Guest essay by David Bennett Laing, Asst. Prof.of Geology, Univ. of Maine (retired)
Two different styles of volcanic eruption appear to have been the principal determinants of climate change throughout geologic time.
The very fact that opinions on climate change could have become as polarized as they have, even in scientific circles, suggests we may still have much to learn. Despite the best efforts of many of the world’s brightest minds, and the claims of some that “the science is settled,” climatic enigmas still persist.
For the past nine years, Peter Langdon Ward has been working steadily in retirement from his career as a geophysicist and volcanologist with the US Geological Survey to try to demystify some of these enigmas. Two years ago, I joined my old friend and colleague in his quest. Last month, we published a new theory of global warming that we feel accounts far better for temperature change over the past 100 years and throughout the Phanerozoic Eon than the currently favored greenhouse warming theory.
In view of the extreme difficulty in getting peer-reviewed journals to publish papers that question greenhouse theory, we decided to present our observations in a semi-popular book, “What Really Causes Global Warming? Greenhouse Gases or Ozone Depletion?”. The book is available in hardback, paperback, and ebook versions on amazon.com and on other book-seller sites. The book and the science are explained in detail at WhyClimateChanges.com, where autographed copies of the book are also available.
In brief, we find that major temperature changes throughout Phanerozoic time can be fully explained with two different styles of volcanic eruption: explosive volcanism causing global cooling and effusive volcanism causing global warming. It is well-known that aerosols from explosive volcanoes, such as the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo, reflect and scatter sunlight, causing global cooling. What we found is that all volcanoes emit chlorine and bromine, which are observed to deplete the ozone layer, allowing increased irradiance of Earth by solar UV-B radiation, causing global warming. UV-B is 48 times more energy-rich than Earth’s IR radiation absorbed by carbon dioxide. The following graphic summarizes the processes involved (Note that in Panel 2, CFCs proxy for effusive volcanism, shown in Panel 3. Their global warming effects are similar, as discussed below).
Global Warming and Global Cooling Related to Ozone Depletion
Panel 1: Under conditions normal before 1965, ultraviolet-C (UV-C) warmed the upper atmosphere, UV-B primarily warmed the ozone layer, and UV-A and visible light warmed Earth.
Panel 2: CFCs, when they rise to the level of very cold polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), release chlorine that depletes ozone, causing more UV-B than usual to reach Earth’s surface, thus cooling the ozone layer and warming Earth.
Panel 3:Effusive volcanoes emit chlorine and bromine, which deplete ozone, leading to global warming.
Panel 4: Explosive volcanoes similarly deplete ozone, but also eject megatons of water and sulfur dioxide into the lower stratosphere, forming globe-encircling aerosols whose molecules soon grow large enough to reflect and scatter sunlight, causing net global cooling.
In the case of explosive volcanoes, the aerosol cooling effect overwhelms the warming effect from ozone depletion, but since effusive volcanoes don’t eject substantial amounts of gases into the stratosphere, warming prevails. Effusive eruptions are also much longer-lasting and can be extremely voluminous. Massive effusive eruptions in Iceland occurred precisely at the time when Earth warmed out of the last ice age (see Preboreal Warming in the following illustration).
GISP2 Volcanic Sulfate From 9 to 16 Ka
Periods of greatest warming coming out of the last ice age are contemporaneous with times of sulfate anomalies in numerous contiguous layers (note blue circles containing the number of layers). Red bars show volcanic sulfate deposited in individual layers of ice in the GISP2 borehole. The purple line shows the δ18O proxy for temperature adjusted for gas age. The Preboreal warming is contemporaneous with the largest sulfate deposit observed. The Bølling warming is contemporaneous with the largest number of contiguous layers containing volcanic sulfate. Dryas periods of increased glaciation are contemporaneous with little or no volcanism.
Less massive effusive eruptions coincided with every one of the numerous, enigmatic Dansgaard-Oeschger warming events during the ice age (see numbers 0 to 1 on the right side of the above illustration and numbers 2-12 on the right side of the next illustration).
GISP2 Volcanic Sulfate from 22 to 46 Ka
Dansgaard-Oeschger sudden warming events (numbers on the right side) all correspond to times of continuous volcanism. Red bars show the amount of sulfate in individual layers of ice in the GISP2 borehole. The purple line shows the δ18O proxy for temperature adjusted for gas age. Numbers in blue circles show the number of contiguous layers containing sulfate deposits at the time plotted. H2 to H5 are Heinrich events when large numbers of icebergs suddenly appeared in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
Much more massive effusive eruptions accompanied extreme warming events during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the End-Permian Extinction, the Cretaceous-Paleocene boundary, and many other times of major rapid temperature change throughout the Phanerozoic.
We view the dramatic warming event of the late 20th century as anthropogenic, but not due to carbon dioxide. The event coincided with the release of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases to the atmosphere, which are broken down by UV solar radiation in polar stratospheric clouds in late winter to release chlorine, thus mimicking the ozone depleting and global warming effects of effusive volcanism. The Montreal Protocol ended CFC production and thereby ended global warming, thus explaining the enigmatic “global warming hiatus” that prevailed from 1998 through 2013 (see following illustration). No other convincing explanation for the “hiatus” has been proposed or generally agreed upon (See ozonedepletiontheory.info/gg-warming-hiatus.html). A warming effect from the massive effusive eruption of Iceland’s Bárðarbunga volcano in late 2014 and early 2015, the largest since 1783, will likely make 2015 the warmest year on record.
Distinctly Different Trends
Trends in temperature (red bars), (NOAA), tropospheric chlorine (green line) (Solomon, 1999), and ozone depletion (black line) (Staehelin et al., 1998) (WOUDC, 2014) over the past 70 years are distinctly different from trends in concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (blue dashed line) (NOAA, 2014). Ocean heat content (Levitus et al., 2012) inceased with increasing ozone depletion and continues to increase while ozone depletion remains greater than levels prior to 1970. Carbon dioxide levels appear related to ocean heat content through the solubility of CO2 as a function of water temperature.
