Scientists trace atmospheric rise in CO2 during deglaciation to deep Pacific Ocean
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Long before humans started injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal, the level of atmospheric CO2rose significantly as the Earth came out of its last ice age. Many scientists have long suspected that the source of that carbon was from the deep sea.
But researchers haven’t been able to document just how the carbon made it out of the ocean and into the atmosphere. It has remained one of the most important mysteries of science.
A new study, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, provides some of the most compelling evidence for how it happened – a “flushing” of the deep Pacific Ocean caused by the acceleration of water circulation patterns that begin around Antarctica.
The concern, researchers say, is that it could happen again, potentially magnifying and accelerating human-caused climate change.
“The Pacific Ocean is big and you can store a lot of stuff down there – it’s kind of like Grandma’s root cellar – stuff accumulates there and sometimes doesn’t get cleaned out,” said Alan Mix, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study. “We’ve known that CO2 in the atmosphere went up and down in the past, we know that it was part of big climate changes, and we thought it came out of the deep ocean.
“But it has not been clear how the carbon actually got out of the ocean to cause the CO2 rise.”
Lead author Jianghui Du, a doctoral student in oceanography at Oregon State, said there is a circulation pattern in the Pacific that begins with water around Antarctica sinking and moving northward at great depth a few miles below the surface. It continues all the way to Alaska, where it rises, turns back southward, and flows back to Antarctica where it mixes back up to the sea surface.
It takes a long time for the water’s round trip journey in the abyss – almost 1,000 years, Du said. Along with the rest of the OSU team, Du found that flow slowed down during glacial maximums but sped up during deglaciation, as the Earth warmed. This faster flow flushed the carbon from the deep Pacific Ocean – “cleaning out Grandma’s root cellar” – and brought the CO2 to the surface near Antarctica. There it was released into the atmosphere.
“It happened roughly in two steps during the last deglaciation – an initial phase from 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, when CO2 rose by about 50 parts per million, and a second pulse later added another 30 parts per million,” Du said.
That total is just a bit less than the amount CO2 has risen since the industrial revolution. So the ocean can be a powerful source of carbon.
Brian Haley, also an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study, noted that carbon is always falling down into the deep ocean. Up near the surface, plankton grow, but when they die they sink and decompose. That is a biological pump that is always sending carbon to the bottom. “The slower the circulation,” Haley said, “the more time the water spends down there, and carbon can build up.”
Du said that during a glacial maximum, the water slows down and accumulates lots of carbon. “When the Earth began warming, the water movement sped up by about a factor of three,” he noted, “and that carbon came back to the surface.”
The key to the researchers’ discovery is the analysis of neodymium isotopes in North Pacific sediment cores. Haley noted that the isotopes are “like a return address label on a letter from the deep ocean.” When the ratio of isotope 143 to 144 is higher in the sediments, the water movement during that period was slower. When water movement speeds up during warming events, the ratio of neodymium isotopes reflects that too.
“This finding that the deep circulation sped up is the smoking gun in this mystery story about how CO2 got out to the deep sea,” Mix said. “We now know how it happened, and the deep Pacific is the culprit – a partner in crime with Antarctica.”
What concerns the researchers is that it could happen again as the climate continues to warm.
“We don’t know that the circulation will speed up and bring that carbon to the surface, but it seems like a reasonable thing to think about,” Du said. “Our evidence that this actually happened in the past will help the people who run climate models figure out whether it is a real risk for the future.”
The researchers say their findings should be considered from a policy perspective.
“So far the ocean has absorbed about a third of the total carbon emitted from fossil fuels,” Mix said. “That has helped slow down warming. The Paris Climate Agreement has set goals of containing warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees (Celsius) and we know pretty well how much carbon can be released to the atmosphere while keeping to that level.
“But if the ocean stops absorbing the excess CO2, and instead releases more from the deep sea, that spells trouble. Ocean release would subtract from our remaining emissions budget and that means we’re going to have to get our emissions down a heck of a lot faster. We need to figure out how much.”
The authors are from College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State, and from United States Geological Survey. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation.
The Study: Flushing of the deep Pacific Ocean and the deglacial rise of atmospheric CO2concentrations
Abstract
During the last deglaciation (19,000–9,000 years ago), atmospheric CO2increased by about 80 ppm. Understanding the mechanisms responsible for this change is a central theme of palaeoclimatology, relevant for predicting future CO2 transfers in a warming world. Deglacial CO2 rise hypothetically tapped an accumulated deep Pacific carbon reservoir, but the processes remain elusive as they are underconstrained by existing tracers. Here we report high-resolution authigenic neodymium isotope data in North Pacific sediment cores and infer abyssal Pacific overturning weaker than today during the Last Glacial Maximum but intermittently stronger during steps of deglacial CO2 rise. Radiocarbon evidence suggestive of relatively ‘old’ deglacial deep Pacific water is reinterpreted here as an increase in preformed 14C age of subsurface waters sourced near Antarctica, consistent with movement of aged carbon out of the deep ocean and release of CO2 to the atmosphere during the abyssal flushing events. The timing of neodymium isotope changes suggests that deglacial acceleration of Pacific abyssal circulation tracked Southern Hemisphere warming, sea-ice retreat and increase of mean ocean temperature. The inferred magnitude of circulation changes is consistent with deep Pacific flushing as a significant, and perhaps dominant, control of the deglacial rise of atmospheric CO2.
