Guest essay by Ferdinand Engelbeen
Both Bart Bartemis and Dr. Murray Salby are confident that temperature is the only/main cause of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere. I am pretty sure that human emissions are to blame. With this contribution I hope to give a definitive answer…
1. Introduction.
Some of you may remember the lively discussions of already 5 years ago about the reasons why I am pretty sure that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere over the past 57 years (direct atmospheric measurements) and 165 years (ice cores and proxies) is manmade. That did provoke hundreds of reactions from a lot of people pro and anti.
Since then I have made a comprehensive overview of all the points made in that series of discussions at:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
There still is one unresolved recurring discussion between mainly Bart/Bartemis and me about one – and only one – alternative natural explanation: if the natural carbon cycle is extremely huge and the sinks are extremely fast, it is -theoretically- possible that the natural cycle dwarfs the human input. That is only possible if the natural cycle increased a fourfold in the same time frame as human emissions (for which is not the slightest indication) and it violates about all known observations. Nevertheless, Bart’s (and Dr. Salby’s) reasoning is based on a remarkable correlation between temperature variability and the CO2 rate of change variability with similar slopes:
Capture: Fig.1: Bart’s combination of T and dCO2/dt from WoodForTrees.org
Source: http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
Bart (and Dr. Salby) thinks that the match between variability and slopes (thanks to an arbitrary factor and offset) proves beyond doubt that temperature causes both the variability and slope of the CO2 rate of change. The following will show that variability and slope have nothing in common and temperature is not the cause of the slope in the CO2 rate of change.
2. The theory.
2.1 Transient response of CO2 to a step change in temperature.
To make it clear we need to show what happens with CO2 if one varies temperature in different ways. CO2 fluxes react immediately on a temperature change, but the reaction on CO2 levels needs time, no matter if that is by rotting vegetation or the ocean surfaces. Moreover, increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere reduce the CO2 pressure difference between ocean surface and the atmosphere, thereby reducing the average in/out flux, until a certain CO2 level in the atmosphere is reached where in and out fluxes again are equal.
In algebraic form:
dCO2/dt = k2*(k*(T-T0) – ΔpCO2)
Where T0 is the temperature at the start of the change and ΔpCO2 the change in CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere since the start of the temperature change, where pCO2(atm) was in equilibrium with pCO2(aq) at T0. The transient response in rate of change is directly proportional to the CO2 pressure difference between the pCO2 change in water (caused by a change in temperature) and the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
When the new equilibrium is reached, dCO2/dt = 0 and:
k*(T-T0) = ΔpCO2
Where k = ~16 ppmv/°C which is the value that Henry’s law gives for the equilibrium between seawater and the atmosphere.
In the next plot we assume the response is from vegetation, mainly in the tropics, as that is a short living response as will be clear from measurements in the real world in chapter 3:
Caption: Fig. 2: Response of bio-CO2 on a step change of temperature
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/trans_step.jpg
As one can see, a step response in temperature gives an initial peak in dCO2/dt rate of change which goes back to zero when CO2 is again in equilibrium with temperature. That equilibrium can be static (for an open bottle of Coke) or dynamic (for the oceans). In the latter case one speaks of a “steady state” equilibrium or a “dynamic equilibrium”: still huge exchanges are going on, but the net result is that no CO2 changes are measurable in the atmosphere, as the incoming CO2 fluxes equal the outgoing CO2 fluxes.
Taking into account Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater, any in/decrease of 1°C has the same effect if you take a closed sample of seawater and let it equilibrate with the above air (static) or have the same in/decrease in (weighted) average global ocean temperature with global air at steady state (dynamic): about 16 ppmv/°C.
2.2 Transient response of CO2 to an increasing temperature trend.
If the temperature has a slope, CO2 will follow the slope with some delay.
Caption: Fig. 3: Response of bio-CO2 on a continuous increase of temperature
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/trans_slope.jpg
A continuous increase of temperature will induce a continuous increase of CO2 with an increasing dCO2/dt until both increases parallel each other and dCO2/dt remains constant. This ends when the “fuel” (like vegetation debris) gets exhausted or the temperature slope ends. In fact, this type of reaction is more applicable to the oceans than on vegetation, but this all is more about the form of the reaction than what causes it…
A typical example is the warming from the depth of a glacial period to an interglacial: it takes about 5,000 years to reach the new maximum temperature and CO2 lags the temperature increase with some 800 +/- 600 years.
2.3 Transient response of CO2 to a sinusoid.
Many changes in nature are random up and down, besides step changes and slopes. Let’s first see what happens if the temperature changes with a nice sinus change (a sinusoid):
Caption: Fig. 4: Response of bio-CO2 on a continuous sinusoidal change in temperature
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/trans_sin.jpg
It can be mathematically explained that the lag of the CO2 response is maximum pi/2 or 90° after a sinusoidal temperature change [1]. Another mathematical law is that by taking the derivatives, one shifts the sinusoid forms 90° back in time. The remarkable result in that case is that changes in T synchronize with changes in dCO2/dt, that will be clear if we plot T and dCO2/dt together in next item.
2.4 Transient response of CO2 to a double sinusoid.
To make the temperature changes and their result on CO2 changes a little more realistic, we show here the result of a double sinusoid for sinusoids with different periods. After all natural changes are not that smooth…:
Caption: Fig. 5: Response of bio-CO2 on a continuous double sinusoidal change in temperature
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/trans_2sin.jpg
As one can see, the change in CO2 still follows the same form of the double sinusoid in temperature with a lag. Plotting temperature and dCO2/dt together shows a near 100% fit without lag, which implies that T changes directly cause immediate dCO2/dt changes, but that still says nothing about any influence on a trend. In fact still T changes lead CO2 changes and dT/dt changes lead dCO2/dt changes, but that will be clear in next plot…
2.4 Transient response of CO2 to a double sinusoid plus a slope.
Now we are getting even more realistic, not only we introduced a lot of variability, we also have added a slight linear increase in temperature. The influence of the latter is not on CO2 from the biosphere (that is an increasing sink with temperature over longer term), but from the oceans with its own amplitude:
Caption: Fig. 6: Response of Natural CO2 on a continuous double sinusoidal plus slope change in temperature
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/trans_2sin_slope.jpg
As one can see, again CO2 follows temperature as well for the sinusoids as for the slope. So does dCO2/dt with a lag after dT/dt, but with a zero slope, as the derivative of a linear trend is a flat line with only some offset from zero.
This proves that the trend in T is not the cause of any trend in dCO2/dt, as the latter is a flat line without a slope. No arbitrary factor can match these two lines, except (near) zero for the temperature trend to match the dCO2/dt trend, but then you erase the amplitudes of the variability…
Thus while the variability in temperature matches the variability in CO2 rate of change, there is no influence at all from the slope in temperature on the slope in CO2 rate of change.
Conclusion: A linear increase in temperature doesn’t introduce a slope in the CO2 rate of change at any level.
2.4 Transient response of CO2 to a double sinusoid, a slope and emissions.
All previous plots were about the effect of temperature on the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Volcanoes and human emissions are additions which are independent of temperature and introduce an extra amount of CO2 in the atmosphere above the temperature dictated dynamic equilibrium. That has its own decay rate. If that is slow enough, CO2 builds up above the equilibrium and if the increase is slightly quadratic, as the human emissions are, that introduces a linear slope in the derivatives.
Caption: Fig. 7: Response of CO2 on a continuous double sinusoidal + slope change in temperature + emissions
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/trans_2sin_slope_em.jpg
Several important points to be noticed:
– The variability of CO2 in the atmosphere still lags the temperature changes, no matter if taken alone or together with the result of the emissions. No distortion of amplitudes or lag times. Only simple addition of independent results of temperature and emissions.
– The slope of the natural CO2 rate of change still is zero.
– The relative amplitude of the variability is a small factor compared to the huge effect of the emissions.
– The slope and variability of temperature and CO2 rate of change is a near perfect match, despite the fact that the slope is entirely from the slightly quadratic increase of the emissions and the effect of temperature on the slope of the CO2 rate of change is zero…
Conclusion: The “match” between the slopes in temperature and CO2 rate of change is entirely spurious.
3. The real world.
3.1 The variability.
Most of the variability in CO2 rate of change is a response of (tropical) vegetation on (ocean) temperatures, mainly the Amazon. That it is from vegetation is easily distinguished from the ocean influences, as a change in CO2 releases from the oceans gives a small increase in 13C/12C ratio (δ13C) in atmospheric CO2, while a similar change of CO2 release from vegetation gives a huge, opposite change in δ13C. Here for the period 1991-2012 (regular δ13C measurements at Mauna Loa and other stations started later than CO2 measurements):
Caption: Fig. 8: 12 month averaged derivatives from temperature and CO2/ δ13C measurements at Mauna Loa [9].
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
Almost all the year by year variability in CO2 rate of change is a response of (tropical) vegetation on the variability of temperature (and rain patterns). That levels off in 1-3 years either by lack of fuel (organic debris) or by an opposite temperature/moisture change [2]. Over periods longer than 3 years, it is proven from the oxygen balance that the overall biosphere is a net, increasing sink of CO2, the earth is greening [3], [4].
Not only is the net effect of the biological CO2 rate of change completely flat as result of a linear increasing temperature, it is even slightly negative in offset…
The oceans show a CO2 increase in ratio to the temperature increase: per Henry’s law about 16 ppmv/°C. That means that the ~0.6°C increase over the past 57 years is good for ~10 ppmv CO2 increase in the atmosphere that is a flat line with an offset of 0.18 ppmv/year or 0.015 ppmv/month in the above graph.
There is a non-linear component in the ocean surface equilibrium with the atmosphere for a temperature increase, but that gives not more than a 3% error on a change of 1°C at the end of the flat trend or a maximum “trend” of 0.00045 ppmv/month after 57 years. That is the only “slope” you get from the influence of temperature on CO2 levels. Almost all of the slope in CO2 rate of change is from the emissions…
3.2 The slopes.
Human emissions show a slightly quadratic increase over the past 115 years. In the early days more guessed than calculated, in recent decades more and more accurate, based on standardized inventories of fossil fuel sales and burning efficiency. Maybe more underestimated than overestimated, because of the human nature to avoid paying taxes, but rather accurate +/- 0.5 GtC/year or +/- 0.25 ppmv/year.
The increase in the atmosphere was measured in ice cores with an accuracy of 0.12 ppmv (1 sigma) and a resolution (smoothing) of less than a decade over the period 1850-1980 (Law Dome DE-08 cores). CO2 measurements in the atmosphere are better than 0.1 ppmv since 1958 and there is a ~20 year overlap (1960 – 1980) between the ice cores and the atmospheric measurements at Mauna Loa. That gives the following graph for the temperature – emissions – increase in the atmosphere:
Caption: Fig. 9: Temperature, CO2 emissions and increase in the atmosphere [9].
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_emiss_increase.jpg
While the variability in temperature is high, that is hardly visible in the CO2 variability around the trend, as the amplitudes are not more than 4-5 ppmv/°C (maximum +/- 1 ppmv) around the trend of more than 90 ppmv. To give a better impression, here a plot of the effect of temperature on the CO2 variability in the period 1990-2002, where two large temperature and CO2 changes can be noticed: the 1991/2 Pinatubo eruption and the 1998 super El Niño:
Caption: Fig. 10: Influence of temperature variability on CO2 variability around the CO2 trend [9].
It is easy to recognize the 90° lag after temperature changes, but the influence of temperature on the variability is small, here calculated with 4 ppmv/°C. For the trend, the CO2 increase caused by the 0.2°C ocean surface temperature increase in that period is around 3 ppmv of the 17 ppmv measured…
3.3 The response to temperature variability and human emissions:
With the theoretical transient response of CO2 to temperature in mind, we can calculate the response of vegetation and oceans to the increased temperature and its variability:
Caption: Fig. 11: Transient response of bio and ocean CO2 to temperature [9][11].
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_nat.jpg
The bio-response to temperature changes is very fast and zeroes out after a few years [6], the response to the temperature amplitude is about 4-5 ppmv/°C, based on the response to the 1991 Pinatubo eruption and the 1998 El Niño.
The response of the ocean surface is slower, but stronger in effect. The 16 ppmv /°C is based on the long-term response in ice cores and Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in ocean waters (4-17 ppmv /°C in the literature).
In reality, both oceans and the biosphere are net sinks for CO2, due to the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere and the biosphere also a net sink due to increased temperature on periods of more than 3 years. That is not taken into account here, but is used in the calculation of the net increase of CO2 in the atmosphere with the introduction of human emissions.
If we introduce human emissions , that gives a quite different picture of the relative dimensions involved:
Caption: Fig. 12: Human emissions + calculated and measured CO2 increase + transient response of bio and ocean CO2 to temperature [9][11].
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_emiss.jpg
The influence of temperature both in variability and increase rate is minimal, compared to the effect of human emissions, based on the transient response of oceans and biosphere and the calculated decay rate of human emissions.
The long tau (e-fold decay rate) of human emissions is based on the calculated sink rate (human emissions – increase in the atmosphere) and the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above dynamic equilibrium (“steady state”), which is ~290 ppmv for the current weighted average ocean surface temperature. That is thus ~110 ppmv above steady state and that gives ~2.15 ppmv net sink rate per year. For a linear response, the e-fold decay rate can be calculated:
disturbance / response = decay rate
or for 2012:
110 ppmv / 2.15 ppmv/year = 51.2 years or 614 months.
That the sink process is quite linear can be seen in the similar calculation by Peter Dietze with the figures of 27 years ago [12]:
1988: 60 ppmv, 1.13 ppmv/year, 53 years
Or from earliest accurate CO2 measurements:
1959: 25 ppmv, 0.5 ppmv/year, 50 years
Conclusion: Within the accuracy of the CO2 emission inventories and the natural variability, the decay rate of any extra CO2 above the dynamic equilibrium (whatever the cause) behaves like a linear process…
3.4 The derivatives.
What does that show in the derivatives? First the transient response of the biosphere and oceans to temperature variability:
Caption: Fig. 13: RSS temperature compared to CO2 increase and transient response of natural CO2 (biosphere+oceans) rate of change [9][11].
