Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
In my last two articles I examined what we know, but more importantly what we don’t know, about the three main greenhouse gases (GHG). The first examined methane (CH4) and the second CO2. The fluster of responses about data and accuracy of measurements is essentially irrelevant because combined CH4 and CO2 represent only four percent of the GHG. It didn’t matter whether Beck was right or wrong about actual CO2 measures, what was important was the degree of variability the data showed, such as with the stomata data. This variability was deliberately eliminated in other measures to achieve a smooth, with no splinters, ‘hockey stick’ because it contradicted the well-mixed scenario essential to the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) agenda.
The articles about CH4 and CO2 illustrate the modus operandi of the creators and proponents of the AGW hypothesis. They designed them to prove the hypothesis rather than disproving, as is the proper scientific method. This includes selecting and adjusting the start and end points of records, ignoring those that don’t fit or worse contradict the hypothesis. There is inadequate temperature data for construction of the computer models, and there is even fewer data for every other variable. Data is created mathematically, such as the use of parameterization for temperatures. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explain parameterization as follows,
“…the technique of representing processes that cannot be explicitly resolved at the spatial or temporal resolution of the model (sub-grid scale processes) by relationships between model-resolved larger-scale variables and the area- or time- averaged effect of such subgrid scale processes.”
Figure 1 shows the current percentages of greenhouse gases as a part of total atmospheric gases. The challenge for the IPCC and its promoters was to create a different set of percentages and images for the public. This required amplifying one side, as I explained about CO2 and CH4 while downplaying the other side.
Figure 1 (After Heartland.org)
The first and most important device was the definition of climate change Article 1 of the UNFCCC, a treaty formalized at the “Earth Summit” in Rio in 1992, defined Climate Change as:
a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.
This allowed them to limit the variables considered in their investigation, which is depicted by the forcing diagrams. Figure 2 shows those for the 2001 IPCC Report.
Figure 2
LOSU stands for Level of Scientific Understanding. Notice only two are rated “High” but we know that is not accurate. Stratospheric water vapour is included, but tropospheric water is not. This is interesting because the 2007 Report says,
Due to the computational cost associated with the requirement of a well-resolved stratosphere, the models employed for the current assessment do not generally include the QBO.
It appears they knew little and did not have the data or the ability to resolve what was going on. The level of knowledge is the same in the 2013 AR5 Report (Figure 3). The changes are telling. Now “Long-lived greenhouse gasses” are “Well-mixed greenhouse gasses.” This is because they switched the narrative. The early story said that CO2 residency time was 100 years, but that was challenged and corrected. The new, false, narrative was that CO2 was well mixed. The “Very High” assessment doesn’t fit the increasing divergence between the CO2 level and the temperature.
Figure 3
The confidence level for well-mixed greenhouse gasses is now “Very high”. This is simply not possible because, as the satellite data from OCO2 shows, CO2 is clearly not a well-mixed gas. The problem is similar to the objective of the IPCC to determine human causes of climate change. It is only possible if you know how much climate changes without the human effect. You can only determine the CO2 effect if you know the effect of the predominant greenhouse gas – water vapor.
The IPCC acknowledges that water vapor is the most important and abundant greenhouse gas. In the 2007 Report they wrote
“Water vapour is the most abundant and important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
They then explain why they are going to ignore it.
However, human activities have only a small direct influence on the amount of atmospheric water vapour.”
The 2013 IPCC Report FAQ 8.1 responds to criticism about not including water vapour as a greenhouse. Here is the entire FAQ, which is illuminating and begs many questions. (There is no significance to the fact it is on page 666.)
As the largest contributor to the natural greenhouse effect, water vapour plays an essential role in the Earth’s climate. However, the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is controlled mostly by air temperature, rather than by emissions. For that reason, scientists consider it a feedback agent, rather than a forcing to climate change. Anthropogenic emissions of water vapour through irrigation or power plant cooling have a negligible impact on the global climate.
Water vapour is the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. The contribution of water vapour to the natural greenhouse effect relative to that of carbon dioxide (CO2) depends on the accounting method, but can be considered to be approximately two to three times greater. Additional water vapour is injected into the atmosphere from anthropogenic activities, mostly through increased evaporation from irrigated crops, but also through power plant cooling, and marginally through the combustion of fossil fuel. One may therefore question why there is so much focus on CO2, and not on water vapour, as a forcing to climate change.
Water vapour behaves differently from CO2 in one fundamental way: it can condense and precipitate. When air with high humidity cools, some of the vapour condenses into water droplets or ice particles and precipitates. The typical residence time of water vapour in the atmosphere is ten days. The flux of water vapour into the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources is considerably less than from ‘natural’ evaporation. Therefore, it has a negligible impact on overall concentrations, and does not contribute significantly to the long-term greenhouse effect. This is the main reason why tropospheric water vapour (typically below 10 km altitude) is not considered to be an anthropogenic gas contributing to radiative forcing.
Anthropogenic emissions do have a significant impact on water vapour in the stratosphere, which is the part of the atmosphere above about 10 km. Increased concentrations of methane (CH4) due to human activities lead to an additional source of water, through oxidation, which partly explains the observed changes in that atmospheric layer. That stratospheric water change has a radiative impact, is considered a forcing, and can be evaluated. Stratospheric concentrations of water have varied significantly in past decades. The full extent of these variations is not well understood and is probably less a forcing than a feedback process added to natural variability. The contribution of stratospheric water vapour to warming, both forcing and feedback, is much smaller than from CH4 or CO2.
The maximum amount of water vapour in the air is controlled by temperature. A typical column of air extending from the surface to the stratosphere in polar regions may contain only a few kilograms of water vapour per square metre, while a similar column of air in the tropics may contain up to 70 kg. With every extra degree of air temperature, the atmosphere can retain around 7% more water vapour (see upper-left insert in the FAQ 8.1, Figure 1). This increase in concentration amplifies the green- house effect, and therefore leads to more warming. This process, referred to as the water vapour feed- back, is well understood and quantified. It occurs in all models used to estimate climate change, where its strength is consistent with observations. Although an increase in atmospheric water vapour has been observed, this change is recognized as a climate feed- back (from increased atmospheric temperature) and should not be interpreted as a radiative forcing from anthropogenic emissions. Currently, water vapour has the largest greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, other greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, are necessary to sustain the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere. Indeed, if these other gases were removed from the atmosphere, its temperature would drop sufficiently to induce a decrease of water vapour, leading to a runaway drop of the greenhouse effect that would plunge the Earth into a frozen state. So greenhouse gases other than water vapour provide the temperature structure that sustains current levels of atmospheric water vapour. Therefore, although CO2 is the main anthropogenic control knob on climate, water vapour is a strong and fast feedback that amplifies any initial forcing by a typical factor between two and three. Water vapour is not a significant initial forcing, but is nevertheless a fundamental agent of climate change.
FAQ 8.1, Figure 1 | Illustration of the water cycle and its interaction with the greenhouse effect. The upper-left insert indicates the relative increase of potential water vapour content in the air with an increase of temperature (roughly 7% per degree). The white curls illustrate evaporation, which is compensated by precipitation to close the water budget. The red arrows illustrate the outgoing infrared radiation that is partly absorbed by water vapour and other gases, a process that is one component of the greenhouse effect. The stratospheric processes are not included in this figure.
This section is so full of misstatements and false assumptions that it requires an entire column in itself, but that is not the purpose of this column. Suffice to say that this appears to be another way of presenting the already disproven positive feedback. It is also an example of, in the vernacular, having your cake and eating it too. Their argument misses the point entirely. They don’t know how much contribution human water vapour (H2O) makes because they don’t have critical information. They don’t know how much H2O humans produce, how much H2O there is in the atmosphere, or the amount H2O varies naturally. When assessing how much the energy balance is affected by greenhouse gases, the source is only an issue if you want to point an accusatory political finger. For science, the total amount of each gas and how it varies is critical. As NASA notes,
Water vapor is a critical variable for climate studies. The absorption of infrared (IR) radiation by atmospheric water vapor and its subsequent emission at lower temperatures greatly influences the radiative energy balance of the planet.
So, the questions are how much H2O is in the atmosphere and how much does it vary?
In 1996, the challenges for measuring water vapour were explained as follows.
It is very hard to quantify water vapor in the atmosphere. Its concentration changes continually with time, location and altitude. To measure it at the same location every day, you would need a hygrometer, which in earlier days made use of the moisture-sensitivity of a hair, and by now of for instance condensators. A vertical profile is obtained with a weather balloon. To get a global overview, only satellite measurements are suitable. From a satellite, the absorption of the reflecting sunlight due to water vapor molecules is measured. The results are pictures of global water vapor distributions and their changes. The measurement error, however, is still about 30 to 40%.
By 2002, according to NASA, it was no better.
Finally, water vapor plays a key role in the Earth’s hydrologic cycle. Therefore, a better understanding of its role will require long-term observations of both small and large scale water vapor features, a major goal of the National Aeronautics and Space and Administration’s (NASA’s) Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) program.
But the IPCC is only interested stratospheric water vapour from CH4 as Figure 3 shows. Even here they don’t know much,
Since trend estimates from the cited literature are used here, issues such as data records of different length, potential lack of comparability among measurement methods and different trend calculation methods, add to the uncertainty in assessing trends.
If they were interested in tropospheric water vapour, they could use the total column water vapour measures from RSS.
We have merged the water vapor measurements from the many radiometers in operation since 1987, including SSM/I, SSMIS, AMSR-E and WindSat. These data were all processed in a consistent manner using our radiative transfer model and careful instrument intercalibration. The water vapor from these instruments are used to create a Total Precipitable Water (atmospheric water vapor) product that is best for use in climate study.
This means we have a 28-year record according to RSS and 19 years according to the IPCC. These are the people who demand a 30-year record for statistical significance.
The IPCC employed their standard amplification technique, known as the Global Warming Potential (GWP) to increase the effect of CO2 and CH4 while reducing the role of H2O. What is GWP?
The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is defined as the time-integrated RF due to a pulse emission of a given component, relative to a pulse emission of an equal mass of CO2 (Figure 8.28a and formula). The GWP was presented in the First IPCC Assessment (Houghton et al., 1990), stating ‘It must be stressed that there is no universally accepted methodology for combining all the relevant factors into a single global warming potential for greenhouse gas emissions.
A search for GWP values produces a bewildering range of numbers. This prompted Gavin Schmidt, now Director of NASA GISS, to write,
The relative contributions of atmospheric long‐wave absorbers to the present‐day global greenhouse effect are among the most misquoted statistics in public discussions of climate change.
How does Schmidt clarify the problem? In typical circular argument using self-generated computer model data.
Motivated by the need for a clear reference for this issue, we review the existing literature and use the Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE radiation module to provide an overview of the role of each absorber at the present-day and under doubled CO2. With a straightforward scheme for allocating overlaps, we find that water vapour is the dominant contributor (~50% of the effect), followed by clouds (~25%) and then CO2 with ~20%. All other absorbers play only minor roles.
The IPCC is less sure about what is going on. Here is what they wrote in Chapter 8 of AR5 Consider the number of values and subjectively related decisions in this supposedly scientific process (my bold).
Emission metrics such as Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Global Temperature change Potential (GTP) can be used to quantify and communicate the relative and absolute contributions to climate change of emissions of different substances, and of emissions from regions/countries or sources/sectors. The metric that has been used in policies is the GWP, which integrates the RF of a substance over a chosen time horizon, relative to that of CO2. The GTP is the ratio of change in global mean surface temperature at a chosen point in time from the uncertainties related to both GWP and GTP, and the relative uncertainties are larger for GTP. There are also limitations and inconsistencies related to their treatment of indirect effects and feedbacks. The values are very dependent on metric type and time horizon. The choice of metric and time horizon depends on the particular application and which aspects of climate change are considered relevant in a given context. Metrics do not define policies or goals but facilitate evaluation and implementation of multi-component policies to meet particular goals. All choices of metric contain implicit value-related judgements such as type of effect considered and weighting of effects over time.
Water vapour is the giant wet elephant in the IPCC laboratory. The definition of climate change they received allowed them to ignore anything that didn’t fit their hypothesis. As a result, the IPCC focus is on eliminating, ignoring, and creating false narratives to enhance the role of CO2. This has the effect of pushing the elephant of water vapour under water so that like an iceberg the public only see about 10 percent of the mass.
Dr. Ball,
You are very good at attributing motivation to what others say, but that only shows that you have no idea about what you are writing (or you do that by purpose):
Now “Long-lived greenhouse gasses” are “Well-mixed greenhouse gasses.” This is because they switched the narrative.
Either you don’t understand what is said, or you made that up: it is a necessary condition for being a “well-mixed greenhouse gas” that such a gas has a sufficient life time. If that isn’t the case, like for ozone in the stratosphere, then that gas will be not well mixed and for ozone the levels over the equator are a lot higher than over the poles.
The early story said that CO2 residency time was 100 years, but that was challenged and corrected.
Where in the IPCC reports was that “corrected”? As far as I know, the IPCC still uses the Bern model which shows different decay times for different reservoirs with different saturation levels, from very fast for the ocean surface to slower for the deep oceans and very slow for other reservoirs, where the last 30% should sink over very long periods.
This is simply not possible because, as the satellite data from OCO2 shows, CO2 is clearly not a well-mixed gas.
Sorry, pure nonsense. A variability of +/- 2% of full scale over the seasons, while 20% of all CO2 is going in and out of the atmosphere in a few months is damn well mixed. See that on full scale for Mauna Loa and Samoa, including all the local outliers and seasonal changes:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_raw_select_2008_fullscale.jpg
Further Fig, 1 shows that human CO2 is only 3,4% of the increase, while it is 3,4 (meanwhile 6%) of the cycle, but contrary to the cycle, it is one-way addition and thus the human contribution is in reality 90% of the increase, not 3,4%…
Thus while I agree that the water vapor feedback doesn’t exist and seems more a negative cloud feedback on any increase in incoming radiation, errors and motive attributions like the above don’t give much confidence to what you write…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
You say to Tim Ball,
I say to you,
You are very good at attributing motivation to what others say, but that only shows that you have no idea about what you are writing (or you do that by purpose):
‘People in glass houses’ and all that.
Richard
The satellite images show it is not well mixed…or are you saying they are fake ???
C’mon. OCO shows that it is not perfectly and instantaneously mixed. Compared to water, CO2 is very, very well mixed.
gymnosperm:
You say
Thankyou for your excellent demonstration of the common warmunist trick of focusing on irrelevance and not on matters of importance.
The comparison with water vapour is irrelevant.
The lack of adequate mixing creates an excess of CO2 over a year in regions where nature cannot sequester all the locally emitted CO2 in that year. And those regions are indicators of reasons for the rise in atmospheric CO2.
OCO-2 shows that over the year sub-Sahara Africa and Siberia have greater excess CO2 than Western Europe.
sarc on/
Clearly, the CO2 from humans’ industrial activities in sub-Sahara Africa and Siberia are causing the rise in atmospheric CO2.
sarc off/
Richard
Richard,
Besides that the OCO-2 people need to address some real strange anomalies, like the extra CO2 over the NE Atlantic, where the largest CO2 sink in the oceans is measured (over many years and many thousands of measurements), even a 20 ppmv difference in levels over a year is small, as 80 ppmv CO2 gets in and out within a few months over the seasons. Thus still well mixed, not instantly mixed…
The “reasons for the rise of CO2” still is wishful thinking from your side…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
In this sub-thread where I objected to your feigned protest at Tim Ball attributing motivation you have written
I do NOT have a “side” but you do.
