From NASA Goddard via the OCO-2 Satellite
Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere through human activities. It is also influenced by natural exchange with the land and ocean. This visualization provides a high-resolution, three-dimensional view of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2015. The visualization was created using output from the GEOS modeling system, developed and maintained by scientists at NASA. The height of Earth’s atmosphere and topography have been vertically exaggerated and appear approximately 400 times higher than normal to show the complexity of the atmospheric flow. Measurements of carbon dioxide from NASA’s second Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) spacecraft are incorporated into the model every 6 hours to update, or “correct,” the model results, called data assimilation.
As the visualization shows, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be mixed and transported by winds in the blink of an eye. For several decades, scientists have measured carbon dioxide at remote surface locations and occasionally from aircraft. The OCO-2 mission represents an important advance in the ability to observe atmospheric carbon dioxide. OCO-2 collects high-precision, total column measurements of carbon dioxide (from the sensor to Earth’s surface) during daylight conditions. While surface, aircraft, and satellite observations all provide valuable information about carbon dioxide, these measurements do not tell us the amount of carbon dioxide at specific heights throughout the atmosphere or how it is moving across countries and continents. Numerical modeling and data assimilation capabilities allow scientists to combine different types of measurements (e.g., carbon dioxide and wind measurements) from various sources (e.g., satellites, aircraft, and ground-based observation sites) to study how carbon dioxide behaves in the atmosphere and how mountains and weather patterns influence the flow of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Scientists can also use model results to understand and predict where carbon dioxide is being emitted and removed from the atmosphere and how much is from natural processes and human activities.
Carbon dioxide variations are largely controlled by fossil fuel emissions and seasonal fluxes of carbon between the atmosphere and land biosphere.
For example, dark red and orange shades represent regions where carbon dioxide concentrations are enhanced by carbon sources. During Northern Hemisphere fall and winter, when trees and plants begin to lose their leaves and decay, carbon dioxide is released in the atmosphere, mixing with emissions from human sources. This, combined with fewer trees and plants removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, allows concentrations to climb all winter, reaching a peak by early spring. During Northern Hemisphere spring and summer months, plants absorb a substantial amount of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, thus removing it from the atmosphere and change the color to blue (low carbon dioxide concentrations). This three-dimensional view also shows the impact of fires in South America and Africa, which occur with a regular seasonal cycle. Carbon dioxide from fires can be transported over large distances, but the path is strongly influenced by large mountain ranges like the Andes. Near the top of the atmosphere, the blue color indicates air that last touched the Earth more than a year before. In this part of the atmosphere, called the stratosphere, carbon dioxide concentrations are lower because they haven’t been influenced by recent increases in emissions.
Joseph Fournier writes on Facebook of the surprising thing he’s found:
I have quantified the average ‘lag’ between the seasonally detrended monthly rate of CO2 concentration change at both the South Pole and at Mauna Loa and there is virtually ZERO LAG as indicated by the symmetric function around the y-axis. The second curve is the ‘lag’ in the number of months between when the Pacific Trade Winds decelerate and when the seasonally detrended monthly rate of change in the tropospheric CO2 concentration as measured at the South Pole station reaches its maximum growth rate. This model ignores empirical data as it shows that all the CO2 emissions are in the North Hemisphere and yet monitoring stations in both hemispheres suggest a common area source in the tropics.
NASA: Hey let’s get someone with a Welsh accent to read this. That always lends an air of intelligence and trustworthiness.
Brummagen. That’s the accent most people equate with ‘stupid’..
This is totally unacceptable, we don’t want to see accentism in this blog.
Except Australians maybe, they speak funny
That’s funnily !
g
Never mind the accent mate, did you see how voracious those bloody plants are!! If we humans didn’t pump CO2 into the atmosphere those greedy flora would eat the bloody lot and we would all FREEZE! And as for breeding, they make rabbits seem sterile. Cut the bastaerds down and burn em I say.
🙂
At the very least the planet’s flora do seem to be a very, very powerful energy sink, stashing away energy in thir own biomass at around 30-40MJ / kG as I understand it and at the same time creating a powerful energy transfer to the upper atmosphere at a rate of 2230 kJ/kG via water transiration as part of their own chemistry.
Interesting and quietly comforting.
All the more reason not to cut down forests and burn them to keep coal in the ground.
and again the sth hemisphere gets zero mention
lending credence to the fact majority co2 is nth centric;-)
“the world’s drylands host 40% more forests than thought, the team writes today in Science. That’s more than a 9% bump in total global forest coverage, or two-thirds the size of the Amazon.”
Earth’s forests grew 9% in a new satellite survey
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/earths-forests-grew-9-new-satellite-survey
A Welsh accent? If that’s a Welsh accent then I am a Chinaman.
Edinburgh is the most trustworthy accent.
To me the Rhodesian accent is the most trustworthy. Unfortunately it is dying out.
That is one of my pet peeves as well. So they sound British does that mean we should automaticaly bow to their superior understanding?
But CO2 is well known to be well mixed in the atmosphere, so where do they get these multi-colored picture maps from ??
Just asking.
G
so, another natural cycle, no matter who reads it.
The most important greenhouse gas is water by at least one order of magnitude.
Anthropogenic water emissions dwarf anthropogenic CO2 emissions. link
People always ignore water emissions when they’re talking about CAGW. Why?
Harder to tax.
“Carbon” sounds menacing; water doesn’t.
I dunno, Ball… I’ve never heard of CO2 floods or drowning in CO2. And if Japan had their preference, they’d probably like a CO2 tsunami instead of the seawater kind.
Dihydrogen monoxide sounds scary enough…in fact, it can kill you! At least you can breathe CO2.
RockyRoad May 12, 2017 at 1:22 pm
There was an episode of CO² drowning some years ago. I cannot remember where. A caldero full of co² collapsed, drowning the village below with asphyxiating co²
Stephen Richards “There was an episode of CO² drowning some years ago. I cannot remember where. A caldero full of co² collapsed, drowning the village below with asphyxiating co²”
You’re probably thinking of Lake Nyos in Cameroon. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/defusing-africas-killer-lakes-88765263/
Pipes have been installed at Lake Nyos to discourage buildup of very high levels of CO2 in the bottom layers of the lake.
Carbon tax? Is it not also a Oxygen tax, as I recall there is more oxygen in CO 2 than Carbon, or is my memory of chemistry so weak? Same for sequestration, Why would we want to sequester Oxygen?
They did at least qualify their exaggeration of CO2’s importance…
Human activities release a lot of water vapor into the atmosphere.
Just think of all those cooling towers the activists like to take pictures of.
no sweat!
I wouldn’t even give them that. There has been a long term increasing trend in relative humidity in the continental United States per figure 7 in this link
The Colorado River no longer flows to the ocean mostly because of human activity. That water almost all ends up in the atmosphere.
What a rabbit hole!
Tell them to get back to us when they can separate the naturally occuring CO2 from the “human activities” CO2.
As a bonus, they can show us a CGI of planet without any CO2 at all.
(I think the only colors they’d need would be blue and brown.)
Gunga Din:
“Tell them to get back to us when they can separate the naturally occuring CO2 from the “human activities” CO2.”
carbon isotopes.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
crackers345 May 12, 2017 at 4:10 pm
Again, were you a regular reader here instead of commenter, you’d know the limitations of the isotope method.
Commieb, the snow pack is more than 150% this year so the Colorado will be moving’ right along this year. The snow pack in the BC interior is a continuing flood risk in the Okanagan. Aquifers are getting recharged and the scientific-politico set is quiet and unhappy.
Chimp: what scientific papers
disprove the carbon isotope conclusions
about manmade vs natural?
crackers345 May 12, 2017 at 5:13 pm
In science, we don’t prove or disprove. We confirm or falsify. Which you’d also know had you any scientific education.
Nor do “papers” matter. Only confirming or showing false. The vast majority of papers are utter garbage.
The problem with isotopes and CO2 is similar to the problems with radiometric dating. It’s not straightforward and clearcut, as you’d know had you ever taken the relevant classes.
I happen to have concluded, based upon a preponderance of the evidence, that most of the 120 ppm increase in CO2 alleged to have occurred since c. AD 1850 is from human sources. But that is by no means a sure thing. Isotope ratios aren’t as dispositive as you’ve been led to believe.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/02/most-of-the-rise-in-co2-likely-comes-from-natural-sources/#sthash.ohV9pJAl.dpbs
This supports why we need more Carbon Dioxide in the environment and not less. It also supports why there is way too much Ice in the environment, Cold air and water retains more Carbon Dioxide than Warm does that retains more than hot does. The higher concentrations of CO2 are during the Colder Months than the Warmer Months and near the Equator it is very neutral to the low scale of their measurements. In a true Interglacial there was NO Ice on Earth and flora and fauna increased globally in a near Tropical Climate at the North Pole and areas that are Deserts now were hotter, yet grew flora and had increased fauna. This was because there was more water in the atmosphere that rained across those areas. With the increasing Ice at the Antarctic and at the Arctic because of the Global Temperature not Warming – and actually Cooling, the CO2 remains higher during the Colder Months when most Flora is dormant and decaying to add to the CO2 in the atmosphere. Remove the Ice and that removes the problem by creating longer flora growing periods of Sinks.
Why is it that people tend to only see Flora as Sinks when addressing Carbon Dioxide? Carbon Dioxide is Food/Fertilizer for Flora and makes up the Majority of their Bio-Mass. Fauna are either Herbivorous, Carnivorous or Omnivorous. A Herbivore eats Flora that is a carbon sink thereby transferring that Carbon from the Flora to the Fauna that is a Sink, that produces more Carbon Dioxide than it inhaled when it exhales, that other Flora uses as a Sink. Just as an Omnivorous or Carnivorous is a Sink by ingesting both Flora and Fauna by direct or/and proxy. When Fauna Sinks are alive or die or respire they return much of their stored Carbon as breathing, excrement and decayed Bio-Mass. This is an exponentially increase of Carbon Cycle in the environment that most of it is as Carbon Dioxide and as Sinks.
Its interesting to look at H2O vs CO2 emissions from fossil fuels combustion and their expected relative impacts. I thought I read somewhere the average water vapour content of the atmosphere is 4%, but that global average is made up of 0% wv in the part of the atmosphere below freezing point and a higher % where water vapour exists as a gas.