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_nat_deriv.jpg
It seems that the amplitude of the natural variability is overblown, but for the rest both the temperature and the transient response of CO2 are equally synchronized with the observed CO2 rate of change with hardly any slope in the transient response. Thus while all the variability is from the transient response, there is hardly any contribution of oceans or biosphere to the slope in CO2 rate of change.
The overdone amplitude of the natural variability may be a matter of CO2/temperature ratio or a too short transient response time, but that is not that important. The form and timing are the important parts.
Now we can add human emissions into the rate of change:
Fig. 14: RSS temperature compared to CO2 increase and transient response of natural CO2 + emissions rate of change [9][11].
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_emiss_deriv.jpg
For an exact match of the slopes of RSS temperature and CO2 rate of change one need to multiply the temperature curve with a factor and add an offset. The match of the slopes of the observed CO2 rate of change and the calculated rate of change from the emissions plus the small slope of the natural transient response needed no offset at all: it was a perfect match. Only the amplitude of the variability was reduced, but that has no effect on the small natural CO2 rate of change slope.
As can be seen in that graph, both temperature rate of change and CO2 rate of change from humans + natural transient response show the same variability in timing and form. That is clear if we enlarge the graph for the period 1987-2002, encompassing the largest temperature changes of the whole period:
Fig. 15: RSS temperature compared to CO2 increase and transient response of natural CO2 + emissions rate of change in the period 1987-2002 [9][11].
Source: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_emiss_deriv_1987-2002.jpg
As is very clear in this graph, there is an exact match in timing and form between temperature and the transient response of the CO2 rate of change, as was the case in the theoretical calculations. Where there is a discrepancy between the observed and calculated rates of change of CO2 , temperature shows the same discrepancy, like the 1991 Pinatubo eruption which increased photosynthesis by scattering incoming sunlight.
Conclusion: it is entirely possible to match the slopes and variability by temperature only or by the effect of human emissions + natural variability.
4. Conclusion.
Which of the two possible solutions is right is quite easy to know, by looking which of the two matches the observations.
The straight forward result:
– The temperature-only match violates all known observations, not at least Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater, the oxygen balance – the greening of the earth, the 13C/12C ratio, the 14C decline,… Together with the lack of a slope in the derivatives for a transient response from oceans and vegetation to a linear increase in temperature.
– The emissions + natural variability matches all observations. See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Most of the variability in the rate of change of CO2 is caused by the influence of temperature on vegetation. While the influence on the rate of change seems huge, the net effect is not more than about +/- 1.5 ppmv around the trend and zeroes out after 1-3 years.
Most of the slope in the rate of change of CO2 is caused by human emissions. That is about 110 ppmv from the 120 ppmv over the full 165 years (about 70 from the 80 ppmv over the past 57 years). The remainder is from warming oceans which changes CO2 in the atmosphere with about 16 ppmv/°C, per Henry’s law, no matter if the exchanges are static or dynamic.
Yearly human emissions quadrupled from over 1 ppmv/year in 1958 to 4.5 ppmv/year in 2013. The same quadrupling happened in the increase rate of the atmospheric CO2 (at average around 50% of human emissions) and in the difference, the net sink rate.
There is not the slightest indication in any direct measurements or proxy that the natural carbon cycle or any part thereof increased to give a similar fourfold increase in exactly the same time span, which was capable to dwarf human emissions…
Conclusion: Most of the CO2 increase is caused by human emissions. Most of the variability is natural variability. The match between temperature and CO2 rate of change is entirely spurious.
5. References.
[1] Why the CO2 increase is man made (part 1)
[2] Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 2)
[3] Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 3)
[4] Engelbeen on why he thinks the CO2 increase is man made (part 4).
[5] 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. Ignore the warning about the “dangerous” website if you open the referenced image.
[6] Lecture of Pieter Tans at the festivities of 50 years of Mauna Loa measurements, from slide 11 on:
http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf
[7] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short full text free after registration.
[8] http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
[9] temperature trend of HadCRUT4 and CO2 trend and derivatives from Wood for trees.
CO2 and δ13C trends from the carbon tracker of NOAA: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/
CO2 emissions until 2008 from: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html
CO2 emissions from 2009 on from: http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8
[10] The spreadsheet can be downloaded from: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/CO2_lags.xlsx
[11] The spreadsheet can be downloaded from:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/RSS_Had_transient_response.xlsx
[12] http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
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Werner writes:
“Ferdinand Engelbeen has this to say:
“The point where Bart (and Dr. Salby) got wrong is where he saw a perfect match of the variability’s and assumed that the slope was from temperature too.
Thus while temperature and other natural causes are fully responsible for the variability, temperature is not responsible for most of the increase, human emissions are… “
An excellent summary. One we all might have divined from Ferdinand’s work but for distractions. Second derivatives explain the variability, but not the trend.
The question becomes, why doesn’t the variability explain the trend? It really ought to. We humans are new players. Not omnipotent players, but new nonetheless.
Going forward many questions remain to be answered. What exactly does “most of the increase” mean? Ferdinand would have it be 95% based on Henry’s law. Yet our understanding of the oceans is so poor the IPCC thinks 3Gt of ocean biomass produces a 50Gt flux. Ocean biology is a wild card exempt from Henry’s law. Our understanding of soil respiration is so bad we were all stunned to see substantial net CO2 coming from the southern margin of the boreal forest.
IMO there is ample margin to suppose the human liability is far less than 95%. What if it were 50%?
A world of difference.
gymnosperm,
Just a matter of different processes: all the variability is from a temperature sensitive process, mainly by (tropical) vegetation. That reacts very fast (half life less than 1 year) but limited: some 4-5 ppmv/°C. Oceans are slower (at least 4 years, but maybe longer) but have a larger response: ~16 ppmv/°C.
Near all the slope is caused by human emission, as the decay rate is by pressure sensitive processes, a small part in vegetation, a larger part in the oceans, in direct proportion to the difference in pressure between the atmosphere and the ocean surface / plant alveoli’s water interface. The overall sink rate currently is ~2.1 ppmv / 110 ppmv extra pressure in the atmosphere or an e-fold decay rate of over 50 years or a half life time of less than 40 years. Too slow to remove all human emissions in the year that they were released. That is the case for every year of the past 57 years…
Temperature has a small contribution to the slope, due to a small non-linear increase of CO2 in the dynamic equilibrium with temperature: less than 10 ppmv in the past 57 years, ~10 ppmv over the past 165 years from temperature alone.
That another unknown process did substantially add to the total increase is theoretically possible, but in that case, the alternative source must fulfill following conditions:
– increase a fourfold in quantity over the past 57 years in lockstep with human emissions, as the sinks don’t discriminate between the origin of the emissions.
– have the same low δ13C level as human emissions.
– don’t change the total carbon circulation, as there is no sign of a shorter residence time.
Which is hardly possible…
To increase fourfold in 57 years requires a 7% annual increase (unless I need more coffee). Since soil respiration is thought to be 6 times human production, I believe you can divide that 7% by 6 to get something more than 1% annual increase to satisfy the condition.
Soil respiration has a 13C signature in the same range as human combustion.
Soil respiration has been around since substantial soils developed in the Devonian as an integral part of the Carbon cycle, satisfying the third condition.
A 1% annual increase in soil respiration during the natural warming + whatever tiny human warming over the last 57 years seems possible, and some increase certainly took place…
gymnosperm,
Soil respiration is part of the total biological carbon cycle. That cycle is negative: more sink than source…
Most of soil respiration and plant decay is aerobic, what isn’t is methane, but that is oxidized in the upper troposphere by OH radicals with a half life time of ~10 years. Thus even if there was an increase in methane release, that is far from a 4-fold, as the CH4 levels are hardly increasing in the atmosphere.
Ferdinand, the biosphere may be a net sink, but individual components need not be. Carbon cycles typically portray soil respiration as ~60Gt out and ~.2Gt in. Essentially a one way input like human combustion.
It is true that most soil respiration is aerobic. Respiration increases from dry to about 60% saturation and at higher water content respiration decreases and becomes more anaerobic. Many soil microbes have multiple metabolic pathways at their disposal and simply switch from O2 as an electron acceptor to something else and continue to produce CO2 rather than methane.
Soil water saturation is not uncommon. Pretty much whenever it rains. But if only 25% of soil respiration were anaerobic, it would hide an amount of respiration 1.5 times human production from the oxygen balance.
gymnosperm:
Ferdinand keeps making the untrue assertion of “different processes”. The assertion is wrong as I explain to him repeatedly in this thread and most recently here.
The observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration may be entirely natural, or entirely anthropogenic, or some combination of the two. What is certain is that Ferdinand’s narrative is wrong as I have yet again explained to him in the comment I have linked.
Richard
Clearly temperature did not cause human combustion. That is the only sense in which the processes are different.
gymnosperm,
Richard doesn’t understand the importance of the different processes: temperature is good to explain a lot of the year-by-year variability, but doesn’t explain the increase, while human emissions explain all the increase and nearly nothing of the variability. The difference between human emissions and increase in the atmosphere is by a pressure regulated process, largely independent of temperature and vv.
That is explained in depth under the comment of Richard…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
You say to gymnosperm,
Ferdinand, I do “understand the importance of the different processes” that you misrepresent.
To save people needing to look up the reality, I copy here my most recent attempt to get you to see sense in this thread.
I wrote to you
Richard
gymnosperm November 28, 2015 at 6:30 pm
“Second derivatives explain the variability, but not the trend.”
Actually, I do not know where you are getting “second derivatives”. The relationship is
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
There is only a first derivative there. It does not affect the trend in dCO2/dt, which is clearly caused by the trend in T.
Human inputs also have a trend. But, that trend is already explained by the temperature relationship. Ergo, human inputs are not affecting that trend significantly, and hence, are not having a significant impact overall.
Hello Ferdinand
I tried to access Mauna Loa (MLO) CO2 data today and found these NOAA databases that only go back to 1974 or 1969.
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_weekly_mlo.txt Starts 1974 05
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/data/trace_gases/co2/in-situ/surface/mlo/co2_mlo_surface-insitu_1_ccgg_MonthlyData.txt Starts 1974 01
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/data/trace_gases/co2/flask/surface/co2_mlo_surface-flask_1_ccgg_month.txt Starts 1969 08
My previous work years ago accessed MLO data back to 1958, presumably when Keeling stated colleting data there.
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Any idea why data pre-1974/1969 is apparently no longer on the NOAA site?
Regards, Allan
Allan,
Indeed, a lot of ftp sites are gone. Maybe a temporarily failure of the site, or they are moving the old date to a different map… The modern data still are there via the carbon tracker, but that is from 1969 on…
We need to keep an eye on that!
Hi Ferdinand,
I just sent this:
webmaster.gmd@noaa.gov
I cannot find the CO2 data at MLO back to 1958. Where is it? Why was it deleted? Thank you.
The complete Keeling curve data is at Scripps which has run its measurement program since 1958. Right now Ralph Keeling runs the program
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/atmospheric_co2
The NOAA series is independent of the Scripps series and started ~1974. Peter Tans runs that
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/programs/esrl/co2/co2.html
FWIW it is confusing. Worse, there have been a number of other meteorological stations on the mountain which have operated on and off and people have looked at these, and well, drawn unfounded conclusions
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2011/09/odd-introduction-to-new-paper.html
about temperature measurements at the CO2 observatory. Heavy breathing ensued.
Hello again,
I received this email from NOAA. This data goes back to 1958/9. No explanation was provided why the other data was truncated at 1969 or 1974:
A web page with the MLO CO2 data is at
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
A data file with the monthly CO2 data from MLO is at
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
A data file with annual CO2 data from MLO is at
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_annmean_mlo.txt
Regards, Allan
Wow, I’d need to spend a day to read all the comments properly. Seems to me the trouble is everything is linked.
Henry’s law is fine for a simple system, but the oceans aren’t simple are they? There’s life everywhere, biotic and abiotic. The rate of CO2 release from warming oceans surely has to consider the temperature difference. I accept we probably know one side of that equation – the surface temp – but we don’t know the other side – what temp was the water at before it reached the surface to outgas CO2 – well we could measure it, but even if we did, it’s only valid for a point in space, we don’t integrate it for the whole of the oceans.
Dixon,
They try to integrate it for the whole ocean surface, be it that the density of the data could be much better…
See Feely e.a.:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
The CO2 level and temperature below the surface is not that important: after upwelling, the temperature and the CO2 level in the ocean waters is what makes the partial pressure (pCO2) of CO2 and the difference in pCO2 with the above atmosphere is what drives the CO2 flux in or out (at the poles)…
Is the computational mandate that temperature change occurs as a transient in response to the time-integral of net forcing (not directly with the instantaneous value of the net forcing itself) being ignored?
The fire under a kettle of water on a stove is a forcing. To heat the water, the fire must exist for a period of time. Likewise, if CO2 is a forcing, to have an effect on the temperature of the planet it must exist for a period of time. The temperature changes with time as a transient in response to a net forcing. If the forcing varies, (or not) the effect is determined by the time-integral of the net forcing (or the time-integral of a function thereof).
The observation that the temperature of the planet does not change as a transient in response to the time-integral of the CO2 level is compelling evidence that CO2 has no effect on average global temperature. The identity of the factors which are responsible for average global temperature change (97% match since before 1900) is at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
In assigning most if not all Keeling curve CO2 increase to non-human causes, Salby is indeed not taking into account an important factor — the so-called Revelle buffer of the partition of dissolved CO2 into aqueous and carbonate species in ocean water, which is maintained by the minerals dissolved in ocean water through buffer chemistry. Hence the exchange of CO2 between atmosphere and ocean does not obey a linear Henry’s law relationship with a reaction exponent of 1 but instead follows a non-linear 10th power law from a chain of chemical reactions having net reaction exponent of 10 (10 is best estimate of this Revelle Factor).