I point out that available data does not permit identification of the cause(s) of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 as being natural, or anthropogenic, or some combination of anthropogenic and natural effects.
You proclaim your belief that the cause of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 is the anthropogenic CO2 emission.
Richard
Richard,
If all observations point to humans as cause of the increase and all alternative explanations do fail one or more observations or even all observations (for Bart’s explanation), then I can be pretty sure that humans are the cause.
By not accepting these facts, you only show that you don’t like the implications…
“All observations” do not point to humans as the cause. You have woven a narrative in which you interpret the evidence that way, but it is a collection of “Just So” stories unmoored from basic physical principles, and fundamentally contradicted by the evidence that dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0).
“…but contrary to the cycle, it is one-way addition…”
This is an assumption, but in fact, there is no constraint that demands that natural inputs and outputs balance.
The argument is naive and self-contradictory. If there were such a constraint, that would imply a regulating feedback, and growth from anthropogenic inputs would similarly be suppressed.
Bart:
there is no constraint that demands that natural inputs and outputs balance.
No, but the measurements show that the natural unbalance is surprisingly small: not more than +/- 1 ppmv around the trend, whatever the trend may cause.
If there were such a constraint, that would imply a regulating feedback, and growth from anthropogenic inputs would similarly be suppressed.
Except that different processes are at work: about all natural processes in the carbon cycle are temperature controlled: seasonal (ocean surface and vegetation), continuous (deep oceans), year by year variability (vegetation). Human emissions (and volcanoes) add to the pressure in the atmosphere above steady state and its decay is only possible through pressure related processes, temperature hardly plays a role there. That is mainly the case for the oceans and more limited for vegetation. The effects of temperature and pressure are quite different for different processes…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
You write saying to Bart
In light of that admission, please explain why you assume all those effects summate to zero in the absence of the anthropogenic emission.
Richard
Richard:
In light of that admission, please explain why you assume all those effects summate to zero in the absence of the anthropogenic emission.
800,000 years of history and current knowledge: in all time frames temperature was the only driving force where CO2 simply followed temperature changes with some variable lag and ultimately balanced at the CO2 levels which are dictated by Henry’s law for the CO2 solubility in the oceans.
That is a quite slow process with lags between 50 years (MWP-LIA) and hundreds of years (deglaciations) to thousands of years (onset of glaciations).
All these processes, from seasonal via 1-3 years variability (both vegetation dominant) and long term (multi-decades to multi-millennia, ocean dominant) are entirely temperature dependent. The same temperature change ultimately gives the same CO2 change over the past 800,000 years, except for the past 165 years.
CO2 increases due to large volcanic events are completely absent in the records and the largest recent huge event, the 1991 Pinatubo – VEI 6 – didn’t even increase CO2 levels, to the contrary.
So, human emissions are the first appreciable release of vast quantities of CO2 in the past 800,000 years, where the increase in CO2 pressure in the atmosphere is the only driving force for the sink rate at an e-fold decay rate of slightly over 50 years. By far fast enough to follow the extra CO2 pressure caused by temperature changes over thousands of years, but not fast enough to cope with human emissions in short time.
The above requires assumptions of
A) absolute faith the the ice core records, without any independent verification
B) belief that whatever happened in the past must continue forever
continuing…
It is a fundamentally unphysical outlook. A tight equilibrium enforced for 100’s of thousands of years requires feedback regulation. Without it, CO2 would have drifted far and wide.
But, tight feedback regulation of natural inputs is fundamentally incompatible with lax response to human inputs.
You quite simply cannot have both tight and loose regulation in the real world. It just does not work like that.
Bart,
The influence of human emissions is measurable in ice cores, in coralline sponges, even in stomata data, the pre-bomb-tests 14C decline, 13C/12C ratio of leaves and wood,… All starting around 1850 and increasing in speed. Thus not only in ice core records, but in a lot of proxies.
Ice core records happen to be direct CO2 measurements, be it averaged over a short (less than a decade for the past 150 years) to very long period over the past 800,000 years (and confirmed over a few million years in foramins).
Thus indeed with reasons, I have confidence in ice core results.
That the past doesn’t (always) predict the future is sure, but what is sure is that the current increase of 400 ppmv is unprecedented in the past 800,000 years. All past variability was temperature induced, the current increase is certainly not temperature induced, despite your formula which violates all physical laws of solubility and response of the fluxes to an increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
There is no discrepancy between a relative slow response to increased CO2 levels: an e-fold decay rate of over 50 years can’t cope with 200 ppmv human emissions in 165 years time, but it is more than fast enough to follow the 100 ppmv increase over 5,000 years between glacial and interglacial periods…
And again, all natural carbon fluxes are tightly temperature regulated, an extra CO2 shot in the atmosphere is not removed by these processes, that is a pressure regulated process of a different order.
Nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense. When natural flows are 30X or greater than the human input, nature obviously would have no trouble regulating our puny input.
You just make things up as you go along, Ferdinand. The Just-so stories you come up with may sound pleasing to you, and appear plausible to inexperienced minds. But, it is no more scientifically rigorous than explaining how the Djinn gave the camel his hump.
Bart,
I know, you are not interested in observations, your theory based on matching two straight lines with an arbitrary factor and offset is the only truth… Even if that violates all observations, including known physics like Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater,,,
I’m not interested in your storytelling based on cherry picked observations, with which the storyline is merely vaguely consistent. You are not arguing observations. You are advocating a particular, and physically untenable, interpretation of the observations.
There are fundamental mathematical and physical laws which contradict your storyline. You do not realize it, because your math skills are poor. Anyone who has ever been snookered by the ridiculous pseudo-mass balance argument has self-identified as being unqualified to understand this system.
Bart:
There are fundamental mathematical and physical laws which contradict your storyline.
That says the man who shows one formula, based on the very difficult match of the slopes of two straight lines…
I haven’t seen one case where the human emissions fail any observation or fundamental mathematical or physical laws, while your formula violates Henry’s law, a pure physical law, established in 1803 and since then confirmed by over 3 million samples, up to today…
It is physically impossible that 1°C average ocean temperature increase will give more than 16 ppmv in the atmosphere, let be 110 ppmv, without any feedback of the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere on the in/out fluxes.
That you have a lot of knowledge on high-frequency processes is clear, that you have no insight in much simpler first order processes with their feedbacks (and Le Châtelier’s principle) is clear too…
“…based on the very difficult match of the slopes of two straight lines…”
Where do you see a straight line here? Where is the difficulty in the match?
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
“I haven’t seen one case where the human emissions fail any observation or fundamental mathematical or physical laws…”
They cannot add significantly, because the temperature relationship above already accounts for atmospheric CO2. The trend in temperature is causing the trend in CO2 rate of change. It cannot be otherwise, because the phase would be distorted if it weren’t. That is a fundamental mathematical and physical fact.
“… while your formula violates Henry’s law…”
It does not violate Henry’s law. As I have stated many times previously, it is precisely the kind of relationship you would expect for a dynamic transport process in which there is a continual flow in and out, and any sustained imbalance between the flows causes a sustained change in CO2 content of the surface oceans, and hence of the atmosphere. You would violate Henry’s law by claiming that a sustained increase in ocean CO2 would not cause a sustained increase in atmospheric CO2.
“It is physically impossible that 1°C average ocean temperature increase will give more than 16 ppmv in the atmosphere…”
Only if the oceans were static. The oceans are not static. Every second of every day, new waters are upwelling to the surface, and others are downwelling. Any sustained imbalance in the flow of CO2 in those waters will cause a sustained change in the CO2 content of the surface waters, and hence of the atmosphere.
The dog wags the tail, not the other way around. The oceans are the dog. The atmosphere is the tail.
Bart,
Where do you see the match between the slopes here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_der.jpg
T changes do induce CO2 changes with a lag.
dT/dt changes do induce dCO2/dt changes with a lag.
A linear increase in T gives a quasi-linear increase of CO2 and that gives zero slope in dT/dt and dCO2/dt, only a small offset.
The slope in dCO2/dt is not from temperature, but from an entire different process: the twice as high human emissions.
(BTW, I should have added “/sarc” after the word “difficult”)
The trend in temperature is causing the trend in CO2 rate of change. It cannot be otherwise, because the phase would be distorted if it weren’t.
Not at all: temperature is not causing any trend in the CO2 rate of change, only almost all of the variability and a small offset from zero. Your match of the slopes is completely bogus. If you add CO2 from two unrelated processes, of which one is temperature related and the other is pressure related, the net effect is the sum of both processes, no distortion, no phase shift.
Any sustained imbalance in the flow of CO2 in those waters will cause a sustained change in the CO2 content of the surface waters, and hence of the atmosphere.
Any sustained imbalance in flows has nothing to do with temperature, as the response of CO2 levels in the atmosphere to temperature only gives a transient change of 16 ppmv/°C at steady state. Steady state is a dynamic equilibrium, where input and output fluxes are again equal at a higher CO2 level in the case of a step in temperature. That is as dynamic as you can have.
An increasing CO2 pressure in the atmosphere reduces the input CO2 flux and increases the outflux, whatever the temperature or concentration changes in the oceans…
The current atmosphere is already 110 ppmv above steady state for the current weighted average ocean temperature per Henry’s law. In what direction do you think that the net CO2 flux goes?
“Where do you see the match between the slopes here:”
I don’t. No match of trend. No match in phase.
That is why your model fails. The relationship is very clearly
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
That is incontrovertible from the data. You must start from there.
It does not matter what you want the relationship to be. This is what the data tell us it is.
“Any sustained imbalance in flows has nothing to do with temperature, as the response of CO2 levels in the atmosphere to temperature only gives a transient change of 16 ppmv/°C at steady state.”
Wrong. When temperature rises, less downwells than upwells, and you get a sustained increase at the surface.
“An increasing CO2 pressure in the atmosphere reduces the input CO2 flux and increases the outflux…”
Only over a very long timeline. You again have the tail wagging the dog.
You are speculating on the dynamics without grounding yourself in the observations. You can come up with any flight of fancy that way. The data constrain the dynamics, and they are such that, since at least 1959
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
“…reduces the input CO2 flux…”
And, BTW, no matter how high the partial pressure in the atmosphere, you cannot stop centuries old CO2 rising back up into the surface oceans. That part of the equation is so long term, you can treat it as an exogenous input.
I don’t know how much American television you have seen, but this is from a classic episode of The Lucy Show ages ago:
Lucy and Ethel have no control over the chocolates coming down the conveyor belt. But, they’ve got to wrap them as fast as they come in, or they pile up.
And, if the downwelling does not match the upwelling, CO2 is going to pile up in the surface oceans, from which it will force atmospheric levels to rise.
Bart,
That is why your model fails.
You still don’t understand it: all variability’s of T, CO2, dT/dt and dCO2/dt show the same form in variability, where CO2 lags T and dCO2/dt (must!) lag dT/dt. Because of the linear increase in slope of T, its effect on CO2 is also (almost) linear for small changes in T.
That means that dT/dt and the part of dCO2/dt caused by temperature both have zero slope…
By taking the derivatives, T changes and dCO2/dt changes are synchronized. That still is directly process related, but the slope of T has nothing to do with the slope of dCO2/dt, as the latter is (near) completely flat for the part that is caused by temperature.
The match of the variability was nicely explained by Paul_K at:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/10/21/diary-date-murry-salby.html?currentPage=2#comments
Fourth comment by Paul_K, and further on in that discussion, gives a nice overview of the effect of a transient response of CO2 to temperature:
and
The “new constant concentration value” for the atmosphere in dynamic equilibrium with the oceans is 16 ppmv/°C, where the 0.6°C increase over the past 57 years was good for 10 ppmv increase. That is all. Already exceeded after 15 years in the measured CO2 increase…
The ΔCO2 in your formula is completely absent, that is where you got lost…
Bart,
Indeed have seen several of Lucy’s shows in the far past…
And, BTW, no matter how high the partial pressure in the atmosphere, you cannot stop centuries old CO2 rising back up into the surface oceans.
Your formula has only a term for temperature, an increased input from the deep ocean is quasi independent of temperature and an increase of 1°C gives no more than a 3% extra release from the sustained upwelling.
Even so, a sustained upwelling itself (for which is not the slightest indication) will increase the pCO2 in the atmosphere, which reduces the upwelling and increases the sinks, until a new steady state is reached. Here for a sustained increase of 10% in CO2 upwelling:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr.jpg
Even if you combine extra upwelling and an increase in temperature, that doesn’t matter: both effects together will give a transient response of CO2 in the atmosphere until a new steady state is reached.
Ferdinand,
It is very unlikely that a “steady state” is ever reached near the sea surface of the tropical oceans. CO2 that is outgassed does not remain near the surface. It rises rapidly with evaporated water vapor into the upper atmosphere in thunder clouds. Some is absorbed by cold rain but most is ejected out the top where the water freezes. I think the concentration of CO2 is being controlled by the amount of water vapor at the freeze temperature in those cloud tops. That amount is likely a function of the temperature gradient in the clouds. This is a fast process because the updraft velocity is so fast.
“all variability’s of T, CO2, dT/dt and dCO2/dt show the same form in variability, where CO2 lags T and dCO2/dt (must!) lag dT/dt.”
CO2 does lag T. But, it is not an arbitrary lag. It is 90 degrees in phase across the entire spectrum. Which means it is an integral relationship.
There is no alternative.
“Because of the linear increase in slope of T, its effect on CO2 is also (almost) linear for small changes in T.”
There is no such requirement. That is you imposing how you want things to be. The data contradict it. It is wrong.
“The match of the variability was nicely explained by Paul_K at:…”
Nope. You can only match it over a finite bandwidth that way. We match it over the entire spectrum here. If you had that type of response, you would have significant phase distortion at the cutoff frequency. There is none observable.
Paul, himself, was still hoping to find an out by the end of the conversation:
That is where he left off. I promise you, if he continued looking, he has convinced himself by now. There is no out.
“…will increase the pCO2 in the atmosphere, which reduces the upwelling…”
The upwelling cannot be reduced. The outgassing to the atmosphere can be decreased, but the upwelling into the surface oceans cannot be reduced.
“…both effects together will give a transient response of CO2 in the atmosphere until a new steady state is reached.”
Were that the case, it would hold for anthropogenic inputs as well, and they could not drive the concentration substantially higher, either.
It is not the case. The feedback from atmospheric partial pressure is not as powerful as you imagine. In fact, it is very weak. You can essentially ignore it over the relevant timeline. Again, the ocean is the dog… no, I take that back. The ocean is the elephant. The atmosphere is just his tail.
fhhaynie:
Ferdinand,
It is very unlikely that a “steady state” is ever reached near the sea surface of the tropical oceans.
Fred, “steady state” has two legs: the inputs and the outputs. The inputs at the tropical upwelling places never will cease, neither do the sink places near the poles (except if the earth stops turning around its axes…).
The steady state is about input fluxes and output fluxes. If these are in equilibrium, steady state is reached. Currently around 40 GtC/year, be it with ~3 GtC/year more output than input.
