Guest essay by Robert Balic
A summary of a problem with estimates of the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and questioning of how it is possible that the rate of increase correlates well with global temperature anomalies.
I saw an interesting plot in the comments of of WUWT a while ago. It was based on the work of Murray Salby who pointed out the strong correlation between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (NOAA ESRL CO2 at Mauna Loa) and the integral of mean global temperature anomalies. How well the CO2 levels correlate with various temperature anomalies can be seen in this plot of the derivative of CO2 levels with respect to time (rate of CO2 level increase) alongside some estimates of global temperature anomalies – HadSSTv3 SH (southern hemisphere sea-surface temperatures) and RSS (lower troposphere temperatures from satellite observations).
http://woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-co2/mean:12/derivative/scale:3/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1958/offset:0.3/plot/rss/offset:0.2/from:1990
The first time that I saw this, I thought that what was meant by “derivative” was an estimate from differences between consecutive months but in ppm per year (as time is in years) so I was twelve times as confident that something was amiss as I should have been. Even after realizing that the results were in ppm per month, I thought that the results were still implausible. That changes in sea surface temperature would have an effect on CO2 levels is plausible but to correlate so well and then to be measured so precisely in order to be able to see the correlation did not seem possible.
In the above plot, the CO2 levels in ppm per month were scaled by 3 to compare with temperature anomalies. If I were to use ppm per year, then I would divide by 4 to do the same comparison iehey are not the same dimensions so the scaling is irrelevant. The data clearly needs to be scaled and also offset to fit each other well so by good correlation I am referring to the way they differ from a line of best fit after scaling to have the same slope.
I have put this out there in comments on blogs and received few replies. One that I need to mention is the claim that the derivative values are some sort of concoction and are so small that they are negligible, about 0.03% of CO2 levels. I don’t know why I need to point this out but an average of 0.125 ppm per month is the rate of change of CO2 estimated using the same method since even Newton was a boy and is equal to 90 ppm per 60 years. Its not negligible but there is the question of whether the uncertainty in measurements are too large to see fine trends over a period of a few years (and you should never multiply the quotient of two values of different dimensions by 100 and call it a percent).
Eyeballing the graph, it appears that the data needs to be very precise in order to see a correlation and a little bit of math makes things clearer. Rather than using the above derivative of smoothed data (12 month moving mean), I took the CO2 levels from woodfortrees.org and the difference between values 13 months apart. Essentially the same with the results being in ppm per year.
There is a good fit to the global temperature anomalies, especially RSS lower troposphere after 1990 (and to HadSSTv3SH before 1990) when the rate of change of CO2 levels is scaled by 0.26 and offset by -0.30. The mean absolute differences between the two is 0.13 and the standard deviation (SD) is 0.17 but varies from 0.08 to 0.2 for blocks of 1 year .
Using the lower value, this is consistent with an uncertainty in GTA of 0.1 K and in monthly CO2 levels as low as 0.34 ppm as calculated using
0.26^2 x 2ΔCO2^2 + ΔT^2 = (2 x 0.08)^2 where ΔCO2^2 and ΔT is the random error of CO2 levels and GTA which would be 2SD of repeat measurements.
This assumes that when differences are at a minimum that it is solely due to random error in the two measurements but its worth remembering that HadSSTv3NH differs much more than this from the rate of CO2 change so there are obviously other errors. Its also a stretch to assume perfect correlation of the real values, especially since its claimed that CO2 levels have increased due to human emissions and the latter have been at a steady rate for the last three years. There is also the question of why such a good correlation with SH sea-surface temperatures and not NH, and why should the correlation be so perfect when things like changes in ocean currents should have a large effect on how much is sequestered into the depths of the oceans.
So unlike I first thought, the precision didn’t need to be ridiculously good to see the correlation but this is still to good to be true.
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NOAA learned their methodology diddling with their budget projections, and can use the same peer review cast.
What makes everyone think this is a chemistry question instead of a biology question? Is life in the ocean incapable of affecting CO2 based on seasonal growth and ocean surface temperature?
The chart, or graph or whatever you want to call it, appears to show a correlation between rate of increase of CO2 and temperature anomalies. This is completely absurd.
There is nothing in the greenhouse theory (whether you choose to believe it or not) that says increase in temperature bears any relation to the rate of increase of CO2. If I read the theory correctly, it says that the temperature (or temperature anomaly, whatever) bears a linear relationship to the logarithm of the concentration of CO2 There are estimates of the factor that is supposed to tie those parameters together, which has been called the “climate sensitivity” or the “transient climate response” and it varies from about 1.4°C per doubling to absurdly high numbers, according to who has estimated it.
(Digression: there should be an “effective climate response” that accounts for direct and indirect “feedbacks” (like water vapour and clouds) and I suspect that it might be so close to zero as to be undetectable, but that’s my opinion”).
Basically, there is a correlation on that graph because temperature has gone up a bit between 1958 and 2017 (not a lot of disagreement there, except perhaps as to the amount), and the “derivative”, i.e. the rate of increase of CO2 has gone up a bit too. The plot of CO2 at Mauna Loa is not a straight line; it curves upwards, i.e. the rate of increase of CO2 is increasing (as the mathematicians say, the second derivative is positive).
But the greenhouse theory says that, even if the rate of increase did not increase over time (which would make the Mauna Loa chart a linear increase), the increasing level of CO2 would still be causing the temperature to go up. If that had been the case the derivative of CO2 would plot as a flat line on the chart that we’re being asked to look at in this post, while the temperature anomalies would still be going up.
You can even envisage a situation where the rate of increase in CO2 starts to decrease. CO2 concentration would still be going up so (greenhouse theory says) temperatures keep on going up. That would have led to an antithetic relationship between the parameters shown here.
If Robert B hasn’t grasped this, maybe he doesn’t have the ability to question what he’s looking at as much as this jaded geologist who is skeptical about everything that’s put in front of him, no matter whence it comes. But honestly, this graph, whoever put it together, is the absolutely worst kind of pseudo-science. It shows a correlation between two quantities where there is absolutely no theoretical or empirical reason to believe that they should correlate – even if you believe without question the greenhouse dogma.
In other words, that chart does nothing but discredit the warmists who designed it. They are mathematically illiterate (or just stupid, and there’s a lot of that around these days). Or even worse, they just don’t care.
Smart Rock, i think you have causation backwards here if i’m reading you correctly here. It’s not the change in the rate of carbon growth that is causing temperature to go up. Rather, it’s the change in temperature that’s causing the rate of carbon growth to go up. (at least, that’s the claim that is being inferred by the graph)…
Could you stop pretending that it’s gone through some algorithmic wringer. I’m not discussing any physical reason for it but lack of there being any and the correlation still being visible.
To not so bright rock, read it again. I’m politely pointing out that its not real.
As we can see by eye, there is a correlation between the ocean temperature and the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Robert B, you are asking, if there is any physical explanation. That is what I tried to show you. The explanation is that the atmospheric CO2 is in balance with the CO2 in the mixing layer of the ocean. This balance is based on the Henry’s law. Simple like that. The temperature dependency of Henry’s law explain very well the yearly changes of CO2 concentration. Einstein said that things should be explained as simply as possible but not simpler that that.
I have used my model to calculate the residence time for the anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. It is possible, because I can calculate both the anthropogenic CO2 and the total CO2 fluxes. The residence time for the anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere is 16 years. It is the same as shown by the full scale test (maybe the only one) available for the climate. The residence time of the radiocarbon 14C is the same 16 years as caused by the stopping the nuclear bomb test in 1964. In this sense I can say that I can truly validate the results of my model. The radiocarbon is a perfect tracer material for testing the anthropogenic CO2 behavior, because the both elements are artificially emitted into the the atmosphere and the whole atmosphere-ocean-biosphere system did not contain this element before the test: anthropogenic CO2 starting about 1750 and the radiocarbon starting in 1940’s.
aveollila, I’m not arguing that you are wrong that atmospheric CO2 is in balance with the CO2 in the mixing layer of the ocean. Look at the Pinatubo eruption about 1992. The rate of CO2 increase matches RSS well (see above graph)
Robert, IF the aggregate total of all SST temperatures determine the carbon growth rate, wouldn’t that make sense to you? Warmer areas outgassing more, cooler areas uptaking less all according to the temperature anomaly relative to the equilibrium state temperature. Note that “0” anomaly is about .7C less than SSTs as of the hiatus in warming. (this is consistent with what we believe temps were during the LIA)…
Yeah, I assumed it was a typical AGW piece trying to prove that carbon does bad stuff (we do see enough of that). Oops. It was apparently an attempt to show – what exactly? That observed CO2 increase all (mostly? partly?) comes from warming of the oceans? Well it doesn’t work for that either, or rather it only works if you ignore the fact that anthro CO2 emissions increased during the period being plotted. That will give you a whole lot of dCO2/dt and you would need to quantify that and see if there was any unexplained acceleration of CO2 that you could attribute to degassing of the oceans. So IMHO it’s a very weak illustration to use as a proof of anything.
Aveollila’s comments quantify atmosphere-ocean interaction quite nicely,as long as you assume that land-based carbon sinks are small relative to the oceans. There’s no reason why Prof. Salby couldn’t have dome something similar instead of showing an apparent correlation between two parameters that have both gone up a bit since 1958. As a demonstration, it’s weak because there are other theories that it could be used to support equally as well, and because it’s not quantitative enough when some of the quantities are quite well quantified.
One minor comment on Aveollila’s calculations. I’m not sure how well Henry’s law should apply to CO2 in ocean water. It’s not just a gas dissolved in a liquid, because there’s a lot of chemistry going on with carbonate and bicarbonate anions being formed. I would guess that, if anything, that the CO2 capacity of ocean water will go down faster with increased temperature than Henry’s law would suggest, because of the breakdown of bicarbonate ions with temperature (as we see when baking cakes). Principle is similar but details may differ. Experimental data are needed. Maybe they do, but it’s too late tonight for me to dig them up tonight.