This power law has the effect of allowing individual atoms to freely exchange between air and ocean to account for the isotope distributions while at the same time retarding the absorption of a bulk CO2 pulse added to the atmosphere.
In Revelle and Suess (1957) “The Question of Increase of Atmospheric CO2”, even taking into account the eponymous Revelle buffer mentioned above, however, they still conjectured that most of the increase in atmospheric CO2 would not be anthropogenic but had to come from yet undetermined natural processes.
But Revelle and Suess assumed a one-compartment ocean model and did not consider a non-zero time constant for the mixing of the top 100 m of ocean with the deep ocean. I recently ran a 2 compartment-ocean carbon model taking the Revelle buffer into account, along with the exchange rate time constants between atmosphere and ocean, between surface ocean and deep ocean along with the absorption rate of CO2 by the terrestrial biosphere, which can be “tuned” to match 1) the Keeling curves for both atmospheric CO2 and C13 ratio, 2) radiocarbon age differences measured between surface and deep ocean, Revelle and Suess’ radiocarbon ages of sea shells, 3) the more recent assay of total atmospheric O2 that fixes the partition of net CO2 update from the atmosphere between inorganic (ocean carbonate system) and organic (plant uptake), and 4) the Bomb Test atmospheric C14 extinction.
Hence almost all of the increase in atmospheric CO2 can be assigned to human activity. Its a remarkable fit of 3 time constants to multiple observations of CO2 and CO2 isotope concentrations over time.
But . . .
This model that does not account for the large year-to-year variation in net CO2 emission into the atmosphere. When I tuned the terrestrial CO2 absorption to account for that variation (I added a temperature-dependent emission from the soils balanced by an increased sensitivity of plants to absorb more CO2 with increase in concentration), the human contribution to the 20th century increase in CO2 fell by half, with the remaining half the result of thermally induced emission from soils (that was my assumption from isotope trends), while still matching all of the other factors.
Furthermore, this model accounts for the observed partition of net CO2 absorption between inorganic ocean components and organic components established by the trend in total atmospheric oxygen while maintaining agreement with the isotope time series.
The fly-in-the-ointment is that not only would an increase from 280 ppm to 400 ppm seem improbable if not implausible from a natural process were CO2 totally flat-lined prior to the 20th century as indicated by the incontrovertible ice core data, but a natural process that would have increased CO2 from 280 to 340 on the time scale of 100 years is equally improbable.
On the other hand, I think there is enough evidence to doubt the temperature hockey stick but that there is an incontrovertible CO2 hockey stick, I don’t know what to think. The conjecture that the temperature fluctuation in CO2 net emissions from year-to-year having a very short time constant to not spill into the longer term trends doesn’t make sense — the famous carbon cycle graphics put multiples of the atmospheric reservoir into the living plant and the dead vegetation and soils reservoirs, and I am using those reservoir sizes in my carbon cycle model.
Is CO2 really fixed in the ice layers? Will some Galileo mutter under his breath, “But it does move!”
Paul Milenkovic:
You ask
Your “Galileo” is the late Zbigniew Jaworowski and he gave a succinct account of how “it does move” here and in this more detailed paper.
I confidently predict that Ferdinand will respond to this by saying you should ignore Jaworowski for ad hominem reasons because he cannot provide valid evidence or argument to refute what Jaworowski reported.
Richard
As you see in the above comments, Ferdinand is persistent in his arguments to say the least, and his arguments contra-Jaworowski, ad-hominen or not, are something I am going to have to try and digest. Englebeen’s arguments regarding gas exchange and the Bomb Test curve turned out to be correct in the end, but I doubt that he understood why he was correct.
I was prepared to make a public disclosure of my carbon cycle model supporting only half of the increase in atmospheric CO2 being anthropogenic along with much shorter atmospheric CO2 persistence than the Berne Model let alone the Englebeen claims.
But the “hill” on which a strong natural component to the Keeling Curve must make its stand is mobility of CO2 in the ice core. I think most people around here agree that the temperature Hockey Stick is implausible, but Ferdinand is clinging to a very definite CO2 Hockey Stick.
I don’t like Hockey Sticks of any kind, but what I like or don’t like doesn’t matter if the physics goes against my intuition. I am going to have to look long and hard at Jaworowski along with the Englebeen critique.
The way I understand Englebeen’s argument regarding Jaworowski is that the 80-year age shift between the ice core and the Keeling data has to do with 80 years of accumulated snow pack being “open” to the atmosphere before ice forms to isolate the gas bubbles, now and for eternity.
To the extent that there is an ad-hominem against Jaworowski, it is the assertion that a 1996 paper (that I will need to look at) settles the 80-year age gap with this reasoning, and that post 1996 Dr. Jaworowski has been enfeebled by age as to be no longer effectively responding to critique of his work.
A non-ad-hominem critique of Jaworowski’s claims about bringing up a core having the effect of equalizing it with the atmosphere is that there are ice cores from the Ice Ages showing CO2 at the 180 ppm level, and if contamination with the modern atmosphere in raising the cores is an effect, the true CO2 levels would be much lower than 180 ppm. Anything much below 180 is regarded as killing all plant life.
On the other hand, I really don’t think Salby’s claims on Fourier analysis of temperature and ice core time series that the ice core data had to have experienced smoothing cannot be so readily dismissed. But to support those claims, we need to look carefully at the physics, whether from Jaworowski or some other source.
Paul Milenkovic:
You say
Ferdinand has not yet responded in this thread so my prediction remains unfulfilled. However, the example you cite is a clear ad hominem: Zeb’s point was right or wrong, and his age and infirmity are not relevant to that.
You also say
I don’t think Zeb ever claimed that CO2 in a core had “the effect of equalizing it with the atmosphere”. If he did then he never mentioned it to me throughout the decades of our collaborations.
Zeb thought gases in the ice were preferentially dissolved in the surface layers of ice crystals (the surface layers are liquid at all temperatures down to -40°C) with the effect that when pressure was released by coring the gases were differently released so the air sampled from an ice core has different gaseous composition than the air trapped in the ice.
Also, ice cores “capture” CO2 because falling snow solidifies to form the solid ice. The solidification takes decades. During those decades the ice exists as ‘fern’ with open porosity.
The fern takes several years to solidify to form solid ice which ‘traps’ the air containing CO2. The IPCC suggests the solidification takes 83 years and David Middleton suggests 30-40 years in an article on WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/07/a-brief-history-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-record-breaking/
The air and its CO2 will be ‘smeared’ throughout the fern prior to the fern becoming solid ice. This ‘smearing’ is induced by diffusion and physical mixing of the air entrained in the fern. Atmospheric pressure varies with the weather, and the pressure variations will act to expand and contract the entrained air to physically mix air entrained in the fern.
The effect of the ‘smearing’ smooths the observed time series of atmospheric CO2 obtained from the ice core. The smearing is similar to conduct of a running mean on CO2 measurement data from ice which solidified in each single year.
The smoothing is severe.
If the IPCC is right that solidification takes 83 years then the Mauna Loa data cannot be compared to the Vostock ice core data: the measurements of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa have only been conducted for the 55 years since 1958. And if Middleton’s minimum closure time estimate of 30 years is correct then fluctuations similar to the rise in the Mauna Loa data would be more than halved in the ice core data.
Richard
I am glad we can have this discussion at the tail end of this thread . . . without Ferdinand mixing in.
As I said, I really need to look into all of this more closely.
Paul Milenkovic,
I seldom use ad hominem, but before replying to certain persons here I need a firm walk to calm down…
About ice cores and the late Dr. Jaworowski… I have a nice summary here of several of his objections:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
What closed the door for me is his insistence that one measures too low CO2 levels in ice cores, because CO2 escapes (preferentially) to the outside air by cracks caused by drilling, relaxation and (explosive!) decomposition of clathrates, That is -theoretically- possible, but it is impossible to measure 180 ppmv in the core’s ice while the outside air was 350 ppmv at drilling time and maybe 380 ppmv at measurement time, if their lab ventilation was adequate…
The 83 years is really wrong: he looked at the wrong column in Neftel’s table of observations: the age of the ice, not the average age of the enclosed gas bubbles. When I mailed him with that point, he responded that there are always melt layers which make that there is no difference between gas age and ice age…
Neftel did see one melt layer at ~70 m depth for which was corrected…
So whatever his knowledge was of radio-isotopes in ice, his knowledge of CO2 in ice is rather dubious to say the least. Thus let him rest in peace, together with his ideas about CO2 in ice…
For the resolution of ice cores, that depends of the snow accumulation at the place where the ice was formed: between 10 and 600 years. Even the latter is sharp enough to notice the current increase, be it with a much lower amplitude. The former has an overlap of ~20 years with direct measurements at the South Pole…
No CO2 can hide anywhere for the modern technique: all ice is sublimated under vacuum and trapped cryogenically with selective release of all constituents. Everything with their isotopes measured by mass spectrometer…
Paul Milenkovic:
The predicted ad hominem has happened.
Ferdinand writes of Zbigniew Jaworowski
But Jaworowski went on dozens of expeditions to obtain ice cores and he devised most of the techniques for analysing ice cores so he had exemplary knowledge of the behaviours of gases and solids entrained in ice cores.
However, it can honestly be said of Ferdinand Engelbeen that
whatever his knowledge was of radio-isotopes in ice, his knowledge of CO2 in ice is negligible compared to that of Jaworowski. Thus let Engelbeen’s ideas about atmospheric CO2 rise rest in peace, together with his ideas about CO2 in ice…
Richard
Ferdinand, a 600 year closing time will compromise the data, give false low readings and thus confirm that henry’s law produces more than 16 ppmv/1C. Are there any estimates anywhere of just how compromised the data is? (would multiplying 280 by 5, adding 400 and then dividing by 6 to get 300 be oversimplifying things?)…
Richard, always enjoy your comments, you give the “personal” touch. People say you can be insulting, however, people should remember that jesus was insulting. (we imitate christ?) I’ve read your comments for a couple of years now and have never seen you in as fine a form as you’ve been on this particular post. Just know that your toil means much to alot of people…
I really think you should hear ferdinand out on the age of air in ice. The etheridge fern record is pretty convincing in showing that air from the surface finds it’s way down into the fern. It seems that air from the surface displaces all the air in the fern in roughly ten years time. This, if i understand correctly, is true of all ice cores. (it certainly seems to be true of siple and law dome) Not only do high resolution cores match up well with each other, but they fit well in time with LIA. In particular they match up well with the 1840 abrupt increase in TSI which sets the pace of 2-3 ppm per decade which continues all the way up til the inception of MLO. (that pace which began when human emissions were just a tenth of that is a clear indication that something may well be wrong with consensus understanding of henry’s law) Lastly, if one were to extend the temperature in bart’s graph all the way back to 1850, one would find that the temperature shows that real concentrations were not too far off from ice cores. Just eyeballing it, one can see that we’d have been at about 300 ppm circa 1940, 290 ppm at the turn of the century and 280 around 1850. It’s also worth noting that with the extension of bart’s graph back to 1850, one can see that the carbon growth rate is about 2-3 ppm per decade. This is entirely consistent with ice cores in what would arguably be the most stable part of the core (where one would expect the least smoothing). Yet, one more “coinkidink” about bart’s graph that ferdinand cannot reasonably explain. So, lend ferdinand your ear on this one if you haven’t already. (i think he’s got his jaworowski link some where down here in one of these comments) I sure found it worth while and i’m certain you will, too… fonzie
afonzarelli:
Thankyou for your comments.
For clarity, I point out that I am not entirely convinced by Bartemis, and I do “lend ferdinand {my} ear on” all he says because he is probably the most knowledgeable person on atmospheric CO2 that there is, but everything Ferdinand says is tainted by his extreme confirmation bias that favours his mistaken narrative.
My view remains as I stated in this thread here.
Richard
PS And I do understand ‘damning with faint praise’.
Paul Milenkovic,
As usual, Richard doesn’t understand the nuance between critique on one’s knowledge of one aspect of ice cores and ad hominem. I did search all what was available of what the late Jaworowski did on CO2 measurements/research on ice cores, but nothing came up. Al I can say is that I know at least as much of the behavior of CO2 in ice cores as he did.
He was a specialist on radio nucleotides, including the fallout of the Tsjernobyl disaster on ice in Scandinavia. Not on CO2.
He made serious mistakes like the reverse migration of CO2 through “cracks” and the 83 year “shift”. Not only that, while his 1992 objections were already refuted one by one in 1996 by the work of Etheridge e.a. in 1996, he repeated exactly the same objections in 2007…
Thus while I only used “dubious” about his knowledge of CO2 in ice, I could have used much stronger words to describe what he did. But even the word “dubious” was too much for Richard…
afonzarelli,
There are no false low readings, all what happens is that at the bottom of the firn, where the bubbles start to get isolated, the air is a mix of many years of air, a skewed mix towards the more recent years, as the air has 40 to thousands years time to migrate… At the bottom of the firn, the air at Law Dome is average ~7 years older than in the atmosphere, while the ice is already 40 years old.
http://courses.washington.edu/proxies/GHG.pdf
Shows a lot of knowledge about ice cores.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
You laughably assert
No, Ferdinand, I know from long experience that when you know you are wrong your default position is ‘red herrings’ in the form ofad hominem insults.
In this case, I wrote
And when you responded I pointed out that my prediction was accurate.
You replied with untrue assertions (e.g. Jaworowski “looked at the wrong column in Neftel’s table of observations” which – if true – is an assertion that the IPCC made the same mistake) then you said of Jaworowski
Quad Erat Demonstrandum.
Richard
Richard,
e.g. Jaworowski “looked at the wrong column in Neftel’s table of observations” which – if true – is an assertion that the IPCC made the same mistake
If you haven’t checked the facts then please don’t give such a comment…
Here is the table in question:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/siple_02.jpg
There is a column “ice from yr AD” and a column “air enclosed yr AD”. Neftel used the gas age CO2 levels and compared them to air measurements with matches within the margins of error. Jaworowski used the “ice from” column to “prove” that the IPCC (?) “arbitrary shifted the data 83 years” to match the Mauna Loa data.