If the ocean surface temperature increases with 1 K, the pCO2 of the oceans increases with about 16 μatm, that increases the CO2 influx at the equator and decreases the outflux near the poles (each about 3%). The difference increases the pCO2 in the atmosphere. Once the atmospheric CO2 increased with 16 ppmv, the original pCO2 differences between atmosphere and ocean surfaces are restored and so are the input and output fluxes…:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
Currently we are at 110 ppmv above steady state for the current ocean surface temperature, therefore there is slightly more sink than source, which dwarfs the temperature influence…
The assumption that the earth has some type of “dynamic equilibrium” or steady state that is being upset by anthropogenic emissions is your problem.
Bart:
CO2 does lag T. But, it is not an arbitrary lag. It is 90 degrees in phase across the entire spectrum. Which means it is an integral relationship.
Agreed, but the integral is between T and CO2 (NOT dCO2/dt) in the atmosphere: not more than 4-5 ppmv/°C for the variability (caused by vegetation, which integrates negative over periods longer than 1-3 years) and up to 16 ppmv/°C for the oceans.
Over the full 57 years, that is ~10 ppmv extra or 0.18 ppmv/year offset from zero. The only “slope” you may have from the non-linearity of warming ocean waters per Henry’s law is 0.005 ppmv/year at the end of the full period. Big deal.
The integral is not between dCO2/dt and T, because the former doesn’t lag T. The integral is between dCO2/dt and dT/dt and because the latter has zero slope, dCO2/dt has zero slope too, only a slight offset from zero.
There is no such requirement. That is you imposing how you want things to be. The data contradict it. It is wrong.
Over 3 million measurements confirm that the ocean waters react quite linear to temperature. The error in non-linearity of pCO2 for a temperature change is less than 3% of the measured change for small changes.
From http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/CO2/carbondioxide/text/LMG06_8_data_report.doc
The value for Tin situ is taken to be the seawater temperature measured by the ship’s thermosalinograph at the time of pCO2 measurements. Teq is generally warmer than Tin-situ by 0.5 ~ 0.8 °C. Hence the temperature correction is normally less than 3% of pCO2 values.
If you had that type of response, you would have significant phase distortion at the cutoff frequency.
Bart, this is not a high frequency feedback process of one variable, this is the sum of many independent processes, each with their own reaction amplitude to temperature, without an appreciable feedback on temperature, all transient responses plus human emissions, which have no appreciable connection with temperature. The sum of all these processes has all the variability caused by vegetation, without any phase distortion, plus the effect of warming oceans plus the effect of human emissions.
The upwelling cannot be reduced. The outgassing to the atmosphere can be decreased, but the upwelling into the surface oceans cannot be reduced.
Sorry, lapsus: I meant the CO2 outgassing to the atmosphere (and the CO2 sink fluxes, as is clear from the graph), which is completely absent in your formula and is the main point in discussion: the increase in the atmosphere restores the CO2 fluxes at 16 ppmv/°C for a constant upwelling (mass and concentration).
Were that the case, it would hold for anthropogenic inputs as well, and they could not drive the concentration substantially higher, either.
Again, you are thinking as if all CO2 is regulated by one process Temperature did regulate CO2 in the 800,000 past and the current huge seasonal changes and the 1-3 years variability around the trend and a small increase from warming ocean surfaces.
Temperature doesn’t cope with increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere, pressure does. That is a much slower process (tau of over 50 years) than short term temperature regulated processes, but much faster than the deep ocean temperature exchanges over glacial/interglacial intervals…
“… the integral is between T and CO2 (NOT dCO2/dt) in the atmosphere…”
I really wonder now if you know what an integral is. dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) means that CO2 is the integral of k*(T – T0):
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
implies
CO2 = CO2(t0) + integral(dCO2/dt) = CO2(t0) + integral(k*(T-T0))
That is the empirical observation, not open to negotiation. It implies immediately that CO2 will lag T by 90 degrees. And, conversely, if CO2 lags T by 90 degrees at all frequencies, then CO2 has an integral relationship with T.
“…not more than 4-5 ppmv/°C for the variability (caused by vegetation, which integrates negative over periods longer than 1-3 years) and up to 16 ppmv/°C for the oceans.”
Again, the relationship dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) is the empirical observation, not open to negotiation. It says, for as long as the conditions that produce this dynamic hold, CO2 will continue to rise as long as T is greater than T0.
You can claim whatever you want, but if it is inconsistent with the empirical observation, then your claim is wrong.
It is quite simple. Your claim is inconsistent with the empirical observation. It is wrong.
The medieval mathematicians insisted that the planets moved in circles about the Earth. They were just sure that it had to. But, it was contradicted by Galileo’s empirical observations. When the data contradict your hypothesis, you are wrong, and you need to rethink things.
“Over 3 million measurements confirm that the ocean waters react quite linear to temperature.”
Locally in the very short term. Over the long term, with continual flows of the THC, it reacts differently. It reacts as dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0).
“… this is not a high frequency feedback process of one variable…”
When you alter dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) to dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) – CO2/time_constant, you are defacto imposing a high pass filter on the outcome of CO2 = CO2(t0) + integral(k*(T-T0)). Were the time constant any shorter than about 10X the record length, it would cause an observable phase distortion.
There is no such observable phase distortion. That tells us that, if there is such an additional term, it has no significance over the timeline of observation, and we may take dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) as the effective dynamic over this time interval.
“I meant the CO2 outgassing to the atmosphere (and the CO2 sink fluxes, as is clear from the graph), which is completely absent in your formula and is the main point in discussion: the increase in the atmosphere restores the CO2 fluxes at 16 ppmv/°C for a constant upwelling (mass and concentration).”
Again, this is only a local, short term process. In the longer term over the entire globe, dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0). That is the non-negotiable, empirical observation.
“Again, you are thinking as if all CO2 is regulated by one process …”
Not necessarily. I am simply demanding that all sources be treated equally. There cannot be one response for natural inputs, and a different one for anthropogenic inputs. If natural inputs could not drive CO2 higher, then anthropogenic ones could not, either.
fhhaynie October 29, 2015 at 3:47 am
“The assumption that the earth has some type of “dynamic equilibrium” or steady state that is being upset by anthropogenic emissions is your problem.”
Yes. They base that assumption on the twin assumptions that the ice cores produce a reliable record of CO2 in equilibrium over hundreds of years, and that condition continues to hold up to the present time.
But,
A) The ice core records are not independently verifiable over the greater part of those hundreds of years, particularly in the long ago past
B) To the extent that they are verifiable with recent measurements, it is a trivial tautology, because they calibrate the one against the other
C) There is no assurance that the conditions which might have maintained such a putative balance continue to this day
Nature, as scientists well know, is mischievous. It delights in confounding our intuition and expectations. Murry Salby has shown how the ice core record can degrade for the distant past.
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods” – Albert Einstein
Bart:
I really wonder now if you know what an integral is. dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) means that CO2 is the integral of k*(T – T0):
I really wonder if you know what a transient response is. dCO2/dt is not the integral of k*(T-T0), it is the integral of dT/dt, where the 90°. lag is. There is no lag between the variability of dCO2/dt and T, thus no integral. Moreover, your formula is only based on the arbitrary match of two slopes, not based on any physical mechanism, as the slope of dCO2/dt for the part caused by temperature is practically zero and no factor in the world can match the amplitude of the variability’s with a zero slope.
All what you did is attributing the slope in dCO2/dt to temperature, because both have a slope, while the whole slope is caused by human emissions, completely dwarfing the 10 ppmv increase caused by warming oceans per Henry’s law.
CO2 will continue to rise as long as T is greater than T0.
Again pure nonsense, that violates all observations, especially Henry’s law which says that for any increase in temperature the new steady state will go up (transiently) with not more than 16 ppmv/°C. That is all, the rest is from human emissions. Your formula doesn’t take into account the decrease of the CO2 influx and increase of CO2 outflux for the increasing CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
When the data contradict your hypothesis, you are wrong, and you need to rethink things.
Says the man which hypothesis conflicts with all known observations…
When you alter dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) to dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) – CO2/time_constant, you are defacto imposing a high pass filter on the outcome of CO2 = CO2(t0) + integral(k*(T-T0))
Again, you see the combination of CO2 changes as one process. All the short term variability is caused by the influence of temperature on vegetation. That integrates to below zero after 1-3 years, vegetation is a net, proven sink for CO2. The transient response of CO2 from the oceans to temperature changes is positive and slower and human emissions are hardly influenced by temperature. Thus at least three independent processes influence the CO2 increase in the atmosphere. There is no influence of the oceans caused CO2 or human emissions on the frequency, timing or amplitude of the CO2 rate of change caused by vegetation. The net result is the simple sum of all three processes.
Again, this is only a local, short term process. In the longer term over the entire globe, dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0). That is the non-negotiable, empirical observation.
Where in your formula k = 4 ppmv/year today, 0.02 ppmv/year over a glacial-interglacial transition, 0.0001 ppmv/year during the Holocene, 0.12 ppmv/year for the MWP-LIA transition,… Take your pick to match the slopes. While the simple application of Henry’s law over the past 800,000 years shows 16 ppmv/°C for every period, including the current period for the oceans (and less for vegetation)…
Not necessarily. I am simply demanding that all sources be treated equally. There cannot be one response for natural inputs, and a different one for anthropogenic inputs. If natural inputs could not drive CO2 higher, then anthropogenic ones could not, either.
All sources are not equal. Short term temperature changes have a short term influence on vegetation which zeroes out, even goes negative, in 1-3 years.
Temperature changes have a slower, transient response on ocean CO2 releases at 16 ppmv/°C and then it stops per Henry’s law. Temperature did drive the glacial – interglacial transitions of 100 ppmv at a rate of 0.02 ppmv/year.
Temperature changes have hardly any influence on human emissions, neither on the decay rate of the emissions which are above the steady state level of the oceans. Current emissions are ~4.5 ppmv/year, a little faster than the influence of temperature on warming oceans over 5,000 years and the only decay of that excess is possible by pressure, not temperature.
Thus human emissions are very capable of driving CO2 levels up much faster than the oceans did in the past…
Bart:
A) The ice core records are not independently verifiable over the greater part of those hundreds of years, particularly in the long ago past
There are few other kinds of proxies available for the long ago past, but for the past 600 years we have coralline sponges which completely parallel ice core records for their 13C/12C ratio in CO2. In complete ratio with human emissions. Long enough to show the small variability until 1850 and the enormous dip thereafter.
B) To the extent that they are verifiable with recent measurements, it is a trivial tautology, because they calibrate the one against the other
Pure nonsense: ice core measurements are completely independent from any other measurements: either NDIR, GC or mass spectrometers are used for CO2 or 13C/12C ratio, both in the atmosphere (20 years overlap) or coralline sponges (600 years overlap, 2-4 years resolution in the sponges).
C) There is no assurance that the conditions which might have maintained such a putative balance continue to this day
Indeed, all what we know for sure is that the current increase of 160 ppmv and drop of 1.8 per mil δ13C is unprecedented in at least the past 800,000 years. Just by coincidence the period that humans started to release lots of CO2…
“…dCO2/dt is not the integral of k*(T-T0), it is the integral of dT/dt…”
Wrong. Data say dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0).
“There is no lag between the variability of dCO2/dt and T, thus no integral.”
Do…I…need…to…type…more…slowly? The lack of variability means
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
which implies
CO2 = CO2(t0) + integral(k*(T-T0))
There is the integral right there.
Really, Ferdinand. This is very basic. If you do not understand it, you really should not be commenting.
“Moreover, your formula is only based on the arbitrary match of two slopes…”
Again, it is a match across the entire frequency spread, including all the variability.
“…not based on any physical mechanism…”
… that you know of. Again, you do not need to know the physical mechanism that drives a train to know you better get off the track when it is bearing down on you. You do not sit there denying the existence of any until the train crushes you under its wheels.
“All what you did is attributing the slope in dCO2/dt to temperature, because both have a slope, while the whole slope is caused by human emissions…”
The slope (or trend) AND all the variations. The slope cannot be caused by human emissions. It is already accounted for by the excellent fit with all the variations of the temperature series.
“… that violates all observations, especially Henry’s law…”
It doesn’t violate Henry’s law. Henry’s law holds for a static pool of water. The oceans are not static.
This is a dynamic flow problem. You are stuck in a static world.
“Says the man which hypothesis conflicts with all known observations…”
Doesn’t conflict with a single one, only with your interpretation of them. But, yours conflicts with the observation that dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0).
“Again, you see …”
It is not what I see. It is what you fail to see.
In order to remove the trend in dCO2/dt induced by T, so as to make room for anthropogenic forcing, you must high pass filter out the trend in T. You, or rather Nature, cannot do it without inducing significant phase distortion which is not observable.
You don’t need all this speculation on what you think ought to be happening. The data are very clear.
“While the simple application of Henry’s law…”
This isn’t a simple application, and you are misapplying Henry’s law in this dynamic, flowing system.
” Short term temperature changes have a short term influence on vegetation which zeroes out, even goes negative, in 1-3 years.”
There may be such influences, but the major long term influence produces a dynamic of the form dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0).
It’s right in front of your eyes. This
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
is no coincidence. It matches the trend. It matches the variability about the trend. It matches the whole thing.
“Temperature changes have a slower, transient response on ocean CO2 releases…”
Sorry. No. The dynamic is dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0). There is zero doubt about it. You are contradicted by the data. See above plot.
“…for the past 600 years we have coralline sponges which completely parallel ice core records for their 13C/12C ratio in CO2…”
Whether or no, the ratio does not confirm the CO2 level.
“…ice core measurements are completely independent from any other measurements…”
Nonsense. How else would they even match up the time?
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/icecore_zpsyp1soird.png
“…all what we know for sure is that the current increase of 160 ppmv and drop of 1.8 per mil δ13C is unprecedented in at least the past 800,000 years.”
We don’t know that at all. There is no independent confirmation.
Bart:
Do…I…need…to…type…more…slowly? The lack of variability means
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
Based on what? The only response from your side was a reference to an article which describes the response of a high frequency signal with a huge feedback to itself. That has no resemblance of what happens with the influence of temperature on CO2 levels at all. There is hardly any feedback of CO2 on temperature, but there is an important feedback of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere on CO2 in/out fluxes caused by temperature or upwelling. That lacks completely in your formula.
This is very basic. If you do not understand it, you really should not be commenting.
Bart if you don’t understand that any change in pressure in the atmosphere does immediately influence the in/out fluxes of CO2 from/to the oceans, then I wonder what you understand of simple first order processes.
It doesn’t violate Henry’s law. Henry’s law holds for a static pool of water. The oceans are not static.
What part of “steady state” or “dynamic equilibrium” don’t you understand? Henry’s law influences both influxes and outfluxes of CO2. Any increase in the atmosphere reduces the CO2 influx and increases the CO2 outflux. At 16 ppmv increase in the atmosphere, a 1°C increase in temperature of all ocean surface waters is fully dynamically compensated. Where is that term in your formula?
The slope (or trend) AND all the variations. The slope cannot be caused by human emissions. It is already accounted for by the excellent fit with all the variations of the temperature series.
Again, only the variability. Temperature has zero influence on the slope of dCO2/dt, as a linear increase in temperature gives a quasi-linear increase in CO2, thus an almost flat trend in dCO2/dt.
Nonsense. How else would they even match up the time?
Sorry Bart, if you need to use the errors (already refuted by Etheridge e.a. in 1996) of the late Dr. Jaworowski who apparently didn’t know that there is a difference between the average gas age and that of the surrounding ice, then you simply have no arguments… Jaworowski did lookup the wrong column in the table of the Siple ice core by Neftel…
Again this whole exercise is fruitless. I have sent a full explanation of why you are wrong to Anthony as guest post. Hope that he will publish it shortly.
