ppmv/year), while human emissions are +9 GtC/year (+4.5 GtC/year).
The satellite only shows concentrations over a year, not fluxes. That doesn’t show the difference in natural sources and sinks as mass over a year. Thus the satellite can’t show the net result of natural (or human) input, even if its resolution was better. It makes no sense to say that the result doesn’t support that human emissions are overwhelming the system, as that is not even measured.
Maybe they can if taking into account -vertical- mixing speed, but I doubt that it is possible. Tall towers can do that by using intakes at different heights and measuring vertical air velocity.
I do not see how this data closes the case for AGW as some have suggested. It merely shows that there are natural variations in the carbon cycle, and that because the natural cycle is so large, it is not easy to detect the human finger print on the global distribution of CO2.
If CO2 is well mixed and since manmade emissions are only a small component of the carbon cycle (circa 3 to 4%), one would require detailed resolution to see the human finger print, so it comes as no surprise that the human finger print is difficult to detect above the overwhelming signal of the natural carbon cycle.
Materially, the data does not deal with what is at the heart of the global warming debate, namely whether the rising levels of global atmospheric CO2 is down to man (the data does not show how CO2 has increased in the year 2014/5), and whether CO2 dives temperature.
This data will not put an end to the climate debate, and due to the difficulty in interpretation, I doubt that either side will be able to draw forceful conclusions advancing their side of the debate. At most, this data is a little piece in the jigsaw, but may assist in determining whether some of the assumptions in the Bern model are correct, but only to a very limited extent.
I want to comment mainly three issues discussed in earlier comments: the origin of atmospheric CO2 increase, missing sink of CO2, and the residence time of the anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. My comments are based on the results of my published paper about the anthropogenic fluxes between the atmosphere, the ocean and the biosphere. This model is semi-empirical based on the Henry’s law describing the dissolution of CO2 into the mixing layer, empirical flux rate into the deep ocean (a simple linear equation), and the biosphere model having four different residence times (1, 8, 50 and 70 years). The empirical part is based on the comprehensive study that the total amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the ocean was 115.8 GtC by 1994.
I just show the main results covering the time span from 1750 to 2013. The total anthropogenic emission rate from fossil fuels has been 394 GtC and it is divided in this way: the atmosphere 65 GtC, surface ocean 23 GtC, deep ocean 165 GtC, and the biosphere 141 GtC. During this time span totally 183 GtC of natural CO2 has recycled back from the ocean into the atmosphere. The total increase of atmospheric CO2 has been 248 GtC (from 602 GtC/1750 to 850 GtC/2013) and it is a sum of 65 + 183. There is no missing sink problem in this model.
This result is different from IPCC, which manifests that the whole increase 248 GtC of the atmospheric CO2 has an anthropogenic origin and it makes 28 % of the total atmospheric CO2 mass. This means that IPCC on the other hand admits that the ocean uptake CO2 from the atmosphere but there would not be any recycling back into the atmosphere. Of course this is nonsense, because about 80…100 GtC recycles annually. On the other hand the fossil fuel emissions cannot disappear from the atmosphere and the whole atmospheric CO2 increase would originate from the oceans only. There are direct carbon isotope measurements of the atmosphere and they show the permil value of -8.4 promille today. This value corresponds to the anthropogenic CO2 portion of 7.7% and it is exactly the same value coming from my simulation model starting from year 1750 and including all the reservoirs of CO2. Also the anthropogenic CO2 of my model is close to the measured values.
If the atmosphere would be an ideal mixing chamber without recycling fluxes, the residence time would be around 4…5 years but it is not. My simulation gives a residence time of 15 years for anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. Residence time itself has no impact on the warming capacity of CO2, but I discovered a strange feature in IPCC’s projections. I carried out a future simulation applying IPCC’s projection RCP4.5. The fossil fuel emissions has a linear growth rate from the present level (10 GtC) to 11.5 GtC up to 2040 before declining to 4.1 GtC in 2080. In my simulation the total CO2 concentration increases to the level 500 ppm in the same way as IPCC’s projection up to 2060 but starts to decrease thereafter pretty quickly. In the IPCC’s projection the CO2 concentration increases to about 540 ppm in 2100 and stays there at least 100 years.