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“The Pacific Ocean is big and you can store a lot of stuff down there – it’s kind of like Grandma’s root cellar – stuff accumulates there and sometimes doesn’t get cleaned out,” said Alan Mix, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study.
“Grandma’s root cellar” and “”stuff accumulates”. Nothing screams SCIENCE like phrases like those.
That phraseology bothered me, too. It is as if you can’t write about science to people who know a decently wide vocabulary and are conversant with scientific terms. You must write down to them, folksy and chummy, in terms the kids at the mall can understand–not that most of their grannys ever had a root-cellar. ” . . . sometimes doesn’t get cleaned out” seems to be calling for a laxative, which is just another way of saying CO2 is waste, no-good stuff. My impression is that CO2 is not waste, but plant food.
You write the abstract for the people who paid for the study. They don’t necessarily want to know the entire calculus, they just want a layman’s term abstraction, along with confirmation, that whatever you are studying could indicate a crisis is in the works, that the agency could potentially “help.”
that verbiage isnt even in the abstract
Interesting.
I wonder about the age of the person that wrote that.
My grandmothers died before I was born. I’m told my mother’s family had a milk house over a cold spring where the milk often was watched over by a rattlesnake.
Not that I haven’t seen a root cellar. Just not recently.
Rob & John it is the most perfect of analogs. Why in Grandma’s root cellar you could find old coins vintage bottles and old news papers with headlines of heat waves in the 1930s or a coming ice age in the 1970s. And lets not forget all of the temperature records and weather reports just waiting to be rediscovered.
michael
When asked what happens when grandma loses control of her bodily functions, he probably said something like, “Depends.”
W.O.W…Just W.O.W….
Now it is a “CRIME to emit CO2 into the air. These scientists better learn to hold their breath for a very long time lest they are arrested for a crime against the Deep Green State
Nothing says BS to me like someone coming out with a string of scientific terms that his audience can’t possibly understand.
On the other hand …
The CO2 budget is poorly understood and has huge error bars. The alarmists claim they can balance the budget to within 1%. That’s also BS.
In particular, we are given CO2 residence times that range from four years to centuries. The alarmist message requires the latter.
It is highly likely that a great proportion of the CO2 that has accumulated in the atmosphere is from natural sources, including the deep ocean.
commieBob,
Individual CO2 fluxes are hardly known within any accuracy, but the overall budget is quite simple to know accurately: we have fossil fuel use inventories with reasonable accuracy (maybe underestimated…) and we have CO2 measurements with high accuracy. The difference is the total balance of the natural cycle.
As in the past 65 years the natural balance was always negative it is very unlikely that nature is the source of the CO2 increase…
Ferdinand,
You said, “As in the past 65 years the natural balance was always negative it is very unlikely that nature is the source of the CO2 increase…” Could you elaborate on that? The OCO-2 satellite maps show significant CO2 levels over the tropical oceans, but the supposed source of anthropogenic CO2 over land are difficult to discern. There appears to be a biological cycling of CO2, particularly in association with mid-latitude deciduous forests, but I don’t see the same thing over the tropical oceans.
Clyde,
I think they overestimated the possibilities of OCO-2 to detect the human influence: 4.5 ppmv human emissions/year is about 0.01 ppmv/day. Even concentrated in about 10% of the earth’s surface, still only 0.1 ppmv/day, hardly detectable by the satellite in daily changes of 100s of ppmv within e.g. a forest…
The natural cycles are huge, especially seasonal and all temperature driven. At the end of the full seasonal cycle there is little change in total CO2 and the cycle itself hardly changed between 60 years ago and today. The same for the main continuous CO2 flux between the upwelling in the tropical oceans and the polar sink places. What you see is the high emissions of equatorial waters (partly drifting over land), but that doesn’t say anything about the effect on total CO2 levels, as you need to subtract the sinks near the poles.
Then, there are still unexplained impossibilities in the satellite data: the main CO2 sink place in the N.E. Atlantic has high levels of CO2 while some 40 GtC CO2 sinks there every year into the deep oceans? The atmosphere is around 400 ppmv, the pCO2 of the ocean surface there is about 150 μatm, should lower the CO2 levels in the atmosphere a lot…
“still only 0.1 ppmv/day, hardly detectable by the satellite in daily changes of 100s of ppmv within e.g. a forest…”
And yet they need that level of precision to get the correlation of global levels measured from a single spot with SH SST and RSS.
Robert,
Mauna Loa and other stations are reference points which can be used to calibrate the satellite readings for the same point at the same time. No need for global levels if used for calibration only…
Ferdinand,
It’s not that simple, nor was the balance negative. There has never in human record keeping of co2 in the last 165 years has co2 been negative. In fact I suspect that some high percenrage of co2 that is in the increase is natural. When it warms up there is more co2 ppm/v. and when it cools down less ppm/v …..
rishrac,
That is a matter of solubility of CO2 in seawater, specifically for the surface waters. There is a shift of about 16 ppmv/K change in ocean surface temperatures. If we may assume that there was a warming of 1 K since the LIA, the maximum increase in atmospheric CO2 ould be 16 ppmv. About 116 ppmv above equilibrium for the current average ocean temperature is observed, thus some 100 ppmv is human caused…
Ferdinand,
How big are the sinks? I’ve been saying this since 2014, there is something wrong with the carbon cycle that AGW has trotted out. AGW likes to portray that the carbon cycle was so finely balanced that when we started burning fossil fuels, it showed up in the co2 record. In fact for a long time AGW was telling people how much the percentage of natural co2 as opposed to anthro co2 based on isotopes ratios. They can’t.