Dr. Jaworowski might have been a nice person, I never met him, but may I call his knowledge of CO2 in ice cores “dubious” without calling that an ad hominem?
Fedinand:
You ask
NO! That falsehood is ad hominem .
If you had an argument worth making you would provide evidence and argument to support it instead of hosing with ad hominem everybody whose evidence does not concur with your mistaken narrative.
Richard
“…but that there is an incontrovertible CO2 hockey stick, I don’t know what to think…”
It is also inconsistent from another point of view. Maintaining CO2 in a narrow range implies a high bandwidth regulatory system. Without it, CO2 would have drifted all over the place in something like a random walk. But, a high bandwidth regulatory system is inconsistent with extreme sensitivity to human forcing.
I do not believe the ice core measurements. Or, at least, I do not believe they have been interpreted correctly.
There is one other possibility, of course: regime change. It appears unlikely with our present state of knowledge (i.e., it may not be unlikely at all), but there is a possibility that the system shifted in relatively recent history, and that the dominant dynamics since the end of the LIA are simply different than they were before.
Bart
A 50 year e-fold decay rate is too slow to cope with temperature controlled 1-3 years variability and current human emissions, but by far fast enough to cope with a CO2 change of 100 ppmv in 5,000 years…
No, Ferdinand. The natural flows are enormous, much, much larger than the anthropogenic contributions even now. Keeping those flows regulated requires a bandwidth that would have no trouble shrugging off our tiny inputs.
Bart,
Almost all natural processes are temperature controlled: from seasons to multi-millennia, that moves a lot of CO2 in and out the atmosphere. Even there, different processes are simultaneous at work, each with its own speed of change and capacity.
Human CO2 is not temperature controlled, it is additional, just like volcanic emissions, one way.
Temperature controlled processes are hardly influenced by any extra pressure in the atmosphere. Only processes that respond to an extra pressure can remove the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. The ocean surface is the fastest, but is limited in capacity (10% of the change in the atmosphere), the biosphere is a small sink and the deep oceans are the main sink. But that is a slow process: over 50 years e-fold decay rate.
Thus whatever the bandwidth of the temperature regulated processes from months to multi-millennia, that has very little influence on the processes that remove any extra CO2 above the temperature controlled steady state of the oceans…
Paul Milenkovic,
Sorry for the delay, I had to rethink what I had done in this guest essay, but now it is on paper…
There are a lot of HS’s in ice cores: CO2, δ13C, CH4, N2O,… Also modern emissions: 14C bomb spike, CFC’s,…. Also in proxies like coralline sponges (δ13C) for the ocean surface layer, δ13C ratio in trees,…
It would be a hell of a coincidence that something natural – not seen in 800,000 years of ice cores – should start in exact timing and ratio to human emissions for all these items…
This model that does not account for the large year-to-year variation in net CO2 emission into the atmosphere.
Depends of what you call “large”… Largest variability 1991 Pinatubo and 1998 El Niño: +/- 1.5 ppmv around the trend of 70 ppmv in the past 57 years, largely temperature driven, but zero’s out after 1-3 years… Not the cause of the trend, because mostly from (tropical) vegetation, but vegetation is a net sink over periods larger than 3 years…
The main CO2 fluxes: seasonal, between equator and poles are temperature driven. There is little change e.g. in the seasonal amplitude (both CO2 and δ13C) since 1974:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_MLO_BRW.jpg
The year by year differences are what you see as changes around the trend, also mainly temperature driven.
Humans and volcanoes emit directly into the atmosphere. Temperature driven processes are hardly influenced by an increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. You need to build up a lot of pressure to push some more CO2 into the oceans and worse, vegetation… At the current 110 ppmv above long-term equilibrium for the current ocean temperature, only ~0.5 ppmv goes into the biosphere and ~2 ppmv in the oceans. That is all. It thus needs over 50 years e-fold decay rate…
Ice cores next…
Ferdinand:
You have done it again after I ‘slapped your wrist’ for doing exactly the same thing on Jo Nova’s site!
You say
You have provided a false comparison then used that to draw a wrong conclusion!
“70 ppmv in the past 57 years” is 1.2 ppmv/year which is similar to – indeed, less than – the +/- 1.5 ppmv/year variation that you say is too small to have effect so “zero’s out after 1-3 years”.
Then you say “vegetation is a net sink over periods larger than 3 years…”. So what? You say amounts of less than +/- 1.5 ppmv/year are sequestered (i.e. ” zero’s out”) in 1-3 years.
Yet again, I point out that each of the sinks treats all CO2 molecules in the same way.
Richard,
I will not react anymore on your “knowledge” as that is just a waste of my and everybody’s time.
If you don’t want to understand that the year by year variability is proven caused by temperature changes in the biosphere (proven by the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes) and the trend is proven not from the biosphere (proven as solid as near all non-plant life needs oxygen and plants provide oxygen), then nobody can help you to understand that…
If you don’t want to understand the effect of natural variability which is not more than 1.5 ppmv/year and zero’s out in 1-3 years and the effect of human emissions which provide currently 4.5 ppmv each year again and again, one way, directly into the atmosphere, then nobody can help you…
Hi,
I guess that the conversation is almost over but a couple of comments. They are based on my own study. The CO2 increase in the atmosphere is caused by CO2 emissions. A question of anthropogenic CO2 (aCO2) is more complicated. IPCC says that the increase of 240 GtC from the year 1750 to 2013 is totally anthropogenic (28 %) . The deniers say that all the increase originates from the ocean caused by the T increase. The isotope measurements show that the percentage is 7.7% ~ 65 GtC.
I used in my study a simple one dimensional model. It was based on the following selections: Henry‘s law, recycling fluxes of 100 GtC/y to the ocean and 120 GtC/y to biosphere, the ocean absorbs 12C and 13C in the same relationship as the are in the atmosphere and outgases in the relationship existing in the mixing layer, biosphere recycles CO2 keeping the permille value of -26, the deep ocean CO2 flux is based on the experimental, measured linear equation giving the total absorbed aCO2 118 GtC from 1800 to 1994. I carried out simulation starting from the year 1750.
My result show that the atmospheric aCO2 amount is 65 GtC corresponding the measured value. The difference between 240 GtC and 65 GtC originates from the ocean. The yearly fluctuations in the absorbed amount into the ocean correlate very well with sea surface temperature variations: r2 = 0.86. I think that in this point my results are different from Engelbeen. Biospehere has no role in explaining anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, because it does not change the relationship 12C:13C but the ocean does it. For centuries the atmospheric permille value had been something from -6.5. To -7.5. Only when the CO2 emissions started to increase, the permille value started to diminish. The total fossil fuel emission of 394 GtC up to 2013 is divided in this way: atmosphere 65, ocean 23+165, and biosphere 141 GtC.
According to my simulations the average delay between the emission input and the aCO2 amount in the atmosphere is 15 years. The future simulation revealed to me, why IPCC wants to use a recidence time more than 100 years. It is therefore that in this way the anthropogenic CO2 stays almost forever in the atmosphere and very scary future temperature increases can be fabricated.
You are indeed correct — the C13 concentration for the atmosphere is changing in the right direction for it to be anthropogenic, but the change does not appear to be nearly large enough in relation to the change in total CO2.
If you replace the linear Henry’s Law relationship for air-ocean CO2 exchange with the non-linear Revelle buffer, and if you introduce a time constant for the mixing of surface and deep ocean, you will find that you can reconcile the isotope ratio change with the total atmospheric CO2 increase for the full 240 GtC (about 120 ppm) addition to the atmosphere to be anthropogenic.
There must be specialists in chemistry who have looked at this aspect of the global Carbon Cycle to come to this conclusion, but reaction-rate exponents are not very well understood by the wider Climate Science community let alone the science popularizers. How many of us have taken the dreaded Physical Chemistry (P-Chem) course in college let alone gotten a good grade?
Our esteemed guest writer Ferdinand Englebeen has long and repeatedly argued that the individual carbon atoms can exchange between air and ocean to equalize the isotopes at a different rate than a bulk pulse of CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean, but he has never even tried to explain why. Lack of a meaningful explanation has sustained many acrimonious arguments, here and on other discussion Web sites. The linear Henry’s law model does not allow for any difference between the rate of exchange of individual molecules and the relaxation of a macroscopic change in concentration. The non-linear Revelle buffer together with surface-deep ocean mixing, however, supplies an explanation.
But, this picture does not account for the very large variability in net emission of CO2 to the atmosphere on a year-to-year basis. Assuming much larger turnover between atmosphere and biosphere than the quasi-static model can introduce the necessary level of sensitivity of net emission to temperature. This assumption results in about half of the atmospheric CO2 increase being anthropogenic with the rest being the result of thermal emission. The thermal emission appears to be from a biologic source on account of isotope ratios.
Whereas Ferdinand Englebeen has argued “the e-folding time of a CO2 pulse is not related to the exchange of individual molecules” over and over to the annoyance of many on account of never offering any physical explanation for this, here he is arguing that the “gas bubbles in the ice cores cannot move”, and this time he is offering a physical explanation in terms of the gas molecules being too large in relation to the molecular pores in the ice crystal. If there is a substantial natural component to the 250 GtC/120 ppm CO2 increase to the atmosphere, similar changes are expected in the ice cores, and they are not seen. This violates a general geologic uniformity principle.
Salby offers statistical evidence that there is gas diffusion in the ice core, but the burden remains to come up with plausible physical explanations for how this may happen. For example, Englebeen long argued differential gas exchange without offering any mechanism, and he is currently arguing that the temperature correlation of net CO2 emission is only over a very short time horizon owing to depletion of organic matter from tropical soils. The rain forest soils are thin, yes, but are they that thin?
I don’t think we can be certain about anything, here, because there are factors that we cannot fully reconcile with known physical processes.
Paul Milenkovic,
It gets difficult to follow, already over 500 comments…
The “thinning” of the δ13C is easy to explain: vegetation is not a big player and the ocean surface even smaller, both mainly follow what happens in the atmosphere. Rest the deep oceans.
The deep ocean – atmosphere exchange happens from the upwelling of water + CO2 near the equator and both sink again into the deep via the THC and others to return ~1000 years later at the equator.
What goes into the deep is the isotopic composition of today (minus the air-water isotopic shift) what returns is the isotopic composition of ~1000 years ago + deep ocean mixing (minus the water-air isotopic shift).
The pre-industrial net result at equilibrium was ~6.4 +/- 0.2 for thousands of years.
We can reverse the question and look at what quantity of deep ocean water we need to explain the “thinning” of the δ13C level:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
At ~40 GtC/year there is a match, the discrepancy in earlier years may be caused by vegetation, which changed from a small net source to a small net sink.
The 40 GtC was independently confirmed by the thinning of the 14C bomb spike for the same reason…
Yes, I am getting a deep ocean exchange of 48 GtC/year in both the quasi-static model in full agreement with the entire atmospheric CO2 increase being anthropogenic and with the model that increases terrestrial turnover to account for the temperature sensitivity of net CO2 emission.
But to account for the “thinning” of the isotopes, a mechanism is required where a bulk CO2 pulse to the atmosphere does not exchange at the rate of individual molecules at the air-surface ocean interface, and the plausible candidate for that mechanism is the Revelle buffer
Here is a more detailed explanation of where and how a “B” term can arise. Let us suppose the system model is actually
dA/dt = (O – alpha*A)/tau + H
dO/dt = (alpha*A – O)/tau + U – O/tau_long
U is upwelling CO2, and O/tau_long is the rate at which CO2 is removed from the surface oceans. In the steady state, without any H, we have
O1 = tau_long*U
A1 = tau_long*U/alpha
Let us insert a temperature dependence on tau_long, so that tau_long = tau_long1 + beta*(T – T0), where tau_long1 is a constant, and beta is a temperature sensitivity constant.
We now linearize the equation. Let A = A1 + deltaA and O = O1 + deltaO. We get
d(deltaA)/dt = (deltaO – alpha*deltaA)/tau + H
d(deltaO)/dt = (alpha*deltaA – deltaO)/tau + U – (O1+deltaO)/(tau_long1 + beta*(T – T0))
But, to first order significant terms, (O1+deltaO)/(tau_long1 + beta*(T – T0)) = O1/tau_long1 + deltaO/tau_long1 – (O1*beta/tau_long^2)*(T – T0). Set k = O1*beta/tau_long^2/(1+alpha). We have
d(deltaA)/dt := (deltaO – alpha*deltaA)/tau + H
d(deltaO)/dt := (alpha*deltaA – deltaO)/tau + k*(T – T0) – deltaO/tau_long1
But, deltaO is small, and tau_long1 is large, so this is approximately
d(deltaA)/dt := (deltaO – alpha*deltaA)/tau + H
d(deltaO)/dt := (alpha*deltaA – deltaO)/tau + (1+alpha)*k*(T – T0)
With tau short, we get the approximate solution for deltaA as
d(deltaA)/dt := H/(1+alpha) + k*(T – T0)
With alpha large, this becomes
d(deltaA)/dt := k*(T – T0)
Setting the change in atmospheric CO2 concentration to A/atmospheric_volume, and redefining k appropriately, then gives us
dCO2/dt := k*(T – T0)
One equation above has a typo
d(deltaO)/dt := (alpha*deltaA – deltaO)/tau + k*(T – T0) – deltaO/tau_long1
should have been
d(deltaO)/dt := (alpha*deltaA – deltaO)/tau + (1+alpha)*k*(T – T0) – deltaO/tau_long1
It was included appropriately in the equation after, but the omission could cause confusion for those trying to replicate the derivation.
One of the problems we have, Ferdinand, is that we are talking past each other. I see you doing it, but have not been sure how to address it. It’s going to take a bit of math. The thing is, you are focusing on the wrong aspect of the system for the temperature sensitivity.
As I present above, the coupled atmospheric-oceanic system can be described analogously by
dA/dt = (O – alpha*A)/tau + H
dO/dt = (alpha*A – O)/tau + U – O/tau_long
This system of equations addresses every one of your concerns. It implicitly incorporates Henry’s Law. It preserves the mass balance. Moreover, it satisfies my requirement that all sources be considered on an equal footing.