Global temperature has plateaued rather than fallen, ice masses still continue to melt globally, and ocean heat content continues to rise, because chlorine remains in the stratosphere and continues to destroy ozone catalytically. This will continue for several decades, and due to heat storage in the oceanic thermal reservoir, it is likely that eventual lowering of global temperature will not occur unless there is a series of explosive volcanic eruptions. Until (and if) these occur, it seems equally likely that we will simply have to adapt to a world that is about one Fahrenheit degree warmer than it was in the mid-20th century, but at least we shouldn’t have to worry about “climate Armageddon” due to further warming, as long as we remain vigilant against further releases of existing CFC stockpiles and other chemicals that deplete the ozone layer.
In the book, we also discuss apparent problems with greenhouse warming in considerable detail on both theoretical and observational grounds. An exhaustive literature search revealed that only one actual experiment has ever been performed to test greenhouse warming theory empirically. It was done by Knut Ångström in 1900, and he concluded that any warming effect from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration was negligible. Accordingly, Peter Ward has issued a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can demonstrate by experiment that greenhouse gases are more effective at warming Earth than ozone depletion. To date, he has had no takers (see WhyClimateChanges.com/Challenge/).
Meanwhile, we sought to assess the relative response of global temperature to mean monthly variations in ozone depletion and in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the same time interval in the northern hemisphere and found, in the following graph, a close correlation with temperature anomalies in the case of ozone depletion, but we also found that the carbon dioxide peak lags the temperature anomaly variation curve by two months, indicating little possibility of a significant influence of carbon dioxide variation on global temperature. A possible, but slight, influence is evident in the small upward deflection of the temperature anomaly curve in June.
The Relationship of Ozone Depletion to Temperature
Mean monthly values of northern hemisphere temperature anomalies (red) and ozone depletion anomalies (green) for the period 1975 to 1998 and of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, (blue) since 1961, normalized as percentages. Carbon dioxide values, peaking in May, show only a minor effect on temperature anomalies, but coincidence of the peaks in ozone depletion and temperature in March suggest a possible causal relationship.
We would welcome your thoughts on the foregoing, especially if they follow a careful reading of the book or the website WhyClimateChanges.com. It is clearly rather important for all living things on Earth that we get this right.
Figures can be added with captions as
1. http://whyclimatechanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FrontCoverFinal.jpg
2. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/global-warming-sulfur.html
3. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/TempClOzCO2-5.html
4. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/sulfate-9-16ka.html
5. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/sulfate-22-46ka.html
6. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/ImagePages/monthly-ozone-temperature-percent.html
Or just as jpegs as
1. http://whyclimatechanges.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FrontCoverFinal.jpg
2. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/global-warming-sulfur.jpg
3. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/TempClOzCO2-5.jpg
4. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/sulfate-9-16ka.jpg
5. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/sulfate-22-46ka.jpg
6. https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Images/monthly-ozone-temperature-percent.jpg
Interesting that both of you are Dartmouth guys. Interesting too that you published your own book, which is just what I did in 2010, for the same reason. I have given up Darmouth as lost to science ever since they gave my book (What Warming?”) away to charity. I had given a copy of it to Baker Library during our sixtieth reunion in Hanover and two weeks later got a letter saying that it was unsuitable for students and was therefore given away to a charity. They had just placed an order for 100 thousand books but could not find a niche for me. You try it with your book and see what they say. Anyway, I bring this up because I treat the case of volcanic cooling in the book which your work also treats. My observations apply to explosive volcanism, not to effusive basaltic volcanism. What happens with explosive volcanism is that volcanic gases at first go up into the stratosphere, as high as 22 kilometers, and warm it, as shown by Self et al. for Pinatubo. After a few years this warming turns to cooling. There is no evidence that despite stratospheric cooling it has anything to do with ground level cooling that is alleged to follow. The most likely reason is that in descending through the tropopause the volcanic cloud gets dispersed, perhaps also changed in other ways. Now it happens that not every volcano is followed by an observed cooling. Some have fully observed cooling valleys, some have none, and some have various degrees of reduced cooling. Self himself admits that he does not know why El Chichon has no cooling following it while Gunung Agung has a fully developed c ooling, and so does Pinatubo. The answer is that these so-called “volcanic” coolings have nothing to do with volcanoes. They are just misnamed La Nina valleys that by luck happened to be located where volcanic cooling from a particular eruption was expected. This means that the time of eruption accidentally coincided with the peak of an El Nino warming and the cooling that follows it is nothing more exotic than a La Nina that normally comes after each El Nino that is part of the ENSO oscillation. And the absence of cooling is also easy to explain: it happens when the time of eruption coincided with the bottom of a La Nina valley. That is of course followed by the next El Nino peak, not by any cooling as El Chichon demonstrates. Since the occurrence of eruptions is not synchronized with ENSO, all degrees of juxtaposition of eruptions and El Nino peaks are possible. In particular, this explains why large eruptions like Krakatoa can be followed by almost negligible cooling. If you want to check further, get a good temperature chart showing the shapes of El Ninos and La Ninas accurately and use accurate dates for eruptions. You may find that some of the alleged coolings do not fit very well onto their assigned niches. This and more you find in my book. Arno Arrak ’51
by luck happened to be located where volcanic cooling from a particular eruption was expected
===========
Willis showed that cooling is able to anticipate volcanoes, which would hold with your observations. that the effect is co-incidental, not cause and effect.
It is very worrying when an educational authority suggests that a book is not suitable for students. The purpose of education is to inform and challenge the mind. No student can prosper with such a blinkered approach.
That institution should be ashamed.
Interesting perspective! Peter and I will mull this over. Tx! Two questions: First, how can we access your book? Second, how far back into the geologic record have you looked to see how well your model explains the major global temperature variations through geologic time? It would be interesting to see how your ideas compare with ours o that score.