This at a time when it took 30 years or more to produce what we now produce in 1 year. This is also when there was a lot more forests and supposedly the oceans were cooler. Turning the ocean acidic is another story. And somehow in 30 years back at the start of Industrial times, the sinks just couldn’t take down the co2 that was being produced?
That ridiculous!!!!
I’ve look at this a lot, and I don’t know. You know factors like the salinity of the oceans, the standard temperature and pressure versus what the pressure and temperature actually are, the surface area….. all those waves increase the surface…. is there more surface area now than 100 years ago? How do you determine those factors?
In 1965 12 Billion Metric Tons of co2 was produced, 6 BMT by weight and volume became atmospheric co2 and 6 BMT went into the sink. In 2014, 38 BMT was produced, 19 BMT went into the sink per NOAA. The rise in atmospheric co2 was 2.23 ppm/v that year, so that’s a little over 12 BMT. Where did 7 BMT go to? This wasn’t a one off year. Every year is like this. The difference between what the sinks are capable of handling today is one and a half times greater than all of the co2 produced in 1965, and yet somehow when co2 production was much, much less, that co2 showed up in the record?
Further, in March of 2015 when I started talking about this subject and the apparent discrepancies between production and what was ending up in the atmosphere, NOAA and the European counter part started going on about ‘ world production levels of co2 have leveled off “. Sure I believe that. ( I don’t ) Year after year production was going up over a BMT a year.
This will give you an idea of how whacked out this story on this carbon cycle is, … ( and they keep doing studies to try to explain it…. just recently as highlighted here on WUWT, a paper on the southern ocean is leaking co2 ) No co2 ppm/v per year increase was higher than 1998 until 2017, another warm year, and then just barely, despite yearly increases of co2 production. The year 2017, the co2 increase should have been a minimum of 4 ppm/v up to 6 or 7. It was only 3.05 ppm/v barely above the 1998 of 2.98 ppm/v.
Want to know a AGW nightmare: co2 levels decline 20 ppm/v in a year and temps go up. Which is in opposition to what I’ve been saying that co2 follows temperature, proof is in the record. However, there could be an event that causes a decline in co2 and a temperature rise. A real one.
Accurate data is needed to do the best analysis of what the processes at work are. NOAA changing the data, and they did, to meet a political agenda is not helpful. CO2 follows temperature, follows peak to peak solar activity and follows cosmic ray activity. Direct conversion of co2 to carbon and oxygen is also a fact. The carbon found in the Arctic may not be all soot carried there. I also think that the SH a lot more direct conversion could be happening when the earth is at perihelion. I think if they look at core samples they might be able to see it. Short term and long term as the position of the earth changes during those times.
How would I know, they aren’t about to give me a grant to go study it, are they?
One further note, ALL of the increased production of co2 since 1998 (using the production of co2 in 1998 as the baseline ) has disappeared. And the reason for ” I don’t how how much of the co2 in the atmosphere is from us or natural ” because there is the little thing called the pause in temperature after 1998. Looks to me like co2 paused as well.
rishrac,
I have no way to validate (or invalidate) anything you claim in the above…and given that this is not something I’ve ever looked at, have no idea if it’s loony tunes or serious inquiry… (😁)
But just wanted to say I love comments like this one. You’ve clearly spent a lot of time thinking about this topic, and are asking some intriguing questions. You should dig in and write up your thoughts for Anthony as a head posting.
I think it might generate some truly interesting discussion here.
rip
@ur momisugly ripshin,
Everything I’ve said can be validated. It really isn’t that hard if you have a knowledge of Excel or Google docs. The information is free of charge at NOAA. It has both temperature by month and co2 ppm/v by month from 1958. Charting is pretty easy. After you write the formula, you can copy and paste for the rest of the years…. you can subtract the dec 1998 co2 reading from dec 1997 gives you 2.75 ( or any month to start and end with or add the months up and divide by 12.) and so on… it’s pretty easy really.
( I should say at least for me .. if your good you can download the data directly into the spreadsheet that’ll save you time and errors )
Realizing that it’s not the total atmospheric co2 you are comparing but the yearly amounts co2 went will save you a few years. The fact that co2 follows temperature clearly wasn’t what I was looking for when I graphed it. It was from a discussion here on WUWT about the acceleration. I was looking for the yearly co2 ppm/v increase compared to the rate at which temperature was increasing.
After all according to the IPCC and assoc. adding more co2 is suppose to be exponential. What I got was a lot of ups and down with co2 that went up and down with temperature. NOAA did mess with it some, but everything is still there… they can’t change it too much.
I’m waiting for somebody to confirm it . This isn’t magic. It works and I am confident that anybody that does the same will get the same result…. and maybe see more in it than I do. … it’s repeatable and verifiable… real science.
The thing I thought was really exciting was the graph on co2 monthly levels for the year. It’s the exact same sine wave as the earth’s orbit around the sun…. it is temperature controlling co2!!!!!!!!! A eureka kind of moment… That’s why I go on about the 3 % distance the earth’s orbit out…. it a 4 C drop planet wide. during aphelion ( when it’s the greatest distance away)
rishrac,
You are not the first who tries to make something of the nice correlation between the variability in temperature and the variability in CO2 rate of change.
To keep it simpel:
The variability in the CO2 rate of change indeed follows the temperarature rate of change with a small lag, but that results only in a small +/- 1.5 ppmv variability around the 80+ ppmv trend over the past 60 years, here enlarged for the 1991 Pintubo and 1998 El Niño:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/wft_trends_rss_1985-2000.jpg
The main cause of the CO2 rate of change variability is the response of mainly tropical forests on temperature changes and changed rain patterns.