“IF the aggregate total of all SST temperatures determine the carbon growth rate, wouldn’t that make sense to you? Warmer areas outgassing more, cooler areas uptaking less all according to the temperature anomaly relative to the equilibrium state temperature. Note that “0” anomaly is about .7C less than SSTs as of the hiatus in warming. (this is consistent with what we believe temps were during the LIA)…”
The whole point of the piece was that the correlation had to be perfect with CO2 levels measured to &plumn;0.34ppm. I can see why there would be some effect but not such a good correlation.
And smart rock, take note. I don’t believe that it shows anything except someone needs to have a good look at the calibration.
Robert,
CO2 measurements at all stations are better than +/- 0.2 ppmv. That is no problem to see that the correlation between T (in fact dT/dt) and dCO2/dt is real.
Thus the correlations between T, dT/dt, CO2 and dCO2/dt are all real with and without lags. Causation in this case is also known and both the short term reaction on temperature changes by oceans and (mainly) by (tropical) vegetation.
Variations in T cause variations in CO2, but that is constrained to the small (+/- 1.5 ppmv) noise around the large (+90 ppmv) trend. It is only by taking the derivative (and thus largely detrending the CO2 increase) that one has blown up the noise around the trend to huge proportions. No problem with that, as long as that is not used to declare that this “proves” that the +90 ppmv trend is also caused by temperature, which is not the case, as that is where human emissions are involved…
Smart Rock. You little bit aside now. It is not about the warming effect of CO2, we are discussing here. It is about the correlation about the tropical sea water temperature and the atmospheric CO2 concentration. We do not care talk about the possible reasons for the temperature changes of the oceans. In my model I have not used any assumptions for the temperature effects of the CO2 changes. But I can show that the yearly CO2 changes in the atmosphere are related mainly to the sea water temperatures and not just on the yearly CO2 emission rates. How much the atmospheric CO2 can increase the global temperature is totally another issue.
aveollili: “We do not care talk about the possible reasons for the temperature changes of the oceans.”
but that’s the most important question of all !!
crackers345:
If you want to decide which question is important in a thread then start your own blog.
AW is our host here and he has decided that the question of a correlation observed by Robert Balic (and several others previously) deserves attention. To that end he has invited Robert Balic to post the above article.
Only matters raised by the article from Robert Balic are pertinent in this thread. All other questions are off-topic, and it is reprehensible that you attempt to deflect the thread onto an irrelevance of your choosing.
Richard
Thanks Richard
the rate of co2 increase in the atmosphere depends on how fast we emit it into the atmosphere, and how much of that is taken up by the land and ocean, and only very slightly on the atmopheric temperature.
Very true
Ferdinand:
It seems you missed my use of the word “honestly”.
The easiest person to mislead is yourself.
Each of your excuses for your refusal to accept the evidence presented by Stephen Wilde is wrong.
The OCO-2 satellite measurements indicate that ALL the CO2 from human activities is sequestered by sinks local to its emission sites. Hence, it is observed that the CO2 from human activities is not overloading those local sinks and is not available to overload other sinks.
That is what the data indicate whatever you may want to pretend.
Richard
crackers345:
You assert without any evidence and/or argument to support it
OK. I understand that is your superstitious belief.
I write to ask how you square that superstitious belief with the observed reality that the rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is independent of “how fast we emit [CO2] into the atmosphere”.
Richard
Richard,
Independent?
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
Ferdinand:
Yes, the observed reality is that the rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is independent of “how fast we emit [CO2] into the atmosphere”.
If the extra emission of human origin were the only emission then in some years almost all of it seems to be absorbed into the sinks, and in other years almost none.
You get an appearance of a relationship by smoothing the data to a degree that cannot be justified by any known physical mechanism.
Richard
Better correlation here:
http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/n488/Bartemis/tempco2_zps55644e9e.jpg
Bart,
Except that the integral of temperature anomaly has no physical meaning, while the integral of emissions and remaining amounts in the atmosphere are physical quantities…
Nonsense. I’ve explained in considerable detail the physical basis. You just don’t understand dynamic systems.
richardscourtney
“I write to ask how you square that superstitious belief with the observed reality that the rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is independent of “how fast we emit [CO2] into the atmosphere”.”
oh, please. that’s absurd.
crackers345:
Yes, I know your superstitious belief is “absurd”. That absurdity is why I asked you to explain how you square it with the observed reality that the rate of rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is independent of “how fast we emit [CO2] into the atmosphere”.
In some years the accumulation rate of CO2 in the atmosphere is equivalent to almost all of the CO2 we emit and in other years it is equivalent to almost none of the CO2 we emit to the atmosphere.
So, now you have admitted that you your superstitious belief is “absurd” so you cannot square it with observed reality, perhaps you will relate how you obtained that absurd superstitious belief?
Richard
Richard,
It is quite simple: in every year of the past near 60 years, natural sinks were not able to remove all human emissions in the same year as emitted. Thus the huge natural in and out fluxes are mostly insensitive to the extra CO2 (pressure) in the atmosphere. These fluxes are mainly (seasonal) temperature dependent and show a year by year variability of maximum +/- 1.5 ppmv around the (90 ppmv) trend. That is all.
The removal of any extra CO2, whatever the source, needs pressure dependent processes mainly sinks into the oceans and partly vegetation. That are much slower process than the seasonal fluxes…
Ferdinand:
I agree that it is “very simple” but I accept empirical data so I say the “very simple” thing is your refusal to consider data which refutes your narrative. You say
The OCO-2 data show that ALL the CO2 human emissions of a year ARE absorbed by the sinks near to their emission sources.
Richard
Yes, that is what I inferred here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/evidence-that-oceans-not-man-control-co2-emissions/
and when I posted it upthread Ferdinand was dismissive without a logical reason for so being.
The problem I find with all Ferdinand’s deep and detailed work is that at base it is founded upon a limited number of assumptions relying on observations that are capable of having alternative explanations to those proposed wrongly (IMHO) by Ferdinand as irrefutable.
He has built an intricate inverted pyramid on top of a sandy base.
Richard and Stephen,
I have been having a discussion with Ferdinand down-thread about the alleged time lag in CO2 growth between the NH and South Pole. I would appreciate the views of others.
Stephen Wilde:
You have commented on my saying
by responding
Thankyou. That makes the matter very clear.
I do not understand how anybody who has seen that plot can honestly claim natural sinks are failing to sequester ALL the CO2 from human activity.
Richard
Richard:
I do not understand how anybody who has seen that plot can honestly claim natural sinks are failing to sequester ALL the CO2 from human activity.
1, Because the emissions from humans (~0.1 ppmv/day) are not directly measurable by the satellite, which only takes snapshots at midday, at the height of photosynthesis.
2. Because they have troubles to calibrate the satellite: there are too many impossibilities like higher levels at the largest sink place of the world: the N.E. Atlantic.
3. Because even if all human CO2 was captured by the next nearby tree, that doesn’t change the CO2 increase in the atmosphere, as that is only less natural CO2 captured by the same tree. The tree captures whatever CO2 which is that moment around, but doesn’t capture more CO2 because it comes from humans (*).
4. Because still 30% of all human CO2 is in the atmosphere, the rest is mainly in the oceans and only a small part in vegetation as is measured via the 13C/12C ratio.
(*) Of course if the total CO2 pressure in the atmosphere increases, both oceans and vegetation will take more CO2 away, but until now that is less than what humans emit in every year of the past 60 years.
Ferdinand:
My reply to you appeared in the wrong place. Hopefully this copy is in the right place.
It seems you missed my use of the word “honestly”.
The easiest person to mislead is yourself.
Each of your excuses for your refusal to accept the evidence presented by Stephen Wilde is wrong.
The OCO-2 satellite measurements indicate that ALL the CO2 from human activities is sequestered by sinks local to its emission sites. Hence, it is observed that the CO2 from human activities is not overloading those local sinks and is not available to overload other sinks.
That is what the data indicate whatever you may want to pretend.
Richard
Richard,
Your “proof” that I am wrong is only your misinterpretation of the satellite data:
The OCO-2 satellite measurements indicate that ALL the CO2 from human activities is sequestered by sinks local to its emission sites.
1. The satellites theoretical resolution is ~0.1 ppmv.
2. The satellite does follow the midday line and takes snapshots of the midday areas.
3. Photosynthesis is at maximum around midday.
4. Human emissions are average ~0.01 ppmv/day (used 0.1 ppmv/day a a comment down, that is in error)
5. Human emissions are concentrated in specific areas (towns, industrial) with higher emissions.
6. The satellite can focus on specific areas for longer periods, thus enhancing the resolution.
If human emissions are visible in the satellite data at specific areas depends of 1. – 6.
Thus it is possible that all human emissions around midday are all removed by the next available tree (which doesn’t change the mass balance with one gram), thus masking human emissions.
The satellite doesn’t measure at night, when factories still are working and emitting and heating (in winter) is at full speed in cold areas and there is no photosynthesis…
As far as I know they haven’t used the focus possibility of the satellite until now, as they still seem to have troubles to calibrate the satellite data with near ground data.
Thus sorry Richard, absence of good data is not proof of anything.
Ferdinand:
The data under discussion is shown by this plot of atmospheric CO2 concentration provided by the OCO-2 satellite. And the link also provides the summary by Stephen Wilde of discrepancies between that plot and your narrative.
Look at what the data shows instead of making excuses for the data refuting your narrative.
As I said, the OCO-2 satellite measurements indicate that ALL the CO2 from human activities is sequestered by sinks local to its emission sites. Hence, it is observed that the CO2 from human activities is not overloading those local sinks and is not available to overload other sinks.
That is what the data indicate whatever you may want to pretend.