“Based on what?”
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
“Henry’s law influences both influxes and outfluxes of CO2.”
For a closed system in static equilibrium. When there is new CO2 coming into the oceans and exiting all the time, any imbalance in those two will cause a buildup in the oceans which will subsequently cause a buildup in the atmosphere.
“Temperature has zero influence on the slope of dCO2/dt, as a linear increase in temperature gives a quasi-linear increase in CO2, thus an almost flat trend in dCO2/dt.”
Quite evidently, you are wrong. Open your eyes.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
“…if you need to use the errors …”
It doesn’t matter if you think it is an error or not. The plain simple fact of the matter is that, you must have a method to match up the series in time. And, that matchup is, in essence, a calibration.
“For a closed system in static equilibrium. When there is new CO2 coming into the oceans and exiting all the time, any imbalance in those two will cause a buildup in the oceans which will subsequently cause a buildup in the atmosphere.”
By this, of course, I mean the surface layer of the oceans.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
I look forward to it eagerly. The real-science posts on this site have become increasing infrequent (although Patrick Moore’s recent stellar contribution has gone far toward making up for it.)
Bart:
For a closed system in static equilibrium. When there is new CO2 coming into the oceans and exiting all the time, any imbalance in those two will cause a buildup in the oceans which will subsequently cause a buildup in the atmosphere.
Indeed you have not the slightest idea where you are talking about. At any moment of the day, CO2 is released in the tropics and taken away near the poles. That is called a dynamic system and if in equilibrium with the atmosphere, that is a dynamic equilibrium or “steady state”.
If that system is in steady state and the temperature increases or the CO2 concentration in the deep ocean upwelling increases, or both, the input flux increases and that increases the CO2 level in the atmosphere, until a new dynamic equilibrium between input and output fluxes is reached. For 1°C temperature increase that is 16 ppmv extra in the atmosphere. That is all. Nothing more. 10 ppmv in the past 57 years. Not 70 ppmv.
The same increase per Henry’s law as for a static equilibrium of a closed sample in a laboratory as for the global oceans…
Quite evidently, you are wrong. Open your eyes.
Again, the slope of dCO2/dt caused by temperature is near zero, even if all variability is explained by temperature variability.
All increase of dCO2/dt is explained by human emissions and the decay rate of slightly over 50 years for any extra CO2 shot in the atmosphere above the temperature dictated steady state:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
My match of the slopes is at least as good as yours, but without using any arbitrary factor and offset to match the slopes…
BTW, the ice core average gas age was measured by Etheridge and that did give a 20 year overlap between ice core CO2 levels and direct measurements in the atmosphere…
“For 1°C temperature increase that is 16 ppmv extra in the atmosphere. That is all. Nothing more.”
No, Ferdinand. That is what would happen if the oceans were static. In the real world, the downwelling outflow is restricted, causing a backup, and an increase in pCO2 of the surface oceans.
“Again, the slope of dCO2/dt caused by temperature is near zero, even if all variability is explained by temperature variability.”
You are obviously wrong.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
“My match of the slopes is at least as good as yours…”
No it isn’t, because you don’t match the variability. And, you do not even match the trend for the last 15 years.
“BTW, the ice core average gas age was measured by Etheridge and that did give a 20 year overlap between ice core CO2 levels and direct measurements in the atmosphere…”
Only after selecting the level of the ice to assign a particular epoch based upon matching the results. And, as the match is low information (virtually monotonic time series in both over the span of overlap), it’s not hard to get it.
“BTW, the ice core average gas age was measured by Etheridge and that did give a 20 year overlap between ice core CO2 levels and direct measurements in the atmosphere…”
Disregard my last response. I did not read closely enough.
How was the age measured? What are the 3-sigma error bars? What were the years of overlap?
From what I can read quickly, it looks like they can mark the years as they pass, but not actually date the gas.
This could perhaps lead to misidentifying the age by +/- a few years, I’d guess, but it is not really germane. I withdraw my point B. But, there still is
A) The ice core records are not independently verifiable over the greater part of those hundreds of years, particularly in the long ago past
C) There is no assurance that the conditions which might have maintained such a putative balance continue to this day
Yeah, bart, and his slopes wouldn’t even be close were it not for the two obvious step rises in temperature with their corresponding step rises in the carbon growthrate (late seventies and late nineties…). I asked him if he really expected the carbon growth rate to soon rise back up to 53% of human emissions without a corresponding rise in temperature (thus keeping his gossamer correlation alive). All i heard in response were chirping crickets…
Bart:
No, Ferdinand. That is what would happen if the oceans were static. In the real world, the downwelling outflow is restricted, causing a backup, and an increase in pCO2 of the surface oceans.
That only shows that you have no idea what happens in the real world: both the CO2 influxes and outfluxes are directly proportional to the pCO2 difference between atmosphere and ocean waters. If the pCO2 in the atmosphere increases, the CO2 influx of the oceans decreases and the outflux to the oceans increases immediately. That is a dynamic response to an increase in ocean surface temperature and thus the pCO2 of the ocean waters.
No it isn’t, because you don’t match the variability. And, you do not even match the trend for the last 15 years.
You don’t match the trend during 35 years of the 57 years if one looks at shorter periods. Temperatures go down, while CO2 rate of change goes up, reversing the amplitudes of the variability if you try to match the slopes with a negative factor.
I do match the variability and the slope: the variability is the transient response of CO2 from vegetation to temperature changes with a 90 deg. lag. The temperature derivative has no slope, neither has the CO2 derivative caused by temperature and that lags T with 90 deg. If you add the CO2 variability to the slope caused by the emissions, slope and variability match:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em7.jpg
The result is the simple sum of variability and emissions, as the “airborne fraction” of human emissions is pressure dependent while the variability is temperature dependent and these don’t influence each other.
Not summed in this plot, as dCO2/dt are monthly values and emissions are yearly values…
Fonzie:
It doesn’t matter if the ratio never returns to 53%, the 53% is just coincidence, it is the result of the slightly quadratic increase of human emissions with as result a slightly quadratic increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere and in sink rate. That gives a nice correlation. But that is not of the slightest interest. It does get 10% one year, 90% next year, 40% in one decade, 60% in the next decade: that is the natural variability in the sink rate. Temperature is the main driver of that variability, but there may be other factors too.
As long as the increase is less than human emissions, human emissions are responsible for (most of) the increase…
In other words, there is no correlation there…
Fonzie,
Correlation between total human CO2 emissions and increase in the atmosphere: R^2 = 0.9977
Correlation between temperature and increase in the atmosphere: R^2 = 0.7727
Correlation between temperature derivative and CO2 derivative: high, but that is for the variability, about +/- 1 ppmv around the trend…
” Correlation between total human CO2 emissions and increase in the atmosphere: R^2 = 0.9977
Correlation between temperature and increase in the atmosphere: R^2 = 0.7727
Correlation between temperature derivative and CO2 derivative: high, but that is for the variability, about +/- 1 ppmv around the trend…”
But what would the correlation be if you presumed temp regulated co2, and not Co2 regulating temps?
micro6500:
But what would the correlation be if you presumed temp regulated co2, and not Co2 regulating temps?
The R^2 of 0.783 (I added the data of 2013) was for the influence of temperature on CO2, the opposite gives the same R^2… Some very long time ago I did work on statistics…
As correlation doesn’t show causation. In this case I would say that the causation is mostly from human emissions towards CO2 levels in the atmosphere, a little from temperature on CO2 levels and very little from increased CO2 levels on temperature.
I don’t think that CO2 levels have an influence on human emissions, but temperature may have, if it is freezing cold outside…
But, we can’t tell whether the chicken or the egg came first.
And I can show in surface data that after each year since 1940 there is no residual accumulation of surface temp, with measurement uncertainty the annual average change in daily temp is 0.0F +/-0.1F, if you don’t limit the significant digits the surface is cooling slightly more than it warms the day before over ~78 Million surface records,the only records not used are for stations that don’t collect less than 360 days of data per year.
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 30, 2015 at 1:09 am
“If the pCO2 in the atmosphere increases, the CO2 influx of the oceans decreases and the outflux to the oceans increases immediately.”
The evolution of dynamic systems is just not your forte, Ferdinand. As in the case of the pseudo-mass balance hooey, you can’t seem to move beyond a static outlook.
Maybe this will help. Think of a river which splits around an island. The left side is slightly elevated relative to the right, so just a small creek (the atmosphere, in this analogy) goes around the island on that side. The main river goes to the right, and represents the oceans.
A dam is placed across the river downstream past the island. The water rises. But, this river flows very slowly (its source is, itself, a spring bubbllng up into a wide basin, and the river is virtually a lake). So, it takes many years before the water overtops the dam and reestablishes the downstream flow (this is analogous to the pCO2 of the oceans rising enough to overcome the “dam” caused by increased temperature restricting the downwelling of CO2).
The water doesn’t rise only in the river portion. It rises in the creek, too. And, until such a time as the dam can be overtopped, it rises at a constant rate.
“You don’t match the trend during 35 years of the 57 years…”
You are rationalizing, using inapplicable statistical tools to deny what is right in front of your eyes.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
“I do match the variability and the slope…”
NO YOU DO NOT. You are 90 degrees out of phase. Your purple line lags your green one, and it lags it by precisely 90 degrees of phase.
THAT IS NOT A MATCH.
Not even close.
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 30, 2015 at 1:19 am
“It does get 10% one year, 90% next year, 40% in one decade, 60% in the next decade…”
Rationalization. Epicycles. Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is that CO2 rate of change is affine with temperature. No need for wild speculation. It matches the whole time since at least 1959, no hand waving necessary.
“Correlation between temperature and increase in the atmosphere: R^2 = 0.7727”
Nonsense.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:24/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1959/scale:0.22/offset:0.1/integral/offset:315
R^2 = 0.96
And, that’s just by doing the fit by eyeballing.
Actually, I did the computation wrong. Should have been 1 – (1-0.96)^2 = 0.998.
Bart,
You have a lively fantasy for defending your theory…
Your analogy has not the slightest resemblance with what happens with CO2 between the atmosphere and the oceans, as there is no “dam” or restriction of any kind in the CO2 sinks more than was in the past: the sink rate is simply linearly proportional to the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere above steady state, at least in the past 57 years: a factor 4 increase in all three: emissions, increase in the atmosphere and net sink rate.
Only dwarfed by the natural carbon cycle, if that increased a 4-fold in the same time frame. For which is not the slightest indication…
Again, it is a dynamic equilibrium: CO2 is continuously coming in and going out, directly proportional to the difference in CO2 pressure between atmosphere and ocean surfaces.
If the pCO2 of the oceans changes, either by temperature or more/less upwelling or more/less downwelling, the pCO2 of the atmosphere follows with a transient response. For 1°C temperature change that is 16 ppmv not more, not less. For changes in upwelling or downwelling, that is proportional to the change.
If you can’t (or want) to understand that, sorry, but that is not my problem, I have done my best.
NO YOU DO NOT. You are 90 degrees out of phase. Your purple line lags your green one, and it lags it by precisely 90 degrees of phase.
THAT IS NOT A MATCH.
Not even close.
It seems that you have a blind spot in your mind, or you are willfully obtuse. If you have some idea about what the meaning is of a transient response, then you should know that the response of dCO2/dt changes must lag dT/dt changes with (maximum) 90 degrees.
If you add the purple line values to the calculated result of human emissions (the red line), you have an almost perfect match between human cause of the slope + natural variability and what is observed in the atmosphere.
At least as “perfect” as your use of an arbitrary offset and factor, which has troubles to match the amplitudes of the variability if the slopes are far different, as slopes and variability are from different processes…
BTW, if some “match” in slopes is opposite for 35 of the 57 years, then your “match” is a matter of begin- and endpoint choice. Plus the fact that with a common factor you switch the amplitudes upside down if the slopes are crossing. In reality, variability and slopes are from different processes and have their own T-CO2-factor, proven independent of each other, no problem with (partially) non matching/different slopes at all…
Bart:
“Correlation between temperature and increase in the atmosphere: R^2 = 0.7727”
Nonsense.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:24/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1959/scale:0.22/offset:0.1/integral/offset:315
R^2 = 0.96
And, that’s just by doing the fit by eyeballing.
Nice try to trick the reader: by taking the integral of the temperature, you erase near all variability in the temperature record…
Here reality:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2.jpg
“… as there is no “dam” or restriction of any kind in the CO2 sinks more than was in the past…”
You’re not even on the same page.
I’m not talking about sink activity. I am talking about the natural depletion of CO2 as it flows down dissolved in the downwelling waters. When temperature rises, less dissolves, and gets carried to the depths. That causes a buildup in the surface waters, and hence in the atmosphere.
“If you have some idea about what the meaning is of a transient response, then you should know that the response of dCO2/dt changes must lag dT/dt changes with (maximum) 90 degrees.”
Absolute nonsense. You can have any phase response from 0 to -infinity, and not generally linear across all frequencies.
If dCO2/dt lags dT/dt by 90 degrees across all frequencies, then it has an integral relationship with that process. Which means CO2 has an integral relationship with T, i.e.,
CO2 = CO2(t0) + integral(k*(T – T0))
There is absolutely no way around it. It is if and only if.
You do not match the phase. Your model does not match. And, the only way you can get it to match is by using the integral relationship above. And, when you do that, you have no need for human emissions to match atmospheric concentration.
We keep going around and around on this same point. You just do not know what you are talking about. And, it is irresponsible for you to represent yourself as if you do.
“…f some “match” in slopes is opposite for 35 of the 57 years,…”
A ridiculus cherry pick of low SNR few years at a time? What the hell kind of analysis is that? This is unworthy of being taken seriously.
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 30, 2015 at 12:18 pm
This is idiotic. You’ve got to integrate the temperature, Ferdinand. That is the model:
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/tempco2_zps55644e9e.jpg
Bart:
I’m not talking about sink activity. I am talking about the natural depletion of CO2 as it flows down dissolved in the downwelling waters. When temperature rises, less dissolves, and gets carried to the depths. That causes a buildup in the surface waters, and hence in the atmosphere.
If the temperature rises, indeed less is going into the depths.
The pCO2 of the surface waters increased with 16 μatm/°C and thus the pCO2 difference between atmosphere are ocean surface decreased with 16 μatm/°C or about 3% of the pCO2 difference, thus the CO2 outflux is reduced with about 3%/°C. That causes a buildup in the atmosphere, as also the CO2 release at the upwelling side increased by about 3%/°C by the same increase in temperature.
What you don’t get or refuse to get is that with an increase of 16 μatm (~16 ppmv) in the atmosphere for 1°C temperature increase the original pressure difference is restored and thus the original in and out fluxes. That is a transient response: the initial increase is fast, but gets smaller and smaller until the new steady state is reached.
If the CO2 levels in the atmosphere do rise above the steady state level for a given temperature, by whatever cause, an overall sink activity in the oceans is created which is directly proportional to the height of the increase above the steady state. For the same reasons as for temperature changes: any change of the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere affects the ocean CO2 sources and sinks.
Absolute nonsense. You can have any phase response from 0 to -infinity, and not generally linear across all frequencies.