DaveR: there’s a great deal of misunderstanding
about water vapor on this blog.
you’re adding to it.
When gasoline or diesel is burned, the number of “new” H2O molecules are produced and added to the atmosphere than is the number of CO2 molecules that are added to the atmosphere.
Not to mention that H2O absorbs a greater range of IR. But then the question is: Why are H2O greenhouse effects ignored while all the blatherskating is about CO2 when H2O concentrations in the atmosphere can be greater than 50,000 ppmv.
This is interesting. I’d thought Venus being 30% nearer to the Sun and getting about double insolation. We get 1.36 kW/m² and Venus gets 2.6 kW/m² according to your guy. You’d think that extra kilowatt/m² affects?
High in the venusian atmosphere, at 55 km, the temperature is quite sane 300K. Incidentally, the pressure at 50 km is about the same as at the Earth.
The reason why Venus is freaking hot, is basically that there is a lot of atmosphere below 1 atm. Also, there is no water/oceans, nor a strong magnetic field, nor moon, nor similar tectonic movents as here. Comparison purporting to say 100 ppm CO2 is dangerous because 90 bar of CO2 (that is about million times more) is unhealthy is somewhat misguided.
But, of course, you are just a child trolling.
“Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas”
Doesn’t using the term ‘most important’ when describing a ‘greenhouse gas’ expose the glaring absence of any science? Why is there no scale of any sort? Why isn’t anything being measured that can be compared?
It is important our crops love it. I guess they don’t mind a bit of water either.
plants they like some co2. too
much and the temperature
gets too hot for them. that’s why
there are no plants
on venus.
” Why is there no scale of any sort?”
There is a scale, shown throughtout. Here is a close-up:
There’s lots of color, but the range is only 390 to 408 ppm.
Crackers345 …
Are you crackers??? This is a science blog. Please discuss science … not internet myths.
@ crackers345
You echo my house troll David Appell . At least you point out that the reason there’s no life on Venus is because it’s too hot . ( likewise there’s no life on Mars despite a 0.95 CO2 atmosphere because it’s too cold . )
But , most importantly , it’s an undergraduate exercise to prove no spectral , ie : greenhouse , phenomenon can explain why Venus’s surface temperature is 2.25 times the gray body temperature in its orbit much less the much lower radiative equilibrium temperature given by its ~ 0.9 albedo with respect to the Sun’s spectrum .
So Nick, I see a funny shaped multicolored picture. So just again, what IS the scale ; there’s no scale on the Y-axis !!
G
Because that’s the REAL inconvenient truth
Because we dont add water to the atmosphere on a long term basis.
Go ahead. Shoot water into the sky
Now emit gigatons of c02
One will remain for centuries
The other will fall to the ground
Mind where you stand
Stephen – both CO2 and water vapour have been ‘up there’ billions of years, so your comparison isn’t spot on. If we talk about residency of an individual molecule of CO2 then, sure, it is longer than that of a water molecule, but not centuries.
Seems pretty clear that temperature has a lot to with water ‘falling to the ground’ and that’s true whether the temperature is greenhoused by water, CO2 or anything else. Temperature is just temperature. So to produce an enhanced greenhouse effect from CO2 you have to appeal to the different spatial and altitude distributions of water and CO2 in the atmosphere rather than residency time. From what I can see the models do try to reproduce this, but in discussions such as the present one it is rarely examined properly. Not even sure the mainstream can articulate it properly. When I tried to find out about this a couple of years back, the only answer I got (realclimate, I think) was ‘water cannot potentiate itself because of short residence time’. That seemed to me a very inadequate response..
But I’m sure you know better.
Centuries.
Centuries!
centuries
Nope, bogus any way you state it, Mosher.
Not that there are verifiable replicable calculations; only the card shuffling, pea hiding shell caps.
Isn’t odd that the NOAA group runs away from year round OCO-2 data?
The above 3d model is a model allegedly updated with OCO-2 CO2 data infrequently; i.e. every six hours.
Only the OCO-2 satellite has a rather slow data gathering cycle:
OCO-2 uses two measurement points and over two consecutive 16 day orbit paths capture a full product for each observation point process.
That is a full 32 days to collect a full global product for either method.
Six hour updates, 32 days, 128 six hour cycles.
The OCO-2 3d model is just another one of NOAA’s distractions and diversions. After two and half years trying to avoid OCO-2 data, this is the best NOAA can do!?
Every six hours, the OCO-2 satellite data hashing system reports the CO2 concentration for a total column of atmosphere; for some vague amount of OCO data.
Not to worry!
Several folks, including here have used the OCO-2 data over long term to demonstrate hemispheric CO2 changes.
Very little CO2 is uninvolved in Earth’s CO2 processes. Leaving that centuries of residual CO2 story as bogus as NOAA temperature adjustments.
So you r saying that irrigation of otherwise arid places, resulting in millions of gallons of evaporation, thus adding water vapor is not a long term, anthropogenic contribution to GHG?
Centuries? Ferdinand calculates a Euler folding time on the order of half a century.
Really, Steve? Let’s do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Total mass of the atmosphere is 5,674,691 gigatons (Wiki). At 400ppm, the mass of CO2 is about 2,269 gigatons (for this exercise we ignore the difference between ppmvolume and ppmmass). The keeling curve shows a seasonal swing of about 5 ppm which is about 28 gigtons, year in and year out. Human CO2 releases are about 9.7 gigtons per year. So, how does nature manage a swing of 28 gigtons per year for “natural” CO2 but knows to keep “manmade” CO2 in the atmosphere for “centuries”? I await your reply with bated breath…but little hope, since you never seem to actually engage in debate once someone hulls your CAGW boat.
SM , Just looking at the variations in CO2 over the seasons in the animation belies that absurdity .
One of the first observations which made me very skeptical of the AlGoreWarming meme , to say the least , was seeing the jaggies in the Mauna Loa graphs . Anybody with any sense of diff eqs can see the decay rate for CO2 is on the order of a decade or so , max . I guess the best estimates are closer to half that , and that’s certainly what the rapid variations shown in the animation would indicate , altho its total range is only about 5% .
Steven,
The e-fold decay rate of CO2 in the atmosphere is a matter of decades (~50 years), not centuries. Over the past 60 years a quite constant ~35 years half life time, no slowing at all.
The IPCC uses the Bern model, which includes saturation of all compartments, which is true only for the ocean surface, very questionable for the deep oceans and non-existent for vegetation.
D.J. Hawkins and Bob Armstrong,
Different causes, different reactions at work:
The seasonal swings are completely driven by (for each hemisphere) huge temperature changes. That makes that huge amounts of CO2 are moved in and out over the seasons, countercurrent for oceans and biosphere. Thus while huge CO2 fluxes are at work, the net effect is modest: some +/- 5 ppmv/K globally, mainly in the NH where vegetation wins the battle: CO2 goes down while temperature goes up…
The huge fluxes give us the short residence time of ~5 years (800 GtC mass / 150 GtC/year throughput), but that says next to nothing about how long it takes to remove an extra shot CO2, whatever the source.
Humans add a modest amount of CO2 each year, independent of temperature or any natural cycle. That increases the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere a little bit, just enough to give some extra sink of CO2 in some of the natural cycles. That is a muxh slower process than the natural temperature driven seasonal cycles, as you need some 110 ppmv extra CO2 pressure above the ocean-atmosphere equilibrium for the current average ocean surface temperature to remove only 2.15 ppmv/year.
That gives an e-fold decay rate of 110/2.15 = ~51 years. A factor 10 slower than the residence time…
Steven Mosher May 12, 2017 at 2:35 pm
“DUH”, a portion of the water vapor that humans are responsible for emitting (adding) into the atmosphere ……. remains in the atmosphere …… for just as many years as does a portion of the CO2 that humans are responsible for emitting (adding) into the atmosphere….. and there is no way in ell you can prove differently.
Oh my, my, …. Steven Mosher, …… why don’t you ….. “Go ahead. Shoot a little dab of CO2 into the sky” ….. and then …. “emit 29 gigatons of water vapor into the atmosphere”.
“DUH”, a portion of BOTH of the above said water vapor and CO2 could/might/ maybe/will remain in the atmosphere for centuries ….. and there is no way in ell you can prove differently.
And Mosher, don’t you be forgetting, ….. if the atmospheric water (H2O) vapor falls to ground in the form of “raindrops” ……. then the atmospheric CO2 will also be falling to the ground along with each and every one of those “raindrops”, ….. but in the form of carbonic acid.
Shur nuff, Mosher, ….. because iffen you don’t “mind where you stand” you will likely be struck on you head and body with dozens n’ dozens of those CO2 laden raindrops.
“Now emit gigatons of c02……will remain for centuries”
How many?
Maybe .1 centuries?
Sadly enough but we know what you really meant. Scientists that speculate using a time scale of centuries in their projection, with regards to weather and climate can be wrong for decades before having to reconcile that projection.
“One will remain for centuries”
Drivel.
You can’t tax water vapor.
They can tax anything.
To your point…
“…comment of Dr. Michael Mann at his Senate Testimony in 2005 when asked why we were not more interested in water vapor, he responded “…because it cannot be regulated.”215 215 Legates, supra note 77, at 3 (emphasis added).
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=3f33b3c9-a28b-4f6c-a663-50c7d02fda24
Thanks for the link CB. Anthropogenic H20 is a rather large nose sticking under the tent flap.
Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere through human activities.
How can that possibly be? It doesn’t take much of a Google search to determine that METHANE is at least 86 times more potent than CO2 as greenhouse gas.
Is there a /sarc there? I have seen figures 12.4 years up. Then of course methane is measured in parts /billion compared to parts/million. So its potency compared to any effect of CO2 is minuscule.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html
Then of course lifetime figures for CO2 are rubbery.