But, as is your usual practice when confronted with data which refutes your narrative, you have reacted with a series of ‘epicyclic excuses’ in attempt to sustain your narrative.
You say
Yes. That is sufficient to show the sinks are not overloaded in industrial areas.
So what is your point?
You say
Yes. What is your point?
You say
Yes. But so what?
You say
Yes. 0.01 ppmv/day is trivially small, and as the plot shows it is not sufficient to overload the sinks local to industrialised areas e.g. Western Europe.
You say
Yes. And the plot shows those emissions are sequestered local to those specific areas. Much higher atmospheric concentrations exist elsewhere.
You say
Yes. But so what?
Face reality, Ferdinand; the OCO-2 data is yet another piece of evidence that refutes your narrative.
HAPPY EASTER!
Richard
richardcourtney, explain the atmosphere’s decreasing 13C/12C ratio.
crackers345:
You demand that I assert what is not known and what available data cannot indicate when you write
The ratio change is clearly NOT a direct result of emissions of CO2 from human activities. The change is in the correct direction for it to be a result of that cause (n.b. there is 50% change that it would be because it has to be up or down), but it is wrong by 300% for it to be a direct result of emissions of CO2 from human activities. (One of Ferdinand’s epicyclic excuses is for this gross disagreement of the isotope ratio change with his narrative. He says the disagreement results from dilution which is a possibility but there is no evidence for it.)
I can make several suggestions as to possible causes of the atmosphere’s decreasing 13C/12C ratio, but nobody knows – and at present nobody can know – the true cause.
Richard
richardcourtney – the declining atmospheric ratio of 13C/12C is consistent with an anthropogenic source for the additional CO2 in the atmosphere, and inconsistent with it being from natural sources.
crackers345:
Clearly, you have not read my answer to your question.
A discrepancy of 300% is NOT “consistent with” the “declining atmospheric ratio of 13C/12C” caused by “an anthropogenic source for the additional CO2 in the atmosphere”. And as discussions by others downthread reveal, there are – as I said – several possible causes of the “declining atmospheric ratio of 13C/12C”.
As usual, your posts are a waste of electrons.
Richard
For interest have a look at the 5th chart or graph at this site:
https://realclimatescience.com/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-noaa-data-tampering/
It is a correlation of Adjustment to USHCN Temperature vs Atmospheric CO2
Yes, to the extent that temperatures appear to track CO2, it is mostly because the temperatures have been manipulated to do so.
However, it does not affect an affine comparison such as shown above in the article. It is here that we see the truth: temperature is driving CO2, not CO2 driving temperature.
This is exactly how NOAA cooks the books. Tony Heller solved this puzzle a long time ago.
It’s a political dictate and NOAA delivers.
1) how would you like to adjust for biases?
2) adjustments -reduce- the long-term warming trend
Lead -reduces- IQ
michael j, you avoided my question.
crackers345:
You ask
Scientists do NOT “adjust” data and I am a scientist so I would not do it.
And I would NOT “like” to “adjust” data because that would be my having a bias.
When a scientist suspects an error in data then s/he attempts to quantify that uncertainty and reports that inherent error as being part of the data (e.g. a value of x +y-z at 95% confidence).
Richard
Why engage you in Q&A when your #2 statement is either painfully ignorant or deliberately misleading?
richardcourtney: scientists constantly adjust raw data to remove biases. it’s an important part of every experiment.
you didn’t explain how you would treat the raw temperature data in light of its biases. (those biases aren’t “errors,” they are unavoidable methodological issues.)
crackers345:
Clearly, you have not read my answer to your question.
To avoid you needing to find it, I copy it to here. Please read it.
Scientists do NOT “adjust” data and I am a scientist so I would not do it.
And I would NOT “like” to “adjust” data because that would be my having a bias.
When a scientist suspects an error in data then s/he attempts to quantify that uncertainty and reports that inherent error as being part of the data (e.g. a value of x +y-z at 95% confidence).
Richard
So we are left with three possibilities.
An infinitesimal jump in CO2 causes a noticeable jump in temperature.
A noticeable jump in temperature causes an infinitesimal jump in CO2.
Something ill understood is capable of a noticeable increase in temperature and infinitesimal jump in CO2.
No way I would bet my own money on the first.
“Something ill understood” Keeling calibration
Rob Dawg, I like your summary. If I may nit-pick a little, it is not a “jump in CO2”, but a “jump in rate of growth of atmospheric CO2”. I guess the view that it is an infinitesimal jump depends on how significant you consider an increase in rate of growth of 50-100% to be.
Your “something ill understood” is, of course, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The air gets warmer and the ocean either slows absorption or even emits for a short while – possibly because the near surface water (inches?) warms due to the temperature of the air rising? So rate of change of CO2 is correlated to air temperature but in the reverse of what many expect?
I don’t really see a problem with the correlation – its just we don’t know causation, people are just assuming it fits their story. I tend to believe temperature is causing CO2 release rather than CO2 is causing the short-term temperature fluxes.
As for CO2 being a well mixed gas… I think that depends on the scope of what you are looking at. CO2 is at higher concentrations in cities for example. It would not surprise me at all if concentrations around oceans were linked to near surface temperatures. If you could see CO2 concentrations in color (3D, locally) I don’t imagine you would see one color but many. Eventually it becomes well mixed, if nothing is adding or subtracting the gas (which is always happening). So maybe the air several hundred feet up is well mixed, but close to where CO2 is interacting I doubt that it is.
Last attempt. I don’t want to talk about what might cause the correlation because nothing would make the two line up so well in the real world. Too many things going on and you need to measure the CO2 levels to ±0.34 ppm to see it.
Robert,
Measurements at most CO2 stations are better than +/- 0.2 ppmv. more than good enough to show natural variability in uptake, not enough to show the variability in human emissions.
Still you are looking at the variability of CO2 around the trend, which is not more than +/- 1.5 ppmv around a 90 ppmv trend, all caused by temperature variability, mainly the reaction of tropical forests. That is figured out by many before you, including Pieter Tans of NOAA, from sheet 11 on:
https://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf
That is only for the variability, the slope is NOT caused by the same processes, as vegetation is a net sink for CO2 on periods longer than 1-3 years.
I’m sure that the measurements at single station do not vary more than ±0.2 but that is not for a global estimate from that spot. The earlier estimates of error were ±1 ppm and still there is good correlation with SH SST up until 1980 when, as admitted in Climategate emails and published articles that there was insufficient data for most of the SH oceans to get any reliable temperature anomalies.
There is no physical reason for it.
Again. I’m pointing out how precise the measurements need to be with a perfect correlation. ±0.2 instead of ±0.34 ppm still means an extremely good correlation that nobody has shown to be true as evidenced by the multitude of reasons given.
Robert,
The main problem with that graph is that by taking the derivative of the CO2 levels, you have removed most of the cause of the increase in CO2: human emissions.
Human emissions show a steady increase over time, hardly influenced by economic crisis and show little year by year variability, not detectable in monthly or even yearly variability of the measurements.
On the other hand, the effect of temperature on CO2 levels is a small increase (~16 ppmv/K) over time, but lots of monthly to yearly variability.
CO2 variability lags T variability, but that is small (+/- 1.5 ppmv) variability around the 90 ppmv trend since 1959. Here for the enlarged 1985-2000 period, including the 1992 Pinatubo and 1998 El Niño:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/wft_trends_rss_1985-2000.jpg
The derivative of the CO2 emissions is a (near) straight slope, as the emissions themselves are increasing slightly quadratic over time. All variability is caused by the derivative of the temperature (dT/dt), which leads dCO2/dt with several months:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
The fully synchronized opposite CO2 and δ13C rate of changes show that the main effect of temperature is on (tropical) vegetation, not the oceans: temperature and changed rain patterns (drought) in the tropics give less uptake and more decay/fires in the Amazon during an El Niño. The opposite happened during the Pinatubo eruption.
That temperature is the main cause of the variability in CO2 rate of change is agreed by NOAA as Pieter Tans showed during his speech for 50 years Mauna Loa:
https://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf
from sheet 11 onward.
The second problem in that graph and the reason why so many are misled, is that one compares T with dCO2/dt. That is comparing T with the detrended CO2 changes, or comparing apples with oranges. Either compare T with CO2 or dT/dt with dCO2/dt. In the latter case, dT/dt has no trend, only a small offset from zero and thus a small influence on CO2 levels, while the full increase is from the slope of the derivative of the CO2 emissions, which is twice the slope of the derivative of the observed increase in the atmosphere.
It is easy to deduce that T/CO2 variability has nothing to do with the increase in the atmosphere, as most of the variability is the reaction of vegetation on temperature variability, while vegetation is a small, but growing sink for CO2 in the past decades as can be deduced from the oxygen balance:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5462/2467.short
Why then the high synchronization between T and dCO2/dt? That is because taking the derivative of a (more or less) sinusoid variable shifts the sinusoid pi/2 back in time, without changing much of the appearance. That makes that as CO2 variability lags T variability, taking the derivative from only CO2 does synchronize it with T variability, but at the same time that gives a largely spurious similarity of T on the slope of dCO2/dt, which doesn’t exist in the real world…
See further the discussion at the links in my previous message…
Correlations on time series data sets happen all the time. You can’t use standard statistical techniques on time series, they are pretty much meaningless.
(that’s besides that 0.4degC of the temperature increase is bogus data manipulation anyways)
Why not have a simple explanation?
One that fits the observations a bit bitter?
One that might even offer causation instead of correlation.
Why not do, or observe in everyday situations, an experiment that even Al Gore couldn’t make a foul-up of – an experiment that refutes the whole GHG effect.
2 similar containers, one containing a GHG and the other not. Put a differential thermometer across them. What happens?
Why not explain the annual variation of CO2 ppm without bluster and hand-waving?
Not agriculture then? A major seasonal activity that only really happens in one hemisphere, so no global averaging
Why claim the climate is a non-linear system then utterly ignore the mother & father of all non-linearities?