That only shows that you have no idea of what a transient response is. From Paul_K at the link you know:
If dCO2/dt lags dT/dt by 90 degrees across all frequencies, then it has an integral relationship with that process. Which means CO2 has an integral relationship with T, i.e.,
CO2 = CO2(t0) + integral(k*(T – T0))
Yes, it is an integral relationship, but a fading one: a transient response is NOT a straightforward integral as the difference with the target, a new steady state, reduces towards zero. To use Paul_K’s formula:
τ * dCO2/dt = ΔT – f(T)* ΔCO2
What you don’t accept is that the increased CO2 pressure caused by temperature in the atmosphere is a direct feedback on CO2 in and out fluxes: 16 ppmv extra in the atmosphere is enough to completely and immediately compensate for 1°C increase in temperature.
You do not match the phase. Your model does not match.
Bart are you blinded by your belief in your own only glorious formula? The phase of the purple variability in dCO2/dt(temp) caused by temperature variation is exactly the same as what is measured in the atmosphere (the blue variability dCO2(12)/dt line) and lags the green variability line of dT/dt with 90 deg. The sum of the red line dCO2/dt(emiss), caused by human emissions and dCO2/dt caused by temperature should match what happened in the atmosphere…
Unfortunately for your theory, my theory fits reality at least as good as yours, that is for dCO2/dt without a slope and all variability while human emissions are responsible for all the increase over time without much variability…
A ridiculus cherry pick of low SNR few years at a time? What the hell kind of analysis is that? This is unworthy of being taken seriously.
If more than half the time the slopes are opposite to each other and the consequence is that the amplitudes are upside down, may I than question the link between amplitudes and slopes, or not? Which BTW is proven caused by different processes…
“What you don’t get or refuse to get is that with an increase of 16 μatm (~16 ppmv) in the atmosphere for 1°C temperature increase the original pressure difference is restored and thus the original in and out fluxes.”
No, Ferdinand. We’re not talking about atmospheric pressure. We are talking about the amount of CO2 upwelling, and the amount downwelling. If the amount of the latter is less than the amount for the former, then the pCO2 of the surface oceans is going to increase.
The atmospheric concentration is going to track that change in the oceanic concentration.
You are thinking only of the effect of temperature on the relative concentration of the surface oceans and atmosphere. But, the surface oceans’ concentration is going to increase all on its own simply because it is continually getting new CO2 in from the upwelling waters, and the downwelling waters are not taking as much back down again.
“That only shows that you have no idea of what a transient response is.”
That only shows you have no idea what you are talking about. From your quote:
“…as response times get larger, the phase shift asymptotes to a shift of exactly pi/2.”
He is talking about a 1-box response. And, that asymptotic limit is the response of an integral.
“Hence, putting any realistic (i.e. long) transient response in place brings temperature exactly into phase with dCO2/dt.”
Exactly. And, since the response has to be long enough that we see 90 degree phase shift for the entire observation interval, it means that for that observation interval, there is essentially no difference between the true system response and pure integration.
“To use Paul_K’s formula:
τ * dCO2/dt = ΔT – f(T)* ΔCO2”
Using Paul’s formula and fitting it to the record means we have to make f(T) very small. This is what I have been trying to get through to you. If f(T) is significant over the time interval of observation, then you are de facto taking the result of the pure integration, and putting it through a high pass filter, and that high pass filtering operation would leave behind a very marked phase distortion.
There is no observable phase distortion. Therefore f(T) is negligible over this interval of observation, and the dynamic is equivalently
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
“The phase of the purple variability in dCO2/dt(temp) caused by …”
I don’t know what you are pulling here. I think you just scaled your dT/dt, then arbitrarily shifted it forward to get your dCO2/dt. There is no equivalent process in nature which can do that. You’ve got to integrate to get that phase shift across the board.
Give me precise details on exactly what you did, and I will explain to you where you are going wrong.
“If more than half the time the slopes are opposite to each other and the consequence is that the amplitudes are upside down, may I than question the link between amplitudes and slopes, or not?”
In the first place, it isn’t the “slopes”, it is the slope in trend estimates of least squares fits. Least squares fits to short intervals of noisy data. There is nothing magical about least squares fits. You can’t just feed them noise, and expect them to uncover truth. Their output is, itself, a random variable, and the shorter the interval, the lower the SNR, and the more random they become.
This is just so stupid. Look at the plot
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
It’s as perfect a match as you can hope to get with noisy data in the real world. What the hell is wrong with you? Look at the damned plot!
Yes, I think that is exactly what you did.
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em7.jpg
The purple line is an exact duplicate of the green line, only scaled and arbitrarily shifted forward.
Not only is that arbitrary shifting verboten, but it still doesn’t match very well. In order to get the scaling to match the central peak, you don’t match hardly any of the other ripples. There is virtually no similarly between late 2000 and 2010. That is because you do not have the frequency dependent gain of the integral.
It is nowhere near as good as the fit here
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
Bart, ferdinand actually gave me a graph of 18 of those 35 years, ’77 – ’95… The last three or four years are are useless in comparison in that they are the pinatubo cooling years which don’t even show up in southern hemisphere data. Another eight years or so in the middle of that period, i was able to fiddle around with the trend lines and get matching slopes. That left only about half a decade at the beginning which did not match up real well (my dim recollection is that hadsst3sh was a better fit than hadcrut4sh here). As you say, perhaps just “noise” in the data…
Bart:
No, Ferdinand. We’re not talking about atmospheric pressure. We are talking about the amount of CO2 upwelling, and the amount downwelling. If the amount of the latter is less than the amount for the former, then the pCO2 of the surface oceans is going to increase.
The atmospheric concentration is going to track that change in the oceanic concentration.
You are only showing that you have not the slightest idea what happens in the real world. Atmospheric pressure is the result of an unbalance, but also influences the unbalance, it is a feedback itself.
– The amounts of upwelling and downwelling is a complete separate issue of the influence of temperature, which is the subject of interest.
– Even if there is a unbalance between CO2 from upwelling and downwelling, the in/decrease of CO2 in the atmosphere will ultimately restore the unbalance, with a transient response.
– Temperature changes influence the same unbalance, but that is largely linear for a small temperature change with a very small non-linear term.
– Temperature changes are completely compensated with a 16 ppmv/°C change in the atmosphere, again with a transient response.
– The real world increase is currently 110 ppmv above the steady state for the current ocean temperature per Henry’s law.
– Both theory and real life measurements show that the oceans are a net sink for CO2, not a source.
Thus as usual, you only see what happens at one side of the balance, but forget to include the other side of the equation: the feedback…
I don’t know what you are pulling here. I think you just scaled your dT/dt, then arbitrarily shifted it forward to get your dCO2/dt. There is no equivalent process in nature which can do that. You’ve got to integrate to get that phase shift across the board.
Thanks for the insult: I did apply the rules for a transient response of CO2 to temperature changes with an ultimate response of 4-5 ppmv/°C. That shows an exact shift of 90° after temperature variability for all frequencies and zero slope after 1-3 years, as was calculated as response of tropical vegetation by Pieter Tans after an El Niño:
http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf from slide 11 on.
Without any arbitrary shift in slope or lag. Only an arbitrary estimate of the amplitude.
You simply integrated all influences over the full period, including human emissions and attributed them all to temperature (the same error that Dr. Salby made), while the variability is all from a process that integrates to zero after a few years, nothing to do with the overall slope.
“Atmospheric pressure is the result of an unbalance, but also influences the unbalance, it is a feedback itself.”
A very weak feedback.
“– The amounts of upwelling and downwelling is a complete separate issue of the influence of temperature, which is the subject of interest.”
No it isn’t. The concentration of CO2 in the oceans which interface with the atmosphere is of critical importance. And, it is temperature dependent.
“– Even if there is a unbalance between CO2 from upwelling and downwelling, the in/decrease of CO2 in the atmosphere will ultimately restore the unbalance, with a transient response.”
Sure, ultimately. In perhaps a few hundred years. Long enough to make it immaterial to our discussion.
“– Temperature changes are completely compensated with a 16 ppmv/°C change in the atmosphere, again with a transient response.”
Nope.
“– The real world increase is currently 110 ppmv above the steady state for the current ocean temperature per Henry’s law.”
Nope. Increasing temperature causes a steady increase in surface ocean concentration due to imbalance between upwelling and downwelling.
“– Both theory and real life measurements show that the oceans are a net sink for CO2, not a source.”
Nope. We’re not going to argue the pseudo-mass balance again, are we?
“I did apply the rules for a transient response of CO2 to temperature changes…”
I see. Well, this is a neophyte error. Take for example the weighting of
1 0.7 0.7 0.7 -0.4 -0.4 -0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4 -0.4 -0.4 -0.3 -0.3 -0.3 -0.3 -0.3-0.3 0.2 0.2 -0.2
What do the gain and phase response look like? This:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/tam_zpsu2m0z9rd.jpg
It is only near a 90 deg lag in specific regions, centered around 1.5 yr^-1, 2.3 yr^-1, 3.4 yr^-1, 4.3 yr^-1, and so on. If your input time series is dominated by such components, then you will get a vague, superficial phase match when the actual response is -90 deg everywhere.
It is a chimera. It appears to fit in your eyes because the dominant formations are at a frequency for which the response is approximately -90 deg, and your brain natually homes in on the dominant features. This is filtering via your eyes. It helps to also filter the data such that those particular formations are the main ones that get through, as the presentation appears to do. But, it doesn’t hold across the entire frequency spread and, if you look closely, you will generally find discrepancies.
Yes, you can torture the data, progressively focusing on particular frequencies, and tailoring a response that has -90 deg phase shift at more and more of the dominant features. But, it is rather contrived. Much easier just to lay down a blanket -90 deg phase lag at all frequencies. And, when you do that, you’ve got an integral.
And, bingo! When you do that, you also match the trend of the data.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
This is not a coincidence, Ferdinand. The odds against it are astronomical. I just cannot see how you can deny the evidence right in front of you.
I suspect that you will counter that there are discrepancies in my plot as well. But, keep in mind, this is related to quality of the data. The satellite data gives far better agreement:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2_zpsnp6z3jnq.jpg
All with a simple, -90 deg phase shift across the board. No contrived, complicated response which just happens to have the right phase at the dominant frequencies. And, it provides the fit with the long term trend as a bonus.
You can’t get any simpler than that. Occam’s razor comes down very firmly on my side.
Areas with major discrepancies:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/disc_zpsqi6ok8kk.png
afonzarelli October 30, 2015 at 6:58 pm
See RSS version at Bartemis October 31, 2015 at 11:30 am. It’s just noise. On such short term scales, it isn’t a valid criticism. With higher quality data, the non-issue goes away.
Bart,
A very weak feedback.
Come on Bart, you know better: if the temperature increases with 1°C, the pCO2 of the ocean waters increases everywhere with 16 μatm. That is all. If the pCO2 of the atmosphere increases with ~16 ppmv, the original pCO2 difference between atmosphere and ocean surface is restored everywhere and thus also the original CO2 in/out fluxes. That is damn fast response, which equilibrium for the recent temperature increase (~10 ppmv) was reached already after 15 years in the Mauna Loa record and meanwhile surpassed with over 60 ppmv. Thus currently there is a disequilibrium the other way out: more CO2 sinks in the oceans than are released…
No it isn’t. The concentration of CO2 in the oceans which interface with the atmosphere is of critical importance. And, it is temperature dependent.
Bart, either temperature is the leading factor, as your formula shows, or concentration is. If you combine them without knowledge of the readers, you are misleading them.
For a constant deep ocean upwelling (both in water mass and concentration), temperature gives 16 μatm/°C, quasi linear increase in pCO2 of the oceans.
For a 10% increase in CO2 upwelling (either mass or concentration), either the CO2 influx increases with 10% by the mass changes or the pCO2(ocean) increases with 10% by the concentration changes. Both increase the influx and thus the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, until the original extra influx is equally distributed between a reduced influx and an increased outflux caused by the CO2 increase in the atmosphere.
Any parallel change in temperature will have its own parallel influence with a very small non-linear term, hardly of influence on the overall changes:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_incr_temp.jpg
Sure, ultimately. In perhaps a few hundred years. Long enough to make it immaterial to our discussion.
Already surpassed after 15 years Mauna Loa, thus very material to the discussion…
Nope. Increasing temperature causes a steady increase in surface ocean concentration due to imbalance between upwelling and downwelling.
Bart, hear yourself: you formula doesn’t say that, your formula says that for a fixed step in temperature (and a fixed deep ocean upwelling/concentration), there is a steady increase in surface ocean concentration due to a concreted imbalance between upwelling and downwelling, with zero influence of the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere…
Which violates a lot of physical laws…
Nope. We’re not going to argue the pseudo-mass balance again, are we?
Not only the mass balance (and all other observations), but lots of pCO2 (and other) measurements in the ocean waters, currently over 3 million:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/mean.shtml
But I know, observations don’t interest you if they don’t fit your theory…
I see. Well, this is a neophyte error. Take for example the weighting of
Bart, I have no idea what you are doing, I simply followed the formula of Paul_K, who did prove that there is a 90° for all frequencies in a transient change if the response time is slow enough. I used a tau of 24 months and magically the shift was 90° for all frequencies of interest. No distortion, no other phase lags…
The only “problem” is that the CO2 variability is a little more smoothed than the original temperature variability by the integration, but even so…
For the rest, we can argue until New Year about what the discrepancies of both plots are, but the main problem for your plot is that all the variability is from a process that has zero to a negative slope in the rate of change: vegetation, which is a proven net, increasing sink for CO2 over periods of 1-3 years and over the full period from 1990 on (before 1990 it was probably a slight source of CO2 of ~0.5 GtC/year, ~0.25 ppmv/year).
Thus even if the slope is temperature caused, there is no reason at all that the same factor is involved.
By taking the integral, you mix the results of two independent processes, where you don’t even know that the slope is caused by temperature or something else (human emissions come to mind…).
Bart:
No it isn’t. The concentration of CO2 in the oceans which interface with the atmosphere is of critical importance. And, it is temperature dependent.
Sorry, forgot to add that the surface concentration in the oceans surface would be reduced with higher ocean temperatures: for the same upwelling (concentration), a higher temperature gives a higher pCO2 and thus a higher release of CO2 towards the atmosphere and thus a lower remaining concentration in the ocean surface. Until the (un)balance is restored by the CO2 increase in the atmosphere.
Unfortunately for your theory, at every place measured in the oceans, including the upwelling places, the CO2 concentration increases parallel, the atmospheric increase, despite increasing temperatures…
Bart, i’m not an “egghead”, so much of what you and ferd are going back and forth on gets lost on me. Have you mentioned that the amplitude of your peaks and troughs matches up as well as the trends (and maybe somehow i missed it)? Ferdinand seems to think that you can fiddle around with the scale and get what ever fit you want. True, you could match trends that way, but then the peaks and troughs won’t match. (assume the temp trend was only half what it is, you would have to double the scale to make the trends fit) Of course, you may have just been extremely lucky and just so happened to have the perfect temperature trend to make it all happen…
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 31, 2015 at 1:37 pm
“…your formula says that for a fixed step in temperature (and a fixed deep ocean upwelling/concentration), there is a steady increase in surface ocean concentration due to a concreted imbalance between upwelling and downwelling, with zero influence of the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere… “
With negligible influence. That is correct. But, that is not what my formula says. That is my hypothesis for producing the relationship. But, the relationship is empirically valid regardless of the mechanism.
“Not only the mass balance …, but…”
If you do not understand why the pseudo-mass balance argument is trivially wrong, you are not qualified to understand this system.