Methane potency figures 30 times up. “While carbon dioxide is typically painted as the bad boy of greenhouse gases, methane is roughly 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas. ”
https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/2014/03/26/a-more-potent-greenhouse-gas-than-co2-methane-emissions-will-leap-as-earth-warms-nature/
Lee, you need to read up on how GHG work. Methane is more “powerful” only because it is at such low concentration and effect scales linearly with concentration. If it ever became abundant enough to matter (virtually impossible due to its instability) it would “weaken” like CO2 has. Take a look at the absorption spectra and you will see why CH4 will never be a major GHG:
lee May 12, 2017 at 7:41 pm
Methane potency figures 30 times up. “While carbon dioxide is typically painted as the bad boy of greenhouse gases, methane is roughly 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas. ”
https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/2014/03/26/a-more-potent-greenhouse-gas-than-co2-methane-emissions-will-leap-as-earth-warms-nature/
There is nothing in that link that says anything about how much methane will run-up the temperature or how long it will take.
Taken at face value whether methane is 30 times or 86 timed more potent, it says nothing about its actual effect. Why doesn’t the Princeton link say anything about actual increase in temperature? Probably because at the rate methane is increasing the run-up in temperature is very small and will take a long time.
At today’s rates, in 100 years methane, will probably cause an increase in global temperature of less than one tenth of a degree Celsius.
So much for CO2 being a well-mixed gas. Kinda makes a one point measurement worthless.
can you point to observations showing that CO2 is not
well mixed?
crackers345,
The term well-mixed turns on the acceptable definition of what “well-mixed” means. Clearly, from the animation and other maps, there is sufficient inhomogeneity that variations can be measured. What would the point be of an animation such as this if CO2 were homogeneous, i.e. well-mixed? Obviously, the variation is at least 2 orders of magnitude greater than the precision with which CO2 can be measured.
Crackers, re “well mixed” CO2 :
https://www.nasa.gov/press/goddard/2014/november/nasa-computer-model-provides-a-new-portrait-of-carbon-dioxide/
“So much for CO2 being a well-mixed gas.”
Here is the scale. The full varation shown is just 390-408 ppm. That is pretty well-mixed.
Nick Stokes May 12, 2017 at 6:57 pm
Iffen you say so, ….. I guess that 390-408 ppm of CO2 could be described as being “pretty well-mixed” ……. but only as long as those BIG ole water (H2O) vapor molecules (humidity, fog, mist, clouds, low pressure air masses) …… stay the ell out of the area or locale being monitored, ….. otherwise your “pretty well-mixed” thingy quickly goes to ell in a handbasket as those BIG ole water (H2O) vapor molecules push n’ shove those CO2 molecules ….. here, there and yonder and your CO2 ppm count goes FUBAR..
Clutching at straws, Stokes?
Nick Stokes May 12, 2017 at 6:57 pm
“So much for CO2 being a well-mixed gas.”
Here is the scale. The full varation shown is just 390-408 ppm. That is pretty well-mixed.
Yes, 95% of the variation within +/- 2sd therefore a sd of ~4ppm I’d certainly call that ‘well mixed’, it’s not ‘perfectly mixed’ but no one ever claimed it was.
water vapor is a feedback for AGW, not a forcing.
Water vapor increasing trend is more than 2.5 times the amount caused by feedback.
Water vapor is quite possibly a negative feedback.
“water vapor is a feedback for AGW, not a forcing.”
Nice assertion. So crackers345 is world recognise authority who can be believed without any proof , ref. or citation.
That may be the one of the assumptions built into climate models and may be one of the major reasons why they do not work.
“water vapor is a feedback for AGW, not a forcing”
Rong…gong. This is one of the most egregious fallacies. Either electrons dance, or they don’t. No matter the molecule.
It is true that water electrons dance closer to the surface, and CO2 electrons are far better mixed in the atmosphere. So what? I could state as foolishly that water is a forcing and CO2 a feedback.
I don’t like the social media style movie preview approach from NASA in this release. There was similar one a while back that showed CO2 flocking to the poles in a very unlikely fashion. Like that one, I suspect this one is tainted with artifacts. The surprising (artifact?) in this one is the depletion anomaly in the stratosphere immediately above the highest tropospheric anomaly in the NH vegetative off-season.
Water vapor is only a feedback not a forcing if it’s due to the ( indetectable ) rise in temperature due to CO2 . commieBob May 12, 2017 at 2:44 pm pointed out that humans have done more forcing of water vapor where humans live by , for instance , evaporating virtually all the water in the Colorado River over the land before it reaches the ocean .
“water vapor is a feedback for AGW, not a forcing.”
Is that you, JimD?
commieBob:
“People always ignore water emissions when they’re talking about CAGW. Why”
because the amount of water vapor in the
atmosphere doesn’t change until the temperature
first changes.
see the Clausius-Claperyon equation, derived from basic thermo.
water vapor is constant if delta(T)=0. But it increases in the atmosphere
by 7% for every 1 deg C of atmo warming.
thus it becomes an important feedback. but, for
climate *change*, it is not a primary forcing.
There are two basic mechanisms.
1 – The air is already saturated. Relative Humidity (RH) is 100%. The air must warm before any more water vapor can be taken up.
2 – RH is less than 100%. More water can be taken up. Evaporation will reduce air temperature.
Over irrigated land, RH is almost always less than 100%.
Hey Cracers345, do you even know what the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is called? Humidity. And like most other atmospheric characteristics, it varies considerably. And like temperature, humidity has been measured for many years. But your argument is based on theoretical equations, not observations or facts.
Your reference to the Clausius-Claperyon equation is incorrect. The relationship it explains is between the temperature of the water (as a liquid) and its vapour pressure as a gas. So using it to support your argument fails because it simply does not apply.
In any event, for water vapour, that relationship is not linear but logarithmic. Again, another fundamental science mistake. Three out of three.
Can you find any evidence of water vapour feedback to support your last comment? No? Neither can the IPCC or any climate *scientist*. Pretend natural laws are not science without evidence.
here’s the evidence for an increase in atmospheric water vapor:
IPCC 5AR WG1 Ch2 Figs 2.30 & 2.31 documents positive trends in water vapor in multiple datasets.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter02_FINAL.pdf
“Attribution of observed surface humidity changes to human influence,”
Katharine M. Willett et al, Nature Vol 449| 11 October 2007| doi:10.1038/nature06207.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v449/n7163/abs/nature06207.html
“Identification of human-induced changes in atmospheric moisture content,” B. D. Santer et al, PNAS 2013.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/39/15248.abstract
“How much more rain will global warming bring?” F.J. Wentz, Science (2007), 317, 233–235.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5835/233
“Analysis of global water vapour trends from satellite measurements in the visible spectral range,” S. Mieruch et al, Atmos Chem Phys (2008), 8, 491–504.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/491/2008/acp-8-491-2008.html
Crackers: that relates to the water vapor CAPACITY of the atmosphere. Actual amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is usually significantly below the maximum capacity. When you irrigate the desert….
crackers345,
You said, “because the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere doesn’t change until the temperature first changes.” Is that why deserts are always so dry?
“amount of water vapor in the atmosphere doesn’t change until the temperature first changes” This is true only when the humidity is 100%.
The Clapeyron equation (also called Clausius-Clapeyron equation) “gives the exact relationship between the change in volume and the latent heat (enthalpy change) when a liquid changes to a vapor.”. ‘Thermodynamics for engineers’, Jesse S. Doolittle.
It applies at saturation (100% humidity). Vapor pressure vs temperature was determined by measurement and is widely available for water. Humidity is usually less than 100%.
Re the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, does it not give the equilibrium amount, not the actual?
Ian M
cracker,
You assertion is only true at 100% relative humidity. As the atmosphere usually only approaches that at night and due to the energy of condensation, level of humidity is one of the driving factors for elevated night time minimum temperature. Thus increased humidity is the primary driver of “global warming” since the plot of daily maximums is basically FLAT, while the increases that have been observed are night time minimums. Thus a valid argument could be made that it is water, not CO2 that drives temperature.
“because the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere doesn’t change until the temperature
first changes.”
Dead wrong. Only true when RH is at 100%, i e in thelight blue areas of this visualization:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=relative_humidity/orthographic=61.75,4.50,267
Switch it around a bit geograpically and at different altitudes and you’ll see that it isn’t that common globally. Perhaps you should try to get beyond basic thermo into atmosphere physics?
Yet global cloud coverage has decreased over the recent warming period. Crackers decimate picked the right name.
The cracker point of view is probably something on the line
– the atmosphere is in a rough balance
– added CO2 increases the average temp
– in increased temp and reduced RH more evaporation happens and water vapour content increases
Well, this is quite a simplification, because evaporation is controlled by how much water is available, which makes deserts places where no evaporation happens. Also it is good to realize increased CO2 means plants need less water, so there is a negative water vapour feedback there.
The biggest reason I do not like this point of view is that it computes with averages, and the product of averages is not necessarily the same as average of products. So it doesn’t tell anything about what happens for real.
crackers345 May 12, 2017 at 3:43 pm
Now, now, ….. crackers345, that was an awful brash statement.
Iffen there is no solid water to sublimate …… or liquid water to evaporate …… then it doesn’t matter how many degrees the near-surface atmosphere warms. …… its water vapor content won’t change.
Example: the US desert southwest, from Sun up to Sun set, you can have an 80+- F temperature variation with little to no change in humidity (water vapor).
And the current 400 ppm of CO2 in that desert air ……. doesn’t per se “trap” any of that 80F to 110F IR “heat” energy because that near-surface air temperature starts “dropping like a rock” when the Sun starts to “set” in the late afternoon.
But now, iffen there was 25,000 to 35,000 ppm or greater water (H20) vapor in that desert air, then those near-surface air temperatures would stay a whole lot “warmer” until late at night and into early morning.
Cogar: there is plenty of
water on the planet to evaporate.
again, Clausius-Claperyon
BobB: where are those data on
global cloud coverage?
Maybe because on average water vapor will precipitate out when it reaches saturation. Likewise, when there is lower levels of saturation, it is more readily absorbed. In other words, maybe because on average the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere doesn’t change much over long periods of time.
CO2 becomes liquid at much lower temperatures and doesn’t precipitate out. So there is no tendency for it to equilibrate in a way similar to water at typical terrestrial temperatures.
Anyway, please note the “maybes.” I’m not a scientist. This is merely why I, as a layperson, could see how it may be important to treat the two gasses significantly differently.
CO2 does not liquify at any temperature on this planet.
I have a tank full of liquid CO2 in my garage.