<cold objects do not radiate energy to warm ones and cause them to warm even more
Why talk about ‘temperature of the surface of the Earth’ then put all the thermometers nowhere near it – anywhere from 4 feet to 400 miles above
<Why are no thermometers worth talking about actually buried in the dirt
Why talk about some nebulous “Industrial Revolution” when its clear to even a child that CO2 levels started ramping up in the late 1940’s
Totally no chance it may have been an agricultural revolution then?? Are you really saying that 10,000 yrs ago, Ugg The Chugg staggered out of his cave every morning, climbed aboard his 500HP John Deere caterpillar and let loose 180 million tons of ammonium nitrate? Did he really do that?
Why talk about Global CO2 levels then measure that level as far from anywhere as its almost possible to get?
Why claim the impossible?
An alkali solution is not going to give up an acidic species just on a few 10th’s of a degree temp change. Henry’s Law in junk for seawater
Why not directly link the observed temp changes with the observed CO2 variation with the most basic climate observation possible?
Seasons
Why come up with such a technical complicated theory (GHG and positive feedback) to explain what thermometers and CO2 levels are doing when all you need do is look out of your window now and again?
A vast area of the planet is now growing annual plants instead of perennials as it historically did
Why ignore the dirt – and the bacteria that comprise the main part of its organic content. Are bacteria not temperature sensitive. Does seasonal plant growth not occur because of what those bacteria are doing in precise symbiosis with plants?
What do those soil bacteria do and what limits what they do? Completely not soluble nitrogen?
Why does farmland treated with water-soluble nitrogen become acidic? (Please do answer that point, in your own head at least) Would that not explain the observed Ocean Acidification – primarily in slow moving estuarine water that came off farmland.
I’ll answer my own questions and it’ll make Malthus, Ehrlich, Chuckles and AH all look like saints when I do.
Therein lies the Magical Thinking that nothing is wrong, that technology will fix anything and no matter what, it is always Someone Else’s Fault.
So finally, why did Climate Change put an end to every organised ‘civilisation’ that has ever existed on the Earth. Is that what happens when The Buck finally stops.
All those fine bureaucracies never ran out of dirt, they never overused fertiliser, they never cut too many trees, never kept too many sheep & goats and never never ever, had too many babies.
No, somebody else always did those things.
sigh. Maybe you figured it yourself but anyway..
You get other people to accept the blame by confusing them, with science.
WAKE UP people.
Why are we arguing about where the increase in highly beneficial atmospheric CO2 is coming from?
Just so long as it keeps on coming.
We really MUST turn the narrative around, and show that increased atmospheric CO2 has absolutely ZERO detrimental effect.
TOTALLY BENEFICIAL to all life on Earth.
Everybody has been talking about well distributed CO2 and the measurements taken at various sites, most of which show a steady increase in CO2, however the latest US Satellite data shows no such distribution.
There is no “Global CO2” when you look at the results from the Satellite data.
NASA has been very quiet about their results, I wonder why that is.
Let me remind you of their first output
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/04/finally-visualized-oco2-satellite-data-showing-global-carbon-dioxide-concentrations/
A C Osborn,
Have a look at the scales: +/- 2% of full scale variability. Seasonal exchanges are ~20% CO2 in and out. Do you expect that such huge changes are instantly mixed at every place everywhere?
164 replies so far, and I didn’t bother to read them all. Part of the reason is that there is nothing new about this, and it is a bit frustrating that it keeps coming up again as if it is. I know I’ve posted in replies about here before, even posting images of this “effect.” I also wrote a short piece about it early last year and sent it to Anthony but he either didn’t get it or didn’t think it was timely. In any case I am going to post one of the images from the work I did on this last year, and then make some brief observations. Here is the image:
http://imgur.com/a9O3aCC
This is a plot of seasonal differences of UAH’s global temperature series and the Mauno Lao CO2 series, i.e. the first difference (what I think the author of this piece is calling a “derivative”) on an annual basis, i.e. the value in one month differenced with the value 12 months previously. I take the natural log of the CO2 series for this comparison because it seems that the CO2 series is increasing at a relatively constant rate of growth.
It is pretty obvious what is going on here. Changes in CO2 consistently LAG changes in temperature and a regression correlation with lagged variables line the two series up quite nicely, as shown in this graph:
http://i.imgur.com/HZRTkM1.jpg
Again, by now there should be nothing remarkable about this. On almost any time scale — here short run seasonal variations — temperature changes are driving CO2. This does not prove that CO2 might not itself have an effect on temperature, which by most theoretical accounts it does. But it seems to me that it is so small that it is swamped by the effect in the other direction, again on all time scales.
What is so hard to understand about this? Is it the presentation of the data in “derivative” format that is novel? I cannot understand why that would be the case. Analyzing first differences is a basic consideration in evaluating time series. If “climate science” hasn’t figured that out yet, it deserves the skepticism it gets in claiming to be “science.”
Basil
blcjr on April 8, 2017 at 3:01 am
On almost any time scale — here short run seasonal variations — temperature changes are driving CO2.
What about having a look at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/07/questions-on-the-rate-of-global-carbon-dioxide-increase/comment-page-1/#comment-2471412
To be honest: If I want to obtain valuable information about CO2, I rather will trust in Ferdinand Engelbeen.
Trust whomever you want. I took a look at the Ferdinand post you pointed to. Not enough detail there for me to understand how he gets to his conclusions. He seems to be saying that temperature rise since the LIA can account for only a small fraction of the rise in CO2, and he points the finger at human emissions as accounting for the bulk of it. I’m sure he has what he considers an answer to this question, but I am not sure where to look to find it: what explains the large increases in CO2 in geologic times past, when human emissions did not exist?
Basil
Basil,
Most of the increase of CO2 in the past 1.5 century is man-made. All observations point in the same direction, here a comprehensive overview of the available evidence:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
The main point is that over at least the past 800,000 years there was a quite constant ratio between CO2 and temperature of ~8 ppmv/K in ice cores, reflecting polar temperatures. Translated to global temperatures, that is ~16 ppmv/K. Not by coincidence the same as the equlibrium of CO2 in seawater with CO2 in the atmosphere per Henry’s law. That means that if the temperature now is the same (or lower) than around 1200 (the MWP), we should see ~290 ppmv in the atmosphere, not 400 ppmv…
Over longer time periods the same ratio doesn’t apply as e.g. during the Cretaceous, carbonates in the oceans and CO2 in the atmosphere were much higher than today. Much of that CO2 is now buried in large carbonate deposits like in south England: the withe cliffs of Dover…
That was a remarkable set of figures.
“a regression correlation with lagged variables line the two series up quite nicely”
Can you please provide or link to some more details about how you made those curves?
Using the appropriate tool, you can draw a plot of anything according to your needs. Here is a chart with trendless plots of UAH6.0 and CO2 concentration:
http://fs5.directupload.net/images/170410/rixnm7gt.png
Origin: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/from:1979/derivative/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/derivative/mean:12/scale:0.5/offset:-0.07
But here the CO2 concentration unluckily seems to follow the temperature, that MUST be plain wrong, shouldn’t happen 🙂
A) Of course it should happen. Cause precedes effect. Temperature change precedes CO2 change.
B) What we see here is a 90 deg phase lag, precisely what is expected if there is an integral dependence of CO2 on temperature.
You’ve done nothing but reinforce the conclusion here: temperature is driving CO2, not CO2 driving temperature.
Bart,
There is a lag between T variability and CO2 variability.
There is practically no lag between T variability and dCO2/dt variability.
There is no integral dependence of CO2 on T.
The observation that the SH shows a better fit than the NH supports the ocean temperatures as the primary cause of CO2 levels simply because there is more ocean in the SH.
Human emissions of CO2 are primarily in the NH so if we were the cause then the NH would show a better fit.
The reality must be that our emissions are rapidly taken up by local vegetation and have little or no effect on global levels.
Stephen Wilde,
Most variability is in the SH, as that is where the rain forests react on fast temperature changes. That is about the variability, not the trend. The trend in increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere starts near ground in the NH, where CO2 increase leads the increase at altitudes and lower latitudes and the SH with 6-24 months:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends_1995_2004.jpg
Clearly the source of the increase is in the NH, where 90% of human emissions are. The same for the δ13C trends (from low-13C fossil fuels burning): the drop is in the low lying high latitudes first and the SH lags with several years…
Your conclusion is non sequitur. There are a host of reasons the plots might appear to be offset. These are different locations, using different equipment, different protocols, and different people. You have no control experiment upon which to base your conclusion.
Bart,
Before you spout such a bunch of nonsense, will you please, please, please check how the data is sampled, with what methods, and how they are (inter)calibrated?
For every single station, the local data are within +/- 0.2 ppmv, regardless of the equipment used, worldwide calibrated by the same calibration mixtures.
Thus either there are regional natural sources at work and the distribution needs time or human sources are at work and the distrubution needs time.
There are huge regional sources at work in the tropics and huge regional sinks near the poles. That should show the highest CO2 levels at Mauna Loa (be it at 3,400 m height, takes time too) and Samoa (30 m ASL) and the lowest levels at Barrow and the South Pole.
Barrow (and other near sealevel stations) show the higher CO2 increase first…
Here is an illustration of why it must be the oceans that control CO2 levels:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/evidence-that-oceans-not-man-control-co2-emissions/
Stephen,
That graph is from one month… Have a look at the yearly release/uptake by the oceans as measured by regular samples taken all over the oceans:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtml
“It’s Official, Global Warming and Higher CO2 Ended the California Drought!!!”