“…Paul_K, who did prove that there is a 90° for all frequencies in a transient change if the response time is slow enough…”
He didn’t prove anything. He merely stated the trivial fact that a particular type of system, that of a rational first order lag response, will do that. Tan’s response, to which you referred, is not that type of system response. As you can see in the plot above, the phase response is all over the place.
In any case, Ferdinand, here’s the catch: to get agreement across all frequencies with the temperature/CO2 data, the response time has to become very slow, indeed. So slow, that it is indistinguishable from pure integration over the observation interval since at least 1959.
“I used a tau of 24 months and magically the shift was 90° for all frequencies of interest.”
So, you did not use Tan’s weighting? Will you kindly explain what you did do? If you put it through a first order filter with a time constant of 2 years, then your phase response is -atan(4*pi*f), where f is the frequency in yr^-1. For a five year cycle, that gives you a phase shift of only -68 deg. Ten years, only -51 deg. You don’t match several major formations that way. Quite plainly, as I showed above, your reproduction sucks.
The longer you take that lag to be, the better your result is going to fit the data, and the more integral-like your response is going to become. Before long, you will be matching the variability very well, and you will also have explained the trend, without any need for human inputs.
“By taking the integral, you mix the results of two independent processes…”
You are begging the question. Fit the hypothesis to the data. Not the data to the hypothesis.
My model is quite plainly superior to yours, and it reproduces the trend as well. You are piling things higher and deeper, equivalently devising epicycles to prove that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 31, 2015 at 1:46 pm
“… for the same upwelling (concentration), a higher temperature gives a higher pCO2 and thus a higher release of CO2 towards the atmosphere and thus a lower remaining concentration in the ocean surface.”
Which is then replenished because there is new CO2 upwelling all the time, and the amount downwelling is being decreased. This is exactly why you get a sustained increase in atmospheric CO2 for a step change in temperature.
Think of it in a series of steps in a continuous loop:
1) as you say, atmospheric CO2 increases, so ocean pCO2 decreases
2) less CO2 downwells
3) new CO2 laden waters upwell, so ocean concentration rebounds
4) atmospheric CO2 increases
5) go to step 1 and repeat
afonzarelli October 31, 2015 at 1:50 pm
“Have you mentioned that the amplitude of your peaks and troughs matches up as well as the trends…”
Yes, in Bartemis October 31, 2015 at 11:21 am above. Look for the word “bingo”.
Ferdinand says this is just a coincidence.
Really. That’s what he says.
I really should have just ignored the earlier parts, and focused on this, which gets to the heart of the problem with your outlook:
————————–
Ferdinand Engelbeen October 31, 2015 at 1:46 pm
“… for the same upwelling (concentration), a higher temperature gives a higher pCO2 and thus a higher release of CO2 towards the atmosphere and thus a lower remaining concentration in the ocean surface.”
Which is then replenished because there is new CO2 upwelling all the time, and the amount downwelling is being decreased. This is exactly why you get a sustained increase in atmospheric CO2 for a step change in temperature.
Think of it in a series of steps in a continuous loop:
1) as you say, atmospheric CO2 increases, so ocean pCO2 decreases
2) less CO2 downwells
3) new CO2 laden waters upwell, so ocean concentration rebounds
4) atmospheric CO2 increases
5) go to step 1 and repeat
—————————
Rather than just rehashing things we’ve already addressed, how about you focus on this in particular. I will take it as a given you are not acquiescing to any other of the points I raised above.
How about you do it at the end of the page, too, so we don’t have to keep scrolling up to find the beginning of the thread. Go here to continue, where I left a note.
Fonzie:
Ferdinand seems to think that you can fiddle around with the scale and get what ever fit you want. True, you could match trends that way, but then the peaks and troughs won’t match.
Yes you can…
Here the match of the slopes of the trend that Bart showed:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/wft_trends_01.jpg
Not bad at all, be it that for a full match the amplitudes of the temperature variability would be somewhat higher.
But why did Bart choose the SH temperatures? The source of the extra CO2 is certainly in the NH, as the CO2 trend in the SH lags the NH. Thus if (ocean) temperatures were the cause, the NH would be matching better:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/wft_trends_02.jpg
Oops, quite a difference in temperature trend. No problem, we can fix that for you:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/wft_trends_03.jpg
But that implies that the effect of the CO2 variability caused by temperature variability nearly halved, thus highly depends of what temperature record you use…
The timing of the variability doesn’t change, whatever (partial or global) temperature trend you take, but the factor of the amplitudes is quite different.
That the SH temperature matches the variability best is a matter of where the reaction on temperature variability is strongest. That is mainly the SH Amazon which reacts on changes in ENSO, as well for temperature as changed rain patterns (drought).
The main problem for Bart’s theory is that almost all variability is from tropical vegetation, independent of the slope in CO2 rate of change, as once that the temperature drops again, that returns to a near-neutral mature forest with zero slope, while the rest of vegetation is slightly more sink than source, thus vegetation can’t be the cause of the increase in CO2 or the CO2 rate of change, to the contrary…
Thus at least two independent processes are at work: one that causes the variability and one that causes the increase in CO2…
If you still believe that a back radiation based greenhouse effect exists after reading that, you’ve got rocks in your head! The so called first principles this pseudo hypothesis is based on has not one piece of basics maths behind it, let alone any detailed calculations.
Another fine article Dr. Ball — many thanks.
You write:
The confidence level for well-mixed greenhouse gasses is now “Very high”. This is simply not possible because, as the satellite data from OCO2 shows, CO2 is clearly not a well-mixed gas. The problem is similar to the objective of the IPCC to determine human causes of climate change. It is only possible if you know how much climate changes without the human effect. You can only determine the CO2 effect if you know the effect of the predominant greenhouse gas – water vapor.
This is spot on. As you point out, they just came up with another unfounded scenario when the “long residence time” myth was shown to be not so. And just like the residence time error, they just keep on saying “well mixed” no matter if they have any data to back it up or if they have data and it is counter to their hypothesis. They just keep on saying “well mixed” as if the words are a magic incantation.
The satellite data shows CO2 is not well mixed, and it also shows that as CO2 has gone up dramatically the average temperature of the planet has remained flat. Both of these facts should put a knife though the heart of the walking dead cAGW delusion.
I am not a scientist and even I can understand this excellent explanation. The question I have is why do the scientists who ascribe to the catastrophic AGW theory not agree with this evidence? Are they wearing blinders because they have a social agenda that, to them, is more important than the science? The other question is how can the liberal mainstream news media be convinced that there is another side to the AGW debate? Now they look down their noses as anyone who dares to put forward a position like Dr. Ball’s. Onward and upward!! The truth will out eventually!!
To answer your questions, Dave, is they can’t be convinced because they aren’t really searching for the truth. They are searching for a way to implement their agenda, and they created a narrative to support that. It is not a case of simply being misinformed. Look at the change in terminology from “global warming” to “climate change.” They still mean global warming, but I’m guessing that the phrase “climate change” is to blunt the damage to their agenda with the push back that “global warming” was getting. Climate always changes, so the term is meaningless without qualification, The phrase does not communicate what kind of change is happening. It is of no use except to overload its meaning with an unspecified boogeyman.
There seems to be an misunderstanding as to the purpose of the IPCC. Its terms of reference are absolutely not to examine the proposition that global warming and climate change is or is not man made. Its terms of reference are to assess the ecological, social, economic and political impact of man made climate change and assess its probable value.
Leo Smith:
Sorry, but you state your misunderstanding of the purpose of the IPCC as defined in the IPCC’s own documents.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only exists to produce documents intended to provide information selected, adapted and presented to justify political actions. The facts are as follows.
The IPCC does NOT exist to assess the ecological, social, economic and political impact of man made climate change and assess its probable value, and it does not.
The IPCC is only permitted to say AGW is a significant problem because they are tasked to accept that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation” that can be selected as political polices and the IPCC is tasked to provide those “options”.
This is clearly stated in the “Principles” which govern the work of the IPCC.
These are stated at
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles.pdf
Near its beginning that document says
This says the IPCC exists to provide
(a) “information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change”
and
(b) “options for adaptation and mitigation” which pertain to “the application of particular policies”.
Hence, its “Role” demands that the IPCC accepts as a given that there is a “risk of human-induced climate change” which requires “options for adaptation and mitigation” which pertain to “the application of particular policies”. Any ‘science’ which fails to support that political purpose is ‘amended’ in furtherance of the IPCC’s Role.
It is the custom and practice of the IPCC for all of its Reports to be amended to agree with its political summaries. And this is proper because all IPCC Reports are political documents although some are presented as so-called ‘Scientific Reports’.
Each IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SPM) is agreed “line by line” by politicians and/or representatives of politicians, and it is then published. After that the so-called ‘scientific’ Reports are amended to agree with the SPM. This became IPCC custom and practice when prior to the IPCC‘s Second Report the then IPCC Chairman, John Houghton, decreed,
This was done and has been the normal IPCC procedure since then.
This custom and practice enabled the infamous ‘Chapter 8′ scandal so perhaps it should – at long last – be changed. However, it has been adopted as official IPCC procedure for all subsequent IPCC Reports.
Appendix A of the most recent IPCC Report (the AR5) states this where it says.
This is completely in accord with the official purpose of the IPCC.
The IPCC achieves its “Role” by
1
amendment of its so-called ‘scientific’ Reports to fulfil the IPCC’s political purpose
2
by politicians approving the SPM
3
then the IPCC lead Authors amending the so-called ‘scientific’ Reports to agree with the SPM.
All IPCC Reports are pure pseudoscience intended to provide information to justify political actions; i.e.Lysenkoism.
Richard
Water vapor is the elephant in the atmosphere well illustrated in this article, but the ocean is the elephant of the greenhouse effect on our planet Earth. This illustration reflects the true contribution of ~33 c, where the ocean covers the huge majority of this and why the alarmist rubbish has been wrong from the start.
http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/SciMattG/atmosphere-vs-ocean-heat-capacity2_zpsjjwuhpbk.jpg
The greenhouse effect of ~33 c would be massively reduced with only 0-4% water vapor in the atmosphere and no oceans on our planet. (taking this could be maintained of course)
The key part is that the Greenhouse effect must take oceans and atmosphere into account.
Water vapor has increased with the trend in ocean temperature especially from ENSO.
http://images.remss.com/figures/climate/vapor_global60.png
http://images.remss.com/figures/climate/temperature_and_vapor_trop20.png
Taking only if this was proportional.
Entire atmosphere = 5 x10^21 J/K.
4% of greenhouse gases being CO2 = 2 x10^20 J/K.
3.4% of CO2 being human source= 6.8 x10^18 J/K.
The amount of energy retention from human CO2 is 823529.4 (not far off a million) times smaller than required for the ocean mass. Even if the excuse for the pause were due to energy going into the oceans, (it isn’t) clearly something nearly a million times smaller will make no difference.
That is why there is no detectable warming in oceans from CO2 and why alarmists have wrongly exaggerated the claims greatly.
Tim:
There was an interesting article posted in the last couple of days on the Arctic and Antarctica. It would appear due to very low humidity, that the effect of CO2 could be studied here without having to be too concerned about the feedback effects of water vapor.
Could you give us your feedback (no pun intended!)?
Thanks,
Walt
Reanalyses find rising humidity in the Arctic
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/29/reanalyses-find-rising-humidity-in-the-arctic/
I posted this on another board a few days ago but is to the point of this post so I will re-post it.
Sorry, it is very long but there is actual data in here.
———————–
In the theory, water vapor feedback is responsible for about 1.5C of the total 3.0C per doubling. It is also responsible for about 5.8 W/m2 of the total forcing of 11.7 W/m2 which is required to raise the troposphere temperatures by 3.0C.
CO2 doubling (with a little extra thrown in for Methane and N2O and other minor GHGs) produces an extra 4.2 W/m2 of forcing, but the feedbacks bump that up by a further 7.5 W/m2 to get to 3.0C. Water vapor is the biggest extra bump.
The water vapor feedback part of the theory comes from the Clausius Clapeyron relation which states that water vapor should rise by 7% for each 1.0C increase in temperature. 1.1C from CO2, another 1.5C from water vapor increasing (and it is the biggest GHG anyway, if it rises there should be warming).
ALL of the climate models have some version of this equation built into them. Maybe only 5.5% or as high as 7.5% but every single one has an assumption close to 7.0% increase in water vapor per 1.0C.
The Clausius Clapeyron relation is solid atmospheric physics. There clearly is a potential increase in water vapor as temperatures rise. Warmer air can hold more water vapor and that is true.
———————-
THE QUESTION is, does the real Earth atmosphere ACTUALLY hold 7.0% more water vapor for every 1.0C increase in temperatures.
THE ANSWER is NO.
The actual observations show a range of actual feedbacks from just 2.2%/1.0C to 5.7%/1.0C – on average, less than half of what the theory predicts and is based on.
——————–
Graphically, this is what Hadcrut4 vs NCEP Reanalysis water vapor looks like over the whole range of possible temperatures so that one can see how assuming 7.0% per 1.0C affects the climate. Lose all of the 33C greenhouse effect, and water vapor falls to almost nothing. This is also where the CO2 in the biggest control knob theory comes from. Lose CO2 and lose all the water vapor as well and lose almost all of the 33C greenhouse effect (actually it is only 21C but that is for another day).
http://s21.postimg.org/ycnjn3jk7/Theory_NCEP_Water_Vapor_vs_Hadcrut4_Sept15.png
If we zoom that in a little, we can clearly see that as Hadcrut4 goes up in temperature, water vapor only responds at 2.2%, nothing even close to the 7.0% theory.
http://s21.postimg.org/53vkh6o5j/NCEP_Water_Vapor_vs_Hadcrut4_Temp_Sept15.png
Some say that we should use ocean temperatures instead of the general ocean/land temperatures. Most of the water vapor is going to coming from ocean evaporation. Well, if use the highly adjusted ERSSTv4 ocean temp versus the NCEP Reanalysis water vapor, we still get just 2.2%/1.0C.
http://s3.postimg.org/rotxonjab/NCEP_Water_Vapor_vs_ERSSTv4_Sept15.png
RSS has also been measuring total column water vapor since 1988. It has a much higher trend than the NCEP Reanalysis dataset. If we use their measure and their Troposphere temperature, one can get as high as 5.7% per 1.0C (but this is the very highest rate than one can get from the various datasets).
http://s24.postimg.org/uly03ajud/RSS_Water_Vapor_vs_RSS_Temp_Sept15.png
—————
Okay, something else is going on which makes Clausius Clapeyron invalid in the real atmosphere.
What might that be.
Well, what is really happening is that the ENSO completely dominates what is going on with water vapor in the atmosphere. IT is the control knob. And the ENSO has NO global warming trend over time. It is FLAT since the earliest good measures of the ENSO going back to 1870.
The ENSO controls water vapor.
http://s28.postimg.org/ck1ryw7m5/ENSO_PCWV_48_Sept15.png
What happens when we drop the 7.0% water vapor feedback assumption to the rate that the atmosphere actually works at around 3.5% per 1.0C….
…. the 3.0C per doubling falls to 1.7C per doubling instead.
The point here is that the Clausius-Clapeyron relation isn’t really saying that the air above a water surface becoming warmer automatically means it will become more humid, as if it were to ‘suck’ water vapour from the surface underneath just from being warmer.
What it says is that as the water surface gets warmer, more will evaporate from it and so more water vapour will enter the air above, meaning that the vapour pressure will rise. Which means the climate establishment appears to have this whole ‘WV feedback’ thing completely turned on its head.