I had a somewhat similar experience when I was working as a research associate at Dartmouth in the early ’90s. I gave the rox dept. a copy of my new Earth science textbook “The Earth System: An Introduction to Earth Science,” Wm C Brown, 1991, 590 pp., and shortly thereafter, I was terminated without explanation. When I went to the office of my old friend and undergad prof Bob Reynolds for some sympathy, he said, “I’ll tell you exactly why they fired you but didn’t fire me. The only two people in this department who have ever published a book are sitting in this room. I have tenure, and you don’t.”
davidbennettlaing
On a related topic, but on a much shorter timescale, what is the “accepted” ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) start and stop dates since 1970? That is, what do the best residential experts on global (Pacific ?) water temperature trends such as Bob Tisdale consider the “proper” ENSO/El Nino/La Nada cycle dates recently?
We know, as you point out above, that recent volcanos have a very, very short atmospheric temperature effect if their measured atmospheric optical clarity is indeed proportional to their heating/cooling effect.
But the Pacific water temperature records since 1998 certainly don’t track the 1997-1998, 2010, and 2015 El Nino’s. Wouldn’t that imply that small volcanoes (not massive 100-500-1000 year-long events like steady magma flows) have very little effect on water and therefore global average temperatures?
RA,
You didn’t ask me, but here is how NOAA sees the ENSO:
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.Indices/ensomonitor.html
The late 20th century warming included the two biggest El Niños of the century.
Not sure what you mean by “accepted,” but I favor the Australian Darwin-Tahiti ENSO Index:
http://www.john-daly.com/elnino.htm.
Yes, short-term eruptions have little effect on the oceans. Notice the 11 Dansgaard-Oeschger sudden warming events in my fourth illustration. They are all contemporaneous with eruptions, some rather large, but none was long-lasting enough to warm the oceans out of the ice age. Neither was the Bolling warming event in the third illustration, but the ensuing Preboreal event lasted over 2000 years, adding enough heat to the oceans to warm Earth out of the ice age.
Just “Nookied” a copy of Peter L. Ward’s latest book, “What Really Causes Global Warming – GHGs or ozone” that offers up ozone as an explanation for global warming.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG —— WRONG & Wrong!!!
The scientific method does not demand that we skeptics offer an alternative explanation for a non-existent problem. All the scientific method requires is that skeptics poke holes in CAGW theory and if they can’t patch those holes that’s their problem. Cold fusion, anyone?
It is obvious that the earth has been hotter and CO2 concentrations higher in the distant past without mankind and that any current minor fluctuations in CO2 and heating are simply natural variability. In the uncertainties surrounding the magnitude and fluxes of both CO2 and heat/power balances, CAGW theory has not demonstrated that anthropogenic sources make a significant contribution compared to natural variability which is evident in their theory’s inability to model or match reality.
CAGW theory is a snake oil combination of esoteric concepts, hocus-pocus proxies, data mining, cherry picking, hand waving, corrupted data, and name calling that has collapsed in the face of reality. We skeptics should not compete by playing their losing game.
The ball is in the warmist’s court, not the skeptic’s. Time for CAGW to put or shut up.
The current CO2 increase is all manmade, since nature has been removing CO2 from the atmosphere despite the temperature increase. http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/global-carbon-budget-2010
Natural CO2 sources and sinks outweigh human emission CO2 by two degrees of magnitude (~150 gtons versus ~4 gtons). Even a slight imbalance could overwhelm human CO2 emissions. Nature has been removing HUMAN CO2 right along with natural. There is no quantifiable evidence to justify your unqualified statement. The entire net increase in atmospheric CO2 could be entirely natural.
Obviously the sinks remove both (ie., they do not discriminate between manmade CO2 and that of non anthropogenic origin), but two questions are raised.
First, if man was not a CO2 source would there be less CO2 in the atmosphere, and if so by how much?
Second, does it matter?
The answer to the first question is probably yes, and quite possibly most if not all the rise in CO2 since the 1950s is due to man becoming a CO2 source.
The answer to the second, is that we have yet to detect the signal to CO2; so far it can not be weaned out from the noise of natural variation within the limitations and error bounds of our best measuring equipment.
It follows from this that if natural variation and/or error bounds are low, the Climate Sensitivity to CO2 must likewise be low. If natural variation and/or error bounds are high, there is potential for Climate Sensitivity to CO2 to be likewise high.
Of course, there is nothing to unduly fear about a warming world. The planet is way too cold for most life, and any warming would be a god send. It just appears that CO2 may do nothing of significance to bring that about. It does of course green the planet.
Presently, it would appear that on this water world of ours, inhabited by carbon life forms that the clean burning of fossil fuels is just what the doctor ordered. CO2 and water vapour is just what carbon based life forms inhabiting a water world like. .
Not at all sure why you’re getting so exercised. All we’re doing is saying we think we’ve found a rather compelling model for a NATURAL global temperature control mechanism in the form of two different styles of volcanic eruption. The fact that anthropogenic CFCs happened to mimic one of those styles to cause a recent warming event shouldn’t be a sufficient reason to reject the model. Once you’ve read your “nookied” copy of our book, please get back in touch and let us know what you think. I suspect we may have a lot more to talk about than you seem ready to admit.
Does this theory answer the following questions posed by Judith Curry?
(I changed the formatting above.) link
Exactly.
Until all of that (I would add to the list the MWP, the RWP, the Minoan Warm Period, the Holocene Optimum) can be adequately explained, we are not in a position to offer any explanation for the late 20th century warming.
1. The VEI6 explosive eruptions of Santa Maria (1902) and Novarupta (1912) ushered in a cooling period that began to reverse around 1920. Then a series of basaltic eruptions along the Pacific Rim took place in the early 1930s, which accelerated warming and led to the warm, dry Dust Bowl conditions in the western US.
2. & 3. We’re working on these. Major, repetitive explosive eruptions of Italy’s Vesuvius and Sicily’s Etna volcanoes in the mid-1600s likely lowered global temperature early in the LIA, and an apparent subsequent dominance of explosive over basaltic eruptions prior to the great Mauna Loa eruption in 1867 seems to have favored low temperatures. More frequent basaltic eruptions over the past 150 years appear to have favored warming.