What is the reason? IPCC admits that “Within several decades of CO2 emission, about a third to half of an initial pulse of anthropogenic CO2 goes into the land and ocean”. But, but thereafter IPCC starts to apply its own residence time of more than 100 years, when the emission rate decreases. It is needed, because in this way IPCC can produce scary projections. In order to hide this fact, IPCC does not show the emission curve in the graphs, because it would reveal this trick. A reader can see only the CO2 concentration graphs without knowing the reason for high values.
Here is a link to my web page blog: “http://www.climatexam.com/” The blog in question is the 6th in the row in the subsection “English blog”.
aveollila,
During this time span totally 183 GtC of natural CO2 has recycled back from the ocean into the atmosphere.
How that? In the past 55 years the oceans were always more sink than source.
There is a continuous flux of CO2 between the deep ocean upwelling zones in the equator and the main sink place in the NE Atlantic. Based on the “thinning” of human δ13C and the 14C bomb spike that is a stream of ~40 GtC which doesn’t add anything to the total amount of CO2, but is mistakenly seen as a sign for less human CO2 in the atmosphere…
And you make the same error as many before you: the 5-14 years residence time only influences the removal of the original human (low-13C) molecules, but doesn’t remove any quantity of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Only the difference between ins and outs does. The net sink capacity today is about 2.15 ppmv/year for 110 ppmv above steady state of the oceans per Henry’s law. That gives a linear e-fold rate of ~51 years. Not 5-14 years, not the IPCC 200 years (the latter based on the Bern model).
That makes that near all increase in the atmosphere is due to human emissions…
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Ferdinand Engelbeen: (from the above link)
“Here is a graph of the (global) temperature trend, the cumulative amount of emissions and the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere (1900-2011):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
“
Note the ‘pause’ period correlation fails !
Similar claim can be made for the changes in the earth’s magnetic field
file://localhost/G:/MAGNET/Aa-FILES/GT-GMF1.gif
Note the ‘pause’ period correlation holds strong !
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net//GT-GMF1.gif
Vuk,
A little overblown to say that the correlation “fails” after 2000, as one should take into account that temperature does have some influence on the uptake. In the period 1976-2000 temperatures were increasing, adding some CO2 of its own (maximum 10 ppmv in that period), while after 2000 there is no temperature increase, so no help anymore. That makes that the increase in the atmosphere is linear, while human emissions continue to increase somewhat quadratic. Still the correlation is very high and far better than with temperature:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
Thanks for your comment. Your explanation for pause at first instance make some sense to us less ‘CO2 literate’, I haven’t seen it before, so it is to those with a bit more expertise to question it.
On the other hand, since the Earth’s dipole runs about a decade ahead, if there is a link, no need for an explanation ‘detour’. In addition I notice that as the years went by, 1940’s were corrected downwards, i.e. cooled down, else correlation would be even stronger.
Vuk,
Taking into account the influence of temperature and the pressure increase in the atmosphere, the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere nicely fits in the noise caused by the short-term influence of temperature on the CO2 rate of change (which is caused by the reaction of tropical vegetation on temperature changes):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
I have no opinion about your magnetic dipole – temperature connection. It would be stronger if you can show that the opposite correlation at the onset of an (Little) Ice Age also works. But I fear that no such detailed proxies exist.
What I always wondered is that the earth’s magnetic orientation (as seen in the iron kernels of the lava at the mid-Atlantic ridge) during the whole Cretaceous was in the same direction, (not?) by coincidence a very warm period. Unfortunately the link I had doesn’t work anymore…
Hi Erik, below I hope the NASA 1Oct to 11 Nov map and your map for same time interval can be compared. Its possible to see many of the same patterns. Using the same scale would make the comparison easier. I was wondering if you could re-frender your chart to same scale as NASA to facilitate this comparison. I also note that the LITE version of the data has been QCd. Any idea what criteria are used to select for “good” data?