…at ambient pressure and temperature, that is.
Phil.:
You say
Rubbish! It does at the bottom of deep ocean.
see e.g. http://bora.uib.no/bitstream/handle/1956/390/0872.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
Richard
“Rubbish! It does at…”
That paper does not claim that liquid CO2 has been observed. It s a model study of the possibility of injecting CO2 at depth as a means of sequestration. It does report some observation of clathrate hydrates, and also some experimental injections.
Nick Stokes May 14, 2017 at 4:14 am
“Rubbish! It does at…”
That paper does not claim that liquid CO2 has been observed. It s a model study of the possibility of injecting CO2 at depth as a means of sequestration. It does report some observation of clathrate hydrates, and also some experimental injections.
Take pure gaseous CO2 to a pressure of ~40bar at 4ºC and it will liquify, however in the ocean it will form CO2-hydrate instead and you’d have to go to 70bar for that to decompose (700m). Of course at that depth liquid CO2 is lighter than sea water so it will rise and dissolve. It has been seen at ~1400m where it was covered by a cap of hydrate. In that case the CO2 emerged from a vent where it was a supercritical fluid which as it cools forms the hydrate casing which holds some liquid in place. It needs to be about 3000m for liq CO2 to be more dense than sea water and form a puddle on the sea floor.
“Take pure gaseous CO2 to a pressure of ~40bar at 4ºC and it will liquify, however in the ocean it will form CO2-hydrate instead”
In fact, liquid CO2 is found in the deep oceans.
Lakes of liquid CO2 in the deep sea
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1599885/
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/life-in-liquid-carbon-dioxide/
For god’s sake, do you not understand that water condenses? How simple do we have to make it? If we put water into the atmosphere it condenses and comes down as rain. CO2 does not do this. Anthrpopgenic water emissisons are totally and utterly not important.
Your statement would only be true if all air were saturated. Most of the atmosphere is not even close to saturation. That is why when you check the weather, the relative humidity is rarely 100%. Therefore you can add more water to the air and increase the humidity and not all of it has to come back out as precipitation. Of couse the water that does come out as precipitation also absorbs CO2 on the way down.
The water cycle is mediated by temperature. If the greenhouse increases the temperature, the water cycle varies in response, whether the greenhouse is a CO2 greenhouse or an H2O greenhouse or a mix of the two. So pointing out the fact that water condenses isn’t saying very much at all. That’s why the debate about whether CO2 is ‘well mixed’ is so important, because its presence in places where water isn’t is the only way we can get a CO2 signal outside of the bigger equilibrium. Do the models account for this adequately? That’s the real question.
Water cycles through the atmosphere each 9 days.
CO2 cycles through the atmosphere each 3.5 years.
And migrating birds cycles through the mid latitude atmosphere each and every 0.5+- years. I mean like the seasonal “cycling” of the equinoxes and/or solstices.
And my statement is a scientific fact ….. and those other two statements are little more that guesstimated assumptions that were determined by “fuzzy math” percentageination calculations.
I shur wish ya’ll would cease and desist with the touting of those “garbage” claims of highly questionable “facts”.
9 days here, … 3.5 years there …… and 69 and 44/100th leagues over yonder.
Wonderful and scientifickly amazing. So much neo-science and so little time to be learnt on it all.
“CO2 does not do this.”
So what?
It dissolves in the condensed water and washes down instead – achieving the identical result.
Coal power plants don’t produce much of it … thats why
Ironically gas powerplants do, 8 pounds of water vapor to each ten pounds of CO2.
CH4 + 2O2 –> CO2 + 2H2O
Not to quibble, tty, but it’s 9 lbs to 11 lbs. 🙂
Excerpted NASA claim in the above article:
OH, my, my, …. I wonder how many really, really, really stupid people there are in the Northern Hemisphere who spend $100s of dollars each year ….. and $1,000s of dollars during their lifetime …. on the purchasing of “leaf” rakes, ….. “leaf” blowers, ……. “leaf” sweepers ….. and walk-behind lawnmowers …… & riding lawnmowers with “leaf” collecting attachments? To wit:
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/leaf%20raking%20equipment%20Standard%20e-mail%20view_1.jpg
How’s come no one has bothered to tell all those really, really, really stupid people that iffen they just leave all of those “leaves” n’ “twigs” and “things” on the ground where they fell off of their trees and plants during the fall and early winter ……. that every bit of that dead biomass would be decayed and rotted away to nothing with gigatons of CO2 released in the atmosphere, if not by mid-December …. then surely by the 1st of March when the Springtime temperatures start “warming up”.
Continued excerpted NASA claim in the above article:
Shur nuff, and it is during those extremely warm to “hot” spring and summer months, that mostly everyone living in the Northern Hemisphere has to “dry”, “can” or store all of their “dead biomass” foods in the “cold” storage of their refrigerators and freezers … to prevent them from rotting & decaying and emitting (outgassing) gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere ……. and thus cancelling out the bi-yearly “sawtooth” pattern of the Keeling Curve Graph, to wit:
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/assets/images/mlo_record.png
commieBob on May 12, 2017 at 1:02 pm
Water vapor needs no human activities to subsist.
Carbon dioxide is not “released to the atmosphere through human activities”. CO2 is heavier than air (specific gravity = 1.41) CO2 above the troposphere is created there by solar reaction.
[?? .mod]
Bob, perhaps you are confusing CO2 with O3 (ozone)?
While both are heavier than air and will tend to collect (temporarily) in low spots if released in quantity, it is O3 that is formed at the top of our atmosphere by solar radiation.
It is anticipated that the next tracking mission will be a satellite that tracks unicorns. It is established science that unicorns cause global something or other.
Perhaps the tracking of the CO2 will give us better understanding of atmospheric dynamics, mixing, etc. but beyond that it is fairly useless imo.
Did you mean “tracking Unicorn farts?” Dangerous stuff don’t cha know !!!
“It is established science that unicorns cause global something or other.”
Could that be because unicorns are such prolific generators of methane?
Could it be that each and every unicorn generates more methane than did the 60,000,000 American bison who once roamed North America? Not to even be concerned by all of the CO2 that a unicorn adds to the atmosphere by breathing.
It can be speculated, but can it be measured?
If Earth’s atmosphere was truly ‘dry’ (no water vapor), would the surface temperature of the planet be low enough that there would be a very thin crust of dry ice (frozen CO2) on the surface? Mull that one over for just a bit.
hmm…. data fusion eh? with models eh? – I’d like to have my cynicism blown away but this needs a close look. The data colour mapping and transparency of the red clouds looks rather contrived but … well – let’s see.
Why didn’t they get earth.nullschool.net to do a nice clicky-zoomy thing with the data ? The SO2 mapping there is excellent ….
Good catch, cBob.
Here’s another “need to go back and read the course material” fail:
— Native Sources of CO2 – 150 (96%) gigatons/yr
— Human CO2 – 5 (4%) gtons/yr
— Note: Native Sinks Approximately* Balance Native Sources – net CO2 (*Approximately = even a small imbalance can overwhelm any human CO2)
150:5
This fact makes the article’s equating (with no qualifier, that is the plain meaning of those words) human with natural CO2 grossly misleading.
Source: Murry Salby (Hamburg 2013 lecture at about 36:34, 37:00), author of:
(pub. 2012)
Janice, a word of caution. I have not read Salby’s textbook, so have no opinion on it. But have studied all three of his videoed lectures. They contain gross (and obvious to anyone who has studied the carbon cycle) errors definitional, mathematical, and observational–so his conclusions are very incorrect in most respects. Perhaps I shall work up and submit a possible guest post to AW.
Not once, Mr. Rud Istvan, have you backed up your claims with proof or detailed evidence. Further, other commenters, such as Allen M. R. MacRae (sp?) and Bartemis, have soundly confirmed Dr. Salby who has FAR more knowledge (see his google scholar record) than you about the subject you so airily pronounce upon.
Also, your stated (on WUWT and elsewhere) monetary interest in “energy storage,” or batteries for cars or the like, makes you a biased witness, here….
Looking forward to your post. It will serve as an EXCELLENT opportunity for many here (if they do not ignore it) to present the strong arguments in support of Dr. Salby.
Janice, it is what it is. Don’t take it personal, research it for yourself. I am a deep CAGW skeptic based on now 6 plus years of research and parts of 3 ebooks, but have been still accused of being a lukewarmer like Dr. Curry by hardcore D*****s because I follow the facts and quality science where ever they lead.
You have provided some additional motivation to write a post definitively debunking Salby VIDEO by VIDEO, as his story morphs. Or, perhaps just the last video, because in response to criticisms he makes ever more egregious errors. I am against junk science of all sorts, on all sides, in all fields.
Janice,
Don’t use personal arguments if you don’t have real ones…
I have followed Dr. Salby’s lectures too and was present in London in the Parliament for his speech several years ago. Dr. Salby made several severe errors in his speeches (like huge migration of CO2 in ice cores…) as ristvan said.
His book about the physics of atmosphere and climate may be superb, but his lectures contain too many assumptions which simply can’t be true. Unfortunately there was little time to have a discussion in London, but we have had several discussions here about his lectures and he never responds to any criticism. Not here, not anywhere.
I have had several discussions with Alan and many with Bart(emis), still repeated every few months, but who is right is in the eye of the beholder…
Janice, good news. I had drafted a general Salby essay that did not make it into ebook Blowing Smoke. Not all the detailed errors, because the book targeted the general public. Just lightly revised as a potential blog post and am now sending to AW. Your wish is my command. Enjoy.
ristvan,
” I have not read Salby’s textbook”
I don’t think Janice has, though she displays the cover. Must be as far as she got. Here is what that 2012 edition says. Seems entirely consistent with the video.,
Sec 1.2.4:
ristvan
I have recently reviewed Harde 2016 which relies heavily on information from Salby and Humlum and concludes that the recent increase in CO2 is mostly natural. Thought you might be interested in it.
@ ristvan
May 12, 2017 at 1:29 pm: Please do, Rud. And we would like to see Murry’s communications with you over your claimed refutation. These sorts of things are the meat of science. Running down a brave and learned Atmospheric physicist does not cut it. Open debate does…..