That has nothing to do with the increase of CO2 itself, which is NOT caused by vegetation: vegetation is a small, but increasing sink for CO2, the earth is greening…
That has nothing to do with constant increasing man made co2 and temperature dropping and co2 following. This isn’t over a period of time where things change.
Besides that information is included in the sinks. It’s still short 7 BMT for 2014, and all the increased co2 since 1998. I think I said that.
I am saying that because of that, there is/has been warming but co2 wan’t driving it.
It’s small when you don’t want it to be and huge when you do. +/- 1.5 ppm/v is anything but small. It’s twice that when considering sinking. By atmospheric weight it’s 9 BMT. If it’s man made it’s 18 BMT allowing for half of it to be sunk.
rishrac,
Seasonal changes are the ones with the highest CO2 fluxes, but end with near zero change after a full yearly cycle.
Global impact: +/- 5 ppmv
ENSO and huge volcanic events impact temperatures for 1-3 years and then level off to near zero. Small, lagged effect on CO2 fluxes: +/- 3 GtC/year.
Global impact: +/- 1.5 ppmv
Humans continuously emit some 4.5 ppmv/year (9 GtC/year) nowadays. The impact of 4.5 ppmv/year extra results in an increase of about 2.15 ppmv/year (2012). The year by year natural variability is only noise and has no influence on the increase. As both oceans and vegetation are net sinks for CO2, the noise is in the variability of the sinks. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Average sink capacity increases with the increase of CO2 pressure in the atmosphere: for the same drain diameter in a sink, a doubling of pressure (= height of the water in the sink), doubles the outflux…
rishrac,
A lot of questions you have… I had them too, but by looking at all evidence built over the years, I am now convinced that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere over the past 165 years is mainly man-made.
Let us start with the main CO2 fluxes between atmosphere and biosphere/oceans within a full year:
Based on O2 and δ13C changes, one can make reasonal estimates of these fluxes:
– Some 60 GtC as CO2 is exchanged between the atmosphere and the biosphere: absorbed in spring/summer/fall and released all year, but mainly in fall-winter-early spring.
– Some 50 GtC as CO2 is exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean surface: released in spring/summer and absorbed in fall/winter.
As these fluxes are opposite to each other and opposite in the hemispheres, the net result is some 10 GtC (~5 ppmv) amplitude, mainly in the NH where most of the land/forests reside.
Note indeed that in the seasonal case, CO2 changes are opposite to temperature changes! Warmer = less CO2…
Here for Mauna Loa and Barrow:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/seasonal_CO2_d13C_MLO_BRW.jpg
Besides that, there is:
– Some 40 GtC/year as CO2 is continuous exchanged between the deep oceans and the atmosphere between the upwelling places near the equator and the sink places near the poles.
The 40 GtC/year is estimated from the “thinning” of the human “fingerprint”: If all human CO2 would have remained in the atmosphere the δ13C level would have dropped much faster than observed. That is independently confirmed by the decay rate of 14C from the atomic bomb tests:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/deep_ocean_air_zero.jpg
All these fluxes are caused by temperature: seasonal, with a lag of a few months for CO2 and continuous due to the temperature difference between equator and poles.
Then we have some large year by year variability in temperature, which causes some variability in the yearly rate of change of CO2, independent of any (human) emissions. Based on the opposite CO2 and δ13C changes, it is proven that the (tropical) forests are the dominant response, not the oceans. In general that levels off to near zero within 1-3 years with a maximum amplitude of 1.5 ppmv around the trend for the extremes (1991 Pinatubo, 1998 El Niño).
Here CO2 follows T with a lag, but in the same direction:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_dco2_d13C_mlo.jpg
Then we have the slow multi-year to multi-millennia changes: there is where the oceans dominate the CO2 changes, following temperature changes with decades to millennia…
Then we have humans adding a little CO2 each year in that more or less equilibrated circus.
In the first years, little happens and a little extra CO2 (as mass!) remains in the atmosphere, within the natural – temperature caused – variability.
As humans add more and more CO2, CO2 levels in the atmosphere start to increase. That doesn’t change the base of the seasonal cycle, which is temperature driven, but it adds a little to how much CO2 is stored into more permanent organics (roots, peat, -brown-coal) and it reduces the input from the equatorial upwelling and increases the output into the deep ocean sinks near the poles somewhat.
How much? According to the data over the past 60 years, quite linear in ratio with the increase in CO2 above the temperature controlled dynamic equilibrium between ocean surface and atmosphere, with a half life time of ~35 years.
Thus how much the CO2 increase will be in a given year, depends of:
1. human emissions.
2. temperature changes.
3. total extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere, which determines the sink rate.
Besides the temperature variability, in average the increase in the atmosphere is about half human emissions which is pure coincidence: it would be zero if humans reduced their input in half, or ir would be zero after a long time, if the emissions were constant or it would be negative if humans reduced their input to below half.
The factor 2 is only the result of the slightly quadratic increase of emissions over time and resulting slightly quadratic increase in the atmosphere and in sinks…
Thus in short: the sink base didn’t change, but the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere increased from near zero in 1750 to 115 μatm in 2018…
Fredinand,
The are no negative numbers since pre Industrial times in the co2 record. This fine equilibrium that is put forth in the carbon cycle is wrong.
Factor 2: Temperature is the driver.