What you have been concerned with is the temperature dependence of alpha. Let us assume a first order model for alpha, alpha = alpha1 + beta*(T – T1), where alpha1 and T1 are constants, and beta is the sensitivity. It is this sensitivity that you insist is not very large, and I agree, it is not, and it does not produce accumulation in the atmosphere, as we shall see.
Including that in leads to a system of perturbation equations (using the results from the previous development)
d(deltaA)/dt := (deltaO – alpha1*deltaA – A1*beta*(T-T1))/tau + H
d(deltaO)/dt := (alpha1*deltaA + A1*beta*(T-T1) – deltaO)/tau + (1+alpha1)*k*(T–T0)
or, setting k1 = A1*beta/(1+alpha1)
d(deltaA)/dt := (deltaO – alpha1*deltaA)/tau + H – ((1+alpha1)/tau)*k1*(T-T1)
d(deltaO)/dt := (alpha1*deltaA – deltaO)/tau + ((1+alpha1)/tau)*k1*(T-T1) + (1+alpha1)*k*(T–T0)
The approximate solution for deltaA here is
deltaA := integral(H/(1+alpha1) + k*(T-T0)) + [k1*(T-T1),tau/(1+alpha1)]
where the square brackets indicate filtering of the first quantity k1*(T-T1) through a unity gain 1st order lag system with time constant of the second quantity, tau/(1+alpha1).
What you have been trying to do is argue that there is no k*(T-T0) term, and that the only temperature dependence is from the term k1*(T-T1), and you have been trying to show that, by choosing tau/(1+alpha1) large enough, you can get a superficial resemblance with the data.
But, it doesn’t work, because the time constant tau/(1+alpha1), which is essentially the time needed to mix CO2 in the atmosphere, is necessarily short, not anything near the 40 or 50 years you need. Hence, you cannot match even close to the 90 deg phase lag needed without abandoning any pretension to modeling a physically realistic system.
What you are refusing to accept is that the temperature induced reduction in downwelling CO2 must necessarily result in accumulation of CO2 in the surface oceans, and thence into the atmosphere. That is what the k*(T-T0) input represents. It is necessary to accept this to have any hope of matching the 90 degree phase lag in the data with a physically realistic model.
Bart,
Indeed we are a long time talking past each other…
The thing is, you are focusing on the wrong aspect of the system for the temperature sensitivity.
I have the same feeling… My impression is that you look at the whole ocean-atmosphere system as one single process, while there are lots of processes at work at the same time: temperature and pressure related, fast and slow… Some of them influence each other, others are working completely independent of each other.
Where we agree is that temperature is the driver for the fast variability. Where we disagree is that temperature is the main cause of the increase in the atmosphere.
In my opinion, temperature drives the change in equilibrium between atmosphere and vegetation, on a fast, but limited scale, which zeroes out after 1-3 years.
And it changes the steady state of the ocean-atmosphere system, at about 16 ppmv/°C.
That is all what temperature does.
In that way temperature is responsible for almost all the fast variability in the atmosphere and a small (~10 ppmv) increase in the atmosphere. That is all.
But, it doesn’t work, because the time constant tau/(1+alpha1), which is essentially the time needed to mix CO2 in the atmosphere, is necessarily short, not anything near the 40 or 50 years you need.
Here you do it again: tau indeed is short for the CO2 reactions on temperature (~12 months for vegetation, ~48 months for the ocean surface), but that is completely independent of the 40 years half life time for moving any extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere, whatever the cause, above steady state into the deep oceans. You still see all the different processes as one overall process…
The extra CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t influence the variability of CO2 caused by temperature variability at all and temperature variability hardly influences the net sink rate into the deep oceans caused by the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere…
Hence, you cannot match even close to the 90 deg phase lag needed without abandoning any pretension to modeling a physically realistic system.
If you treat the temperature related and pressure related processes as separate processes, which they are (but including the small influence of temperature on the pressure related sink rate), there is a 100% match in variability with your temperature-fits-all variability: as good a 90 deg phase lag:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_emiss_deriv_1987-2002.jpg
Zero difference in phase between the two solutions… And there was a 100% match of the slopes, without using a factor or offset…
Remains the question which of the two is the real one. For that we can compare them with the observations…
You have been talking past Ferdinand and others for a long time now. Your model completely fails to account for the physical chemistry involved, your assumption that dCO2/dt only depends on temperature can not be reconciled with the fact that pCO2 must also be a factor (Henry’s law). As I have pointed out to you on multiple occasions the sinks and sources must include T and CO2 dependence, you never address the point. The effect of T variation is inter alia to modulate the curve by varying the exchange with the ocean. The radiocarbon bomb spike shows a first order dependence on the excess 14CO2 in the atmosphere.
Bart,
Further about your model…
dA/dt = (O – alpha*A)/tau + H
dO/dt = (alpha*A – O)/tau + U – O/tau_long
at steady state:
O1 = tau_long*U
A1 = tau_long*U/alpha
Assuming that O1 and A1 would be the levels in the atmosphere and ocean surface without other influences.
The rest of the reasoning sounds good up to:
d(deltaA)/dt := H/(1+alpha) + k*(T – T0)
With alpha large, this becomes
d(deltaA)/dt := k*(T – T0)
alpha between the deep oceans and the atmosphere is large, but between the ocean surface and the atmosphere it is only 1:0.8, thus the term H/(1+alpha) is not negligible.
But let’s go on to the end:
dCO2/dt := k*(T – T0)
There you stop, but that is not the end. dCO2/dt := k*(T – T0) is the right increase rate at time t1. At time t2, the pressure already increased in the atmosphere by the previous dCO2/dt and the extra pressure pushes more CO2 back into the oceans, both by reducing the release and increasing the uptake.
It all ends at ~16 ppmv/°C extra CO2 in the atmosphere per Henry’s law…
Thus while you start with obeying Henry’s law, you deviate from Henry’s law the moment that you released the first extra CO2…
The whole pressure dependency of the source / sink rate is not taken into account in your model…
Ferdinand Engelbeen December 1, 2015 at 3:33 am
“…while there are lots of processes at work at the same time…”
But, they are not of the same significance, and one is apparently dominant.
“Here you do it again…”
No. I have shown you in the equations above that the time constant governing your process is the time constant of equilibration between oceans and atmosphere. It is very short.
“… and temperature variability hardly influences the net sink rate into the deep oceans…”
It most certainly does. Very directly. When polar waters are warmer, less CO2 downwells with them. That creates a backup in the pipeline, as it were.
“If you treat the temperature related and pressure related processes as separate processes, which they are…”
Meaning, “If you go through the arduous process of ad hoc filtering and shaping the data to fit your preconceived ideal, you can get a superficial resemblance with anything.” It’s epicycles, Ferdinand. You are going to great lengths to convince yourself that the planets move in perfect circles about the Earth.
And, your “fit” is only across 15 years. What’s happening before 1987 and after 2002, Ferdinand?
Here is the long term. Show me your long term.
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
Phil. December 1, 2015 at 6:00 am
“Your model completely fails to account for the physical chemistry involved…”
With your preconceived notion of the physical chemistry involved. In fact, my model is consistent with Michael Hammer’s inputs above.
“…your assumption that dCO2/dt only depends on temperature can not be reconciled with the fact that pCO2 must also be a factor (Henry’s law).”
Wrong. My model has Henry’s Law incorporated directly into it.
“The effect of T variation is inter alia to modulate the curve by varying the exchange with the ocean.”
And, one of the inter alia-s is that it also modulates the downwelling of CO2 out of the surface system, and thereby, the CO2 content of the atmosphere.
“The radiocarbon bomb spike shows a first order dependence on the excess 14CO2 in the atmosphere.”
The radiocarbon bomb spike is related to the diffusion of that CO2 throughout the air/land/water system. It is not necessary that it be related to the movement of bulk quantities into and out of the surface system.
Ferdinand Engelbeen December 1, 2015 at 6:16 am
“alpha between the deep oceans and the atmosphere is large, but between the ocean surface and the atmosphere it is only 1:0.8, thus the term H/(1+alpha) is not negligible.”
This is not the ocean surface. It is the entire surface reservoir of the oceans. My A and O are CO2 content representing the entire associated reservoirs.
“At time t2, the pressure already increased in the atmosphere by the previous dCO2/dt and the extra pressure pushes more CO2 back into the oceans…”
Once the model is set up, the rest is all math. To have any objection to it, you have to go all the way back to
dA/dt = (O – alpha*A)/tau + H
dO/dt = (alpha*A – O)/tau + U – O/tau_long
“The whole pressure dependency of the source / sink rate is not taken into account in your model…”
Yes, it is. It is taken care of in the equations just above. Once that is set up, it’s all math.
Want to emphasize this:
From conversation above:
“Atm-CO2(t-1) is the observed atmospheric CO2 at time t-1”
But, what is it in terms of the other variables? How does it connect?
“But, what is it in terms of the other variables? How does it connect?”
I think I am beginning to see… It doesn’t connect. You are using it to drive your model.
So, it’s basically a circular exercise. You don’t have an actual model that can independently reproduce the atmospheric concentration.
Wow.
Bart,
But, they are not of the same significance, and one is apparently dominant.
Yes that is right: the dominant process is the pressure increase in the atmosphere which gives the net sink rate of CO2 from the atmosphere into the (deep) oceans,
The temperature caused variability is the secondary process that gives some minor variability of +/- 1.5 ppmv around the trend of 70 ppmv.
No. I have shown you in the equations above that the time constant governing your process is the time constant of equilibration between oceans and atmosphere. It is very short.
You have shown that the time constant of the secondary process is short, but that is the time constant of the temperature influence on vegetation and oceans, which only is about the noise and 10 ppmv increase. That is all.
The time constant of the primary process is over 50 years, hardly influenced by temperature.
When polar waters are warmer, less CO2 downwells with them.
Yes, that is right, about 3% less outflux per °C increase. If the CO2 level in the atmosphere increases with 16 ppmv/°C, that increases the outflux with the same 3%. You know, Henry’s law…
Meaning…
Meaning that I see nature as a bunch of processes, like the real earth is, each working on their own, some temperature sensitive, some pressure sensitive, some both. Each with their own ratio and time constants. Your temperature-fits-all is as far from the real world as any curve fitting can be…
your “fit” is only across 15 years. What’s happening before 1987 and after 2002, Ferdinand?
Which shows that you haven’t read my essay: the full RSS fit is there too (Fig 14). I enlarged the period 1987-2002 to show in detail that my synthesis has the same fit as yours with exactly the same timing of the variability, as that was your main complaint in the past… The HadCRU plot must be worked out yet, but as I have plotted the effect of the pressure related sink rate in the past in the middle of the noise, I am sure that will give no problems… Here the full RSS plot again:
If you can see a difference, I can’t…
Bart:
This is not the ocean surface. It is the entire surface reservoir of the oceans. My A and O are CO2 content representing the entire associated reservoirs.
Bart, the part of the oceans, called the “mixed layer” in intense contact with the atmosphere, a few hundred metes deep, contains ~1000 GtC. The atmosphere contains ~800 GtC… See:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/
Both are in rapid equilibrium, where the deep ocean – air exchanges rapidly bypass the ocean surface…
Once the model is set up, the rest is all math.
Yes, but as I said, the result shows that the model doesn’t fit reality, the model is wrong because it doesn’t contain a term for the removal of the increased pressure in the atmosphere…
Bart,
From somewhere at the top:
You are looking at the wrong temperature related process. See linked discussion below for further details.
My model looks in the first place at the effect of pressure in the system: pressure is what removes the human emissions out of the atmosphere into the deep oceans (and a little in vegetation and the ocean surface).
Temperature only modulates the pressure related sink rate somewhat (less than 3%), but has a rapid, but limited effect on vegetation and the ocean surface. That is a transient effect: a temperature increase pushes some extra CO2 in the atmosphere, a temperature decrease sinks some more CO2. For vegetation that zero’s out after 1-3 years. For the ocean surface, that gives a transient change of 16 ppmv/°C per Henry’s law.
Thus in your model, you attribute everything to temperature, in my model most increase is from emissions minus sink rate, while +/- 1,5 ppmv around the trend + 10% of the trend is temperature caused.
So, it’s basically a circular exercise. You don’t have an actual model that can independently reproduce the atmospheric concentration.
Pressure:
dCO2(press)/dt = k1(pCO2(atm) – pCO2(eq))
Temperature:
dCO2(temp)/dt = k2(k(T – T0) – Δ(pCO2(temp)) (2 separate equations for vegetation and oceans)
Where pCO2(eq) = pCO2(0) + pCO2(temp) (sum of the 2 equation results)
and finally:
dCO2(total)/dt = dCO2(press)/dt + dCO2(temp)/dt
“If the CO2 level in the atmosphere increases with 16 ppmv/°C, that increases the outflux with the same 3%”
Wrong. I know you do not understand the math, but the math works out precisely as I have been telling you.
You are looking only at the temperature dependence of my “alpha” term, but you are completely missing the temperature dependent of the “tau_long” term.
“Which shows that you haven’t read my essay.”
I’ve read enough to be disgusted. I now see that you are using the atmospheric concentration itself to drive the output of the atmospheric concentration.
“If you can see a difference, I can’t…”
Yes, that happens when you cheat.
“… the part of the oceans, called the “mixed layer” in intense contact with the atmosphere, a few hundred metes deep…”
The oceans have very large buffering capacity. They hold far more CO2 than the atmosphere. See Michael Hammer’s inputs previous.
“…but as I said, the result shows that the model doesn’t fit reality…”
No, the model is mathematically and physically consistent. What it doesn’t fit is your prejudice.
“My model looks in the first place…”
Your model is absolute bunkum. You are driving it with the quantity you are supposed to be independently matching.