DMA and Ristvan,
I have sent a rebuttal to Harde, without any reaction until now. Harde makes the common error to blend the residence time (~5 years) with the e-fold decay rate (~51 years) of any extra CO2 in the atmosphere, although he knows the difference. But in his main formula he used the residence time, making all following conclusions worthless. My rebuttal is here:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/Harde.pdf
Ristvan: ” I am against junk science of all sorts, on all sides, in all fields.”
Like you I regard Salby as being in this category. He starts out with the 90 degree phase lag at short timescales and then goes into all sorts of handwaving about longer timescales to get to the conclusion he wants to make.
e-fold rate is 16 to 18 years by directly measured 14CO2 in the bomb curve. It’s not a calculation, but observed fact.
Janice,
Not the right comparison…
Seasonal native cycles are divided in winter/summer sources/sinks and sinks/sources, opposite of each other:
Oceans: +50 GtC (summer) -50 GtC (winter)
Vegetation: -60 GtC (summer) +60 GtC (winter)
Net effect: -10 GtC (summer) +10 GtC (winter)
Or a global change of app. +/- 5 GtC over the seasons.
Further:
even a small imbalance can overwhelm any human CO2
It “can” overwhelm human emissions, but it didn’t in the past near 60 years. Human emissions are in average about twice the natural variability:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
BTW, human emissions are already 9 GtC/year…
“BTW, human emissions are already 9 GtC/year…”
So, the rate of emissions has nearly doubled, yet the rate of change of concentration in the atmosphere has been essentially constant since the onset of the pause in temperatures.
There is a simple solution to that conundrum: concentration simply is not significantly dependent on human emissions.
Bart,
Concentration depends of mainly two factors: human emissions and total CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above the (dynamic) equilibrium between atmosphere and ocean surface per Henry’s law.
If both temperature and emissions increase, then the net sink rate increases at about the same pace and the ratio between increase in the atmosphere and emissions remains about constant.
If temperature stalls and emissions increase, then the net sink rate increases faster and the ratio decreases with about a constant rate of change,
If temperature stalls and emissions stall (as happened in the past few years), the net sink rate goes faster and faster and the CO2 rate of change drops.
Take enough time and at constant emissions and temperature, the CO2 rate of change drops to zero where emissions and sinks are equal, that is at a CO2 level of 9 / 0.02 = 180 ppm above the 290 ppmv steady state for the current average ocean surface temperature. Or 470 ppmv for the observed ~50 years decay rate for any excess CO2 above equilibrium…
Bartemis, if I understand you correctly you are just dead wrong. Based on the Keeling curve starting 1958, CO2 this century has gone up ~35%. Except for the now rapidly cooling 2015-16 El Nino blip, temperature has not gone up at all. (Except by Karlization.) Those facts by themselves falsify BOTH the CO2 control knob theory and Salby.
Ferdinand – nonsense. The net sink rate decreases with temperature, and the emissions cannot contribute more than their share of total inputs.
Ristvan – nonsense. It is an integral relationship. The relationship is very well described by the differential equation
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
where T is the temperature anomaly, T0 is an equilibrium temperature parameter, and k is a coupling parameter in ppmv/degC/unit-of-time.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:12/from:1979/plot/uah6/offset:0.73/scale:0.2
I don’t know why so many people have so much trouble with this. It’s like a mental block. They cannot think of any relationship involving temperature beyond strict proportionality.
It’s not a proportional relationship. It is an integral relationship. I describe how such a relationship can come about here.
Nonsense. You can’t point to anything even remotely as consistent relating to human emissions. Put simply, they don’t correlate at all.
But, the data have errors, and there are other processes going on. It is frankly astounding to have such a high SNR showing such a clearly defined relationship. There is no doubt about it.
Ferdinand, a new elephant is appearing in the room. The greening of the planet, particularly noticeable n arid regions where a growing fringe is in evidence, for example, Saharaward from the Sahel. Also, growth of forest trees, plankton expansion, crop plantation… This as a first approximation is exponential. Could it be that CO2 will level off in the near future even with continued emission growth?
Ristvan,
Bart’s formula:
dCO2/dt = k*(T – T0)
May give a mathematical nice correlation, but is physically impossible, as he doesn’t take into account that any increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above the steady state per Henry’s law will push more CO2 into the oceans, no matter the temperature of that moment. All what happens is that the steady state shifts with ~16 ppmv/K as the past 800,000 years in ice cores showed.
I have been working in a cola bottlery (for lack of better work at that moment) and if the temperature of the liquid in summer increased, all we had to do was giving more pressure of CO2 to reach the same carbonatation.
In ocean terms: the current steady state between the ocean surface and the atmosphere is ~290 ppmv for the current (weighted) average ocean surface temperature, not 400 ppmv. The measured average CO2 flux is from the atmosphere into the oceans, not reverse. See Feely e.a.:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/mean.shtml
This map yields an annual oceanic uptake flux for CO2 of 2.2 ± 0.4 PgC/yr.
Gary Pearse,
Indeed the earth is greening, one of the positive points of more CO2. But the net sink rate of CO2 in the biosphere is around 1 GtC/year and growing, still not enough to sink all 9 GtC/year human CO2.
The net sink rate can be deduced from the change in oxygen balance, after subtracting oxygen use for fossil fuel burning:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
Of course that is only the net balance, human emissions from land use changes also play a role, thus the increase in greening of the earth may be 3 GtC/year sink with 2 GtC/year emissions from land clearing or 5 GtC/year sink with 4 GtC/year emissions from land clearing, as the latter is quite uncertain.
For my calculations I never include land use changes, only fossil fuel burning as these are more certain (thanks to taxes on sales…). Land use changes only add to human emissions…
“…as he doesn’t take into account that any increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above the steady state per Henry’s law will push more CO2 into the oceans…”
Wrong. You cannot create work merely by splitting flows. This is a perpetual motion scheme.
“The measured average CO2 flux is from the atmosphere into the oceans, not reverse.”
There are no such measurements, only models and estimates. Which makes this circular reasoning: the models assume the outcome they produce.
An useful and alarming graphic. At a sink rate of 2 ppm per annum, when we run out of rocks to burn the whole rise of the industrial era to date will be reversed in 50 years with agricultural productivity falling 20% to 30% along with it.
Your point is correct despite the protestations of ristvans and Englebert Humberdinck. The NOAA and IPCC also acknowledge that annual human CO2 emissions are roughly 4% to nature’s 96%.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/carbon/
IPCC AR5 (2013) Chapter 6: Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles here:
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
There is, however, roughly a balance between natural CO2 emitters and sinks. Human activity, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, appears to have tipped the balance somewhat and has caused more CO2 to accumulate in the atmosphere. But no big deal, right? It takes a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration, say to 560 ppm from pre-industrial 280 ppm, to increase temperature 1° C and we’re not even halfway there at about 409 ppm. There is little evidence that increased CO2 is detrimental. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the benefits of the increase in CO2 in the last century outweigh the disadvantages.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Disrespectful anonymous random poster… whatever point you may have had, is lost in your noise.
Alan, maybe you need a hearing aid ??
“Human activity, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, appears to have tipped the balance somewhat and has caused more CO2 to accumulate in the atmosphere.”
It does not continue to accumulate. That is simply not how a balance works in nature. A natural balance occurs when you have a change on one side inducing a greater push back from the other, so that they settle out to an equilibrium.
It’s like water gushing into a sink. The water level rises to a point where the pressure above the drain propels the water out at the same rate it is rushing in. If you have a virtual increase in the level, the pressure rises, and the outflow increases from the drain so that the level subsides. If you have a virtual decrease in the level, the pressure falls, the drain does not take as much out, so the level goes back up to the equilibrium level.
If you increase the input by 4%, it doesn’t just accumulate. It reaches a new balance point, with the pressure above the drain increasing 4%.
Which means, the level will rise… wait for it… 4%.
The net accumulation of atmospheric CO2 from human forcing cannot be greater proportionately than its proportionate contribution to the overall inflow.
stinkerp,
In their latest report, the IPCC includes the nightly respiration of all plants and doubles the daylight photosynthesis. That doubles the carbon cycle of vegetation, but as the diurnal part of it hardly reaches the bulk of the atmosphere, that part is normally not used in calculations for seasonal and longer CO2 changes.
Further, so what? Even if human emissions were only 0.1% of all natural carbon cycles that is one-way extra, not part of any natural cycle, which mostly are temperature controlled, while the removal of any extra CO2 – whatever the source – is a pressure controlled process…
Bart,
Wrong comparison…
Near all natural carbon cycles are temperature controlled. That is the case for the seasonal cycles and the 1-3 years noise. If the temperature doesn’t change much over the seasonal amplitude, the same amount of CO2 will be released and absorbed again, both by the oceans and vegetation,
That gives the short residence time of ~5 years for any single CO2 molecule in the atmosphere, before being swapped for another CO2 molecule out of the oceans or vegetation. But that doesn’t change the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at all.
Any extra CO2 – whatever the source – doesn’t make much difference in the seasonal cycles. The net removal for the current 110 ppmv above equilibrium is good for only 2.15 ppmv/year net sink rate. That gives an e-fold decay rate of ~51 years. Fast enough to follow any volcanic emissions or the glacial-interglacial changes, but too slow to remove all human emissions in the same year as emitted…
Hope AW posts my just offered rebuttal. Then get back with facts.
No, Ferdinand. It is the right comparison. And, your reasoning is nonphysical. That is not how dynamic feedback works. That is not how a natural system maintains balance.
Bart,
We can repeat again and again the same arguments, but if you don’t understand the difference between what happens in nature with CO2 for a temperature change and for a pressure change, then further discussion doesn’t make any sense.
Near all huge natural carbon cycles are temperature driven.
Human emissions increase the CO2 pressure in the atmosphere.
Different reactions of the natural processes to temperature vs. pressure with different reaction times. That is the difference in physics within the natural world you fail to understand…
You are grasping at straws, Ferdinand.
The huge gaping problem with the assumptions on natural CO2 fluxes is that the sinks are far far from saturated. It is only the NH seasonal kinetics on a time constant of years to decades that prevent absorption of the anthro-CO2.