There is a definite day of the year when total atmospheric co2 stops increasing. That day is when the earth is moving away from the sun. The rate of increase declines and goes to zero. After that co2 levels start to decline, and they continue to decline until the earth reaches a point where the decline stops ( by atmospheric weight it’s more than the sum total of all the current co2 produced in a year ) and the the numbers build back up as the earth warms back up.
I think that at that number where the earth is at the temperature when co2 levels stop increasing and goes to zero, if it gets cold below that number you will see co2 start to go negative.
I can point out episodes in the last 60 years where the temp dropped and co2 ppm/v increase also dropped. And when temps went up co2 ppm/v went up. That’s a fact.
Everything else is speculation and needs to be driven by that fact. When you provide the science that supports what I see in the observation, then we will know something.
We don’t know any more about climate than we did 60 years ago. In fact we may have known more.
While I don’t think that I’ve totally disagreed that we have added some co2 to the atmosphere, the percentage is. And for 2 reasons:
1. I don’t trust the record for the MWP and LIA on co2. And the reason I don’t trust them is that it was both colder and warmer than present. Being that there is geologic, written, and biologic evidence that supports that view, what’s in disagreement is the co2 record.
2. The combination of the sinks and temperature.
How big are the sinks? By today’s volume of co2 there is no reason at all that any of the co2 should have been positive… Unless there was an underlying trend… warmer.
During any time period co2 follows the time.
There will be world wide chaos if temperatures drop. No amount of money will save you.
One other thing, the current levels of co2 are the highest they been in a very long time. During a couple of the last periods between ice ages the temperature was warmer than it is now. What do you think the reason is for the discrepancy between more co2 and lower temperatures?
We are 126 ppm/v over pre Industrial times, what should the temperature be? Or my new question how many ppm/v raises the temperature 1 C. That way it can be verified. Some one said 357 ppm/v. That seems an awful lot.
rishrac,
The are no negative numbers since pre Industrial times in the co2 record.
As the short term variability (El Niño) levels off in 1-3 years and the best performing ice cores have a resolution of about 10 years, we simply don’t know.
That day is when the earth is moving away from the sun.
For the NH. For the SH it is exactly the opposite. As the NH has a higher forest to ocean ratio, the NH is dominant. Of course the position of the earth is important, as that gives the seasonal temperature changes, but the temperature change is what drives the CO2 change, not the position of the earth directly.
I can point out episodes in the last 60 years where the temp dropped and co2 ppm/v increase also dropped
The focus is on “ppmv increase dropped”, as even in that case the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere still increased. The variability in CO2 rate of change is (near) entirely caused by the influence of temperature variability on the sink capacity of the natural sinks. Even so, the average impact on the increase is near zero after 1-3 years.
I don’t trust the record for the MWP and LIA on co2
The resolution of the ice core CO2 record is too coarse to see fast changes, still the best record shows the influence of the LIA: minus 6 ppmv for a drop of about 0.8 K, with a lag of ~50 years after the temperature drop. From Etheridge (1996) e.a.:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/law_dome_1000yr.jpg
How big are the sinks?
Depends of the extra CO2 pressure in the atmosphere. If there is no extra CO2 in the atmosphere, there are no extra sinks. With 50 ppmv extra there is a sink of about 1 ppmv/year. With 110 ppmv extra the sink is 2.15 ppmv/year. Highly linear as observed in the past 60 years of measurements.
There will be world wide chaos if temperatures drop.
Not at all: a sudden drop of 1 K will give a drop of 16 ppmv, that is fully compensated by less than 4 years of human emissions at 4.5 ppmv/year.
Or my new question how many ppm/v raises the temperature 1 C.
Firste the opposite: 3 million of seawater samples have proven that the equilibrium between seawater CO2 and atmospheric CO2, changes with about 16 ppmv/K. Thus if all 115 ppmv was caused by warming oceans, the temperature should need to have increased with about 7 K, which is not what is observed…
Second: theoretically, a doubling of CO2 (560 ppmv) causes an increase of about 1 K (Modtran). In real life it seems less (ice cores) in climate models a lot more, but the performance of these is rather questionable…
I’m waiting for the light bulb to go on in your head. That’s all I talked about was drops. You talked about 1998. Let’s talk about 1998 specifically. You know the year before the co2 was less as well as the year after and all the years up 2017. What I didn’t talk about was that 1998 we didn’t produce enough co2 to make the ppm/v that high. What drove 9 BMT to be in the atmosphere? or 1.5 ppm/v that we didn’t produce? Was it hiding somewhere?
The way I see it is that last year, 2017, was the 1st year that co2 production matched what was found in the atmosphere. Therefore I can concluded that the actual temperature has been declining.
The orbit of the earth is extremely important. Of course it’s just the opposite in one hemisphere than the other. That has nothing to do with the total TSI the earth receives at aphelion. It’s 5 Million Km further away. The energy flux drops more than 3%, I told you it’s the inverse power law. Additionally, because of Kepler’s law, it’s out there longer.
It is temperature controlling co2. The total uptake in the production is included in the NH. From May to October the amount of co2 being sequestered somewhere is truly staggering. For 2017, not only all of co2 produced during that time became sequestered, but 42 BMT of atmospheric co2 became sequestered in addition to. That is more than we produced all year. A temperature drop below a certain level will cause atmospheric co2 levels to drop. This isn’t some guess work, this happened.
rishrac,
You are overfocused on the short term variability.