David,
IMO the Maunder Minimum is a pretty good explanation for the chilly second half of the 17th century and early 18th. Indeed, the whole Little Ice Age appears to have been influenced by solar minima, to include the Spörer (1460-1550), Maunder (1645-1715) and Dalton (1790-1820), if not also maybe the Wolf (1280-1350), which however IMO was instead a cold spell, with bad weather, famine, war and plaque, toward the end of the Medieval Warm Period.
Certainly a contributing factor, but difficult to quantify as to its contribution relative to volcanism. What would be nice would be to find a proxy that could reliably extend the sunspot record back to the early Phanerozoic to see how sunspot activity compares over time with volcanism as a possible driver of global temperature variation.
From the article and just below the pic of this book:
“In brief, we find that major temperature changes throughout Phanerozoic time can be fully explained with two different styles of volcanic eruption: explosive volcanism causing global cooling and effusive volcanism causing global warming. ”
“fully explained”
An AHHHH escaped my lips, does the 97% sound familiar here? ( no wonder they had to self publish). I read the article and it is looking good on the surface then I had to re-read that one again. Changed my mind.
Damn. My bad. Let me rephrase: “…can be largely explained…”
Ward does an admirable job of gutting CAGW theory and that is by itself sufficient. However offering up the volcano/ozone solution to the global warming “problem” suggests it is one that demands an explanation and solution. “Global warming” is natural business as usual, aka, the null hypothesis, and requires neither.
And what’s with this worn out overpopulation hype? All 7 billion humans on earth today would stack easily, if a bit uncomfortably, inside less than half of the Grand Canyon. Just picture that, no human beings anywhere else on the entire rest of the planet.
The problem is not the number of people. How many decades has the earth been at an overpopulation tipping point of resource shortages? A couple more decades than the CAGW tipping point?
Those who quack about “too many” people simply don’t like those people and don’t want to share, want to deny those underdeveloped countries the ability to develop the standard of living that fossil fuels and capitalism delivered and delivers, not just to the developed countries, but to everybody everywhere.
I have heard various suggestions as to how the world’s population could be accommodated in relatively small areas. Unfortunately, it is only valid if they are all being buried. Any functioning population needs infrastructure to deliver food, energy, and water, and to dispose of the waste products; that is what we have today. Unless you rely on Soylent Green, agricultural land is necessary. Lumber and mineral resources require land that is proportional to the population. lastly, the question should be asked if people need more than a living room couch and a TV to have a life worth living. If you put everyone shoulder to shoulder in Texas, or where ever, then you don’t have an opportunity to do much except play ‘musical phone booths.’ It may not be so much an issue of a ‘tipping point’ as one of lower quality of life and loss of freedoms as people have to be controlled by government to make everyone comply. There is a saying in Japan that “The nail that stands up gets hammered down.” They long ago learned that they had to give up certain freedoms to sustain high population densities.
You are suggesting that there is no practical limit to the size of the human population that Earth can support? Would you say, by extension, that there is no limit to the number of human beings you can cram into the Grand Canyon? One might extend the limit by resorting to compaction techniques, but that might have negative consequences for the quality of life. Seriously, there are certain essential, limiting resources, phosphate rock in particular, that are in limited supply and will, at some point, give out. To deny the limits imposed by such realities, and the necessity of planning for them, seems socially irresponsible, IMHO.
I am not convinced Dr. Ward’s work is solid enough to consider relevant.
Good. Can you please be more specific as to the basis, or bases, on which you make this determination? We always welcome constructive criticism. Tx!
Has anyone studied deep ocean volcanic eruptions? What possible influence do they have on ocean temperature, chemistry, and gases entering the atmosphere?
Nobody knows below 2,000 meters. Distinct possibility. Have been interesting studies at plate boundaries.
There has been little work in this area. Although volatile emissions at sea floor pressures are certainly much less than from subaerial eruptions, nonetheless, large quantities of CO2, SO2, H2S, HCl, HBr, etc., are undoubtedly introduced to the benthic environment, where they must contribute to some extent to ocean acidification and probably to local euxinic conditions. More work is clearly needed here.
“In view of the extreme difficulty in getting peer-reviewed journals to publish papers that question greenhouse theory, we decided to present our observations in a semi-popular book”
That is BS. Anything scientifically sound is publishable. so I must assume that …it isn’t.
So you’ve never read the Climategate emails, where your heroes bragged about controlling the journal/peer review process.
Sure, anything scientifically sound is publishable. But when your censor pals get in the way it’s a different story. Innit?
trafamadore
That is BS. Anything scientifically sound is publishable. so I must assume that …it isn’t.
No it is not a matter of “so I must assume that,,,it isn’t” You merely choose to. You could have just as easily given them the benefit of the doubt, but you instead formed a exclusionary world view.
The authors seem to have done a good job of presenting their theory. I will at some point read their book.
By the way trafamadore since we’re on the subject, here is a question for you, that I would bet the authors know off the top of their head, Who were the first two academicians to link ice ages to the arctic, and when did they publish etc.
michael
I love it when people let theory over ride real world data.
Peter Ward is a 27-year veteran of the US Geological Survey with over 50 peer-reviewed publications. When he wrote a paper presenting the concepts in the book, it was rejected eight times without review, with one exception, which read, “The ideas expressed in this paper show a complete disregard for all known science.” Obviously, we disagree. Speaking for myself, I found the ideas compelling enough to persuade me to change my views on greenhouse warming theory, which I had accepted without much thought throughout my career as a professional geologist. After poring through over 10,000 climate-related papers in search of actual experiments supporting greenhouse theory, we came up with only one, performed in 1900 by Knut Angstrom, that showed little warming effect on air from an increase in carbon dioxide. Given the purely theoretical foundation of greenhouse theory, we though it might not be amiss to advance another theory that we feel does a better job of explaining major global temperature variations throughout geologic history. We think we’ve succeeded, and we’re encouraged by the generally positive reception we’ve had since the book was published in November. It seems clear that the resistance to peer-reviewed publication has more to do with protecting reputations, funding, employment, and status than with negative reaction to “bad science.” Unfortunately, acceptance of our ideas will be seen as some as relegating greenhouse warming theory to the category of “bad science.” That is not our intent. We think our idea has merit, and that it deserves a hearing. We are gratified that most people with whom we’ve interacted seem to agree.