“…Which shows that you haven’t read my essay: the full RSS fit is there too (Fig 14). I enlarged the period 1987-2002…”
You still only show 1980-2015. Go back to 1958, like I did:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/temp-CO2-long.jpg_zpsszsfkb5h.png
And, stop cheating. The only inputs you are allowed are emissions, and temperatures. You can’t fill in the gaps with actual atmospheric concentration data.
Bart,
If you plot two similar variables on different scales, you can “prove” what you want.
your emissions are accelerating, while the atmospheric concentration is NOT for the past decade.
So what? Until ~2000 temperature helped to increase the CO2 levels with a mall slope, after that not anymore. Still a linear increase with the “airborne fraction” still in the middle of the noise…
This is a cheat and a lie. You don’t have a model. You are just comparing the atmospheric concentration to the atmospheric concentration
What kind of nonsense is that???
It is my model, which assumes that any increase of CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above steady state is followed by a proportional sink reaction into the deep oceans. That is measured in the past 55+ years as a quite linear response with an e-fold decay rate of ~53 years.
If you don’t understand that, then your math may be marvelous and your knowledge of single variable high frequency processes outstanding, but you don’t recognize a simple linear pressure dependent process if it is before your nose.
“So what?”
So, there is another model available which decelerates at the same time, and that is the dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) model. If one model fits in a place the other does not, then the one that fits is preferred.
“What kind of nonsense is that???”
This nonsense:
Sink-CO2(t) = Ocean_P_alpha*((Atm-CO2(t-1) + Emiss(t)) – (CO2_base + Nat-CO2(t)))
What is Atm-CO2(t-1) doing as a forcing in your model?
All you’ve got, Ferdinand, with your “transient” response is a chance similarity with the high frequency portion of the CO2 record because, for the frequency formations observable in your short data record, your filter phase response is roughly right (though not as good as the dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) model, BTW). The longer the record goes, the more trouble you are going to have with that.
So, take it back to 1958, and let’s see how it looks.
You can, of course, add additional complexity to your model to shore up those places where it doesn’t fit. But, then, medieval scholars were able to massage their epicycles to get better fits, too. At some point, you have added so much speculative garbage that it just becomes ridiculous to continue rejecting the much simpler one that fits the data, dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0).
Bart:
You still only show 1980-2015. Go back to 1958, like I did:
If you don’t even read what I wrote, then there is little discussion possible.
I did say that I was working on the Hadley data, but my essay was published faster than expected with so many comments that I have not found the time yet to complete it. But the same data in the past for the pressure response were in the middle of the noise…
And, stop cheating. The only inputs you are allowed are emissions, and temperatures. You can’t fill in the gaps with actual atmospheric concentration data.
I only used the actual CO2 levels in the atmosphere to plot them so that you can see the difference with the model calculated CO2 levels with and without noise.
If the formula in my model:
dCO2(press)/dt = k1(pCO2(atm) – pCO2(eq))
did give the wrong impression:
pCO2(atm) is not the observed pressure in the atmosphere, it is the calculated pressure in the atmosphere.
But it is wrong, as I also did forget to add human emissions in the formula and to clear up the confusion:
dCO2(press)/dt = k1(pCO2(calc) + emissions – pCO2(eq))
——————
Sorry, I see that I made the same mistake in the description of what I have done:
4. Ocean CO2 response to the pressure difference between observed and dynamic equilibrium pressure
Sink-CO2(t) = Ocean_P_alpha*((Atm-CO2(t-1) + Emiss(t)) – (CO2_base + Nat-CO2(t)))
Must be:
Sink-CO2(t) = Ocean_P_alpha*((Calc-CO2(t-1) + Emiss(t)) – (CO2_base + Nat-CO2(t)))
and the explanation:
Calc-CO2(t-1) = calculated CO2 level in the atmosphere at time t-1
The observed data were not used anywhere in the calculations.
Thus entirely my fault. Sorry for the confusion…
“Calc-CO2(t-1) = calculated CO2 level in the atmosphere at time t-1”
My apologies for jumping to conclusions.
How is Calc-CO2, in fact, calculated?
“I did say that I was working on the Hadley data…”
Use the SH data – it matches the satellite data fairly well. NH, in my opinion, and hence global, is bogus. Once they notice it, they will probably change the SH, too, so get it while it is still relatively untainted.
Bart:
All you’ve got, Ferdinand, with your “transient” response is a chance similarity with the high frequency portion of the CO2 record because, for the frequency formations observable in your short data record
Bart, what you still don’t see is that there is no “chance” in the similarity between the temperature variability and the derivative from the transient responses. For a broad range of frequencies, they are 100% synchronized. That is what Paul_K tried to show to you and what I show in the theoretical part of my essay.
The calculated slope of the CO2 level from emissions and calculated sink rate is in the middle of the noise…
You are looking only at the temperature dependence of my “alpha” term, but you are completely missing the temperature dependent of the “tau_long” term.
Doesn’t make any difference: for a fixed upwelling in mass and concentration a temperature increase gives 16 ppmv/K in equilibrium, thus 3% extra release of CO2. With 16 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere that is over and out
The oceans have very large buffering capacity. They hold far more CO2 than the atmosphere. See Michael Hammer’s inputs previous.
You misunderstood the chemistry from Hammer: seawater can absorb 10 times more CO2 than fresh water thanks to its buffer capacity, but that is only 10% of the change in the atmosphere. Thus the 30% change in the atmosphere did give a 3% change in the ocean surface, or 30 GtC extra on the 1000 GtC in the ocean surface…
That is the reason that the deep ocean-atmosphere largely bypass the surface for their CO2 release and uptake: any extra CO2 entering the surface layer will be released when warming up, as the surface can’t hold it…
Ferdinand Engelbeen December 1, 2015 at 4:27 pm
“Bart, what you still don’t see …”
Oh, man. Ferdinand, you have no idea what you are talking about. I know far, far more about these things than you will ever know.
My burden is trying to explain these topics in a way that you can understand. It isn’t easy.
This: “For a broad range of frequencies, they are 100% synchronized” is absolute, complete nonsense.
“Doesn’t make any difference…”
Yes it does, Ferdinand. Yes it does. I see it in plain view, the same way I see the silliness of the pseudo-mass balance argument that you, also, cannot see.
“You misunderstood the chemistry from Hammer…”
Ferdinand, sea water can hold much more CO2 than the atmosphere. You are just making excuses.
How is Calc-CO2, in fact, calculated?
I’m ready to concede a stalemate at this juncture, and tie this round off, Ferdinand. See my closing summary below.
Bart:
Ferdinand, sea water can hold much more CO2 than the atmosphere. You are just making excuses.
The total mass in the deep oceans can do that because its mass is enormous, but the surface is only ~1000 GtC, comparable to the atmosphere and the maximum increase due to its buffer capacity is 10% of the atmospheric change. That is the Revelle/buffer factor which is a measure of how much the ocean can change for an atmospheric change.
If you look at the total carbon increase in different species (DIC: CO2 + bicarbonates + carbonates), that is ~10% of the increase in the atmosphere over the past (short) period of measurements:
http://www.biogeosciences.net/9/2509/2012/bg-9-2509-2012.pdf
Fig. 5 and Table 1.
How is Calc-CO2, in fact, calculated?
Starting at the observed CO2 level at time zero (there is already a pressure in the atmosphere above steady state in the start year), the new calculated CO2 pressure = the previous one + emissions – the calculated sink rate.
The latter is a function of the difference between calculate pressure in the previous step + emissions and the calculated steady state CO2 level for the current temperature.
Thus to be pedant, I used one CO2 observation as starting point…
What is the new weight of atmosphere STP at sea level? I would prefer kg/Sq cm. Your formula doesn’t subtract out the weight of o2 that is being replaced by co2. So it’s just the Carbon in the molecule that matters. (to be sure that may not be the only thing adding weight on any given day)
Further you never got back to me on whether or not high pressuse cells have achieved higher highs for longer periods of time, and low pressure cells have developed higher lows. How does that line up with stronger more powerful storms? Doesn’t that require deeper low pressure centers?
It’s not a straight forward linear equation. It’s a calculus one with partial difference or a matrix. Do use the right math. You’re also going to have to show that a hurricane churning the waters (I see I was made fun of by saying boiling) how much co2 is released and in relation to pressure.
These claims all start from the premise that the rise is anthropogenic. It is circular reasoning.
As Michael Hammer indicates above, the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2 is very large.
rishrac,
Henry’s law is for the pressure of CO2 alone, whatever the total air pressure above sea level. Of course, a severe low pressure in the atmosphere will lower the absolute pressure of CO2 too. But take a total atmospheric CO2 pressure drop from 1030 to 950 mbar, that is a drop of ~4% in total pressure, thus also of the partial CO2 pressure.
As there is already a continuous CO2 flux out of the ocean upwelling near the equator, That may give a temporarily increase in CO2 influx, but I haven’t seen any increase of CO2 in the global (or local) atmosphere after a severe cyclone. Maybe there was, but as far as I know, not high enough to grab the attention of anyone…
Bart:
These claims all start from the premise that the rise is anthropogenic. It is circular reasoning.
Any increase (or decrease) in the atmosphere is met with a 10% increase (or decrease) of total inorganic carbon (DIC) in the ocean surface layer, whatever the cause of the increase (or decrease). The same if reverse: any change in the surface layer gives a change in the atmosphere, but the decrease in pH together with the increase in DIC show that the flux is from atmosphere into ocean surface, not reverse…
As Michael Hammer indicates above, the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2 is very large.
Michael Hammer didn’t indicate anything about capacity in mass, only chemistry, which indeed show a ~10-fold more absorption of seawater than fresh water for the same pressure change of CO2 in the atmosphere. But that still is only 10% of the atmospheric change… Or ~30 GtC over the past 165 years. That is all.
Please consult someone who knows (ocean/water) chemistry, as he/she can show you the real figures…
“but the decrease in pH together with the increase in DIC show that the flux is from atmosphere into ocean surface, not reverse…”
Circular reasoning, again.
Bart:
Circular reasoning, again.
Bart, you know a lot of signal processing, but in (ocean) chemistry you are out of your depth…
If something happens at the oceans side, that would influence the atmosphere and v.v.:
– If the ocean surface pH suddenly decreased (undersea volcano…) more CO2 is released and DIC decreases.
– If the oceans surface temperature increases, more CO2 is released and DIC decreases while the pH increases.
– If the atmospheric CO2 level increases, more CO2 is pushed into the oceans and DIC increases while the pH decreases.
The latter is observed.
What also is observed is that the global average pCO2 in the atmosphere is higher than in the ocean surfaces, thus the net ocean surface balance is more sink than source…
And, the circle is complete with retreat into the abject fallacy of the pseudo-mass balance argument.
CO2, in spite of being a ghg, has no effect on climate. http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
The observational evidence does not suggest that CO2 has any strong impact on temperatures, and suggests that Climate Sensitivity, if any at all, is low.
But unfortunately, the observational evidence is either of poor quality with large error bars, or it is of too short a duration to be able to properly answer the question.
I envisage that we will know a lot more in the next 10 to 15years time. the only issue is how much money will be wasted before then.
Thank you Richard V.
Many of us agree on this thread with this key point – that climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 (ECS) is low.
I suggest that:
– ECS is so low that increasing atmospheric CO2 is a materially insignificant driver of climate,
– the recent minor changes in global temperature are largely natural, not manmade, and
– the global warming crisis does not exist (as we wrote with confidence in 2002).
IF you have the time, I urge you and others (Richard C, Ferdinand, and the other capable commenters on this thread) to look at Dan’s model at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com
I had been hoping to rebuild Dan’s model from scratch to verify it, but had no time recently.
Assuming Dan’s model has no major glitches, I think he is on the right track. One may argue with his statistical claim (perhaps because of the effect of smoothing), but no matter.
Dan has built a simple Earth-temperature (climate?) model that has two significant inputs variables:
– solar intensity (the integral thereof, which makes sense) and
– a ~60year sawtooth (PDO?)
It is regrettable that we do not have an unbiased surface temperature (ST) record for Dan to use – one can assume that his model will also work with an unbiased ST record with minor tweaks, IF we ever get one.
It is notable that Dan’s model now suggests global cooling is imminent, which is consistent with our view. I suggest that global cooling could be mild or severe and may be a serious imminent problem for humanity and the environment..
Thanks to all who look at Dan’s model. Thank you also for a very interesting thread.
Regards, Allan
(MY COMMENTS IN CAPS FOR CLARITY)
Richard V said:
“I envisage that”
– “we will know a lot more in the next 10 to 15 years time”
I AGREE
– “the only issue is how much money will be wasted before then.”
TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF SCARCE GLOBAL RESOURCES WILL BE SQUANDERED ON THE FALSE GLOBAL WARMING CRISIS:
– ENOUGH MONEY TO INSTALL CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION SYSTEMS IN EVERY COMMUNITY ON OUR PLANET;
– PROBABLY ENOUGH MONEY TO PROVIDE HEALTHIER LIVING CONDITIONS FOR ALL OF HUMANITY – IMMUNIZATION, SAFER INDOOR AIR QUALITY, AND EVEN ELIMINATION OF SOME CRIPPLING DISEASES.
The science is increasingly clear – the global warming crisis does not exist.
Why are the global warming alarmists pushing their objective despite the absence of any credible scientific evidence to support it? What are their real agendas?
Regards, Allan
richard V – IMO the ‘compelling evidence’ CO2 has no effect on climate is from the last 500 million years. The lower limit on CO2 had to be high enough for life to evolve. If CO2 was a forcing, its effect on temperature would have to be according to its time-integral (or the time-integral of a function thereof). The error bars on temperature don’t matter as long as we accept that global temperature went up and down during the 500 million years. The only way this all consistently works is if CO2 has no effect on temperature and hence no effect on climate. This is discussed more in the last third of the agwunveiled document.
There was an article the other day pointing out that we do not understand the carbon isotope balance/imbalance on Mars. We cannot explain it, and that there must be processes ongoing that we do not presently know of, or properly understand.
I suggest that the same may apply to planet Earth. We do not know enough about what is going on, or how things work, especially not in the fine detail.