Short term variability is caused by temperature variability. Everybody agrees on that: all sceptics, the IPCC, NOAA,…
See Pieter Tans of NOAA at (from sheet 11 on):
https://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf
The seasonal temperature changes are huge and so are the seasonal CO2 changes.
The year by year temperature changes are smaller and so are the year by year CO2 rate of change changes.
At the end of the year, the net CO2 effect of the seasons is near zero.
After a few years, the net CO2 effects of Pinatubo or El Niño are near zero.
It is proven that seasonal and year by year effects are mainly the response of vegetation on temperature changes (but opposite to each other!).
It is proven that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is NOT caused by vegetation, as vegetation is a net, proven, increasing, sink for CO2:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
We find the average CO2 uptake by the ocean and the land biosphere was 1.7 ± 0.5 and 1.0 ± 0.6 GtC/yr respectively
It is proven that warming oceans are NOT the cause of the increase, only a small part of it, because of the solubility change with temperature is too small. The oceans are a net, proven, increasing, sink for CO2:
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 Pg C/yr
In contrast, humans emit in average twice the amount of CO2 than the measured increase in the atmosphere.
It doesn’t matter at all if one year more than all human emissions of that year are absorbed and the next year the increase is more than what humans emitted. That is just completely unimportant noise and doesn’t affect the cause and effect case for human emissions averaged over a few years
About spurious correlations which “prove” that temperature is the cause of the overall CO2 increase:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/25/about-spurious-correlations-and-causation-of-the-co2-increase-2/
Rishrac, this is hugely a important concept to discuss. Well stated.
Thank you, I’ve looked at this a long time.
They have already shown that approx. 50% of the CO2 is produced by nature and it is one of the main reasons plant life started to spread all over the planet. Without CO2 in the atmosphere all life except for a few species of microbes would die.
CO2 never “accumulates” in Earth’s atmosphere.
It circulates to and from much larger surface pools, both ocean and biological.
Just like a river flows from sources to sinks. Water never accumulates in a river, it just flows.
River levels do rise when inputs to watersheds exceed outflows. And vice versa.
Exactly. The same is happening with atmospheric CO2.
bwegher,
I don’t see it that way: the atmosphere, soils, oceans,… are reservoirs for CO2, not active fluxes. There are lots of active fluxes (“rivers”) at work which exchange CO2 between the different reservoirs. If there is more influx than outflux in one of the reservoirs, CO2 will accumulate in that reservoir. Which is currently the case for the atmosphere…
commieBob,
In addition, the residence time for any CO2 molecule, whatever the origin, in the atmosphere indeed is only a few years. But that has nothing to do with how fast (or slow) an extra shot of CO2 above equilibrium is removed out of the atmosphere, that is about 51 years. The hundreds of years is from the IPCC’s Bern model, for which not the slightest proof of saturation of the deep oceans is in sight…
You can see the difference between the two decay times as the throughput of goods (and capital) through a factory (=residence time) and the gain (or loss) of the same factory after a fiscal year (=your return on investment). Quite different things…
Your 51 years claim has no basis in reality, and is directly refuted by observed radiocarbon tracer showing tau of 18 years.
No real scientist will ever cite your convoluted claims when the real world experiment has already shown the conclusive reality.
bwegher,
Please, the 51 years claim is based on real life data over the past 60 years and is surprisingly linear with the extra CO2 pressure above the dynamic equilibrium.
Residence time = content / throughput:
800 GtC / 150 GtC/year = 5.3 years
E-fold decay rate = cause / effect:
= extra pressure in the atmosphere / net sink rate:
In 1959: 25 ppmv / 0.5 ppmv/year = 50 years, half life time 34.7 years
In 1959: 60 ppmv / 1.13 ppmv/year = 53 years, half life time 36.8 years
In 2012: 110 ppmv / 2.15 ppmv/year = 51.2 years or a half life time of 35.5 years.
There is a problem with the use of the 14C decay rate from the atomic bomb tests: what goes out of the atmosphere does return only after some 1,000 years. Thus while high levels 14CO2 sink into the deep oceans, only 45% returns the same year (at the bomb peak), while 97.5% of all 12CO2 returns the same year. That makes that the decay rate of any extra 14CO2 is much faster than of any extra 12CO2.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/14co2_distri_1960.jpg
Sorry, the second decay rate calculation is from 1988, not 1959…
One has to wonder just who the expected or intended reading audience was.
Sadly one often has to “dumb down” science to analogies a 3rd grader would understand, quite frankly because the majority of Americans have only a 3rd grade level of science understanding. Not everyone has a comprehension of scales and sizes of things, not even some well educated scientists.
“A scientist can calculate a number, but it takes and engineer to make you understand just how big a sh!tload that is.”
rocketscientist,
That is the point! Were they writing for other scientists, or was it intentionally written as propaganda for the scientifically illiterate?
It’s meant for politicians and MSM who, too often, have the comprehension of 3rd graders (no offense to 3rd graders, some are better than the two afore mentioned…..)
Talk to a water operator or a limnologist. i think “turnover” could cause a release. Cold water from the surface falls and displaces a warmer blob stratified below to the surface. happens all the time in lakes and ponds. On 21 August 1986, a limnic eruption at Lake Nyos in northwestern Cameroon killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.
yes as popper argued, you can reject science merely by looking at the bad metaphors used by scientists when trying to explain compkex phenomena to the popular press.
bad metaphor means its false.
who knew that an art critic could reject science so easily. wuwt readers are razor sharp.