An article of faith is that decreased stratospheric ozone results in a significant increase in surface UVB. It is obvious that one gets sunburned more quickly at high elevations than at sea level. Therefore, UVB is being absorbed in the troposphere. What is missing in this (and other related discussions) is empirical evidence for the amount of surface UVB increase that occurs with a given decrease in stratospheric ozone. Furthermore, the effect of ozone depletion is greatest in Antarctica when the sun isn’t shining and when the sun is very low on the horizon. The ozone decline in the equatorial regions, where most heating occurs, is small.
Clyde Spencer December 22, 2015 at 7:20 pm
Furthermore, the effect of ozone depletion is greatest in Antarctica when the sun isn’t shining
As pointed out to you before, this isn’t true. O3 depletion requires sunlight.
Phil,
Based on the information you provided, there is a small but noticeable decline in Arctic ozone starting with the Winter Solstice and then accelerating as the sun gets higher in the sky around the Arctic Circle; this coincides with the coldest temperatures. The displays don’t make it obvious whether the pockets of reduced ozone are produced where there is actually sunlight penetrating or if they are generated at more southerly latitude and then migrate poleward. In any event, your complaint is really a Strawman. The important issue is whether there is an increase in surface UVB under these pockets of reduced ozone. Considering that the sun is low on the horizon, and the sunlight enters the atmosphere obliquely outside the pockets of low ozone, I sincerely doubt that there is any increase of UVB that would be of biological significance, or provide significant warming as these authors suggest. You have not provided any citations of measured UVB increases to counter my conjecture.
Phil,
This link ( http://www.ozoneapplications.com/info/ozone_properties.htm ) indicates that ozone thermally decomposes at -50C with a half-life of 3 months. in the real world, the highly reactive ozone will be reduced by infrequent, but finite, interactions with other molecules. Sunlight accelerates the catalytic decomposition, but is not the only mechanism at work.
Clyde Spencer December 22, 2015 at 7:20 pm
Furthermore, the effect of ozone depletion is greatest in Antarctica when the sun isn’t shining
No there is no depletion when the sun isn’t shining!
This year we have the following data:
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/statistics/meteorology_ytd_sh.png
From the end of June until early August there is no depletion, the maximum depletion occurs in early October, when there is plenty of sunlight.
Note the minimum temperature in the stratosphere where the depletion is occurring is 179K (-94ºC).
Clyde Spencer December 23, 2015 at 10:48 am
Phil,
This link ( http://www.ozoneapplications.com/info/ozone_properties.htm ) indicates that ozone thermally decomposes at -50C with a half-life of 3 months.
That data is at atmospheric pressure not the pressure in the stratosphere where the ozone exists. The thermal decomposition of O3 depends on [O3]^2 so the half-life in the stratosphere would be much longer. Also as indicated above the relevant temperature is about -100 not -50 which would result in a much slower reaction.
In the real world the actual data indicates that no thermal decomposition takes place under those conditions.
It’s true that UV-B is being absorbed in the troposphere, and our model attributes much of that absorption and consequent warming to low-level ozone, which seems likely to be one reason why warming in the northern hemisphere has been significantly stronger than in the southern, the lower thermal capacity of the northern hemisphere due to landmasses being the other obvious factor.
As for Antarctica, I quote from p. 94 of our book: “The largest warming trend in the world observed between 1976 and 2000 was along the Antarctic Peninsula. Minimum monthly temperatures at Faraday/Vernadsky Research Base increased by 12 degrees F (6.7 degrees C) from 1951 to 2003, representing the greatest warming of this region, according to ice core studies, in more than 1800 years. These rapid increases in temperature were strongly correlated with decreases in total column ozone. During summer months when ozone is not depleted, maximum monthly temperatures have changed very little since observations began. Between 1958 and 2010, annual mean temperatures increased 5.4 degrees F (3 degrees C) at Faraday/Vernadsky Station and 4.3 degrees F (2.4 degrees C) at Byrd Station (80 degrees S, 199.5 degrees W) compared to 1.3 degrees F (0.7 degrees C) globally.”
Hmmm, I wonder why that is.
Wagons circled in the Big Boys’ Club?
It is called editor blackmail, as in the climategate email where they discussed getting an editor discplined if he didn’t spike certain papers.
From:
http://esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/ozone/2006/chapters/Q8.pdf
“Volcanoes can emit some chlorine-containing gases, but these gases are ones that readily dissolve in rainwater and ice and are usually “washed out” of the atmosphere before they can reach the stratosphere.”
This article ( http://www.pnas.org/content/107/15/6594.full ) addresses ozone destruction by the release of bromine oxide in volcanic plumes. BrO is not as soluble in water as HCl.
Thanks for this! Will follow up.
” An exhaustive literature search revealed that only one actual experiment has ever been performed to test greenhouse warming theory empirically…. ”
I’m amazed – and intrigued – by that.
It’s generally accepted that the basic physics is well established: that a CO2 doubling will give around one degree C of additional warming.
Are there any peer reviewed studies that confirm this?
Al Gore made a video that supposedly demonstrated this, but it was quickly shown to be fraudulent (how appropriate).
I would be intrigued to know if any published studies do confirm the physics.
Of course, what happens in the global climate system is a different story entirely.
Chris
We looked through over 10,000 climate-related journal articles looking for experimental or observational evidence that would support greenhouse warming theory and found only one, performed by Knut Angstrom in 1900, and his conclusion was that there is very little warming effect on air from an increase in CO2 concentration. This is the only published study that we know of, and it does not confirm the physics. That’s why Peter issued his $10,000 challenge to over 2000 climate scientists to perform an experiment that would prove that increased CO2 concentration actually causes a greater warming effect than ozone depletion over the same time interval. So far, no serious takers! This appears to be a prime example of the ascendancy and acceptance of purely theoretical science without any experimental or observational backing, a dangerous and regrettable development, in our view.