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/its-official-global-warming-and-higher-co2-ended-the-california-drought/
I realise Ferdinand has already largely pointed this out, but I’ll do so again. If you plot the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 over a relatively short time interval (say about 2 decades, as Salby does) you’ll see that it is variable, but does not vary about 0, it varies about a value of about 1.6ppm/yr – there is an offset. Correlations are, however, insensitive to offsets and so if you then find a good correlation between temperature and the rate of change of atmospheric CO2, what you’re finding is a correlation between temperature and the variability about the mean, but your correlation says nothing about the almost constant offset. So, the question is, what is causing this almost constant offset? The answer, is us, as Ferdinand has already pointed out. There’s quite a good discussion of this here.
TTP,
Seems that I have missed that discussion at Bishop’s…
Actually, there is a nice explanation of this correlation issue in this post by Dikran Marsupial.
I don’t understand why DM’s excellent answer to Salby’s conundrum, though about 2 years older, wasn’t mentioned at the very beginning of the comment thread in
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2398783.
Because it’s really dumb?
Because it’s really dumb?
No, I it’s because I wasn’t aware of DM’s excellent answer when I was commenting on the BH Discussion thread.
Would have been better for you if you had conceded that it is really dumb. Because, it is really dumb.
I explain why it is so dumb below.
Correction: You explain why you think it is so dumb below.
No, it’s pretty objectively dumb as rocks.
That is facile. It is not the offset in the rate of change of CO2 that produces the curvature of the absolute level of CO2. That is caused by the trend in the rate of change. And, the trend in the rate of change of CO2 matches the trend in temperature anomaly, when the one is scaled to match the other’s variability.
Human emissions also have a trend. There is little to no room for them to be added in to the CO2 rate of change, once the temperature sensitivity is accounted for. Hence, human emissions cannot be a major driver.
Dikran is a computer scientist, and promoter of the horrendously shallow pseudo-mass balance argument. He has no understanding of dynamic systems, and his arguments are physically absurd.
Bart,
There is no need to compare the trend of T with the trend of dCO2/dt, as the trend of both CO2 emissions and increase in the atmosphere are both slighlty quadratic and human emissions are twice the increase in the atmosphere.
The simplest explanation mostly is the one that fits cause and effect: human emissions cause most of the increase in the atmosphere, both the curvature of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere and the straight increase in the derivative. That is what the mass balance says and as long as you have no proof that the natural carbon cycle increased a fourfold over the past near 60 years, as human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere did, you have no leg to stand on and your theory is just one of the many others that pop up now and then without any proof in the real world.
The variability of T causes the variability in CO2 around the trend, but that is only +/- 1.5 ppmv around a trend of 90 ppmv. That is just noise and has no influence on the increase of CO2.
No arbitrary manipulation of T to fit the slope of dCO2/dt can change the fact that the influence of temperature is mainly in the small variability and hardly in the CO2 increase…
” That is what the mass balance says…”
No, that is what the pseudo-mass balance says. And, it is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Your “simplest explanation” does not explain the excellent agreement between the rate of change of CO2 and the temperature anomaly, including the long term trend over the past 59 years. Ergo, it fails.
Bart,
I have proven beyond doubt that a combination of the trend caused by human emissions and the temperature varaibility explains the full trend in the atmosphere, including most of its variability, as good as your theory does. Here again for those few who haven’t seen it:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/had_co2_emiss_nat_deriv.jpg
That human emissions are the main cause of the increase is confirmed by every single observation, That temperature is the main cause of the increase violates every single observation. All what you have is a nice match between a lot of noise around a huge trend and a spurious “match” between two straight slopes.
The temperature anomaly only explains the variability, which is the same in T and dT/dt, only shifted back in time for the derivative, which has zero trend.
It doesn’t explain the increase in the atmosphere, as that is not caused by temperature, as you have removed much of the trend of the CO2 increase before comparing it with the the temperature trend and it violates Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater, no matter if that is for a single sample in a lab or the wrold wide ocean surface in dynamic equilibrium with the atmosphere…
You have “proven” nothing at all. You have merely extruded the data through some finely tuned filters. And, you have to bend over backwards to do it. All I have to do is take the derivative. Occam’s Razor says mine is more likely.
But, your prescription is a-physical, because you assume a natural, underlying equilibrium, and decouple the anthropogenic forcing from those equilibrium dynamics.
Bart,
Please,
All I have done is the application of Henry’s law for the oceans, using the observed sink rate for oceans + vegetation of ~35 years half life time) and a factor 4 for the short term influence of T on CO2 (the same factor as you have used). Nothing is filtered, except for a 12-month smoothing of the observed CO2 rate of change.
But, your prescription is a-physical, because you assume a natural, underlying equilibrium, and decouple the anthropogenic forcing from those equilibrium dynamics.
Bart, there was a temperature controlled equilibrium of CO2 between the oceans (deep and surface) and the atmosphere over the past 800,000 years. Don’t you agree on that? That equilibrium changes with about 16 ppmv/K.
Further, the net sink rate is proportional to the extra CO2 pressure in the armosphere above steady state. With three points in the total CO2 level in the atmosphere and the corresponding net sink rate one can calculate the zero sink rate for a linear process (which the sinks are in the past 60 years), that is at the steady state level. That is ~290 ppmv, not by coincidence what Henry’s law says for the current average ocean surface temperature.
The removal of any extra CO2 injection into the atmosphere is not by the same mechanism as most of the natural fluxes.
Take the seasonal changes:
~60 GtC uptake in warm months by vegetation ~60 GtC/year release, with a peak in late fall.
~50 GtC release by the oceans in warm months, ~50 GtC uptake in cold months
Average global seasonal difference ~10 GtC all temperature induced.
Does that change if we add 10 GtC human emissions in the very first year of fossil fuels use? Hardly. Still near the same quantitities wil go in and out if the temperature differences over the seasons remain the same. There is no reason for the sessonal temperature caused processes to take more CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Of course, the extra CO2 increases the average pressure in the atmosphere a little bit. With the observed sink rate of 0.02, some 0,2 GtC will be taken away by the oceans and vegetation. The rest, 8.8 GtC remains in the atmosphere… we are now at 110 ppmv above steady state and only half of human emissions (as mass) are removed in the same year as emitted…
“Bart, there was a temperature controlled equilibrium of CO2 between the oceans (deep and surface) and the atmosphere over the past 800,000 years. Don’t you agree on that?”
No, I do not. The ice cores are the only source of that insinuation, and they have fundamental problems.
“…With three points in the total CO2 level in the atmosphere and the corresponding net sink rate one can calculate the zero sink rate for a linear process…”
All premised on the ice cores, and the requirement that the relationships are unchanging over 100s of thousands of years.
“The removal of any extra CO2 injection into the atmosphere is not by the same mechanism as most of the natural fluxes.”
Utter nonsense. All inputs of the same compound must be treated exactly the same.
“That is facile. It is not the offset in the rate of change of CO2 that produces the curvature of the absolute level of CO2.”
This is a clear misrepresentation of the SkS article, which shows that the offset causes the linear trend in the CO2 (i.e. the rise in CO2, which is what actually matters), not the curvature (which is actually rather small and of little relevance). Nobody was claiming that the offset in the growth rate causes the *curvature*, as anyone who actually read the SkS article would know:
“Essentially the correlation only explains the variability of CO2 measurements around the long term trend, but not the trend itself.”
“Thus we can see that the long term rise is principally because of the mean value of net global emission, not because of the wiggles.”
“Thus the correlation doesn’t tell you very much about the cause of the long term rise, because that is mainly due to the mean value, not the variablity around the mean.”
“Key Point: It isn’t the variability (the general up and down wiggliness) in net emissions that gives rise to the long term trend, it is the mean value of the net emissions, and the value of the correlation does not depend in any way on the mean value. Therefore the correlation with net global emission tells you very little about the cause of the long term trend.”
How much more clearly did I need to state it? How more often did I need to state it?
Sadly, having been so insulting about the mass balance argument, and those that argue against him, Bartemis has backed himself into a corner where he can no longer admit he is wrong without looking utterly ridiculous. Hence his only option is to be ever more insulting and to indulge in this kind of rhetorical misrepresentation, which is why there is little point in trying to discuss this with him. I don’t need to insult Bartemis, as I am confident the science is correct.
It’s not an insult, DM, merely a fact. Your pseudo-mass balance argument is dumb as rocks, and you have no business inserting yourself into a discussion in an area for which you have no training or aptitude.
So I point out that Bartemis had misrepresented the SkS article, and that he has backed himself into a position where he can no longer admit he is wrong without completely losing face, forcing him to resort to insults.
How does he reply? By showing that he hadn’t misrepresented the SkS article? No, by merely being insulting, as predicted (and thereby tacitly acknowledging that he had misrepresented the article). Very sad.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Bartemis doubles down again, obviously because he can’t bring himself to admit that he misrepresented my argument, which did not claim that it is ” the offset in the rate of change of CO2 that produces the curvature of the absolute level of CO2.”, but instead shows the offset gives rise to the trend in atmospheric CO2.
Perhaps you would like to point out where I did claim that it is “the offset in the rate of change of CO2 that produces the curvature of the absolute level of CO2.” (emphasis mine).
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Response here.
The pseudo-mass balance argument is just so, so, so dumb.
Bartemis makes it completely clear that he knows perfectly well that he misrepresented my argument, but can’t admit that is what he had done after having been so insulting. It is a shame that science cannot be discussed on blogs without descending to this sort of behaviour.
DM is a computer scientist. He has no training in dynamic systems analysis, and he has no idea what he is talking about. The pseudo-mass balance argument is junk science.
Bart, again:
“…With three points in the total CO2 level in the atmosphere and the corresponding net sink rate one can calculate the zero sink rate for a linear process…”
All premised on the ice cores, and the requirement that the relationships are unchanging over 100s of thousands of years.
Besides that the T/CO2 ratio in ice cores IS surprisingly linear and didn’t change in 800,000 years, my remark was for the recent period with direct measurements, not for ice core measurements.
Take three snapshots on the average trend in the past near 60 years of measurements:
1959: X ppmv above equilibrium, 0.5 ppmv/year net sink rate.