Wow, I’ve just realised, seeing those side by side, why NASA cut off at 60Sand 60N. That removes the embarrassing presence of the biggest CO2 in the northern, N.Atlantic.
The 60˚ cut also chops the dark blue sinks at high N and S latitudes. But the one thing about the whole picture I don’t understand is that big blob of red in the N Atlantic.
The high CO2 in the North Atlantic between (Greenland and Spitzbergen) is interesting. That sea area is supposed to be CO2 sink according to this: http://serc.carleton.edu/eslabs/carbon/6a.html. Then again, the ocean carbon cycle could be yet another unsettled area of climate science.
Here is the image using NASA’s original range. I think they have biased up the CO2 levels since that first image. I am not raising an alarm flag, since they may not have calibrated OCO-2 to surface measurements yet.
http://i60.tinypic.com/mkw0p4.png
Here is an image that more closely matches their “color” scheme. As you can see, I had to move the min from 387 to 385, and the max from 402.5 to 406.
http://i62.tinypic.com/2ugp47s.png
Sorry, I made a mistake in the scale on the images. The proper range should have been 389-406. After I fixed that, my image looks much closer to NASA’s using their scale.
http://i59.tinypic.com/vy1p2c.png
Erik, many thanks for your help. Can we trust your 51 week image is true to the published data? I’ve become a bit confused by the discussion below. I’ve started to write a post on this venturing mainly observations with multiple caveats.
Hi Euan – I can’t reply to your comment below (too deep I guess?) Mike is right about the data at the extreme parts of the map. You will not have a complete yearly cycle over all parts of the image. I can’t think of a way to correct for that. You can see from the images above that those regions ARE represented for approximately April/May through September though. So, there is meaningful data. However it does not represent the complete yearly picture.
Having said that, it would appear that far Northern Canada does follow the same trends as SE Canada, which is represented throughout the complete data set. So, I think it would reasonable to assume that NW Canada and SE Canada are similar in their CO2 sink/source. I don’t know if anyone has wants to comment on that.
I have to agree that the concentrations seem to follow photosynthetic capacity which are often over-ridden by industrial/human concentrations. This however in no way explains the behaviour of equatorial Africa where one would assume both photsyntesis and industrial activity is relatively constant.
The unexpectedly marked seasonality of the hemispheres is startling – long way to go before we understand fully what is going on, a lot of the patterns seem to follow the weather and SSTs. Boy does this show we know next to nothing!
“mwh
October 5, 2015 at 2:29 am
This however in no way explains the behaviour of equatorial Africa where one would assume both photsyntesis and industrial activity is relatively constant.”
There is almost no industry, as we know it, there. Subsistence farming more likely.
exactly my point – no change to explain the seasonal difference
Another strage one would be from the annual averaged map at the end – why the higher concentration in the Greenland Sea – that should get a bit of conjecture going
Maybe it’s the mating season for equatorial African termites…
🙂
ROFL
Hi Erik, same thing for next time slice. A number of things need to be noted. 1) NASA skip 10 days of data and present time interval 21 Nov to 27 Dec, 2) you skip 5 days of data and present 16 Nov to 31 Dec, 3) once again some similar trends are clear e.g. high concs over Amazon, west Africa / Congo and China. But there are also some differences, e.g your map lacks the high concs over Siberia and Canada. 4) NASA are using a different map projection to before 5) NASA chop a lot of high N latitude data 6) your maps have a lot of black blobs at high N latitude.
Can you explain what the black blobs are? And why is there no data at high N and S latitude? With a polar orbit I’d have thought we might get total cover?