Very confusing, the graphs where most recent time sits at the bottom, usually the most recent is put on top.
Sorry. In the book, you’ll find a more conventional display of the same data.
Correlation does not prove causation. It is possible that there is a correlation between volcanos and the climate and ozone depletion. That doesn’t mean that ozone depletion affects the climate very much.
Here’s a link to a paper that suggests a correlation between volcanos and a 21 year sunspot cycle. Folks have suggested a link between sunspots, cosmic rays, and the climate. In other words, the same thing could be causing both a warming climate and volcanic activity.
I think the authors would have been better off if they hadn’t suggested a mechanism by which volcanos might warm the climate. The warming, in and of itself, is interesting because it is counter intuitive. Folks may ignore their work, because the mechanism is debunked, even though the rest of the work is worthwhile.
Lots of paleoclimate papers are published that actually contradict CAGW theory, if you follow the implications of those papers to their logical conclusions. Lang and Ward could probably get their work published if they avoid suggesting mechanisms.
Thanks, but we stand by our mechanisms. Yours is the first cautionary response we’ve had so far on this.
Thank you for the post Prof. Laing. It is nice to see my Alma mater represented on WUWT.
You’re most welcome! What better in the Dartmouth tradition than to be a vox clamantis in deserto?
“Niflheim was primarily a realm of primordial ice and cold, with the frozen river of Elivágar and the well of Hvergelmir, from which come all the rivers. According to Gylfaginning, Niflheim was one of the two primordial realms, the other one being Muspelheim, the realm of fire. Between these two realms of cold and heat, creation began when its waters mixed with the heat of Muspelheim to form a “creating steam”. Later, it became the abode of Hel, a goddess daughter of Loki, and the afterlife for her subjects, those who did not die a heroic or notable death.”
One wonders if the old creation myths contain some sparks of actual memory.
Mankind’s resurgence after the last ice age ended..
…coinciding with great volcanic upheaveals in iceland?
Tx! When the book sells out the first edition, we’ll consider adding this to the title page.
I have no problem with particulates and aerosols causing cooling. There is ample evidence. I am surprised by the theory that ozone depletion causes warming. That theory would predict warming during solar minimum, would it not?
During a solar minimum, there is a pretty big drop off in UV production by the sun.
Yes; it would just be proportionally smaller.
The one problem with this theory is that the link between CFCs and ozone destruction has been disproven.
Please provide a reference for this. Tx!
The modern rise in temperatures began long before the use of CFCs started.
Mark,
If you mean the end of the LIA, yes, of course. But if you mean the late 20th century warming cycle, no.
Freon was in use at least from the 1930s.
Yes, it did. We attribute that to recovery from a cold period following the eruption of Santa Maria in 1902 and Novarupta in 1912, both VEI6 explosive eruptions.
Professor Laing,
Please could you comment on this:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/must-read-co2-or-sun-which-one-really-controls-earths-surface-temperatures/
inter alia:
“The two spikes around 1983 and 1993 were a consequence of volcanic eruptions injecting material into the stratosphere resulting in short term warming of the lower stratosphere. They do not appear to affect the background trend.”
An intriguing theory, appealing in its simplicity and in its implication that it is self-regulating with respect to temperature simply through changes in the height of the topopause. That might well be true. It’s not clear to me how the injection of volcanic material into the stratosphere would, in and of itself, cause a warming spike. What makes better sense to me is that the satellite-recorded increase in total column ozone immediately preceding the eruption of Pinatubo would have provided an increased ozone substrate with which solar UV-B radiation could have interacted, the exothermic effect of which would have caused the observed warming spike in the lower stratosphere. The subsequent delivery of volcanogenic HCl and HBr to the lower stratosphere would then have depleted ozone (to its lowest measured level since record-keeping at Arosa, Switzerland began in 1927), thus greatly reducing the exothermic effect of ozone photodissociation by UV-B and cooling the lower stratosphere, as observed. The pre-eruption ozone phenomenon is enigmatic, but we are inclined to ascribe it to the generation of exoelectrons by rock fracture due to rising magma. These very high-energy exoelectrons are capable of dissociating O2 molecules, releasing monatomic oxygen, which immediately combines with O2 to form ozone, O3.
All material injected into the stratosphere results in warming because such material has higher radiative and absorption capability than does oxygen and nitrogen.
It isn’t all about ozone as far as volcanic eruptions are concerned. I’m of the view that ozone (and other) variations in stratospheric temperatures induced by volcanic eruptions are relatively minor and short lived as compared to the millennial climate cycling represented by the Roman Warm Period, Dark Ages, Mediaeval Warm Period, Little Ice Age and current warmth.
We don’t seem to have regular cycles of global volcanic activity on a millennial basis do we ?
Granted there should be some warming effect from absorption, but the dissociation of ozone by UV-B has a major advantage over simple absorption in terms of thermogenesis in that it’s ionizing. Photodissociation of ozone heats air directly through the increased kinetic energy of the molecular fragments. Heating of volcanic tephra by absorption isn’t ionizing, and any heat generated must be transferred to the air primarily via conduction, a far less efficient process.
A recent study of volcanism on the Pacific Rim over the past million years showed a strong Milankovitch periodicity of 41,000 years. The study suggested that changes in insolation-moderated ice volume could be an isostatic trigger for volcanism, but in our book, I suggest a more plausible possibility that Milankovitch rhythms could actually exert a more direct influence in terms of gravitational force on Earth’s delicately balanced plate tectonic system. Given the extremely low rheidity of Earth’s asthenosphere, it doesn’t take much of a nudge to set the plates in motion, thereby triggering volcanic activity at spreading and subducting margins.
Explosive volcanic eruptions by their nature and the meaning of the word are usually short lived. As such they are unlikely to have any longer term effect. Most of volcanoes are to be found along tectonic faults and mostly in or at close proximity of two major oceans, Pacific and the far North Atlantic, both displaying distinct multi-decadal variability.