1988: X + 35 ppmv, 1.13 ppmv/year net sink rate.
2012: X + 85 ppmv, 2.15 ppmv/year net sink rate.
Between 1959 and 1988:
X + 35 – X ppmv extra CO2 pressure gives 1.13 – 0.5 = 0.63 ppmv/year net sink rate
or an e-fold decay rate of 55.6 years
Between 1959 and 2012:
X + 85 – X ppmv extra CO2 pressue gives 2.15 – 0.5 = 1.65 ppmv/year net sink rate
or an e-fold decay rate of 51,5 years.
X can be calculated too, taking the longest period:
X = 85 * 0.5 / 2,15 = 20 ppmv
Or the current steady state equilibrium is around 295 ppmv…
Not bad for a rough calculation, as per Henry’s law the current steady state should be around 290 ppmv…
Congratulations on showing how to make a linear approximation. Why this is supposed to impress, I have no idea.
Bart,
All what I have done is calculating the steady state of the oceans for the period 1959-current by back-calculating the net sink rates with the increase in the atmosphere. That is something that can’t exist according to you.
For something that doesn’t exist, the response is remarkably linear…
What is it they say about those who resort to ad hominem arguments? (this question is rhetorical, in case that isn’t obvious).
DM is actually an electronic engineer, who has taught circuit theory and differential equations. However he posts pseudonymously (rather than anonymously) because the only thing that matters is the validity of the argument, not the qualifications of the source. Not that you need to be an expert in dynamical systems to understand that conservation of mass (the mass balance analysis) establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the natural carbon cycle is a net carbon sink and hence opposing the observed rise in atmospheric CO2, in addition to numerous other lines of evidence.
Bart,
There is no trend in the derivative of the temperature (anomaly), thus zero contribution of dT/dt to the slope of dCO2/dt. Only a small offset from zero. When integrated, that gives the more or less linear slope of T.
By comparing T with dCO2/dt you compare the slope of T with the largely detrended slope of CO2 because you are looking at the derivative.
That is pure curve fitting and has nothing to do with any physical process…
Yes, it does. That is how dynamic processes with long equilibration time evolve.
This isn’t even remotely questionable. You are stuck in a static world.
Bart,
There is reason to compare T variability with CO2 variability:
Short time T variability is less than +/- 0.3°C around the T trend.
Short time CO2 variability is +/- 1.5 ppmv around the CO2 trend, lagging T variability. That gives in detail some 3-5 ppmv/K short time (1-3 years) variability.
Short time human emissions variability is less than 0.4 ppmv/year, not visible in any monthly or even yearly measurement.
Total T trend is 0.8°C since 1958, including periods (1958-1975 and 1997-2012) with negative trends.
Total CO2 trend is +90 ppmv over the same period, slightly quadratic and always positive.
Total human emissions trend is +170 ppmv over the same period, slightly quadratic and always positive.
According to Henry’s law for CO2 in seawater, the maximum influence of T on CO2 is 16 ppmv/K (static as good as dynamic) over millennia, thus the 0.8°C is good for maximum 13 ppmv of the 90 ppmv increase.
The short time variability of T and CO2 (Pinatubo, El Niño/La Niña) zeroes out in 1-3 years and have no direct influence on the trends (as they are caused by different processes).
Similar findings can be made by comparing the derivatives of T and CO2. In that case dT/dt has zero trend, only a slight offset from zero, while the slope of dCO2/dt is caused by the slightly quadratic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
There is no reason at all to compare T with the dCO2/dt as you then compare the trend of T with the largely detrended change in CO2 and that leads to completely unphysical conclusions.
“There is no reason at all to compare T with the dCO2/dt as you then compare the trend of T with the largely detrended change in CO2 and that leads to completely unphysical conclusions.”
Again, what is a-physical is your treatment of the natural equilibrium as a given, and your decoupling of the anthropogenic flows from the equilibrium dynamics.
You are imposing your own vision of how you think things should be, rather than following the data to determine how things are.
Bart,
The natural equilibrium IS a given over the past at least 800,000 years. Not only from ice cores, but confirmed by over 3 million seawater samples in the past decades.
and your decoupling of the anthropogenic flows from the equilibrium dynamics.
Most natural in/out fluxes are caused by temperature related process: from seasonal to multi-millennia. As long as the temperature changes remain similar, there is no reason for these processes to take the extra human emissions away, no more reason than that they don’t take all CO2 out of the atmosphere to the last molecule.
The only way that can be done is by the influence of the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere on some processes.
Thus there IS an effective decoupling between most of the natural fluxes which are two-way temperature controlled and the removal of an extra addition of human (and volcanic) CO2, which is only possible by pressure sensitive processes.
“The natural equilibrium IS a given over the past at least 800,000 years. Not only from ice cores, but confirmed by over 3 million seawater samples in the past decades.”
Not in the slightest. As far as the last several decades go, this is the very question we are debating, so it is begging the question. As far as the ice cores go, they are A) questionable B) there is no requirement that the dynamical state of the climate today has to be the same as it was 800,000 years ago.
“As long as the temperature changes remain similar, there is no reason for these processes to take the extra human emissions away, no more reason than that they don’t take all CO2 out of the atmosphere to the last molecule.”
This is again begging the question. You are drawing conclusions based on the answer you have already settled on, and using those conclusions to justify the answer you have settled on.
“Thus there IS an effective decoupling between most of the natural fluxes which are two-way temperature controlled and the removal of an extra addition of human (and volcanic) CO2, which is only possible by pressure sensitive processes.”
There can be no decoupling. Any model that purports to explain CO2 concentration must be comprehensive. It must explain the natural equilibrium, and it must subject anthropogenic emissions to the same processes which establish the natural equilibrium.
Original response disappeared. Apologies if it resurfaces. Synopsis:
A) You are begging the question throughout
B) There can be no decoupling. The same compound must be treated the same, no matter its source.
Bart:
there is no requirement that the dynamical state of the climate today has to be the same as it was 800,000 years ago.
It was the same until a few hundred years ago. It should be today, but it isn’t. There is no indication that any natural flux increased a fourfold or more in the last few hundred years. There is no indication that Henry’s law ceased to exist. The only point that changed with confidence is the addition of fossil fuel CO2 by humans with a fourfold increase since 1959.
The natural equilibrium between ocean surface pCO2 and pCO2 in the atmosphere per Henry’s law is ~290 ppmv for the current average ocean surface temperature, no matter static or fully dynamic all over the globe.
You are drawing conclusions based on the answer you have already settled on
I draw conclusions from observations:
– natural fluxes cause a residence time of ~5 years or a throughput of ~150 GtC in ~830 GtC in the atmosphere. Confirmed by many different estimates, based on different observations.
– human emissions are at in total twice the increase in the atmosphere, both increasing a fourfold since 1958. Either human emissions are the cause of the increase, or some natural flux increased a fourfold over the same period, dwarfing human emissions.
– more recent estimates show a lengthening of the residence time vs. earlier estimates, thus a rather stable natural throughput in a growing CO2 mass. No indications are pointing to any substantial increase of any natural CO2 flux or cycle.
There can be no decoupling. Any model that purports to explain CO2 concentration must be comprehensive.
Bart, al what you stick too is a “temperature explains all” theory. There are many processes at work in nature, some mostly temperature driven, some pressure driven and some mixed.
There is not the slightest reason that the seasonal temperature changes will grow one leaf or apple more if the temperature change over the seasons didn’t increase or decrease.
It did grow more leaves, because the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere increased with 30%. That is of a complete different order than the CO2 exchanges due to the growth and wane of leaves over the seasons and largely independent of each other.
I have shown you that it is possible to explain the same graph with a combination of temperature for most of the variability around the trend and human emissions for most of the trend. Your solution thus is not unique and one need to show which one is the right one by looking at which is more consistent with the observations.
That human emissions are the main cause of the increase is consistent with all observations, that temperature is the main cause is consistent with none…
“It was the same until a few hundred years ago.”
Begging the question.
“I draw conclusions from observations:”
You use the observations to construct a storyline based on your own peculiar interpretation.
“There are many processes at work in nature, some mostly temperature driven, some pressure driven and some mixed.”
Without a doubt. But, what we have here is a very clear signal relating two quantities that must be related in some fashion. The data tell us what fashion. And, what they are telling us is unmistakably that the major influence on atmospheric CO2 is temperature driving the rate of change.
“I have shown you that it is possible to explain the same graph with a combination of temperature for most of the variability around the trend and human emissions for most of the trend.”
It is a-physical, because it illegitimately decouples the equilibrium dynamics from the anthropogenic processing.
“That human emissions are the main cause of the increase is consistent with all observations, that temperature is the main cause is consistent with none…”
It is not consistent with the observation that the rate of change is proportional to temperature anomaly. The temperature relationship is consistent with all observations, just not necessarily your arbitrary interpretation of them.
“That human emissions are the main cause of the increase is consistent with all observations, that temperature is the main cause is consistent with none…”
It isn’t consistent with the fact that the rate of change is proportional to temperature anomaly. My model is physically sound. Yours assumes a magical, natural equilibrium that simply exists for no particular reason.
Bart,
It is getting confusing with parts everywhere…
You use the observations to construct a storyline based on your own peculiar interpretation.
Several observations are unambiguous. Like the drop in δ13C in the atmosphere, vegetation and the ocean surface. Which proves that the oceans can’t be the source…
It is a-physical, because it illegitimately decouples the equilibrium dynamics from the anthropogenic processing.
CO2 from whatever source is treated the same way by different processes. The main (seasonal) in/out fluxes are quite indifferent for any extra CO2, whatever the source, but the oceans are more sensitive for increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere, whatever the source.
The removal of any extra CO2, whatever the source, is of a different order than the seasonal exchanges.