But kinetics rule in the pCO2 evolving dynamic equlibrium. But On a time scale of decades to centuries, the growing season length and NH vegetation responses (advancing subArctic treelines, thickening and expanding forests mostly, grasslands on arid prairies too) will enhance summer uptake flux and duration.
Feedback happens. Earth’s biosphere is responding to the life-giving CO2 enhancement man is providing. Every living thing benefits from fossil fuel burning.
Ultimately, though the next major Ice Age and short term “mini Ice Ages” are controlled by Earth orbital and obliquity changes and solar activity, respectively.
+1 joelbryan. The graph posted by Ferdinand illustrates this nicely. Sinks are still growing without evidence of saturation. They must of course always lag somewhat behind emissions simply due to the kinetics of mixing, so an increase in atmospheric concentration is inevitable but not proof that the sinks can’t keep up. Sinks are relatively large, increasing, and also still very poorly “constrained” in terms of both absolute magnitude and growth potential.
Bart,
Again, wrong comparison:
At no moment in time there is 150 GtC natural CO2 input in the atmosphere. That is the main error. Oceans and vegetation work opposite to each other over the seasons. Average global change is ~10 GtC (~5 ppmv), mostly concentrated in the NH where vegetation growth and decay wins the CO2 level battle.
Thus at any moment in time, there is maximum 5 ppmv CO2 extra in the atmosphere, if quantities (thus pressure and not temperature) where the driving force for the (seasonal) uptake of CO2.
Human emissions are ~9 GtC/year (~4.5 ppmv/year). Thus at the peak natural CO2 release (in early spring), human emissions and natural CO2 peak are near equal, in the first year of human emissions. That is around 50% each, quite different from your 4% human.
Then natural sinks start to overwhelm natural sources, thanks to increased photosynthesis (completely opposite to the long term trend: higher temperatures, less CO2!), but human emissions still go on without delay. The next year the same temporarely CO2 increase happens and the same temporarely CO2 decrease happens again. Net result: increase of about half human emissions each year again.
Your main problem is that you still try to explain everything as one process, only temperature driven, while in the real world the main in/out fluxes are seasonal and temperature driven, but the removal of any extra CO2 is pressure driven, only temporarely influenced by temperature changes.
joelobryan and michael hart,
Indeed the net sink rate remains surprisingly linear with the increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above the (temperature controlled) steady state between ocean surface and atmosphere per Henry’s law.
That means that there is no saturation of the deep oceans, neither of the biosphere as the IPCC expects with its Bern model. Not (yet) full proof that the Bern model is wrong, as the simple linear model and the Bern model give the same result in the early years until the deep oceans start to saturate, but the lack of saturation doesn’t look good for the Bern model and its long tails of hundreds of years of remaining parts of human CO2 in the atmosphere…
These are all assertions by Ferdinand, ungrounded in physical reality. This is not how natural balance works.
Ristvan and F.E…..Tou keep claiming Salby made numerous errors, yet, you do not name them ??? WUWT ?
…YOU …D’oh !!
Butch,
I did name already one: in one of his earlier lectures (Hamburg?) he claimed that there must be a huge CO2 migration in ice cores and that the ~300 ppmv peaks during interglacial periods were originally 10 times (later he says 3 times) higher.
That simply is impossible, as if that was true, then the CO2 levels during the coldest periods (~180 ppmv) originally must have been much lower, effectively killing all trees and other C3-cycle plants on earth. Moreover, as the CO2 peaks during the warm intervals are all about around 300 ppmv, the most recent peak had the shortest period, so the previous peak had twice the time to diffundate, thus its peak originally needed to be even much higher than 10 times…
Butch,here is a short list you could have defined for yourself. Salby’s most recent lecture claims a kink in CO2 rise about 2000 to accomodate the pause. There isn’t one in the Keeling curve. His supposed lecture data chart is an easily exposed lie. His most recent lecture confounds efold CO2 residence time with individual molecule bombspike time. Eschenbach exposed that years ago here. And then he mathematically bungles the wrong interpretation of the wrong data. Math just is. You want more? There is lots more. Go view the videos, then bring it all on.
“… then the CO2 levels during the coldest periods (~180 ppmv) originally must have been much lower…”
Not necessarily. It depends on durations, and the ultimate disposition of the gases.
But, the ice cores present a fundamental problem for your POV. It is impossible for the CO2 regulating systems of the Earth to be high bandwidth enough to prevent significant variation for thousands of years, then be so low bandwidth as to be supersensitive to our inputs. They cannot be both. It doesn’t add up on a fundamental level.
“There isn’t one in the Keeling curve.”
RV, you really need to understand the argument. The rate of change is where you see the kink. Integration into CO2 smooths it out, so that it just becomes a gradual change in slope. Since the onset of the pause, the CO2 rate of change has settled out to a constant level, and the absolute CO2 curve is no longer a curve – it has lost its curvature, and become essentially linear. This is all consistent with Salby’s model.
“His most recent lecture confounds efold CO2 residence time with individual molecule bombspike time.”
If sinks are active, and they are, there is little difference between the two. The meme that they are widely different is an assertion, not an established fact.
“And then he mathematically bungles the wrong interpretation of the wrong data.”
Sure he does. Well, we will see what you have written up, and where you have gone wrong.
Butch
There are several studies that support Salby on ice core CO2 levels( I believe one is by Svalstad and Jawarski if my memory is ok). The true levels could not have been lower than the ice core record because of the nature of diffusion always going from higher to lower concentrations. Stomata analysis shows periods 10000 years ago at 360 PPM. High quality chemical analysis show concentrations in the high 300s in the 19th and early 20th century
Bart,
It would be quite remarkable that CO2 would diffund over 2 km of ice, but shouldn’t affect the most nearby CO2 levels…
There are measured CO2 peaks of around 300 ppmv lasting ~10,000 years at about every 100,000 years and periods of ~180 ppmv during ~90,000 years inbetween the peaks.
According to Salby, the real CO2 concentration was originally 10 times higher during the peaks, thus 3,000 ppmv. The difference of 2,700 ppmv CO2 then redistributed over the 90% period of measured 180 ppmv. Thus the original CO2 level in the cold period was 180 – 270 ppmv or -90 ppmv. Seems rather problematic to me…
Further, the next peak also redistributed in both directions, thus adding to the previous cold period as good as to the next one over time… Moreover, all peaks should flatten over time for each 100,000 years back, as the migration period gets longer and longer. Still the CO2/temperature (proxy) ratio remained exactly the same over 8 peaks in 800,000 years time.
There is some -theoretical- migration speed in relative warm coastal ice cores of Antarctica, but all that does is widening the resolution of the CO2 levels from 20 to 22 years at middle depth and to 40 years at full depth. For the much colder long term inland ice cores there is no measurable CO2 migration…
DMA,
I suppose you mean Dr. Jaworowski, who exactly made the mistake of assuming that CO2 migration is from low to high levels… See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html
And stomata data have their problems: these are proxies from leaves growing on land, where there is already a local CO2 bias. Therefore the stomata (index) data are calibrated against direct data and… ice core data over the past century. The problem is that one has no idea how the local bias changed over the centuries due to land (use) changes over the centuries in the main wind direction or even changes in the main wind direction itself (MWP to LIA and back).
Thus if the average CO2 levels between ice cores and stomata differ over periods longer than the ice core resolution, it is probably the stomata which need recalibration, not reverse…
I do not care to get into the details of ice core data. They cannot be verified by any independent means, and they provide estimates which are at odds with the idea that the regulatory systems are sensitive to human inputs.
That is enough for me to discount them as having any usefulness. I am certain that, when it is eventually understood that they are inconsistent with reality, analysts will finally start thinking about how they can be deficient, and will reason out why they are. Right now, they aren’t looking, and unsurprisingly, they aren’t finding.
If your entire case is built upon obviously faulty ice cores, then your case is very flimsy.
In the end, this taxpayer funded hissy fit will serve to remind the informed that this is about power and control, not about our atmosphere or well-being.
+1
After their last OCO-2 press release, I do not believe them.
First pictures were showing that the CO2 was main producers were hydrothermal vents, seasonal foliage decay and in some places in China and India.
Then, they “processed” the data and those signals were gone.
You mean the data changed after trump took over?
Well, go get the level 0 data and re calculate. Its easy. How many Petabytes can your phone process?
Mosher, hopefully the data will change back under Trump.
urederra,
I think that what you are attributing to hydrothermal vents was actually outgassing at the surface in the tropics. Any CO2 released in hydrothermal vents in the deep oceans probably gets dissolved in the surrounding cold water before it can reach the surface. There are some shallow water CO2 sources in the South Pacific, but I’m pretty certain that outgassing is responsible because the CO2 bands are located in the tropics and are at right angles to the mid-ocean spreading centers.
Of course we had to choose a nasty looking yellow red goo colour swirling at a visually absurd concentration just to make CO2 look like the nasty poisonous mustard gas that we should all run and hide from. Funny that, whenever I look at the sky it never looks that colour – is it really that bad in the USA? Only time I’ve ever seen CO2 is in dry ice vapour, but why miss the chance of making it look scary and toxic.
opaque too…. like a 1950s London smog… choke, cough…
Any more inventive descriptions of the display parameters (or their “look”) out there?
Oh, this is rich. Data assimilation.
Data assimilation is Nothing more fancy than what we use in engineering
Think Kalmen Filter.
Example
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjF7tW_puvTAhVC5WMKHY-ACwcQFgguMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fearth.esa.int%2Fdocuments%2F973910%2F1002056%2FDA2.pdf%2F9cd3c6c8-7d89-400d-8c9c-df33259f47c2&usg=AFQjCNHPFclhO_hWm5aLsvyjX1Gyz3mCrw
At time Zero you measure the variable.
You predict where it will be 6 hours from now.
At 6 hours from now you read in the real data ( assimilate) and adjust your model and do another
prediction.
Predict. Measure. Improve. Repeat.
Kalman filters and least squares polynomial regression (and indeed, the latter can be formulated under the rubric of the former) are very robust. But, therein lies their weakness. Their ability to track a set of measurements in and of itself is not generally an indicator of the fidelity of the underlying model.
and do you see how they are “normalizing” the term model as data??
All data assumes a model.
When you collect data using a device, the device is built according to physical theory. That physical theory is a model.
” That physical theory is a model.”