Instead of your usual drive-by comment, you are actually putting your English background to good use through creative sarcasm. Keep up the good work! But, I still maintain that when authors appear to be writing for a lay audience, rather than their peers, it raises the question of whether their purpose is to communicate science or to promote propaganda. If the latter, then it doesn’t matter what Popper would have thought.
I learned about Granny’s root cellar when she made Jethro dig one out next to the cement pond.
Why do they insist on labeling CO2 “Carbon”??
Carbon is the new Satan whereas CO2 is literally the stuff of life, the vector by which all life on the planet flourishes. The eco science einzatsgruppenfuhrers can’t have any confusion about any of that. It would complicate the job they have to and are paid to do.
In Carbon Bondage.
Everybody seems to forget life on this planet IS carbon-based without it life here would not exist..
They’re racists.
Moleculists perhaps
Eric H,
There is a good scientific reason to call it the carbon cycle, as CO2 is only CO2 in the atmosphere. In the oceans it is 1% CO2, 90% bicarbonates and 9% carbonates. In vegetation it is transformed into a lot of carbohydrates (sugars, starch, cellulose,…) and other compounds. Thus to make comparisons and flows easier to calculate and follow, everything is calculated as carbon…
The same reason as why in agriculture one follows the phosphor cycle (although mostly phosphate), the nirogen cycle (mostly nitrate and/or ammonium), the potash cycle…
In a discussion of such cycles, yes, it makes sense to speak of only carbon, but when the discussion is clearly about carbon DIOXIDE, and an attempt is made to conflate THIS discussion with a more generalized discussion, then we are no longer in the realm of “sense” but in the realm of sensationalizing, as the word plays on emotions by associating what is dirty and evil with what is black (i.e., coal).
Robert,
I know, some make it carbon “pollution”, but the origin was simply scientific: the carbon cycle and not the CO2 cycle, even if one theoretically can calculate everything as CO2 “equivalents”: it is not CO2 that is cycling, it is CO2 only in the atmosphere and that is only 1% or so of all carbon on earth…
CO2 is also found in the soil as well as methane, it is produced by organic matter decomposing.
John,
Most of what is buried into soils is organics: carbon compounds like cellulose and lignin. That is decomposed by bacteria and molds to CH4 and CO2, which escapes to the atmosphere and is part of the biological carbon cycle. One can call that the “CO2 cycle”, but that isn’t the case for 99% of the cycle…
And one of the things this “study” is glossing over is “what oxidises the carbon in the sediment?”
Nobody uses the term “nitrogen pollution”.
sure they do. There is a fancy word for it though. Eutrophication is almost always too much organic nitrogen in the water. Eutrophication is almost always induced by the discharge of nitrate or phosphate-containing detergents, fertilizers, or sewage into an aquatic system.
“The same reason as why in agriculture one follows the phosphor cycle (although mostly phosphate), the nirogen cycle (mostly nitrate and/or ammonium), the potash cycle…”
Not really, as a farmer we try to have all those nutrients in the soil for the planets to uptake as it is needed, true early in planting nitrogen is needed for vegetation growth but so are phosphate and potash. As the growth of the plant continues nitrogen is used up to a degree as the plants requires it and when fruiting starts to happen the plant uses more of the other nutrient to complete it’s growth.
It’s the plant itself that decides what it needs and wants at each stage of growth to grow properly, this can easily been seen when doing organic gardening/farming. Personally I dump all kinds of organic matter on the soil before the winter is over work it in then in spring time I plant the veggies and during the growing season I do nothing but give it water when needed nothing else, the plant uses the nutrients as it is needed.
John,
I fully agree (was on organic gardener myself in my -small- family garden)…
As you see in your own words: you use the term “nitrogen used” by the plants, while it is in fact mostly nitrates which are absorbed.
Several people here object to the use of the words “carbon cycle” with a vision of black carbon floating around, while that term is only used to follow any element from point to point, in whatever form it may be incorporated…
Because everyone knows Carbon is Black and Dirty
Bryan A
..”everyone knows Carbon is Black and Dirty”….
I wouldn’t describe my wife’s diamond ring as ‘black and dirty’ !!?
Cheers
Just give that little clear stone a bit of pressure and see what color it crushes into.
Diamonds are a good way to sequester carbon though
why?
must be a conspiracy.
Oh you little Conspiracy Ideationist you
Lots of hand-wavium going on here in this paper.
They’re just trying to say when the ocean gets warmer, it releases more CO2…
..and when it gets colder it sucks up more
but 80ppm ain’t squat
No, their use of neodymium isotopic ratio as a proxy measure for the Pacific over-turning current flow speed is dubious. Alterations to Neodymium isotope ratios at the millennial time scale could easily come from submarine volcanic flows and hot smoker mineral laden deep waters, of which there are copious amounts of both on the Pacific floors. So they think they are seeing flow speeds alone with that ratio, when is could just be jumbled mess meaning nothing. Like seeing patterns in clouds.
I wonder just how accurate the neodymium proxy is. Remember treemometers?
The deep oceans are the main sources and sinks for CO2, that is clear, but the CO2 level in the atmosphere is determined by the average seawater temperature of the surface layer, not by the deep oceans.
There is a quite linear ratio between Antarctic temperatures over the past 800,000 years of about 8 ppmv/K. Translated towards global temperatures, that is about 16 ppmv/K. Not by coincidence the change of the solubility of CO2 in seawater:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
Most of the discrepancies are the result of the (huge) lag of CO2 after the temperature rise and especially the temperature drop towards a new glacial period
Also important: the glacial-interglacial transition needed 5,000 years to push 80-100 ppmv extra in the atmosphere or a “speed” of maximum 0.02 ppmv/year while the current increase is over 2 ppmv/year (and human emissions 4.5 ppmv/year).