If you widen the range more, you can see they are mostly low CO2 readings. There are some high readings there as well, which might be spurious.
http://i60.tinypic.com/2q8q0xu.png
As I noted in another comment, I found a problem with my scale, the range for the other images here should be 389-406. The image above is close to the range I had in my original image, but shows more data now due to my error.
http://i59.tinypic.com/152kmk4.jpg
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol4/iss2/art3/figure1b.gif
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol4/iss2/art3/
(Fig. 1. Global forest distribution at 1-km resolution from the International Geophysical Biome (IGBP) Project (Loveland and Belward 1997). The five forest types shown were combined into one category for analysis of fragmentation patterns.)
I think the correspondence is quite astonishing. The implication would be that these northern forests have become a net source of CO2 that would have to link somehow to their life cycle.
Fascinating Euan – it’s those damned evergreens! Both Needleleaf and Broadleaf!
Allan MacRae says:
Similar caution before drawing too many conclusions and interpretations. Erik’s nov-dec plot does not have any data for N.Am boreal forest, so the ‘annual’ hotspot is probably misleading. It is seasonally biased to the northern summer.
Yes, its a good point that we don’t have a full year of data and there could be a residual effect. One week of data missing – 23 to 30 Sep. I doubt that could cause the pattern, but you never know, N hemisphere in sink mode at this time – not sure I understand that either.
Thank you Euan, very interesting!
What I find staggering here is the range from 380 ppm to 415 ppm. I blows a raspberry in the direction of the “well mixed” hypothesis and the climate models that use it, and the idea that we can categorize CO2 by a single global value.
For normal science, this would be back to the drawing board and we would have to understand what was going on here and how to incorporate it in a meaningful way into the models.
However, in climate science, it is business as usual (or in fact politics as usual). People will still continue to pump out articles that ignore this information.
I discovered an error in my scale map. The actual range is 389 – 406. I am working with Anthony to find the best way to update this page. SOOO many comments!
Walt,
Depends of the time scales. Well mixed doesn’t imply that all levels are equal at any moment in time, no matter the inputs and outputs.
In the case of CO2, some 20% (~80 ppmv!) of what is in the atmosphere is going in and out within a year over the seasons. That is reflected in an only 8% scale for the full globe. Thus within months the 20% change is leveled off and within a year the average difference between near the North Pole (Barrow) and the South Pole is only 4 ppmv, even that mostly because the ITCZ restrains the exchange of NH and SH air masses to some 10% per year.
Climate models calculate with changes over longer time scales and use yearly averages for the whole globe. Local CO2 changes of +/- 4% over halve a year have negligible influence on the radiation balance (which doesn’t imply that the models are accurate!)…
that’s a good point about coverage, Euan.
The main cutoff has been answered several times already, it is due to OCO2 only measuring in daylight hours. The end of year plots go deeper in SH. The wavey effect in NH will be an interaction of flight path with time of day of flyover, basically an alias of the daily cycle. You will note that the blockiness of the NASA plot has a diffterent phase to Erik’s version. This is because of different end dates.
Ah, Eric, I think a see a problem in your annual averaged plot.
Your Nov_Dec 2014 graph does not go any higher than Norway. That means that your “annual average” is does not include data for all 11 months in the region higher than that. It is not an annual average it is dominantly summer data.
That CO2 ‘hot spot’ is probably a processing error.
Agree.
Is that why NASA chop at 60˚ N and S? The data beyond that contain a seasonal bias?
It seems to be that the satellite needs full sunlight to give good CO2 measurements. In the polar regions that is a problem in winter… That indeed gives a seasonal bias.
“It seems to be that the satellite needs full sunlight to give good CO2 measurements.”
True, a lot of times there’s about a 10% shift between daytime and night time CO2 levels.