As opposed to the silly computer games with their AlGoreithms you dodgy lot use to
screw with“Homogenise” the raw data.That strawman is thoroughly worn out now, Mosher.
I’d like to see a simulation showing only natural CO2 sources juxtaposed with a simulation that shows only the manmade sources of CO2. That would be a lot more informative.
“can be mixed and transported by winds in the blink of an eye.”
Blink of an eye? Really?
For a supposedly well mixed gas, there is an ‘unbelievable’ hemispheric difference in the video. Another thing the models likely have got wrong if OCO-2 got it right. IF, because Amundsen Scott ppm readings aren’t that different from Mauna Loa; the video (if I understand it correctly) implies they should be different. Will go double check that recollection now.
The seasonal variation thanks to NH summer photosynthesis is not new news- been in the Keeling curve from the beginning, and Keeling himself published on it in the later half of the 1960’s.
Rud. AFAIK, CO2 is fairly well mixed. If memory serves me right, the MLO “continuous” readings are backed up by weekly(?) flask measurements at eight stations at widely spaced latitudes. CO2 levels fall off slightly toward the poles., but that’s about it. My belief is that the images we are looking at are quite small anomalies exaggerated by color. That’s great if one is trying to identify CO2 sources and sinks. They’d be awfully hard to see otherwise. But it doesn’t mean that huge CO2 variations are rampant (and we’re all gonna die.)
DK, that could be. But then where are the error bars on the OCO-2 estimates? I will have to delve further into this.
Don K,
The range of concentration in the animation is from about 389 to 406 ppmv, or about 4%, which is consistent with what has been shown previously.
This remind me the ozone hole
It is interesting to observe that the convection does not create a perfect wall but still a wall between south and north hemisphere !
Therefore the CFC in majority in the north hemisphere should be more effective in the north hemisphere !
The official explanation is the lower temperature in the arctic
BUT
Since, because of the non anthropic but real moderate global warming, the antarctic is more surrounded by open sea there is some appearance of ozone hole in northern hemisphere!
We are then, funded to emit the hypothesis that it is the sea itself that produce the chlorocarbons and other ozone killers
Could the anthropogenic ozone destruction be a hoax too?
Where is all the OCO-2 raw data? Is it available to the public?
Seems to be kept under wraps and used only in these “puff pieces”.
NASA did a bang up job with obfuscation there – you need some coding to parse the data into an easily displayable georeferenced format.
Like I said up topic – why no release to folk who do this globe display thing so much better in some ways?
Data is freely available for you. You wont be able to figure out HDF5 formats.
takes brains.
Mosher, would social justice be served if us brainless taxpayers didn’t have to pay for stuff they couldn’t provide in an understandable way. Hollywood profits depend on being intelligible to us Deplorable. Maybe NASA needs to employ Hollywood consultants.
“Mosher, would social justice be served if us brainless taxpayers didn’t have to pay for stuff they couldn’t provide in an understandable way.”
Go look at the data. It Is UNDERSTANDABLE, but still takes brains.
If you have a simpler way of organizing multi layer, multi dimensional data….
Your Big data Prize awaits you.
@Mosher – At the risk of going all ad-hom your @2:27 comment just shows what you’ve got between your ears.
@ SM . Stupid insult .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_Data_Format :
“In keeping with this goal, the HDF libraries and associated tools are available under a liberal, BSD-like license for general use. HDF is supported by many commercial and non-commercial software platforms, including Java, MATLAB, Scilab, Octave, Mathematica, IDL, Python, R, and Julia. The freely available HDF distribution consists of the library, command-line utilities, test suite source, Java interface, and the Java-based HDF Viewer (HDFView).[1]”
If anybody has a serious enough motivation , we can work together to implement or interface the formats in CoSy .
The raw data has been assimilated.
…”Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated” !!…Sooner or later !!
Something has plugged up the drains that empty into the swamp.
The data has been there since the begining, well until trump took over
https://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/
https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov/
here. where it has been from day 1
https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov/#mission=OCO-2
But that only gives you a total column metric
And its Level 2 data. You know what that means right?
you dont want the raw data, since the raw data is voltage from the sensor
Mosher, have you come down to believing the totally corrupted Democrat Nouveau Monde champagne socialists on the myth of Trump destroying the… ermm… ‘evidence’ of the dangers of CO2 /temp that has descended on us. Do you know what a ‘tell’ is? They are really worried that the raw data is going to get reinterpreted after Hansen, Tom Karl and ‘Best’ bent and exaggerated the trend by pushing down pre 1945 and lifting up the present (admittedly they were constrained withe present except for Karl switching SST to ship intake temperatures). Yeah, I know about TOBS and station change. But if a fiery future with 10meter SLR is in the OFFING, it shouldn’t be necessary to adjust temperatures by several tenths of a degree and be rushing down to the seashore with a micrometer. Put a dozen high tech continuously recording thermometers in pristine Arctic locations and polar enhancement (maybe decadal averages) will give us all we need. Since the alarm over warming according to theory turns out to be ~300% exaggerated compared to observations. We have ~a century we can safely wait to see what develops.
No gary
It strikes me as funny that you guys forget who is charge now
There is no more NASA bashing or NOAA bashing.
Its Trumps ship
He is responsible. So complain to him if you dont like the way a Republican NASA and NOAA is running.
He has the power, if he cant or wont use it to “fix” things to you liking then, I guess he doesnt care what you think
Mosher,
You expect Trump to fix in 4 months what got corrupted over more than 8 years? Get real!
Clyde,
Bush Jr did nothing to stop the Deep State climate fraud started by the Clinton-Gore Admin.
The climate corruption really got going in 1993 and hasn’t stopped until now with Trump and Team. And GISS’s Hansen got it going in 1988. So many Liberals were triggered by Reagan and Bush Sr, they laid the seeds of climate Trojan Horse hiding a socialist agenda with the first IPCC.
Mosher
Are you sure it’s not current from the sensor?
Raw data is available from NASA JPL, but the data look noisy and one would need specialized software to produce your own maps.
Noisy data in the hands of ideologues! Precisely why we should be down loading the data to be able to do it ourselves before its too late. How raw is it now?
Gary. Trump runs nasa and noaa.
Okay, what we need now or should have had long ago was global surveillance of deforestation with metrics tracking it.
“As the visualization shows, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be mixed and transported by winds in the blink of an eye.”
OK. Nice work. So can heat, especially as it is delivered upward so effectively by water vapor. Such a visualization makes it clear to me why excess heat cannot be successfully trapped at the surface, as the atmosphere circulates so readily as a heat engine. It’s time to quote again from NASA itself, in its Earth Observatory article “Climate and Earth’s Energy Balance” by Rebecca Lindsey, January 14, 2009: “At an altitude of roughly 5-6 kilometers, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the overlying atmosphere is so small that heat can radiate freely to space.”
Watch the video and look at the altitude scale. I’m looking forward to the day when folks finally “get” that the earth’s effective emission altitude for outgoing longwave radiation is not at the surface, but much higher up.
Bingo on the heat engine! The more heat you put in, the faster it runs. But all the heat that comes in goes back out again.
@ john harmsworth
May 12, 2017 at 3:16 pm: And strangely, none is added to that total flux, in the air. Some is however imagined. Nasa’s games with OCO2 and elsewhere are coming to an end. This is what the evil twins Mosh and Stokes fear. Their treatment of Judith C. is soon to come back on them. Could not happen to nicer fellas.
“The more heat you put in, the faster it runs.” Your comment also prompts this question relevant to CO2: Does the addition of more CO2 make the working fluid of the heat engine more effective, or less so, at absorbing heat down low and rejecting it up high? I would have to say more effective. It seems to me that “climate science” has ignored this most important question. By the way, the “heat engine” description of the atmosphere was expressed by NASA in that same article I cited above. As a mechanical engineer, I “get” the concept and see it as key to ultimately getting over the fear of climate change.
The last words in the video are “Humans determine the long term trends” Holy sh1t!- is that ever flagrant propaganda! Where is that covered?
How about something more scientific, like “Humans have some contribution to the long-term trend.”?
About 90% human, 10% ocean surface temperature since 1958, thus they “may” say that humans determine the long term trend since the South Pole and Mauna Loa measurements started, until now .
“About 90% human, 10% ocean surface temperature since 1958”
There are no other factors?
Pop,
There are many natural factors at work in nature, but the main point is that largest sources/sinks oceans and vegetation act opposite to (seasonal) temperatures, thus reducing the net effect of the main natural CO2 driver.
Human emissions are an external factor and how fast that extra CO2 is removed is a matter of extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere above the (temperature conrolled) equilibrium between CO2 in the ocean surface and in the atmosphere (Henry’s law).
For the current ocean surface temperature, CO2 in the atmosphere would be around 290 ppmv. 400 ppmv is measured, thus 110 μatm (about = ppmv) extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere is good for ~2,15 ppmv net sink rate of CO2, or about half human emissions. Not all of them…
It’s more like 96% temperature, 4% human. Ferdinand’s conception is nonphysical.
and what are the
natural forcings?
Bart,
Your concept is non-physical: only temperature dependent without any influence from an increased CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. That is physically impossible.
Everything is in my model, Ferdinand. You are wrong.
Your model is nonphysical because you assume a natural balance exists by magic. You then decouple the natural input flows from anthropogenic inputs, and treat them differently. Yet, nature has no means of differentiating the two.
Bart,
Your model is nonphysical because you assume a natural balance exists by magic. You then decouple the natural input flows from anthropogenic inputs, and treat them differently. Yet, nature has no means of differentiating the two.
That only shows that you have not the slightest insight in natural processes.
Temperature is the driving force for the huge seasonal fluxes.
The seasonal amplitude hardly changed over the years and the increase in CO2 after a full seasonal cycle still is half human emissions, despite 80 ppmv extra in the atmosphere. Thus the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere has less influence on the sink capacity than the temperature increase in summer (yes opposite to the long-term trend, as the fluxes in/out vegetation are larger than out/in the oceans and opposite to each other).
If you don’t accept that there IS a natural CO2 balance between the temperature of the ocean surface and the atmosphere, you reject over 3 million of ocean data sampled over two centuries and 800,000 years of ice core data, affirming Henry’s law for the solubility of CO2 in seawater for temperature changes. No matter if that is for a single sample in a laboratory or the full dynamics of the oceans.