Personally, I am extremely sceptical of arguments based upon isotope balances/imbalances.
Richard Verney,
I don’t think there is much vegetation on Mars nowadays, even questionable if there has ever been… Although NASA hopes there was, just to have a reason to sent people up there, good for years of work for them…
Hi!
Discussion is almost over but few comments anyway. The basic message of the post is that the atmospheric CO2 increase is caused by fossil fuel emissions. There are so many evidences that the conclusion is sure. But the ocean has a role in the increase of the CO2 from 595 GtC (1750) to 845 GtC (2013). The anthropogenic amount in this increase is only 65 GtC and the rest is from the ocean (=185 GtC). The explanation are the recycling fluxes between the atmosphere, ocean and biosphere.
According to isotope measurements the 13C permille value is -8.4 corresponding the portion of 7.7% of the anthropogenic CO2. IPCC says that the portion is 28%,which would make the permille value to be -12.9.
The biosphere has no influence on the atmospheric permille value, because the plants uptake and release out CO2 keeping the 13C/12C relationship the same all the time. These results are based on my own study and it shows that annual CO2 fluctuations in the ocean uptake (and in the atmospheric changes) has a good correlation to the ocean temperature variations, r2 = 0.86.
One question to whom might know. What is the permille value of the mixing layer and the deep ocean before the year 1750?
aveollila,
According to coralline sponges (which take bicarbonate to build their skeleton at ~ the same δ13C level as the surrounding waters) +4.95 +/- 0.2 per mil at Bermuda in waters down to 200 m depth:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.jpg
The + per mil largely depends of local bio-life in the ocean surface. Deep ocean water is 0-1 per mil, surface waters 1-5 per mil.
You need to make a distinction between what remains as original human released molecules (~8%) and the human caused increase in total mass (~28%). The -12.9 per mil is what the δ13C level would be if all human CO2 remained in the atmosphere, but as 20% of all CO2 of the atmosphere per year is exchanged each year with CO2 of other reservoirs, the human “fingerprint” is diluted by CO2 from other reservoirs, mainly the deep oceans…
I could certainly be wrong here, but this is how I see things:
1. There are three pause busting data sets: GISS, Hadcrut4 and NOAA.
2. The two satellite data sets show pauses of 18 years and several months.
3. Ferdinand Engelbeen says human emissions are responsible for most of the increase in CO2
4. Dr. Salby says temperature is the dominant factor.
In my opinion, you need to decide if both 1 and 4 are true or if both 2 and 3 are true. You are inconsistent if you want to argue for both 2 and 4. Does that sound about right?
You’ve got to be kidding. Werner, I’ve gained some respect for you on these boards over the years, but you apparently haven’t been following this conversation at all.
The atmospheric CO2 data reflect the pause in temperatures perfectly:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/Pause_zps1n1vhhz6.png
What they do not reflect is the continuing acceleration in emissions:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/CO2_zps330ee8fa.jpg
Bart,
There we go again: using different scales for the same kind of variable is NOT DONE.
See the global emissions and the resulting “airborne fraction” after subtracting the calculated sink rate in my plot in next message below.
For the HadCRU temperature – emissions – increase plot:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
I only have to work out the full response of pressure + temperature for that one…
Werner,
No problem to emulate the same graph with human emissions, modulated by natural CO2 variability from temperature variability:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/rss_co2_emiss_2000-2015.jpg
Linear trend lines all are for the full RSS period.
There is hardly a difference between slope and variability between both hypothesis.
The difference is in the observations:
Human emissions increased a 4-fold in the past 55+ years, so did the increase in the atmosphere and thus the net sink rate. If some natural cause overwhelmed human emissions, that must have increased a fourfold in the same period, or you violate the equality of all CO2.
Such a fourfold (or even less) natural increase would violate a lot of observations.
In short: Bart’s (and Salby’s) theory violates about all observations, the human cause fits all observations…
Ferdinand Engelbeen December 1, 2015 at 1:02 pm
“There we go again: using different scales for the same kind of variable is NOT DONE.”
WRONG! It is perfectly fine to do so. You are cheating by scaling the emissions so that they kind of, sort of, fit. But, you still cannot disguise the FACT that your emissions are accelerating, while the atmospheric concentration is NOT for the past decade.
Ferdinand Engelbeen December 1, 2015 at 1:02 pm
This is a cheat and a lie. You don’t have a model. You are just comparing the atmospheric concentration to the atmospheric concentration.
I retract my allegation here. Ferdinand explained there was an error in his formula above.
I know you like going into derivatives. I prefer this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.33/trend/offset:-0.4/detrend:0.174/plot/rss/from:1997.05/trend/offset:-0.45/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/normalise:0.5/trend/detrend:0.8/offset:0.35
Werner Brozek December 1, 2015 at 11:50 am
No, Werner. That is not the model. The model is
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
You have to compare apples with apples:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997.33/trend/offset:-0.4/detrend:0.174/plot/rss/from:1997.05/trend/offset:-0.45/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996/derivative:0.5/trend
Yeah, werner, in plain laymans english (which is the only language i know), the pause is not in the carbon growth rather the pause is in the carbon growth RATE…
The above are the first sentences in the article. Were they not accurate?
You say (along with Bart’s graph just prior to this):
So should the first sentences have read: (emphasis mine)
“Both Bart Bartemis and Dr. Murray Salby are confident that temperature is the only/main cause of the rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere. I am pretty sure that human emissions are to blame.”
Or could this apply to Bart but not Salby? But if it applies to both, what would they say causes the unaccelerated increase in CO2?
Would you quibble so between
“Both Bart Bartemis and Dr. Murray Salby are confident that depressing the gas pedal is the main cause of velocity increase in an automobile”
and
“Both Bart Bartemis and Dr. Murray Salby are confident that depressing the gas pedal is the main cause of acceleration in an automobile”
?
Werner,
Both Bart and Dr. Salby integrate temperature, which implies that all the increase and all the variability in the atmosphere is from temperature.
The rate of change is natural variability around the trend: between 10-90% of human emissions from year to year, between 40-60% over decades. In the total CO2 increase the variability is around +/- 1.5 ppmv around the trend. Bart makes a lot of the “pause” in the rate of change, but there are other periods where the change in rate of change was negative…
Thus both “definitions” are true: a “pause” in the rate of change with increasing emissions and still all increase is from temperature according to Bart and Dr. Salby…
“Both Bart and Dr. Salby integrate temperature, which implies that all the increase and all the variability in the atmosphere is from temperature.”
No, just the most significant part. Nobody suggests that it is “all” temperature. The other drivers are simply relatively insignificant.
“…but there are other periods where the change in rate of change was negative…”
But, except for obvious anomalies (such as that due to the 1993 Pinatubo eruption), the temperature relationship always matches.
“…and still all increase is from temperature according to Bart and Dr. Salby…”
Again, nobody has said “all”.
Bartemis December 1, 2015 at 8:20 pm
“Both Bart Bartemis and Dr. Murray Salby are confident that depressing the gas pedal is the main cause of velocity increase in an automobile”
The problem is that Bart and Salby both appear to think that when your car accelerates going downhill it must be because you depressed the accelerator not because of gravity!
Phil. — your introducing the law of gravity is not helpful. You only twist Bartemis’ metaphor out of useful recognition by inserting it. FURTHER, pressing the accelerator going downhill would make your car accelerate.
That is, for the purposes of THIS metaphor illustrating the fact that the observed data is best explained by: TEMP. UP –> CO2 UP (delayed a quarter cycle),
going uphill or downhill is not relevant, merely velocity per se and acceleration.
That is: CO2 RATE of increase and absolute CO2 level at a given point in time.
Janice Moore December 3, 2015 at 10:35 am
Phil. — your introducing the law of gravity is not helpful. You only twist Bartemis’ metaphor out of useful recognition by inserting it. FURTHER, pressing the accelerator going downhill would make your car accelerate.
Janice you’re wrong it’s a very apt analogy. The gradient of CO2 concentration across the ocean surface is what drives the transport and hence the rate of change of CO2, temperature has a secondary effect.
Just like the car going down hill which for constant accelerator setting will still accelerate due to gravity.
Well, I have finally had time to look over what Ferdinand has done, and I will have to admit, he has provided enough evidence that those who continue to hope that we are in control of atmospheric CO2 can continue, for a while, to do so without being considered completely off the rails.
What we have is a series of data which matches the relationship
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
phenomenally well for parameters k and T0 which can be considered reasonably constant for the past 57 years.
I have shown, in comments above via a toy model, that such a relationship is expected when you are dealing with a continuous flow which is impeded by temperature dependent throttling action at the downwelling regions. It may be a natural outcome of other transport processes as well.
The overall trend of the dCO2/dt data matches the trend of the T data when k is chosen to match the variability, and that, to me, is the clincher. I would say the odds are astronomically against such a fantastic consilience by chance alone.
However, Ferdinand does not see things this way. He feels no twinge of doubt in summarily dismissing this phenomenon. However, to open up room for significant anthropogenic forcing, he must eliminate the trend in the T dependence of dCO2/dt. He does this (based on assumed physical processes) by applying implicitly a high pass filter, nominally of the form (with s the Laplace variable)
F(s) = b1*s/(tau1*s+1) + b2*s/(s*tau2+1)
with the values of tau1 and tau2 chosen as 1 and 4 years, respectively, to the temperature data. Naturally, a high pass filtering operation such as this, having zero gain at zero frequency, will eliminate a first order trend. However, it imparts a phase distortion which should be observable especially in the transition region from zero to max gain.
Unfortunately (for me), the detrended data themselves are dominated by a narrowband process with peak power at about 0.28 years^-1. That translates into about 3.6 years equivalent period, and as one can see by inspection, most of the variation goes up and down in about that interval of time.
Ferdinand’s high pass response looks like this:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/ferd_zpsxtpaznrk.png
The shaded portion shows where the spectrum of the data is most heavily concentrated. The phase shift is less than 20 degrees, which is too small to make out reliably with all the noise.
As a result, it is not possible to rule out Ferdinand’s toy model by just eyeballing the data. He can add the emissions in, and get something that, to some level of adequacy, more or less matches the observations. He still has to contend with the fact that emissions are accelerating, and CO2 during the “pause” is not, but the discrepancy isn’t yet large enough to send the faithful scurrying for cover.
I can produce an estimate of the transfer function which shows no change in phase down to the lowest observable frequency, but this wouldn’t make much of a mark on folks who are not familiar with that type of analysis, which is most people, and there are certain aspects which are somewhat subjective which could be assailed by people who are. So, why bother.
Where does this leave us?
I believe his manipulations are arbitrary, and unrealistic, and Occam’s Razor comes firmly down on the side of the dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0) relationship.
I do not believe he appreciates the rate dependencies inherent in dynamical systems, and I believe it is assured that there is a ppmv/degC/unit-of-time dependency that results from the temperature dependent throttling of downwelling ocean waters.
I believe my estimates of the transfer function which show no phase distortion at low frequency.
I believe that the fact that the scaling of the T data, to match the CO2 rate of change variations, produces a very good match to the trend is way too unlikely to just be happenstance.
But, these are just beliefs. Not proven. Assuredly not enough to stir the faithful.
If emissions keep on increasing, which they assuredly will, notwithstanding the recent propaganda timed for COP21, and temperatures continue declining, as they probably will for the next decade or more, there will be enough divergence between emissions and atmospheric concentration to nail things down for certain.
In the meantime, I will continue making my case, and no doubt, Ferdinand (along with others) will continue making his, and the struggle will continue.
I want to thank Ferdinand for his efforts, wrongheaded as I believe them to be, and apologize for jumping to conclusions and accusing him of cheating. He’s a good fellow. There’re just so many things he is not aware of that I wish I could explain in a way he would understand…
These are the same. But “constant velocity” and “acceleration” are not the same.
To me, the following phrase changed the whole meaning
Wow!! I must be out to lunch and ought to quit while I am ahead! My understanding of Ferdinand’s position regarding the major reason for the increase in CO2 can be boiled down to two words: “human emissions”.
Do not even try to explain the above equation. It is way above my head. I will just go with Occam’s Razor for now and agree on human emissions.
Werner Brozek:
You say
Yes, that is “Ferdinand’s position”. Empirical evidence refutes his narrative, but that is his position.
Richard
CO2 increase and CO2 rate have the same relationship to one another as velocity increase and acceleration.
And, Occam’s Razor comes down on the side that requires fewest assumptions. That is the temperature driven side.
Bart:
Naturally, a high pass filtering operation such as this, having zero gain at zero frequency, will eliminate a first order trend.
You still see this as “filtering”, while it is an integral towards a new equilibrium. At zero frequency, the step response gain is the same as for any low frequency signal and only gets a smaller amplitude at higher frequencies: All are at a 90 deg. shift for all tau’s which are long enough (where 6 months for vegetation was already enough)… Any first order slope in temperature will give a first order slope in the transient response of CO2. See Fig. 2 and 3 in my essay…
The difference is in the derivatives:
Where T has a linear slope, the derivative of a transient response to T has no slope, only an offset, but the timing and form of the variability of both is exactly the same…
it is an integral towards a new equilibrium
If you take the derivative of the integral towards a new equilibrium, you see the original variability again, but without the slope… If the integral has the maximum 90 deg. shift, then T and dCO2/dt also match in timing…
“You still see this as “filtering”, while it is an integral towards a new equilibrium.”
It is not a naked integral. It is an integral with feedback. It is a filter. It has a frequency response.
“…where 6 months for vegetation was already enough…”
A 6 month 1st order lag would give you a phase shift of only -41 degrees for an input period of 3.6 years (the phase shift is -atan(2*pi*tau/P), where P is the period of the input, and -atan(2*pi*0.5/3.6) = -41). An error of 49 degrees of phase would be discernible. No, you need that 4 years.
I saw Fig. 2 and 3. It is part of what made your narrative so painful to read. The depth of your misunderstanding is pretty severe.