I was a little reluctant to do a yearly average. That is one problem. As well, all around the globe points are not equally represented. NASA has holes in the data, so yearly averaging may not be a good idea. When I was doing these tests myself, I would reset the graph every 2 or 3 months to make sure long-term effects like that were not present. Good observation Mike.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/04/finally-visualized-oco2-satellite-data-showing-global-carbon-dioxide-concentrations/#comment-2042028
This is why I suggested extracting a regional average and doing a verification against ground based measurements. That error would have become immediately obvious. Those high N. latitudes have the highest range annual cycle. If you inadvertently select summer centred months it will be very high.
I would say that Erik’s averaging method seems a lot better than what NASA do, particularly visible in equatorial Africa. It looks like NASA are doing something crap like a spacial running average. As I understand Erik’s description, he is using “tent” shaped triangular weighting: crude filter but way better than running average.
Here is a similar aliasing problem in tropical ERBE satellite data. This has a similar , near polar, orbit with a 72d repetition. The daily illumination of the NS pass and the following SN pass ‘around the back’ are superimposed. Thus the flat night-time section is not seen. This is similar to Erik’s waviness showing two peaks in the 360 of the daily rotation, not one.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=1293
This horrible alias was caused by some fairly crude and inappropriate data processing assumptions about cloud cover being constant throughout the day in the tropics. They obviously haven’t been there !!
euanmearns: “Is that why NASA chop at 60˚ N and S? The data beyond that contain a seasonal bias?”
That would make sense if they provided an annual plot. I don’t see it as a reason to crop what data was captured. It may be an attempt to avoid the kind of diurnal alias I pointed out above. The most northerly part of the wave will be sampling at midday, solar. The troughs will be an overlap of 6am and 6pm from each pass, eight days apart.
BTW Kevin Trenberth that pointed out that their processing of the 36d ERBE orbits into monthly averages would produce a circa 6mo alias. Credit where it’s due. Greg Goodman extracted and plotted the diurnal alias.
euanmearns: “Is that why NASA chop at 60˚ N and S? The data beyond that contain a seasonal bias?”
That would make sense if they provided an annual plot. I don’t see it as a reason to crop what data was captured. It may be an attempt to avoid the kind of diurnal alias I pointed out above. The most northerly part of the wave will be sampling at midday, solar. The troughs will be an overlap of 6am and 6pm from each pass, eight days apart.
BTW Kevin Trenberth that pointed out that their processing of the 36d ERBE orbits into monthly averages would produce a circa 6mo alias. Credit where it’s due. ( G. Goodman extracted and plotted the diurnal alias.)
I’m encouraged. ANY area supplying the world w/more vital CO2 should be thanked for their efforts — significantly increased crop and biosphere production, perhaps delaying the next glaciation, staying above the disastrous CO2 starvation level, helping keep people warm, providing efficient transportation, supplying vital electrical power — on & on & on.
Concur.
Warm is good.
Cold is bad.
CO2 is good.
’nuff said.
Here is an animated gif if anyone is interested.
http://www.m4gw.com/images/GIFS/OCO-Animated.gif
Hey Elmer! That GIF has already made it to Google’s image search! Cool. I am trying to get Anthony to update the images on this page with the correct scale (should be 389-406). Once we get that done, can you regenerate your anim?
Thanks!
Is that the equivalent of a science selfie?
You may be pleased with that, but the public sees this instead.
Then they go look at your beautiful science selfie and likely say to themselves,
“look, even the skeptics over at WUWT are trying to find out who the biggest emitters are. oh look, there’s unhappilandia, glad they have to pay more than we do … did you hear what Poland said … how about those heels she wears”
You are doing the work for the cagwistas.
Stop and think. If you pump out trend analysis without referencing WHAT THAT MEANS CONCERNING THE PLANET, you are very likely inflaming the misinformation.
WUWT was needed as an outlet for suppressed information. Now WUWT has created a forum that requires the next step.
Nice selfies, but what does the Society for Scientific Inegrity conclude concerning its meaning ?
Yes I can make a new gif no problem. It would be nice to get higher res images but this size is fine too.
Excellent thread with graphics that can be easily overlain.