Volcanoes do not erupt by chance or at random, they are consequence of the Earth’s internal movements and changes, thus eruptions have to be seen as a kind of (often delayed) proxy for those movements. Earth’s internal activity is readily picked by thinner ocean floor crust, possibly affecting critical oceans’ currents ‘nodes’, the places where cold and warm currents are vertically stratified and interacting.
Two major locations are to be found along line stretching from Japan to Alaska (Kuroshio-Oyashio currents) and Denmark to Fram Straits (N. Atlantic-Arctic inflow/outflow) both volcanically very active. It is likely that both of these areas are sources of the natural variability, with the above mentioned currents responsible for the variability in the equatorial heat transfer pole-ward.
The greatest effect in the N. Hemisphere, has to be found in the polar and sub-polar regions ( miss-named as ‘polar amplification’), while the equatorial belt is hardly affected, with the excess heat either going northwards to the pole or upwards to the space.
“Peter Ward has issued a $10,000 challenge to anyone who can demonstrate by experiment that greenhouse gases are more effective at warming Earth than ozone depletion. To date, he has had no takers (see WhyClimateChanges.com/Challenge/).”
Not possible with poor current data and knowledge in relation to the effect of ozone changes high up on the temperature of the Earth. Only recently was it observed that solar effects on the ozone creation / destruction balance are apparently reversed above 45km as compared to below 45km.
I much prefer this:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
to the volcanic hypothesis because solar and cloudiness changes track climate variations much better than volcanic eruptions over the long term.
One should really define greenhouse gases as ALL gases because the surface warming effect of gases is more to do with conduction to and convection of non radiative gases than it is to the absorption or emission of radiative gases.
Like you, I tend to think synthetically rather than analytically, which most climate scientists (indeed most scientists) prefer to do. I wasn’t aware that there was significant ozone above 45 km. Can you cite a reference for this? Few climate scientists acknowledge that “…the surface warming effect of gases has more to do with conduction to, and convection of, non-radiative gases than it has to the absorption or emission of radiation.” I agree 100%. I like your model linking zonal and meridional flow with Rossby wave development to the solar cycle. I still think, however, that our volcanogenic (and recently anthropogenic with CFCs) ozone depletion model does the best job of explaining observed temperature variation both in recent times and throughout the Phanerozoic. One example: following the recent eruption of Bardarbunga from Aug 2014 to Feb 2015, we now have the 4th largest ozone hole ever recorded, and 2015 is on track to be the warmest year ever. We should continue the dialog. I think we could all learn a lot from it.
Here you go:
http://www.energianews.com/newsletter/files/c80b5c6f82d91f6a669a11f6a6d1b643.pdf
“Here we show that these spectral changes appear to have led to significant decline from 2004 to 2007 in stratospheric ozone with an increase above 45 km. Our results, simulated with a radiative-photochemical model, are consistent with contemporaneous measurements of ozone from the Aura-MLS satellite, although the short time period makes attribution to solar effects difficult. We also show that solar radiative forcing of surface climate – based on the SIM data – is out of phase with solar activity. Although there is currently insufficient observational evidence to establish that the spectral variations observed by SIM are characteristic of other solar cycles, our findings raise the possibility that the effects of solar variability on temperature throughout the atmosphere may be contrary to current expectations.”
So it isn’t so much the amount of ozone per se that affects climate but rather the effect of ozone’s absorption capability on the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere via lapse rate distortions from the ideal lapse rate set by atmospheric mass held within a gravitational field and warmed (via conduction and convection) by an irradiated surface beneath.
The lapse rate distortions alter tropopause heights and thus affect the gradient of tropopause heights between equator and poles which then affects global cloudiness in the way I proposed.
I do accept that volcanoes will have thermal effects over multidecadal periods of time but they don’t seem to repeat regularly enough to account for observed climate cycling over millennial timescales.
As for Bardarbunga I can accept that it may well have influenced the thermal effect of the underlying solar trend in recent years, possibly by delaying the cooling effect that so many are now expecting from the less active sun. Since we are only just past the recent peak of solar activity it is not surprising that we are still seeing warm surface temperature peaks and ‘large’ ozone holes from time to time but in due course I think the solar effects will prevail.
Interesting. Tx! It will be instructive to see how the climate system responds over the next few years as we gain more distance from the peak of the solar cycle and the short-term effects of Bardarbunga.
I would like to see some hard facts:
1. If we accept (what I do not do) IPCC’s model,transient climate sensitivity is 1.85 C. How much solar insolation flux at the surface should reduce (or increase) that it has the same effect than the doubling of CO2 concentration?
2. The total absorption flux in the present climate is about 311 W/m2 and the portion of CO2 is about 11% = 34 W/m2. The total absorption of incoming solar flux is about 71 W/m2 and the portion of ozone is about 20 % = 14 W/m2. Ozone has a very sharp absorption wavelength zone from about 0.22 micrometer to about 0.33 micrometer. I just doubt that even relatively big concentration changes of ozone in the stratosphere could change the total absorption of ozone enough.
3. Have you any hard figures or is this just an idea?
The calculations of irradiance by climate scientists reporting to the IPCC is based on a method that doesn’t accurately account for the effective interactions of radiation with receiving matter. It really isn’t a matter of “how much total irradiance is present, and what percentage of that is due to CO2, ozone depletion, etc.” Thermal effects of radiation in the SW bands result from ionization and dissociation, and those in the LW result from resonant bond vibrations and rotations. All these effects are frequency dependent. If the radiant flux contains radiation at or above the threshold value for activation of a specific ionization or resonant response in receiving matter, that response will occur. If it doesn’t, it won’t. You can’t simply add up energy across bandwidths because it makes no sense in terms of what is actually happening. Unfortunately, current energy budgets do just that, and that requires some rather strange manipulations in order to balance the budget.
That is a good point.