In reality, the increase in evaporation is a NEGATIVE feedback to a warmer surface. It is NOT a positive feedback to warmer air. It is what CAUSES the air above the warmer surface to warm, through the process of condensation and the resulting release of latent heat of vaporisation.
To repeat: More atmospheric WV is not a positive feedback to a warming atmosphere. It is a response to a warming surface. It is then in turn rather the primary CAUSE of a warming atmosphere. And not through any radiative properties, but simply through latent heat.
Which is carried poleward where it cools, condenses, and radiates to space.
ENSO does dominate and control the trend in water vapor over the ocean and therefore it must be responsible for global warming and cooling during shorter 30-40 year periods with different phases of ENSO being based on solar energy loss from the Tropical upper Ocean.
This is highly doubtful because ERSST versions show overall warming in NINO3.4 during the same period, related to warming and cooling in global temperatures. HADSST doesn’t, but it could have easily shown something similar with questionable limited SST’s earlier. Before the 1940’s SST’s are very questionable and very sparse in number. Therefore only really good measures cover a global cooling period and a global warming period.
Strong El Nino’s in the 1970’s and 1990’s had shown that they can cause global step ups and global step downs. Why should this be surprising when water vapor changes matches them well? The difference between an El Nino causing a step up or step down few years later, depends on how much energy is left in the Tropical upper Ocean tank. I strongly believe there is good scientific evidence that ENSO controls global temperatures on both long and short term periods. The clincher for me would be when the next strong El Nino causes a global step down due to not enough top up from solar energy in the Tropical Ocean.
The true temperature control of Earth :
https://youtu.be/_3jXCo3BVuA
Something seems to be wrong in Figure 1. Current CO2 concentration is around 400 ppm. However the figure states that the CO2 concentration is 4% of a 2% concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, i.e. 800 ppm, so something is wrong here.
Things of note: Any heat input would trigger water vapor feedback, not just CO2. Due to the amount ocean on the planet the is an UNLIMITED amount of water vapor available. What is preventing run-away feedback ? Nothing, the climate has had this for all of it’s existence. Why is it not hotter ? Latent heat transport and cloud formation from water cloud formation. Negative feedback (Willis E.’s tropical observations) The general climate temperature is not radiation controlled, it is evaporation latent heat transport controlled. Since the ocean is only heated by short wave radiation and cooled by evaporation or heating is blocked by clouds and the ocean contains virtually all of heat in the climate system there is no roll for a substantive CO2 effect at all.
SO, now that we all know this, every body can just shut up and go home, right ?. 🙂
Right. I agree 100%.
A geologist’s excellent explanation :
https://youtu.be/iEPW_P7GVB8
I haven’t heard him speak before, but that was a very good talk. A lot of ground was covered, in a basic and understandable way, in 15 minutes. About the right sort of snapshot to give to a lay audience.
Perhaps the only main issue not covered was models, and their problems, and the fact that there is such a large divergence between projections/predictions and actual observations.
Most of the people in my economic situation ( poor and under educated ) have no idea that the models exist , never mind that they are useless as programmed !! These are the people that green liberal socialists target because they are under educated !! This video’s simplicity would be easy for them to understand…
Wikipedia states, in the Combustion article, that the burning of hydrocarbons primarily yields CO2 and H2O. An illustration shows the chemical equation for the burning of methane in air. The result is a molecule of CO2 and 2 molecules of H2O. So twice as much water as carbon dioxide is produced by burning the simplest hydrocarbon, methane. I infer that all burning of fossil fuels produces more water than carbon dioxide. But the IPCC states that the water produced by fossil fuel power plants is not significant. The anthropogenic CO2 is significant but not the H2O. This seems anomalous but perhaps the explanation is that as a fraction of the water already in the atmosphere, water produced by burning hydrocarbons is tiny. However, since water vapor is also the most powerful GHG it seems reasonable that anthropogenic water should be included in all climate models.
Ken, the difference is in the decay rate of any extra CO2 or water added to the atmosphere. For water that is minutes (condensate from cooling towers, exhausts,…) to a few days. For CO2 that is ~51 years…
What does CO2 decay into?
What does water decay into ???
Marcus,
Rain, rivers, oceans and land: aquifers, as far as not evaporated again…
Edmonton Al,
Rough estimates per year:
~0.5 GtC in the ocean surface, decay rate less than a year, but saturated at 10% of the atmospheric change.
~1 GtC in the biosphere, the earth is greening, with a decay rate of over 100 years, but no constraint ever.
~3 GtC in the deep oceans, with a decay rate of ~50 years, no constraint (yet).
Durn it, that’s the point I was trying to make in my earlier post, exchanged with Dr. Engelbeen. The products of complete combustion are not only evil-horrible-nasty “carbon pollution” CO2 but also vapourous dihydrogen monoxide, a far more potent greenhouse gas.
If Mother Gaia is truly being fricasseed as the result of humanity’s reactionary, anti-Progressive, politically incorrect and arguably racist, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, sexist, and White-Privilege-pushing selfishness with regard to purposefully burning hydrocarbons (whatever their sources), then those who govern us – and co-ordinate their environmental concerns for Planet Earth through the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – MUST also track anthropogenic hydroxilic acid emissions in order to determine the extent to which this man-made “oxygen pollution” is also inducing catastrophic climate change, and propose suitably draconian measures to punish every human being below the rank of GS-3 for this crime against….
Well, yeah, it’s not a crime against humanity, ’cause human beings need to do this stuff to keep from starving and freezing to death as Solar Cycle 25 drops us into another Little Ice Age. So it’s gotta be a crime against…something the warmunists (progressives, Social Justice Warriors, leftists, statists, eco-Nazis, and generally the “right-side-of-history” consciousness-raised self-appointed consciences of the universe) value more than humanity.
Probably baby seals and grey whales.
(But – jeez! – don’t them critters exhale “carbon pollution” and water vapor, too? Oh, the humanity!)
Come on, tell us how you REALLY feel !! LOL…well said.
You are bad, bad i tell you. I like it.
I’m not going to read all the comments so maybe someone’s already pointed this out. The first diagram in the main article that illustrates that 2% of the atmosphere is composed of greenhouse gases is wrong. The yellow portion of the 5 by 10 diagram should consist of one entire square as each square represents 2% of the entire atmosphere. Either that or the 2% number quoted under the second diagram is an error. It appears the diagram is from Heartland.org, so perhaps the mistake is theirs.
“The first diagram in the main article that illustrates that 2% of the atmosphere is composed of greenhouse gases is wrong. The yellow portion of the 5 by 10 diagram should consist of one entire square as each square represents 2% of the entire atmosphere.”
The diagram is incorrect in the yellow portion, but not for the reasons you mentioned. As it should only show 2 yellow blocks in the representative 2%. If anything it makes the CO2 content look even bigger than it is, with it being 2 blocks not 4.5 blocks. Although the idea how small it represents is there and that is what really counts.
Each small block in the 2% represents 0.02%. The CO2 atmosphere of 400 ppm = 0.04% so that represents just 2 yellow blocks.
Mistake – 3.5 blocks not 4.5 blocks.
The 2nd block does represent 2% section and 3.5 yellow blocks = 0.02 x 3.5 = 0.07% (700 PPM)
To al in kansas,
The Earth is and it must be also in radiation balance. The Earth receive 240 W/m2 solar radiation and it radiates longwave radiation into the space exactly the same amount. The heat can be received and released only in the form of radiation in the space and that it where our planet is.
“……The problem is similar to the objective of the IPCC to determine human causes of climate change. It is only possible if you know how much climate changes without the human effect……….”
Climate changes without human affects are very well known !!!
Just examine the climate history prior to , say, the year 1900 , to say, 500,000,000 years ago and that will provide a good “boundary” as to what purely natural climate variations can produce .
It shows that with ZERO human influence the climate will range from very, very cold to damn hot, and that CO2 levels for the vast majority of that time span were much higher than today.
Wow, their illustration even shows water vapor rising to altitude and condensing to fall back to Earth as rain. BUT, there is NO MENTION of the inherent movement of energy (as the Latent Heat of Water) from Earth’s surface to altitude where it is released and the energy lost to space, with cold rain falls to the ground, cooling the surface. This is a deliberate effort to skirt the Water Cycle in it reality and entirety. They mention water vapor as a feedback mechanism but ignore the fact that the Water Cycle is a HUGE positive-feedback HEAT ENGINE that ramps up with warming, thus pulling the climate back down very effectively. Only changes in large factors, such as solar input and ocean cycles, can alter the climate, as THE WATER CYCLE NEVER SLEEPS.
higley7
the Water Cycle is a HUGE positive-feedback HEAT ENGINE
I suppose that you meant a negative-feedback?
Tim Ball wrote above:
“It didn’t matter whether Beck was right or wrong about actual CO2 measures, what was important was the degree of variability the data showed, such as with the stomata data. This variability was deliberately eliminated in other measures to achieve a smooth, with no splinters, ‘hockey stick’ because it contradicted the well-mixed scenario essential to the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) agenda.”
Thank you especially for that comment Tim. I believe Beck was treated with inadequate respect and while he may not have been entirely correct, he raised good questions that were swept away without intellectual rigor. The “well-mixed CO2 scenario” was demonstrably false, since it was easily disproved by actually CO2 data that changed greatly on a daily and seasonal basis.
The other “elephant in the room” is that atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. Few academics want to discuss this subject because they “know” that CO2 drives temperature, and typically they just want to debate the magnitude of climate sensitivity to CO2 – or essentially, by how much the future can drive the past. 🙂
In reality, climate sensitivity to CO2 (ECS) may not exist in a practical sense, of may be so close to zero as to be insignificant. Many scientists believe that significant atmospheric CO2 increases started circa 1940 when fossil fuel combustion accelerated, but since then, global temperature has gone up, down and sideways, which suggests that Earth’s climate is dominated by natural drivers and the impact of atmospheric CO2 is relatively insignificant – if ECS exists, it is probably less than 0.3C.
The response from the global warming alarmists has been to falsify the surface temperature data record to claim 2014 (or now 2015) is the warmest year EVAH, which is demonstrated to be FALSE by the satellite temperature data.
Here are some thoughts from 2012:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/13/do-latest-solar-studies-confirm-upcoming-global-cooling/#comment-891335
In 2008, I wrote that atmospheric CO2 lagged atmospheric temperature T by ~9 months on a short-time-cycle (~3- 4 years – between major El Nino’s?).
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
I also noted that CO2 lags temperature by ~800 years from ice core data, on a much longer time cycle..
I postulated that there could be one or more intermediate (between 9 months and 800 years) cycles where CO2 lags temperature.
The late Ernst Beck had already discussed intermediate lags, and thought the CO2-after-T lag was 5 years.
This post, by inference, suggests we should be looking for a CO2-after-T lag of about 9 years, similar to the period of one sunspot cycle. We have adequate CO2 data at Mauna Loa back to ~1958, so perhaps someone has the time to look for this postulated lag.
Perhaps other longer intermediate CO2-after-T lags also exist – if we have any quality CO2 data to permit analysis (pre-1958, we would probably have to use Beck’s data compilation, which has been treated with inadequate respect, imo.
Regards, Allan
Allan, nice to see you and thanks again for your guest essay back in june… It should be noted that the satellite temperature data no longer tracks with the carbon growth rate. The last few years carbon growth has been up slightly while both of the satellite data sets are flat as pancakes. It’s ironic that the alarmist’s insistence that we are warming is consistent with your theory!
fonzie (aaaaaaaay)
“The other “elephant in the room” is that atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. Few academics want to discuss this subject because they “know” that CO2 drives temperature, and typically they just want to debate the magnitude of climate sensitivity to CO2 – or essentially, by how much the future can drive the past. 🙂 ”
///////////
Shouldn’t this read: “…Few academics want to discuss this subject because they “know” that temperature drives CO2…”
Both the proxy data, and the 20th century data shows that CO2 lags temperature, thereby indicating that if this is not mere coincidence, it is temperature that is the driving force, not CO2.
Allan said:
“The other “elephant in the room” is that atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales. Few academics want to discuss this subject because they “know” that CO2 drives temperature, and typically they just want to debate the magnitude of climate sensitivity to CO2 – or essentially, by how much the future can drive the past. 🙂 ”
Richard Verney said:
“Shouldn’t this read: “…Few academics want to discuss this subject because they “know” that temperature drives CO2…”
Both the proxy data, and the 20th century data shows that CO2 lags temperature, thereby indicating that if this is not mere coincidence, it is temperature that is the driving force, not CO2.”
Allan again:
Hi Richard V.
Obviously, I agree with your last paragraph – I wrote the original paper on this subject in January 2008, and still have the scars on my back from the initial response.
I was suggesting above that few academics want to discuss the reality that CO2 lags temperature because it contradicts their utterly false (religious or financially-driven) position that CO2 is a significant driver of temperature.
Some history on the close dCO2/dt vs. Temperature relationship below (when it is posted – it will probably get hung up for a while).
Best, Allan
Here is some history compiled over recent years on this subject:
To my knowledge, I initiated in early January 2008 the still-heretical notion that dCO2/dt changed ~contemporaneously with temperature and therefore CO2 lagged temperature by about 9 months, and thus CO2 could not primarily drive temperature.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
I later learned from Richard Courtney that others (Kuo et al 1990, Keeling et al 1995) had noted the lag but apparently not the dCO2/dt relationship with T.
Roy Spencer was kind enough to acknowledge my contribution at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/double-whammy-friday-roy-spencer-on-how-oceans-are-driving-co2/
I am fairly sure this concept was new because of the very hostile reaction it received from BOTH sides of the CAGW debate. All the warmists and most skeptics completely rejected it.
First I was just plain wrong – the dCO2/dt vs T relationship was merely a “spurious correlation”.
Then I was grudgingly admitted to be correct, but the resulting ~9 month CO2-after-T lag was dismissed as a “feedback effect”. This remains the counter-argument of the global warming alarmists, apparently the best they’ve got – a faith-based “Cargo Cult” rationalization, in my opinion.
Now we are embroiled in the “Mass Balance Argument” as ably debated by Ferdinand Engelbeen and Richard S Courtney, and I frankly think this is quite worthwhile. To me, this is the cutting edge of climate science, and it is interesting.
I also infer that some parties, notably Jan Veizer at the University of Ottawa, had gotten almost this far some time ago.
Intellectually, I think the alleged global warming crisis is dead in the water, although politically it sails on, a ghost ship with the Euros and Obama at the helm. Not to forget our own Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne in Ontario – now a “have-not province” collecting transfer payments, our national welfare scheme for mismanaged economies.
The global warming alarmists have squandered several trillion dollars of scarce global resources on foolish “alternative energy” schemes that we condemned in writing in 2002. We said then that “the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels” and this is now proven to be true. The economies of the European countries and their fellow-travellers have been hobbled by green energy nonsense, and millions are suffering and many thousands are dying each winter from excessively high energy costs.
I am concerned, I hope incorrectly, about imminent global cooling, which I (we) also predicted in a Calgary Herald article in 2002. I really hope to be wrong about this prediction, because global cooling could cause great suffering. Our society has been so obsessed with the non-existent global warming crisis that we are woefully unprepared for any severe global cooling, like the Maunder or Dalton Minimums circa 1700 and 1800.
Solar activity has crashed in SC24, and although our friend Leif Svalgaard says not to worry, I continue to do so.