And again, again and again, natural processes don’t make a distinction between natural and human CO2 (except a small one in isotopes), they do react different on temperature changes than on CO2 pressure changes. As long as you don’t understand and accept that, any further discussion is just a waste of time for everybody.
“Humans determine the long term trends”
That’s the ‘Money Shot’ that guarantees further funding.
Interesting their nice range of colours – I looked at the key and the whole range is 15 ppm (390-405 give or take) All of the yellow-red side is 5 ppm – just over 1% of the amount. Are they really that accurate? Any error in this, particularly with measurements taken at angles compared to straight down?
It’s Red, RED and it’s all our fault!
Roiling turbulent clouds of dense, viscous, toxic fume inexorably returning the planet to its Hadean genesis. Really needs a few Late Heavy Bombardment bolides streaking across the dreadful crimson sky to properly complete the imagery.
yes – viewing angle is compensated.
The issue here is with the processing and presentation – which sucks
“This model ignores empirical data as it shows that all the CO2 emissions are in the North Hemisphere and yet monitoring stations in both hemispheres suggest a common area source in the tropics.:
Err wrong.
The model USES empirical data ( its called data assimilation– same as used in weather models ) to determine sources and flows.
Joseph Fournier writes on Facebook of the surprising thing he’s found:
I have quantified the average ‘lag’ between the seasonally detrended monthly rate of CO2 concentration change at both the South Pole and at Mauna Loa and there is virtually ZERO LAG
If I understand this well, Joseph looks at the seasonal detrended increases and foudn that the maximum increase is in the same month.
From that point he concludes that some common CO2 source is in the tropics.
That is indeed right: the largest deep ocean upwelling sites are near the equator and are influenced by trade winds (El Niño is its extreme form). That CO2 is absorbed near both poles, thus giving a common change if the source changes. Total quantity about 40 GtC/year, based on the δ13C “thinning” of human emissions and the fast decay rate of the extra 14C from nuclear bomb testing.
But that – again – is a cycle and not what causes the CO2 increase in the atmosphere. The increase is caused by extra emissions in the NH as the measured increase shows some 18 months lag between South Pole and Mauna Loa:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/co2_trends_1995_2004.jpg
Need some update, but I don’t think that has changed much (only with a longer lag for the South Pole).
That’s not a lag, Ferdinand. Just an offset.
Ole Humlum’s site Climate4you has monthly updates of much of this data. His 2013 paper “The phase relation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature” goes into this study in depth. He concludes “There exist a clear phase relationship between changes of atmospheric
CO2 and the different global temperature records, whether
representing sea surface temperature, surface air temperature, or lower
troposphere temperature, with changes in the amount of atmospheric
CO2 always lagging behind corresponding changes in temperature.
(1) The overall global temperature change sequence of events appears
to be from 1) the ocean surface to 2) the land surface to
3) the lower troposphere.
(2) Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 11–
12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
(3) Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months
behind changes in global air surface temperature.
(4) Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months
behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
(5) Changes in ocean temperatures appear to explain a substantial
part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January
1980.
(6) CO2 released from anthropogene sources apparently has little influence
on the observed changes in atmospheric CO2, and
changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human
emissions.
(7) On the time scale investigated, the overriding effect of large volcanic
eruptions appears to be a reduction of atmospheric CO2,
presumably due to the dominance of associated cooling effects
from clouds associated with volcanic gases/aerosols and volcanic
debris.
(8) Since at least 1980 changes in global temperature, and presumably
especially southern ocean temperature, appear to represent
a major control on changes in atmospheric CO2.”
DMA,
No problem with points (1)-(5), as far as “global CO2” is meant as the variability in the CO2 rate of change, not the absolute increase of CO2, where that variability is only +/- 1.5 ppmv around a trend of 80 ppmv…
Point (6) doesn’t follow from (1)-(5), as the first points are all about the noise. That says next to nothing about the cause of the increase. The increase in the atmosphere is tracking total human emissions with a very strong correlation since at least 1958 and from ice cores already since about 1900.
Point (7) agreed.
Point (8) only for the noise.
In general, Humlum is speaking about “changes in atmospheric CO2”, while he looked at changes in the rate of change of atmospheric CO2…
FE
In my understanding of the Humlum paper the analysis supports the clear meaning of the words in point 6. From pg. 58
“Fig. 14 shows the calculated correlation coefficients between
changes in anthropogene CO2 and changes in atmospheric CO2 for the
four stations shown in Fig. 13. In all four cases there is a negative correlation
from the time of release and 17–24 months later between DIFF12
changes in anthropogene CO2 and DIFF12 changes in atmospheric CO2,showing that changes in the emission of anthropogene CO2 are not causing changes in atmospheric CO2”
DMA,
There is some analysis of Humlum’s paper by <a href="https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/review-of-humlum-et-al-2012-the-phase-relation-between-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-and-global-temperature-by-donald-rapp/")Donald Rapp at the web blog of Roger Pielke Sr.
In his words:
They compared the rate of change of CO2 concentration with measures of the rate of change of global temperature.
That is the main problem:
At one side you have human emissions with a huge trend and hardly any variability around the trend
At the other side you have temperature with a small trend and a lot of variability.
If you take the derivatives, you remove most of the trend caused by the emissions and what remains is a small trend (caused by the sleightly quadratic increase of total emissions) and a lot of noise. The correlation then is between the temperature rate of change noise and the CO2 rate of change noise, but that says next to nothing about the cause of the trend in CO2…
See further:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_variability.html
DMA,
Humlum didn’t exactly use the derivatives of temperature and CO2, but Diff12, the difference in temperature/CO2 increase between the last 12 months and the previous 12 months, One can see that as a rough equivalent of 24-month filtered derivatives.
Bart,
It would be an offset only if there was no trend, but in this case, the source of the increase in in the NH, the more that the δ13C trends also show the SH lagging the NH.
The two longest series Mauna Loa and South Pole show an increasing lag of the SP:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1960_cur.jpg
Circulus in probando.
Bart,
1. Why would there be an offset between NH and SH at all, as CO2 is readily mixed between the hemispheres, with a mixing rate of about 10%/year both ways.
2. With readily mixing between the hemispheres, how can you maintain an offset?
3. With readily mixing between the hemispheres, how can it be that the lag between the South Pole and Mauna Loa increases?
Sadly the Founier link is broken, or it has been deleted (author realised it was BS ?).
If you remove the mean annual cycle from both ends, how do you expect to find residual phase lag relationship?
You answer your own question. With a mixing rate of only 10% it will take a long time to equilibrate any difference. In the presence of a steady input mainly in NH there will be a persistent lag: sources and sinks.
Ferdinand,
I don’t have a lot of faith in your interpretation. From previous OCO-2 maps, there are massive CO2 sources in the tropics from outgassing. There are significant sources from upwelling at higher latitudes, and there are small anthropogenic sources mostly in the NH. More importantly, the seasonal variations from NH vegetation spreads the sources AND sinks across most of the NH.
Clyde Spencer,
Indeed there is a huge permanent CO2 flux from upwelling zones, mainly in equatorial waters to the poles. Estimated around 40 GtC/year. That is what you see in the OCO-2 measurements. That doesn’t say anything about the residual CO2 after a year – or years.
What is measured is that the oceans as a whole are a net sink for CO2, based on over 2 million measurements of the pCO2 difference between ocean surface and atmosphere. See Feely e.a.:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
and following pages…
Ferdinand, the greening of the planet currently a baby elephant in the room. The greening on the southern fringe of the Sahara and around and in all arid regions (plus rapid growth in forest trees, crops, plankton ) is a exponential factor. Surely CO2 will start to flatten in the not too distant future. This plus the endothermic nature of such growth, and the log flattening of green house effect, plus orher negative feedbacks will make achieving 2C improbable this century. Before we even get half way to 2100, we will be unable to have business as usual CO2 emissions even if we thought it desirable. I think it’s time to set up some bets.
So the CO2 and heat head for the Arctic Circle. Gee, I wonder when climate science grows up to explain something in place of fanciful models for the paper mill promotion system.
Lets make some noise against climatic communist party
“Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere through human activities.”
Is this really true???
Why has there never ever been a study showing what H2O water vapour that humans create over and above what nature creates? While I realize that water vapour only has a residency time of 10-11 days in the atmosphere, we are creating it non stop 24/7 in dozens of ways that is not even talked about. And water vapour is the most potent major GHG that we have overall, and we don’t even even take that into consideration other than showing wacko’s taking pictures of cooling towers hoping to convince the ignorant and gullible that the water cooling towers ejecting water vapour is CO2. (an invisible odorless trace gas of .04% of earths atmosphere)
An ICE engine is only 25%-30% efficient, and the rest is mostly water vapour or friction heat. Same for coal and NG electricity generators, as well as nuclear. We create tens of thousands of sq miles of water storage reservoirs that evaporate huge amounts of water vapour annually. We don’t even talk about thermal heat pollution, other than maybe mentioning the urban heat island effect for weather station siting.
With the majority of industrial activity in the northern hemisphere as well as population and dry earth, is man made water vapour and thermal heat pollution from changed albedo and the like, circulating into the polar regions of the NH which mostly at sel level other than Greenland, responsible for the increasing heat to the polar regions? Is it creating increased rainfall causing flooding? All that water comes back to earth sooner or later, within 10-11 days as rain or snow.
I say this, because if any of this true, then all the blame cannot be laid at the feet of CO2. This is not my area of professional expertise, so would be very keen to hear the thoughts of others. An honest innocent question, so please don’t beat me up too badly.
+++++ with regards to changes in water use…crop irrigation systrms, mining evaporation and storage, cattle dams, catchments for drinking…the list goes on. Lots of reports where ground water tables have fallen ie not getting to the ocean, which Btw affects land elevation and sealevels. Ignore water at your peril.
Careful what you wish for. Given that those economical with climatic truth have already pulled a large positive feedback to co2 sensitivity out of their fundaments, an ever upwardly spiralling human emitted co2/h2o vapour catastrophic planetary heating catastrophe is child’s play.
Irrigation puts about 100 times as much water vapor into the air as everything else combined.