This is the yearly OCO Ferdinand requested overlain by the human distribution. Other than China being the bad boy, everything else is a surprise. The boreal forests are net sources? The North Atlantic is a huge net source that dwarfs any single human locus?
All bets are off until we figure this out…
Latest from the Chinese Minister of Truth
“China’s top scientists have reviewed the recent evidence and find that China is unreasonably being targeted for excess CO2. We do not believe the data has been independently validated. We also do not believe that the relatively short snapshot in time accurately represents the potential for CO2 to travel and temporarily stop in China. We call on the world to stop promoting unsubstantiated rumors based on corruptable and unvalidated data”.
Alternative Chinese Minister of Truth statement
“China has consulted with its scientists and determined that CO2 is good for the greening of the planet as a whole. We realize though that our sacrifice to absorb what the rest of the planet considers an unacceptable gas must be compensated.”
And on and on this will go until the somebody steps up and establishes themselves as the world’s data validator.
All bets are off until you read the rest of the thread ….
My recent comments may help you.
Suspect data.
Rabbit hole explanations.
Do you not see a clear opportunity to demand a revival of an independent peer review process ?
As I read mountains and years of material on CAGW, it is my impression that the US is the leading corruptor. Britain is their little show pony. Germany just wants to be liked. The Aussies show a little fire in the belly.
Perhaps ….
The Australian Independent Data Validation Society ?
You don’t even have to discuss theory. Just establish yourselves as the uncorruptable gold standard for data concerning the subject.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/04/finally-visualized-oco2-satellite-data-showing-global-carbon-dioxide-concentrations/#comment-2042299
That CO2 ‘hot spot’ is probably a processing error.
Mike, a “processing error”? Since when does the gov’t make a ‘processing error’?
Oh, wait…
It is not ALL a processing error. If it is the bias that only the NH summer data pertains to that area, that would mean that it is inflated by a factor of approximately 2. Even half of that “blob” eyechrometer wise would be what, a China, 2/3 of a China? By any standard a huge non sequitur for the meme.
Not to mention (again) that the boreal NH forests are supposed to be a net sink. Interesting that to a large extent except for their southern margins they are.
What odds do you propose?
Thanks to Erik Swenson for his most interesting work.
For those wondering about the data cut-off near the poles:
tomo said
October 4, 2015 at 1:09 pm
“The spectrometer geometry at the poles is no good – it’s all explained in the documentation.”
I haven’t checked the documentation because I don’t know where it is. Perhaps tomo could provide a link.
David Riser said
October 4, 2015 at 10:19 am
“Its 8%, 35ppm over a 415ppm range. […] I imagine that there are greater variations that are being tossed out as bad data.”
Probably true.
Whatever is going on with atmospheric CO₂ concentrations in the OCO-2 data plotted by Erik Swenson, any link to anthropogenic sources is obscure.
Previously, data from the JAXA Ibuki GOSAT had indicated regions of the N Hemisphere were net sinks of CO₂ during the summer months.
http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2012/12/20121205_ibuki_e.html
Finally, a general question: What evidence do we have that any natural sinks of CO₂ are ever saturated?
Question for Erik if he’s still watching.
Have you read the doc here? : https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov/#mission=OCO-2
It seems that the equatorial Africa region that shows warming in the annual average has a high warning level. At low warning levels there is not data for much of it. What WL did you select for your graphs?
In his guest essay, in the section titled “A few implementation notes,” Erik Swenson wrote:
“All data points are plotted from the OCO-2-Lite files regardless of warn_level. Warn_level is used to judge the quality of the sample. The OCO-2-Lite files say they are the “high-quality” samples, so I chose to use them all.”
dbstealey, I was referring to an error by Erik, read the link 😉
Mike,
Sorry, I forgot the “/sarc” tag. That big red spike in my link is a ‘processing error’. I was trying to be funny but I guess it didn’t work.
🙂 It worked. I laughed. No /sarc nor /humor (/humour) tags necessary.