“If the integral has the maximum 90 deg. shift, then T and dCO2/dt also match in timing…”
No. Once you wrap feedback around that integral (in the form of your time constant parameterized dissipation factor), it is no longer just an integral. You change the phase response into something very frequency specific. Here is a tutorial you might find helpful.
Bart,
Wordpress has some strange behavior these days in mixing the order of the comments… Maybe overloaded by the 500+ reactions…
It is not a naked integral. It is an integral with feedback. It is a filter. It has a frequency response.
What I miss in that course is the tau (DC-tau to load the capacitor). If tau is large enough, or the frequency high enough, the 90 deg is easily reached. In the RC circuit, even with very high frequencies you don’t reach 90 deg.
The amplitude indeed is frequency dependent, but the phase response doesn’t fit the RC calculations.
As a practical boy, I have done a few experiments with three sine lengths: 1 year, 3 years and 4 years (and a few more, as everything is changeable). All three transient responses are at 90 deg, if you have tau’s at around the sine length and longer.
For each tau at ~sine length there is a near perfect match with temperature in the CO2 derivative, except for no slope, if you allow for a one month shift in the matches (the calculation step is one month).
The match is thus for all frequencies higher than the tau used.
I have no idea where the difference with the RC response is, as it should be a reasonable comparison,
Paul_K may have the answer:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/10/21/diary-date-murry-salby.html?currentPage=2#comments
Here the plot of the three frequencies (offsets and amplitude changes used for clarity):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/trans_3sin.jpg
Bart,
With further experimenting, the tau >= cycle length seems to work for every cycle length, except smaller than 1 year, where the 1-month step may be interfering too much…
“…if you have tau’s at around the sine length and longer.”
Indeed. That is what I have been telling you. That is why 6 months will not do it for you with 3.6 year variations, but 4 years will. The single lag filter phase response for input period P and time constant tau is -atan(2*pi*tau/P). If tau = P, you get -atan(2*pi) = 81 degrees, which is near enough -90 degrees that you won’t see much difference.
The reason you are getting a superficial match is that your phase response is near -90 degrees for the dominant 3.6 year formations.
In the future, I am going to try to tease out the longer term formations, and show that they are not phase shifted enough by your formula. But, that is another job for another day, and it may be difficult to show convincingly given all the noise and/or extraneous forcings which cause deviations in both our models. We shall see…
In the meantime, I am hanging my hat on the infinitesimal likelihood that the trend in dCO2/dt matching the trend in T is by chance.
IMO around 100 ppm of the 115 ppm apparent gain in CO2 since c. AD 1850 probably is man-made. But the increased plant food is a good thing, as it has greened the planet, and its effect on climate negligible, but also beneficial so far.
CO2 still remains at a very low level compared to most of Earth’s history. A doubling from the present alleged 400 ppm to 800 would be even better and 1200 best for plants and probably people as well. We breathe indoors air with concentrations higher than this. A 2012 study did however find previously undetected effects on some decision making processes at only 1000 ppm.
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2012/10/17/elevated-indoor-carbon-dioxide-impairs-decision-making-performance/
Link to paper.
Gloateus Maximus,
Interesting paper, needs to be replicated in a larger group, but it seems that they have taken into account most of the confounding factors.
I’m naturally dubious, but if valid, then most of us suffer impaired decision making most of the time if we work and live indoors.
a) it is not just indoor air, you can get those values in megacities where traffic is jammed.
b) When CO2 levels were that high people were not around.
Bart,
As the current discussion is getting to an end…
– Where we agree is that most of the variability is caused by temperature variability.
– Where we disagree, is what caused the slope:
1. The variability is proven caused by vegetation out of the 13C/12C ratio changes which are opposite to the CO2 changes.
2. The slope is not caused by vegetation, as that is a small, increasing sink since at least 1990.
3. Thus variability and slope are not caused by the same processes, where the variability is caused by temperature variability, but the slope may be temperature dependent, or not…
4. It is easy to match two linear slopes, if the steepness is not too far apart. If the CO2 rise in the derivative is flat (as is the case for a transient response), the amplitudes go down to zero, as the same factor is used for slope and amplitude.
5. The alternative is the effect of the pressure increase in the atmosphere on the (deep) ocean uptake (and vegetation).
6. The overall net sink rate as result of the increase in the atmosphere shows a quite good linearity to the CO2 increase in the atmosphere over the past 57 years.
7. Any non-human cause must have increased a 4-fold in exact ratio and timing as human emissions did and the increase in the atmosphere and the net sink rate did over the past 57 years, or one violates the equality of the sinks for CO2, whatever the source.
There are some physical impossibilities in Bart’s example, but even if we assume that it is right, Bart’s solution violates about all observations. My solution fits all observations:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
I will further work out the same graphs for the longer HadCRUT4 trend and publish it on the net soon…
HadCRU and all other so-called “surface data” sets are “science” fiction, worse than worthless packs of lies getting worse every month the charlatan chefs cook the “data” ever crispier.
The Southern Hemisphere data are not completely unreasonable (yet) and match the satellite data fairly well in the region of overlap.
The crooked gatekeepers are limited in how crispy they can cook the satellite-era books, for the simple reason that the eyes in space and balloons in the air are watching. But for the century or so before balloons and especially satellites, the charlatans are free to cool or warm the past at will.
And they’re not shy about it. Compare NCAR’s less adjusted, more honest data sets from the late ’70s with the same interval in 2015. The period of pronounced cooling from the ’40s to ’70s almost disappears and the warming of the prior 30 years has been chilled.
Shameless and disgusting, but no surprise.
“1. The variability is proven caused by vegetation out of the 13C/12C ratio changes which are opposite to the CO2 changes.”
It is not proven by this, merely suggested.
“2. The slope is not caused by vegetation, as that is a small, increasing sink since at least 1990.”
This is an assertion without foundation, and positing an increasing sink is epicyclic.
“3. Thus variability and slope are not caused by the same processes, where the variability is caused by temperature variability, but the slope may be temperature dependent, or not…”
Another assertion.
“4. It is easy to match two linear slopes, if the steepness is not too far apart. If the CO2 rise in the derivative is flat (as is the case for a transient response), the amplitudes go down to zero, as the same factor is used for slope and amplitude.”
It is painful when you misuse the nomenclature. A “transient response” is a short lived response due to a discontinuity. With the raw data, the same scale factor matches the amplitudes and the slope of the trend. This is exceedingly unlikely to be by chance.
“5. The alternative is the effect of the pressure increase in the atmosphere on the (deep) ocean uptake (and vegetation).”
You have demonstrated that the data are not precise enough to rule out this possibility on the basis of obtaining a good fit. That is a concession on my part, in case you read it differently.
“6. The overall net sink rate as result of the increase in the atmosphere shows a quite good linearity to the CO2 increase in the atmosphere over the past 57 years.”
But, only if you dismiss the significant improbability of the slope and the variation of dCO2/dt and T matching by happenstance, and you adjust sink activity to maintain the match as emissions accelerate while concentration does not.
“7. Any non-human cause must have increased a 4-fold in exact ratio and timing as human emissions did and the increase in the atmosphere and the net sink rate did over the past 57 years, or one violates the equality of the sinks for CO2, whatever the source.”
I have demonstrated via mathematical modeling that dCO2/dt = k*(T-T0) is physically viable. Your solution hinges on the rate dependent temperature related input being small. That is a very bad bet, IMO.
“There are some physical impossibilities in Bart’s example, but even if we assume that it is right, Bart’s solution violates about all observations.”
I have demonstrated that there are no such impossibilities.
“My solution fits all observations: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html“
It cannot be ruled out yet on the basis of extracting a fit which, to the naked eye, is not completely unreasonable.
“I will further work out the same graphs for the longer HadCRUT4 trend and publish it on the net soon…”
I have looked at it. It has the same concentration of power near 3.6 years period, and you should be able to achieve a superficial fit. But, you will probably have to assume an epicyclic increase in sink activity to get the emissions to add in properly, and that problem is going to get worse as (if) temperatures cool.
Bart,
I know, you don’t like observations, but I don’t want to repeat all these arguments again and again… If has been intense enough these days…
So let’s stop it here.
Just want to clear one point up: the “filtering” of a transient response…
Bartemis December 1, 2015 at 8:55 am
Phil. December 1, 2015 at 6:00 am
“…your assumption that dCO2/dt only depends on temperature can not be reconciled with the fact that pCO2 must also be a factor (Henry’s law).”
Wrong. My model has Henry’s Law incorporated directly into it.
It explicitly does not, by Henry’s law the exchange between the ocean surface and the atmosphere is driven by the difference in the [CO2], your model does not include that. The effect of temperature acts because it changes the equilibrium position (Henry’s law coefficient) between the two regions.
H(T)=Ho.exp(c/T)
“It explicitly does not…”
Yes it does, Phil. The “(O – alpha*A)/tau” term explicitly drives O toward proportionality with A.
” The effect of temperature acts because it changes the equilibrium position…”
That is one effect of temperature, and I specifically looked at that effect here. But, the quasi-secular effect comes from the temperature dependence of tau_long. This reflects the throttling action on downwelling CO2, which causes it to accumulate in the surface waters.
Bartemis:
I am really interested in discussing carbon cycles and temperature dependencies and concentration and isotope ratio time series. I have that model I mentioned, and I am open to what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong. You could contact me through Sergey Brin’s popular service. Its my name run together and all lower case.
Bartemis December 3, 2015 at 9:54 am
“It explicitly does not…”
Yes it does, Phil. The “(O – alpha*A)/tau” term explicitly drives O toward proportionality with A.
Except that your incorrect assumptions lead to your ignoring the Henry’s Law effects in order to generate your model equation which only depends on T.
” The effect of temperature acts because it changes the equilibrium position…”
That is one effect of temperature, and I specifically looked at that effect here. But, the quasi-secular effect comes from the temperature dependence of tau_long. This reflects the throttling action on downwelling CO2, which causes it to accumulate in the surface waters.
You have claimed this ‘throttling action’ to be on the THC, however the THC consists of an equal volume of downwelling and upwelling water. The deep ocean water contains a higher concentration of DIC so the effect of your ‘throttling’ would be to reduce the accumulation in the surface layers. Your balance equation also ignores the transport of detritus from the surface to the deep ocean.
The thing that beggars belief is that with 1) year-to-year fluctuations in net emission that correlate highly with temperature and 2) multi-decade trends in net emission having nearly the same high correlation with temperature, that somehow the temperature correlation “washes out” over time scales of more than 2-5 years and that the human emissions have come along to make up the difference in just the exact proportions required.
I have a carbon cycle model to confirm this crazy belief, only the model supports that only about half the increase in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic rather than most of it, as crazily claimed by many people.
But this is may be one of these “the fossil record only gives the appearance of age and was created that way so as to deceive faithless evolutionists” type of arguments.
Paul Milenkovic,
As this discussion shows, mathematically the whole increase can be 90% from humans 10% temperature down to 10% from humans, 90% of temperature. Thus your 50%-50% is mathematically possible. If you look at the observations, Bart’s and your solution violates a lot of observations human emissions fit all observations… That is the difference between the models…
As proven by the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes: most variability in the CO2 rate of change (+/- 1.5 ppmv around the trend of 70 ppmv) is caused by the temperature influence on (tropical) vegetation. That indeed levels out to (below) zero in 1-3 years. Over periods longer than 3 years, vegetation is a net sink for CO2 proven by the oxygen balance.
Thus the variability and the increase in the atmosphere are certainly not caused by the same (vegetation) process. The discussion is about what caused the increase…
Direct measurements of seawater d13C in open water nowhere approach +5 PDB and are usually less than +1.
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/iorgc/ocorp/data/p10rev_2005/data/CTD_sea_sum/FinalReport_of_14C_for_MR05-02_100316.pdf
The sponges may reflect the d13C of the ambient water in the reefs where they live, but this water is already heavily enriched in 13C as a result of fractionation by other calcifying creatures and their symbionts.
The anomalous reef water (by way of increased sensitivity) may be a good indicator location for atmospheric influence…or not. Usually reefs are in areas of warm water which should be outgassing, not absorbing atmospheric CO2. If it were absorbing it would be subject to a surface film effect of -2 in addition to the effect of the atmospheric reservoir value of -8.
Certainly for purposes of the Carbon cycle +1 should be the reservoir value for the mixed layer.
gymnosperm,
Thanks for the reference, +1 per mil looks fine to me. Makes -7 (-9 water-atmosphere +2 atmosphere-water) per mil after a full seasonal cycle in the atmosphere. Add to that some more permanent uptake by the biosphere and the -6.4 per mil pre-industrial in ice cores is not far off…
What happens in the ocean surface is not that simple: bio-life makes a lot of difference…
The local +5 per mil in coralline sponges around Bermuda meanwhile is already below +4 per mil, thanks to human emissions…
Thus saith The Ferd{inand}.
Stage lights — down.
Curtain falls…
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Thus saith the Ferd{inand}.
Stagelights — down.
Curtain falls…………..
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What? No applause?
Thank you Ferdinand, Bart and all,
I do applaud this discussion about the CO2 balance – most interesting. I wish I had more time to participate.
I think most of us agree that climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 is so low as to be insignificant – so the global warming crisis does not exist.
A question for Bart and Ferdinand (and anyone else):
IF my colleagues and I are correct and natural global cooling (similar to the Dalton or Maunder Minimums) commences (say) in 2018, what will the atmospheric CO2 concentration look like?
a) Will atmospheric CO2 continue to increase linearly?
b) Will atmospheric CO2 continue to increase at a decelerated rate
c) Will atmospheric CO2 flatten and later start to decline, and when?
You may wish to use Dan Pangburn’s temperature model as a reference.
http://agwunveiled.blogspot.ca/
Regards, Allan
Allan,
Depends of the speed of the cooling…
The MWP-LIA cooling was good for an about 6 ppmv drop with ~0.8°C cooling. If that is what can be expected and the drop needs 20 years, that gives a drop of ~0.3 ppmv/year, that will be visible in the measurements still as an increase at a slightly slower yearly rate, as long as human emissions increase over time…