And you have a lot to learn about what is “consistent” and what not…
TTP:
Indeed, the offset in delta CO2 is NOT explained by the correlation with temperature over decadal time scales. No doubt, it’s due largely to anthropogenic sources. However, it requires blind faith to attribute decadal-scale global surface temperature variations to those sources. What would be required for such CAUSAL attribution is strong low-frequency coherence at decadal (and longer) periods, along with cross-spectral phase LEADS of CO2 relative to T. With yearly-average GST estimates uncorrupted by UHI, one finds weak coherence, at best, and CO2 consistently LAGGING temperature.
It is only through the artiface of UHI-corrupted and ad-hoc adjusted GST estimates that any credible causal relationship with the Mauna Loa CO2 record can be entertained. Sadly, those who rely upon simplistic “trend analysis” for their attributions have no concept of operative transfer functions in dynamic systems–which are specified by cross-spectral relationships between input and output–and lack the field experience required to properly vet station records, eliminating corrupted ones.
Termites?
Bart says
temperature is driving CO2, not CO2 driving temperature.
Henry says
anyone who knows a bit about chemistry knows that the first smoke from a kettle that you switched on, is the CO2 being removed from it. This is what the UV from the sun is doing to the top layers of the oceans.
So Bart is right.
Like others, I don’t see the relevance of this whole debate when we have never really discussed the results of Arrhenius and Tyndall and why in principle their predictions/evaluations are not valid to theorize that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming, rather than cooling.
henryp,
your namesake Henry would disagree, and so do over 3 million seawater samples: the influence of temperature on CO2 levels is not more than 16 ppmv/K over very long periods (glacials – interglacials) and smaller at shorter periods (seasonal to centuries).
Thus some 10 ppmv of the 110 ppmv can be caused by temperature, the rest of the 110 ppmv is from humans, burning fossil fuels…
You are only considering the fast dynamics of equlibration with the ocean’s surface waters. There is a much longer equilibration time needed for the deep oceans.
Bart,
The exchange between atmosphere and deep oceans is much too slow to have any short time effect on the dynamic equilibrium between ocean surface and atmosphere. During glacial – interglacial transitions CO2 changed with 0,02 ppmv/year. In opposite direction with 0.0066 ppmv/year. Currently humans add ~4,5 ppmv/year or ~225 times more than the “fast” natural exchange with the deep oceans.
Only by increasing the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere far beyond the long term equilibrium, about half of human emissions are sequestered by the deep oceans and the biosphere.
Yep, Bart, there ain’t a dimes worth of difference between digging co2 up out of the ocean (via the thermocline) and outgassing it verses digging it up out of the ground (via fossil fuels) and burning it…
Fonzie,
Ther is only one small difference: slightly more CO2 is buried again near the poles into the deep oceans than digged up near the equator, while burying again the CO2 from digged coal, oil and gas needs a little more time…
“The exchange between atmosphere and deep oceans is much too slow to have any short time effect on the dynamic equilibrium between ocean surface and atmosphere.”
It is precisely the slow exchange which provides the integral-like response over relatively short (compared to many centuries turnover time) timelines. Temperature modulation of the exchange, however, is not slow. Taken together, these give us the response we see – temperature modulated rate of change of the CO2 concentration, i.e., an integral response of CO2 to temperature.
Bart,
The deep oceans exchanges play near zero role in the equilibrium between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. Over the past 165 years, the natural exchange would have been around +3.3 ppmv from the deep oceans exchange if we may apply the same “speed” as during a deglaciation. Thus near the complete “static” equilibrium is between the ocean surface and the atmosphere on periods of centuries.
Temperature modulation of the deep ocean exchanges is minimal at 16 μatm/K for the ocean surface: less than 5%/K of the direct in/out flux exchanges between deep oceans and atmosphere via upwelling and sink places. Fully compensated by a 16 ppmv/K CO2 change in the atmosphere:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/upwelling_temp.jpg
Moreover, observations of ΔpCO2 over all oceans show that the oceans are a net sink for CO2, not a source, despite a small warming since the LIA.
“The deep oceans exchanges play near zero role in the equilibrium between the ocean surface and the atmosphere.”
Warning: assertion alert. Just because you proclaim it so does not make it so, Ferdinand.
“Moreover, observations of ΔpCO2 over all oceans show that the oceans are a net sink for CO2, not a source, despite a small warming since the LIA.”
Excruciatingly dumb pseudo-mass balance argument again.
Bart:
Warning: assertion alert.
A temperature change of ~7°C in 5,000 years did give a change in CO2 of ~110 ppmv with a lag of ~800 years over a deglaciation as a lagged response of the deep oceans.
The temperature drop between the MWP (around 1200 AD) and the LIA (around 1600 AD) should now have its effect: a drop of ~13 ppmv in atmospheric CO2 levels over the next 400 years as a lagged response of the deep oceans…
Excruciatingly dumb pseudo-mass balance argument again.
Only from observations, something you obviously don’t like, because they refute your theory:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/mean.shtml
From Feely e.a.:
Distribution of the climatological mean annual sea-air CO2 flux (moles CO2/yr) for the reference year 1995 representing non-El Niño conditions…
…This map yields an annual oceanic uptake flux for CO2 of 2.2 ± 0.4 PgC/yr.
“A temperature change of ~7°C in 5,000 years did give a change in CO2 of ~110 ppmv with a lag of ~800 years over a deglaciation as a lagged response of the deep oceans.”
Maybe it did, and maybe it didn’t. We cannot know for sure, as the ice core measurements cannot be corroborated.
But, it has no relevance to your assertion.
“Only from observations, something you obviously don’t like, because they refute your theory:”
All observations are consistent with either hypothesis, as they must be. It is a tautology – if the atmospheric concentration goes up, then the concentration of the surface oceans will go up, and vice versa.
BTW, I explain the fundamental flaw in the pseudo-mass balance argument once again down below.
You’ve hung your hat on two very questionable premises, and one very questionable assertion. To wit:
1) The pseudo-mass balance argument, which is hopelessly wrong
2) The absolute certainty of the ice core proxies
The questionable assertion is that the present state of the climate is the same as it was for the entire ice core record.
If you winnow your arguments down, these very questionable assumptions form the basis for your case. One of the legs of that table is non-existent (pseudo-mass balance), and the other two are very wobbly at best. Take them away, and what have you got? A whole bunch of nothing.
Bart,
Again…
1. The ice core measurements from cores with extreme differences in average (local) temperature and (local) accumulation rate show the same CO2 levels for the same average period. Even with an overlap of ~20 years with direct measurements at the South Pole.
The ice core measurements show a similar drop in δ13C level as coralline sponges in the ocean surface over the past 600 years. That is in direct ratio to human emissions and the increase in the atmosphere (as measured in ice cores, firn and atmosphere). That means that at least the δ13C drop is directly confirmed by an independent observation. As human CO2 and human δ13C are intimately connected, the confirmation extends to CO2 levels.
Further, you have zero indication that the carbon cycle between the deep oceans and the atmosphere substantially increased. If that was the case, the δ13C level in the atmosphere would increase, while we see a firm decrease, not seen in 800,000 years. Thus if there were changes, these are too small to be detected.
Thus deep ocean changes play very little role in the exchanges between atmosphere and ocean surface over the period of interest.
2. All observations are consistent with either hypothesis
The observation that the oceans for at least 30 years follows the inrease in the atmosphere is consistent with your hypotesis that the oceans are the source of the increase in the atmosphere? Who do you think to fool with that kind of remark?
3. The mass balance must be obeyed at any moment of time and space. I just shredded your “alternative explanation” into the dustbin. See below…
You shredded nothing. It’s pitiful. An absolute flail, totally disconnected from reality. I have responded, but it has not appeared yet. If it does not soon, I will repost.
Desorption – Absorption Rachet vs changing production/sequestration?
CO2 desorption is faster than absorption. See CO2 Temperature and Ice Ages
Could we be seeing a Desorption-Absorption Ratchet?
How much of the difference between the 2 ppm difference between the 5-6 ppm decrease versus 7-8 ppm increase is due to increased CO2 and how much due to lower absorption over desorption?
Until that is quantitatively answered, we do not know how much anthropogenic CO2 is contributing to atmospheric CO2 increase etc.
David,
For the ice ages, the long term changes did involve the full ~800 year cycle over the deep oceans at a rate between 0.0066 ppmv/year (cooling) and 0.02 ppmv/year (warming). Not comparable to the current increase in the atmosphere of 2 ppmv/year with 4 ppmv/year emissions, which is much faster than the deep oceans can absorb in the same year as emitted.
The observed e-fold decay rate for the extra CO2 pressure above steady state (into the oceans + biosphere) is ~51 years or a half life of ~35 years. Absorption rates:
– Ocean surface: ~0.5 GtC/year
– Deep oceans: ~3 GtC/year
– Biosphere: ~1 GtC/year
Total ~4.5 GtC/year or about half human emissions.
That makes ~2.3 ppmv increase in the atmosphere caused by human emissions. Seasonal cycles are entirely caused by temperature changes over the seasons and are hardly influenced by the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere, except for the small extra uptake, which is largely independent of temperature changes.
Ferdinand
You avoided the issue at hand. Sorry to tell you again: there is no man made warming. At any rate, the warming is not even global, as I found out:
Concerned to show that man made warming (AGW ) is correct and indeed happening, I thought that here [in Pretoria, South Africa] I could easily prove that. Namely the logic following from AGW theory is that more CO2 would trap heat on earth, hence we should find minimum temperature (T) rising pushing up the mean T. Here, in the winter months, we hardly have any rain but we have many people burning fossil fuels to keep warm at night. On any particular cold winter’s day that results in the town area being covered with a greyish layer of air, viewable on a high hill outside town in the early morning.