_________
My paper was posted Jan.31/08 with a spreadsheet at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
The paper is located at
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
The relevant spreadsheet is
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRaeFig5b.xls
There are many correlations calculated in the spreadsheet.
In my Figure 1 and 2, global dCO2/dt closely coincides with global Lower Tropospheric Temperature LT and Surface Temperature ST. I believe that the temperature and CO2 datasets are collected completely independently, and yet there is this clear correlation.
After publishing this paper, I also demonstrated the same correlation with different datasets – using Mauna Loa CO2 and Hadcrut3 ST going back to 1958. Later I examined the close correlation of LT measurements taken by satellite and those taken by radiosonde.
Further, earlier papers by Kuo (1990) and Keeling (1995) discussed the delay of CO2 after temperature, although neither appeared to notice the even closer correlation of dCO2/dt with temperature. This correlation is noted in my Figures 3 and 4.
See also Roy Spencer’s (U of Alabama, Huntsville) take on this subject at
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/double-whammy-friday-roy-spencer-on-how-oceans-are-driving-co2/
and
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/spencer-pt2-more-co2-peculiarities-the-c13c12-isotope-ratio/
This subject has generated much discussion among serious scientists, and this discussion continues. Almost no one doubts the dCO2/dt versus LT (and ST) correlation. Some go so far as to say that humankind is not even the primary cause of the current increase in atmospheric CO2 – that it is natural. Others rely on a “material balance argument” to refute this claim – I think these would be in the majority. I am (almost) an agnostic on this question, to date.
The warmist side also has also noted this ~9 month delay, but try to explain it as a “feedback effect” – this argument seems more consistent with CAGW religious dogma than with science (“ASSUMING CAGW dogma is true, then it MUST be feedback”). 🙂
It is interesting to note, however, that the natural seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2 ranges up to ~16ppm in the far North, whereas the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 is only ~2ppm. This reality tends to weaken the “material balance argument”, imo. This seasonal ‘sawtooth” of CO2 is primarily driven by the Northern Hemisphere landmass, which is much greater in area than that of the Southern Hemisphere. CO2 falls during the NH summer due primarily to land-based photosynthesis, and rises in the late fall, winter and early spring as biomass degrades.
There is also likely to be significant CO2 solution and exsolution from the oceans.
See the excellent animation at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
It is also interesting to note that the detailed signals we derive from the data show that CO2 lags temperature at all time scales, from the 9 month delay for ~ENSO cycles to the ~800 year delay inferred in the ice core data for much longer cycles.
__________
In this enormous CO2 equation, the only signal that is apparent is that dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature, and CO2 lags global Lower Troposphere temperatures by about 9 months.
CO2 also lags temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.
I suggest with some confidence that the future cannot cause the past.
I suggest that temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. This does not preclude other drivers of CO2 such as fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, etc.
My January 2008 hypo is gaining traction with the recent work of several researchers. We don’t always agree on the fine details, but there is clear agreement in the primary hypothesis.
Here is Murry Salby’s address to the Sydney Institute in 2011:
Here is Salby’s address in Hamburg 2013:
See also this January 2013 paper from Norwegian researchers:
The Phase Relation between Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature
Global and Planetary Change
Volume 100, January 2013, Pages 51–69
by Ole Humluma, Kjell Stordahlc, Jan-Erik Solheimd
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
Highlights
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
– Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
– Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
A paper by a group from three Dutch universities published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics that they have found that only about 3.75% [15 ppm] of the CO2 in the lower atmosphere is man-made from the burning of fossil fuels, and thus, the vast remainder of the 400 ppm atmospheric CO2 is from land-use changes and natural sources such as ocean outgassing and plant respiration.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/7273/2014/acp-14-7273-2014.html
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/08/another-model-vs-reality-problem-national-weather-offices-canada-a-case-study-with-national-and-global-implications/#comment-1958404
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/04/the-magical-power-of-the-kilowatt-hour/#comment-1897997
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/18/anatomy-of-a-collapsing-climate-paradigm/#comment-1886588
A few observations (we formally published most of these conclusions in 2002 – we’ve known this for a long time):
1. CO2 is the basis for all carbon-based life on Earth – and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient.
2. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
3. Recent global warming was natural and ~cyclical – the next phase following the ~20 year pause will be global cooling, starting by about 2020 or sooner.
3. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature and atmospheric CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales (published in 2008).
4. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society.
5. Green energy schemes (scams) are responsible for driving up energy costs and increasing winter mortality rates.
I suggest that most of the above statements are true, to a high degree of confidence.
All of the above statements are blasphemy to warmist fanatics.
It is truly remarkable how the warmists could get it so wrong.
Regards, Allan
(Petroleum Engineer / Earth Scientist)
______________________________________________
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/01/30/what-are-your-fears-about-global-warming-and-climate-change/#comment-1847733
Hypothesis:
1. The next act of this farce will be characterized by global cooling starting by about 2020 or sooner, cooling that may be mild or severe. Global cooling will demonstrate that climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 is so small as to be insignificant. The scientific credibility of the warmist gang will be shattered and some may face lawsuits and/or go to jail.
2. The scientific community will gradually accept the fact that CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, and that temperature (among other factors) drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
3. The foolish green energy schemes to “stop global warming” will be shelved and dismantled, but not before they contribute to a significant increase in Excess Winter Mortality, especially in Europe and to a lesser extent in North America, where energy costs are much lower (thanks to shale fracking).
4. The warmist thugs will still be bleating about a warmer world, wilder weather, etc., all caused by the sins of mankind, but nobody will listen.
Regards to all, Allan
Allan MacRae:
I intend no denigration of your excellent work over many years but I write to provide a caveat to your comment made here where you write of your January 2008 paper
I respectfully suggest that such a brief history should include mention of the earlier work of Jarl Ahlbeck who in August 2001 provided an update of his ‘Carbon Dioxide Thermometer’ that can be read on the site of the late John Daly here.
The Abstract of Ahlbeck’s update says
Richard
Thank you Richard for the reference to Jarl Ahlbeck of August 2001 and his CO2 Thermometer.
This is actually the first time I’ve seen a copy of the paper – although I recall some reference to the “COS thermometer” in discussion circa 2009. .
Allan,
I had years of very respectful discussions with the late Beck about the quality of the data he had compiled. Especially for the period 1935-1945, where a huge 80 ppmv peak (smoothed, worse from one year to the next) is seen in his compilation. Such a peak is physically impossible and doesn’t show up in any other measurements (ice cores) or proxy (stomata data, coralline sponges).
Simply said: the quality of 90% of all data compiled by Ernst Beck were too bad to give any clue about the real background data of that time. The methods of that time couldn’t even detect any seasonal changes (+/- 10 ppmv), but the main problem was the places where was measured.
Even including all outliers in the current Mauna Loa and other stations data, the variability is less than +/- 4 ppmv (1 sigma) compare that to the main series that makes the “peak” of 1942: Giessen (W Germany): +/- 66 ppmv (1 sigma)… The huge variability, also seen in a modern station at near the same spot, is a sure sign of local contamination and makes the local measured data essentially worthless for estimating the “global” CO2 levels of that time.
Thus E-G Beck was not correct at all: most of the data which he compiled were completely unsuitable to make any conclusion about the “background” CO2 levels of that time.
Further, let us end the “not well mixed” mantra: CO2 is extremely well mixed if you give it the time to mix in the huge (20% of all CO2 in the atmosphere) changes within a few months over the seasons. Well mixed doesn’t mean that such a huge changes are instantly distributed all over the earth…
Further, there are indeed several CO2 lags at work after T changes, the three main are: seasonal (vegetation dominates), 1-3 years (vegetation dominates) and very long term (multi-decades to multi-millennia, oceans dominate).
The current increase of over 100 ppmv above the long-term equilibrium between oceans and atmosphere according to Henry’s law is unprecedented in the past at least 800,000 years and has nothing to do with any natural cycle…
You make a number of valid observations, but I consider that the penultimate paragraph is an over-statement of the case.
Is it not the case that at low altitudes CO2 is not well mixed on any scale? In a number of posts this past month (and I think that I have read all of your comments) you have provided data showing that CO2 is not well mixed at low altitude. Further, this after all is one of the reasons why you argue that the Beck data compilation cannot be used for ascertaining background levels (and I consider that you are probably correct on that). You cannot ascertain background levels by sampling at 200 metres or less because CO2 is simply too variable at low altitude, and low altitude could be up to about 1 to 2,000 metres.
it is only at higher altitudes that CO2 becomes well mixed given enough time (always depending upon what is meant by well mixed, ie., the extent of tolerance one is prepared to allow). Personally, I would accept that if one takes a broad brush, CO2 is well mixed at mid to high altitudes, or at any rate sufficiently well mixed for present purposes.
As I see it, the issue is whether the fact that CO2 is not well mixed at low altitude is a material factor, or not. On that I have not yet formed an opinion.
Ferdinand,
You and Richard Cortney have had me earlier on the subject of “man made” CO2 in the atmosphere. If you recall while still not convinced that man is responsible for 90-100% of the increase I was opened to the possibility.
My question is why is that even important. It does not appear climate (temperature) is nearly as sensitive to CO2 as predicted by alarmists. The models have poorly predicted temperature change compared to observations, and the water vapor feed back does not appear to have occurred which should explain why the climate models fail so badly. If CO2 is not the “control nob” as alarmists claim its source seems largely moot.
Oops, You and Richard had helped
richard verney,
CO2 levels are not well mixed in the first few hundred meters over land, but they are well mixed everywhere over the oceans. The CO2 levels at Mauna Loa at 3,400 m altitude and Cape Kumukahi in Hawaii at near sea level are practically the same. The atmosphere in up to 1,000 meter over land and 30% of the surface is less than 5% of the atmospheric mass. Any even huge changes there has little influence on the rest of the atmosphere, except for the huge changes in vegetation over the seasons as these are gigantic in only a few months.
Thus for about 95% of the atmospheric mass, the CO2 levels are well mixed where the remaining differences are the huge seasonal changes and the NH-SH lag as the ITCZ hinders the exchanges: only 10% of air masses is exchanged between the hemispheres over a year…
GTL (Gregory Lawn),
I agree that all skeptic effort should be focused on the lack of warming as predicted by the models.
That is one of the reasons that I regret that so many skeptics don’t accept the human cause of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere, as that is a completely lost battle and undermines the much better arguments where “warmistas” have no answer…
There’s proof in the surface data, I’ve done what I can to show that (follow link), but it doesn’t seem most see the proof that I see.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/23/polar-puzzle-now-includes-august-data/#comment-2054863
Code and all the reports, plus a lot of other regional data are at the sourceforge link (listed the above link).
Hello Ferdinand,
I am glad that you were respectful to Ernst Beck – many others were not.
To be clear, I regard you as one of THE experts on this topic, and enjoy your thoughtful comments.
Having said that, I am still an agnostic on your key conclusion – the “mass balance argument” (MBA) that concludes that fossil fuel combustion is the most significant driver of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. I just want to wait and see what the new CO2 satellite data tells us.
We can afford to be patient on the MBA issue, since it is increasingly obvious that the sensitivity of global temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2 is too small to be significant.
Other issues are much more important and urgent:
IF we are correct about imminent naturally-driven global cooling, which some of us think should be apparent by 2020 or sooner, and which could be mild or severe, then we cannot wait much longer to address the potentially serious consequences of cooling on society.
As I have stated before, I hope to be wrong about cooling.
Best, Allan
People should read a paper published in Climate Research titled State-of-the-Art Climate Models and Extreme Meteorological Events and Consequences (Volume 14, Number 30: 27 July 2011). It compared the projections of state-of-the-art climate models with what was known about the real world with respect to extreme meteorological events related to atmospheric moisture, such as precipitation and various types of storm systems, as well as subsequent extreme consequences such as droughts, floods, and wind damage. Amazingly, Kevin Trenberth is one of the paper’s authors. Why amazing? You will understand when you read some of the statements in that paper:
“All models contain large errors in precipitation simulations, both in terms of mean fields and their annual cycle (such as the spurious migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone into the other hemisphere), as well as their characteristics: the intensity, frequency, and duration of precipitation, plus the amount (e.g. IPCC, 2007; Bosilovich et al., 2008; Liepert and Previdi, 2009).
“It appears that many, perhaps all, global climate and numerical weather prediction models and even many high-resolution regional models have a premature onset of convection and overly frequent precipitation with insufficient intensity, (citing the work of Yang and Slingo (2001) and Dai and Trenberth (2004)).
“Confidence in model results for changes in extremes is tempered by the large scatter among the extremes in modelling today’s climate, especially in the tropics and subtropics (Kharin et al., 2007), which relates to poor depiction of transient tropical disturbances, including easterly waves, Madden-Julian Oscillations, tropical storms, and hurricanes (Lin et al., 2006).
“Models produce precipitation that is too frequent and with insufficient intensity (Yang and Slingo, 2001; Trenberth et al., 2003; Dai and Trenberth, 2004; Dai, 2006).
“Major challenges remain to improve model simulations of the hydrological cycle.”
It begs the question how climate models can be relied upon, at all, with such major shortcomings acknowledged by Trenberth in the paper!
” It begs the question how climate models can be relied upon, at all, with such major shortcomings acknowledged by Trenberth in the paper!”
When you average it all together and then compare that to the mostly all made up published annual global average “surface” “data” you can’t tell the difference between a hot dog and a twinky (neither of them are real).
I’ve found Trenberth to be pretty good about identifying uncertainties and what further research is needed to validate findings. He tends to go astray in the summary conclusions making statements that aren’t supported by his own stated uncertainties.
Wasn’t it Micheal Mann who said ” scientists don’t need evidence ” ??
and every effort I’ve tried to get funded for remote measurement of water content has been squashed… sigh
Did you repeatedly mention ” Glo.Bull Warming Apocalypse ” ???? No…….well there you go !!
Easy test- check the CO2 and CH4 in deserts. The point? Deserts are very cool at night due to the lack of humidity. If CO2 and CH4 were a significant factor they should help keep the deserts warmer.
“For 1°C temperature increase that is 16 ppmv extra in the atmosphere. That is all. Nothing more. 10 ppmv in the past 57 years. Not 70 ppmv”
Ferdinand is correct here although I think it is too simplistic. The mean atmospheric concentration is affected by other factors besides ocean temperature changes as well, such as primary production, microbial recycling, upwelling of CO2-rich deep-ocean waters, and so on The increase in atmospheric CO2 could exceed Ferdinand’s estimated 16ppmv from temperature changes because of these other factors. It’s estimated that if all biological activity in the oceans were removed then that would increase the atmospheric CO2 concentration by a factor of 5 (Jaworowski et al 1992) meaning small changes in biological activity could be contributing to the increase, and CO2 originating from biological sources would be depleted in C13. There is another possibility, of course, as suggested by Jeff Glassman (that I doubt many here would subscribe to) and that is, the atmospheric CO2 concentration is not even increasing and the Mauna Loa measurements are not representative of global concentrations.
Richard,
I agree that other natural factors also play a role, but temperature was the main driver in the (long) past: over glacial – interglacial periods (16 ppmv/°C), 1-3 years (4-5 ppmv/°C) and seasonal (5 ppmv/°C). Temperature and other possible natural unbalances don’t show more than +/- 1 ppmv around the trend in the past 57 years, while the trend itself is only half the human emissions…
man made dust is the biggest problem water vapour sticks to this fine dust (1000 time finer than natural dust ) and then it will not fall as rain as it is to small
Ferdinand – continue conversation here.