The ‘resonant bond vibrations and rotations’ are derived from surface heating, the energy from which is then passed to non radiative gases by conduction and taken up (temporarily) into convecting columns as potential energy which is not heat and which does not register on sensors (or radiate) whilst in potential form.
It is that creation of potential energy by convective overturning which keeps the mass of atmospheres suspended off planetary surfaces in hydrostatic equilibrium.
Thus, as David says:
“It really isn’t a matter of “how much total irradiance is present, and what percentage of that is due to CO2, ozone depletion, etc”
but I would amend that slightly and say:
“It really isn’t a matter of “how much total irradiance is present WITHIN THE SYSTEM and what percentage of that is due to CO2, ozone depletion, etc”
Agreed.
David Laing – a fascinating observation, and given a sequence of the right magnitude and type of volcanic eruptions, the hypothesis is testable.
What do you think of research such as this
http://www.geosciences.ed.ac.uk/homes/tcrowley/crowley_PAGESnote_volcanism.pdf
which links the Little Ice Age to specific (explosive?) irruptions during the time frame in question? Would the single eruptions idenitified cause cooling for the length of period suggested, or could there be other mechanisms at work?
I also approve of publishing your work outside of a paywalled journal (which restricts those of us not with academic access). All early science did so without peer review, and we seemed to have managed then.
I’ve had a look at that paper and it does show short term cooling around the time of volcanic eruptions (which is well known as per the Pinatubo eruption) but the pattern of eruptions does not appear to explain the longer background trend of approximately millennial climate cycling.
I suggest that the best interpretation is to acknowledge that for decades at a time volcanic events can indeed swamp the background solar signal but in time, across centuries, the solar signal dominates.
The chief problems I have with the paper is that it doesn’t acknowledge a warming role for effusive (non-explosive) volcanoes (not that I had expected it to) and it doesn’t attempt to exclude effusive eruptions from the analysis, thus tacitly assuming that, as with explosive eruptions, they also serve a cooling role rather than a warming one, thereby limiting the usefulness of the method.
As to your question about persistence of a cooling trend, we show in our book (Figure 8.6, p. 106) two modeled plots of temperature anomalies for a gradually warming upper ocean with and without a cooling effect from the 1883 eruption of Krakatau. In the former plot, the cooling effect persists for over a hundred years. Duration of lower tropospheric cooling (and warming, in the case of effusive eruptions), is much briefer, on the order of two or three years. Persistent warming and cooling trends depend on both the intensities and the frequencies of effusive and explosive eruptions, respectively. It appears that continuous eruption of over 11 effusive volcanic vents in Iceland for over 2000 years was what it took to warm the oceans enough to bring Earth out of the last ice age.
So, effusive volcanic events cause warming whereas non effusive cause cooling.
In the case of Krakatoa you discern a cooling effect for a century.
How well can you separate those volcanic events from longer term (millennial or multimillennial) solar influences such as the variations in solar activity that seem to cause changes over 1000 to 1500 years and the Milankovitch cycles that deal with the shifts between ice ages and interglacials ?
Have you considered the possibility that increased volcanic activity around Iceland at the end of the last ice age might have been a result of the removal of the weight of ice above Icelandic volcanoes which allowed them to vent more freely ?
We really haven’t considered fluctuations in solar irradiance other than those caused by volcanogenic aerosols. That’s something we should look at down the road. There’s no question that removal of ice overburden stimulates (intensifies) effusive volcanism. It was likely a significant factor in the Preboreal warming event.
Ok, but you said this:
“It appears that continuous eruption of over 11 effusive volcanic vents in Iceland for over 2000 years was what it took to warm the oceans enough to bring Earth out of the last ice age.”
So you attributed causation for the end of the ice age to volcanic activity but now you accept that the end of the ice age could have stimulated volcanic activity.
Why not both, in a bootstrap operation? The protracted volcanism had the dual effect of warming and ice removal, the latter stimulating further volcanism, which led to more warming.
Logically possible and I find your volcanic sulphate charts intriguing. They appear to show a better fit to climate variations over very long periods of time than that seen over the past 2000 years during which the changes in solar activity seem a better match.
We know that the Milankovitch cycles largely match the ice age / interglacial cycling but I’m not aware of anything that could cause changes in volcanic activity in the same or a similar pattern other than deep ice sheets suppressing volcanic activity around polar regions during glacial epochs and releasing it as the ice thins in the approach to the next interglacial.
It’s the old ‘chicken and egg’ conundrum once more 🙂
Could the volcanic effects on climate from ice coming and going account for the discrepancies that some say they have found in the relationship between the Milankovitch cycles and glaciations ?
I agree with your point above that the next few years should help with the diagnosis if the sun remains quieter than it was during the late 20th century.
I’m glad we are agreed on the importance of conduction and convective overturning as a process capable of raising the temperature of planetary surfaces above that of the S-B equation. I have been finding that point to be a bit of an uphill struggle on this site.
Likewise the point that the fluxes of radiation within an atmosphere do not affect the temperature that the system is capable of achieving at a given level of insolation from outside.
I regard those two points as being amongst the ‘settled science’ of the mid 20th century that was in place before the radiative theories came to the fore. Astrophysicists (who deal entirely in radiative exchanges when they observe distant features of the universe) with no knowledge of meteorology (non radiative processes) took over the nascent climate science of the time.
We now need to row back from their errors.
According to some data I found, atmospheric CFCs have NOT DROPPED since the Montreal Protocol. Only reported CFC production. See here: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/new_atmCFC.html This means either that most of it in the atmosphere is of natural sources or lots of parties are breaking the protocol and making CFCs anyway.
There are two possibilities. CFCs have long residence times in the stratosphere (50-300 years). I feel this is the main reason, as adherence to the Montreal Protocol appears to be fairly good. Volcanoes also produce CFCs, and this is the only natural source I know of, but it is small compared to the anthropogenic input.
Actually the data you linked to shows that it has dropped
Perhaps a graph will help:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/graphs/Combined_CFCs_2010.png
Yes, tx! Our Figure 3.3, p. 37, reflects this decline.