I figured that as the population increased over the past 40 years, the results of my analysis of the data [of a Pretoria weather station] must show minimum T rising, particularly in the winter months. Much to my surprise I found that the opposite was happening: minimum T here was falling, any month….I first thought that somebody must have made a mistake: the extra CO2 was cooling the atmosphere, ‘not warming it. As a chemist, that made sense to me as I knew that whilst there were absorptions of CO2 in the area of the spectrum where earth emits, there are also the areas of absorption in the 1-2 um and the 4-5 um range where the sun emits. Not convinced either way by my deliberations and discussions as on a number of websites, I first looked at a number of weather stations around me, to give me an indication of what was happening:
The results puzzled me even more. Somebody [God/Nature] was throwing a ball at me…..The speed of cooling followed a certain pattern, best described by a quadratic function.
I carefully looked at my earth globe and decided on a particular sampling procedure to find out what, if any, the global result would be. Here is my final result on that:
Hence, looking at my final Rsquare on that, I figured out that there is no AGW, at least not measurable.
Arguing with me that 99% of all scientists disagree with me is useless. You cannot have an “election” about science.
You only need one man to get it right.
henryp on April 8, 2017 at 7:54 am
You only need one man to get it right.
Yes henryp: we all know you are from your personal point of view the one and only.
Henryp,
I was reacting on the first part: temperature rises CO2, which is true, but not 110 ppmv, only maybe 10 ppmv since the LIA…
I also disagree on the second part, as the increased absorption of IR in the CO2 band is actually masured by satellites and the increased backradiation in the same band towards the surface is measured too by two ground stations. Which still gives very little increase in temperature of the surface…
Not that I am afraid of that: in my opinion, warmer is better and the observed increase in temperature and CO2 is far more beneficial than harmful…
Ferdinand
It seems then we are agreed now that there is no man made warming?
I don’t see the relevance of this whole debate, then, when we have never really discussed the results of Arrhenius and Tyndall and why in principle their predictions/evaluations are not valid to theorize that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming, rather than cooling.
Namely, apart from the absorption in the 14-15 um band where earth emits, CO2 has absorptions in the 1-2um and 4-5 um band where the sun emits. Most recently, we also found a certain small band in the UV range which is how [currently] we can identify its presence on other planets.
Particularly, graphs 6 (bottom) and 7 of the report prove my point.{i.e. we can even measure the energy (radiation) reflected from earth by the CO2 via the moon}
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/disksite/library/turnbull06a.pdf
Henryp,
We do agree that CO2 has little effect on temperature/climate, not that it is zero, that is a scientific step too far. Anyway, more beneficial than harmful…
That I always react on the (mainly human) origin of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is because sceptics shoot in their own foot by insisting that “something else” is the cause of the increase, while all evidence points to the human origin…
We’re looking for causation. One before the other. So timelags: temp rises before or after CO2?
Douglas,
T leads CO2 over the past at least 800,000 years until a few hundred years ago when humans settled and started to use land and herd cattle and in increasing amounts using fossil fuels. Here for a combination of ice cores over the past 1,000 years:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/antarctic_cores_001kyr_large.jpg
The increase after 1800 can’t be explained by temperature, as that was probably not higher than in 1200 (the MWP).
Still on short time periodes (seasonal, 1-3 years) temperature still leads the variability in rate of change, as the article shows, but that is only for the (+/- 1.5 ppmv) “noise” around the (90 pmv) trend, which is not caused by temperature.
Ferdinand. The chart is constructed on the assumption gas concentrations in glaciers remain static at ppm level for hundreds of years. How could it be so at molecular level when glaciers themselves behave like viscous liquid?
jaakkokateenkorva,
Indeed, ice is plastic, I have foto’s of glaciers in Alaska which show the same behaviour as sound waves after passing a narrow opening…
That is the reason why most ice cores are taken on the summits of ice domes. as these have little sideward flows, only the deeper layers are more compressed and get thinner.
The gas inclusions simply follow the ice, but have no direct connections with each other, thus gas exchanges are very limited, if at all. One has attempted to find a theoretical migration of CO2 in relative “warm” (coastal) ice cores (-23°C) ice cores by looking at the CO2 increase near remelt layers. That shows that the resolution broadens from 20 to 22 years at middle depth and to 40 years at full depth:
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3773250
That plays no role at all for the much colder (-40°C) inland ice cores of Antarctica.
See for more background information:
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/16/8343.full
“CO2 has always been a participant in keeping our planet about 33 °C warmer than it would be in its absence”
==========
actually, the 33C is better explained by the conversion between Potential Energy (which does not affect temperature) and Kinetic Energy (which does affect temperature).
The average temperature of the Troposphere is 33C cooler than the surface. This is at approximately 5 km altitude on average. This temperature determined by radiation from the sun.
Without vertical circulation, the Troposphere would all be the same temperature due to conduction, and both the surface and the Troposphere would be 33C cooler.
However, due to circulation, the Troposphere below 5 km is warmer that what the sun provides, because PE is converted into KE. Above 5km the Troposphere is cooler than what the sun provides, because KE is converted into PE. This PE/KE conversion, combined with the condensation of water, gives us the Lapse Rate which on average is about 6.5 C/km.
Combining these two figures we get: 5 km x 6.5 C/km = 32.5 C = 33 C warmer without any need for CO2.
The energy to provide the 33 C of warming at the surface comes for a cooling of the atmosphere above 5 km, due to vertical circulation of the Troposphere in a gravitational field, powered differential heating by the sun.
Correct.
The Earth’s surface is 33C warmer than the S-B equation predicts simply because PE is converted to KE in descending air columns having previously been converted from KE to PE in ascending columns.
The greenhouse effect is a consequence of atmospheric mass conducting energy in the form of KE from the surface, lifting that KE to height whilst converting it to PE and then later returning that PE to the surface in the form of KE which then adds to incoming solar radiation.
Nothing to do with radiation physics at all.
ferdberple on April 8, 2017 at 11:46 am
actually, the 33C is better explained by the conversion between Potential Energy (which does not affect temperature) and Kinetic Energy (which does affect temperature).
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.de/2015/07/physicist-richard-feynman-proved.html
This is probably the origin of your statement.
I know of Feynman’s ideas. But your assertion (my bold emphasis above) needs a proof, isn’t it? We have here two concurrent theories, but we do not know which one is better.
The PE/KE concept fits observations, complies with the Gas Laws and provides the foundation for the Standard Atmosphere.
None of that requires any consideration of radiative physics.
The radiative theory is surplus to requirements and therefore wrong.
See here for why it is wrong:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/neutralising-radiative-imbalances-within-convecting-atmospheres/
Stephen Wilde on April 8, 2017 at 2:41 pm
See here for why it is wrong:
…
Published by… Stephen Wilde ha ha ha
Come back here Mr Wilde when you will have presented your ideas in a peer-reviewed paper…
Anybody can pretend anything on his/her own blog.
I could say the same to you…come back here when you have presented your ideas in a peer-reviewed paper …while I don’t agree with some of Mr. Wilde’s ideas, at least he HAS THE COURAGE TO PUT HIS REAL NAME TO HIS WORDS, unlike you. Take a 48 hour timeout to think about it.
Wow, so Bindidon has to publish a peer reviewed paper, but you don’t require Stephen Wilde do do the same. How about if Bindidon publishes his ideas on a blog….that would be fair wouldn’t it?
Anthony Watts on April 8, 2017 at 6:31 pm
Replied via another channel…
To Ferninand Engelbeen. You say that “The main effect is on tropical vegetation”. The photosynthesis rate increases, when the temperature increases. The increased photosynthesis decreases the CO2 concentration. How do you explain that the temperature peaks – ocean temperature in my model and global temperature in the graph by blcjr – matches almost perfectly with the CO2 peaks? If your explanation would be correct, the opposite would happen: a higher temperature decreases the CO2 concentration.
aveolilla,
Temperature increase especially in the extratropic latitudes increases – or even starts – photosynthesis. That gives the huge sink in the summer months for the NH, where most of the extratropic forests are.
That is not the case for the tropics: higher ocean temperatures during an El Niño mean changed rain patterns and large part of the tropic forests dry out and release more CO2 than they take away. That is measured by looking at the O2 use in the atmosphere: after subtracting the O2 use by fossil fuel burning, the remainder is what the biosphere uses or produces. In most years, more O2 is produced than used, thus the biosphere is a net sink for CO2. During El Niño years, the biosphere is a net source of CO2. See:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Figure 7.
In the case of an El Niño, both the oceans and the biosphere are lesser sinks or even temporarely sources of CO2, thus still the correlation with (ocean) temperatures hold, but the main reaction is from tropical vegetation, not only from the oceans… In the case of a huge eruption like the 1991 Pinatubo, the opposite happens: temperatures drop somewhat, but again the main effect is in vegetation: the scattering of sunlight by the volcanic debris enhanced photosynthesis, as leaves normally in the shadow of other leaves for part of the day, then received more light from another direction…
This is clearly visible in the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes as is the case for vegetation uptake/release, while for the oceans CO2 and δ13C changes parallel each other.
This is fundamentally a misdirection. Seasonal variation is entirely beside the point.
The plot that headlines this article is comparing yearly averages of the rate of change of CO2 with temperature. The variations that lie on top of one another are on the order of 5 years or so on average. So, seasonal variations have nothing to do with it.
Bart,
My response and the work of Battle e.a. is specifically the reacton of the biosphere (mainly the tropical forests) on ocean surface temperature changes, which is the topic of interest.
That largely refutes your temperature-explains-all narrative, as tropical forests react opposit to temperature increases (less CO2 absorption, more emission) than extratropical forests on seasonal temperature changes. Thus short term (1-3 years) CO2 variability is mainly from tropical forests, but the long term increase is NOT from the biosphere, as that is a net sink for CO2 over periods longer than 1-3 years. The earth is greening…
Even “if” the overall CO2 increase was also caused by temperature, in any case, that is not the same process as that causes the variability around the trend…
Thus anyway, the same factor used for variability and trend has no merit…