In the first case, it was quite easy to reach an equilibrium between temperature and CO2 levels, while we are now 110 ppmv above equilibrium for the current average ocean temperature…
Equilibrium? What does that mean exactly? Why does it matter if we are 110 ppmv above some arbitrary number? Why does the speed matter? Seems to me you are trying to say something useful but instead are dancing around the AGW talking points.
CO2 in the atmosphere is the effect. When science gets around to figuring out all the causes (like ocean circulation patterns) then we might be able to predict the effect.
Lance,
Over the past 800,000 years or so in ice cores (supported by a few million years of foramin proxies), there is a nice correlation between temperature and CO2 levels in the atmosphere. That correlation has been broken in the past 165 years (or beyond): levels are now 110 ppmv higher than should be for the current average ocean surface temperature.
The mass balance shows that humans have emitted about twice the increase in the atmosphere and in the past 60 years in every year nature was more sink than source.
You don’t need to known anything of any natural source or sink: nature as a whole was always more sink than source, thus not the cause of the increase:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em2.jpg
Thus, yes in the past 800,000 years and beyond, CO2 was the effect of temperature changes. In the past 165 years, CO2 is the source of a possible (small) effect on temperature.
The cause of the CO2 increase is one of the few points (if not the only) where the “consensus” is rock solid, so it is not smart of sceptics to insist on a non-human sources of the increase, as that simply undermines the very good arguments we have on the effects of the increase…
I seem to recall that CO2 rises lag temperature rises – as measured in ice core samples? So while there may be a correlation, one can simply not assume that the CO2 is causing the rise in temperature, but it is far more likely (given the correlation) that temperature rise is causing an increase in CO2 (possibly through rising ocean temperatures and effects on plant life).
I also seem to recall that the “explanation” is that temperature does not really go up first, but that air trapped in the ice is younger than the surrounding ice so the measurement is skewed enough that CO2 is really the culprit… So…either CO2 is not causing the temperature to start rising (but might contribute some to the overall warming), or the ice core samples are very blurry on measuring CO2 concentrations versus temperature and are therefore open to all sorts of interpretations. Either way, the “straight forward” belief that everyone accepts CO2 causes all or most of the warming is simply not proven per scientific methods. At best, one can state it “may” cause most of the warming.
Given that the last 20 years has seen a remarkable increase in CO2 released into the atmosphere by developing countries, and that acceleration of temperature rise seems to be immune to this, one can also conclude that CO2 does not play the simple role of “Climate Temperature Control” some espouse it to be.
Meant with all due respect, you can hold whatever beliefs you want, but so can others. It is what can be demonstrated using scientific methods that we should be focused on. The science so far is still not conclusive, so it is not only fair but scientific to remain skeptical.
Robert,
Most scientists agree that in the past, temperature changed first and CO2 levels followed temperature. That doesn’t exclude a (small) role of CO2 in the warming (or cooling), as long as that is small to modest. According to models, that is more at the “modest” side, according to ice cores, that is at the small side.
Ice cores air bubbles and ice are not buried synchronous, as pores still may be open to air for years to centuries after the snow accumulated. So there can be discussion about the timing of what started first when deglaciations started. There is no discussion possible about the opposite: CO2 starts to go down thousands of years after the temperature drops to new cold levels.
The problem then is in the past 165 years: the correlation is what it was for the past few million years, but now we are some 115 ppmv above that ratio. That can’t be caused by temperature. As humans have emitted about 200 ppmv over the same period and every single observation points to human emissions as the source, then it is obvious that humans are the cause. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
One can discuss the effect of the 110+ ppmv increase – in my opinion very small – but any further discussion about the cause of the CO2 increase is a lost battle and doesn’t do any good to the cedibility of the real good arguments that sceptics have about the minor role of CO2 in any recent warming…
Ferdinand
You will see here the increased accumulation at 100km altitude. At this altitude it is the last bus stop to space, one way traffic only. It should be interpreted as a pass through rate. Space is one of the largest destinations for CO2 and is never even considered in the budget. The periods of NH winter and the June to September are the primary transport periods. Part of earths breathing cycle.
Regards
https://phys.org/news/2012-11-atmospheric-co2-space-junk.html
Ozonebust,
As far as I remember, only hydrogen (and to a smaller extent helium) is light enough to escape the gravity forces of the earth. So I don’t think that CO2 will get out, or we should have not existed on a planet without the lighter O2 and N2 molecules…
Still interesting that the CO2 increase reaches the highest atmosphere, even with a long lag…
Very interesting. I”m this will be viewed in the context of warming started by humans, which triggered a series of events that will accelerate warming and kill us all. But it’s empirically equivalent to the view that the warming so far has been natural, so it gains the AGW crowd nothing in that sense, and actually undermines the thesis that humans are responsible for the warming so far. If this is true, it helps explain the observation that in the past warming has preceded CO2 increases, which had nothing to do with AGW. Am I right?
it’s like they’ve never heard of Lake Nyos
It makes sense if the oceans have a part to play in the global CO2 distribution, being 70% of the planet’s surface, but this only enforces the fact that we still have a lot to learn. CO2 levels have varied significantly historically for many reasons – and evidence with correlation to warming is not overwhelming. Should we not close the door just yet and study more Nature’s cycles?
Why study more of nature’s cycles when we have a few thousand years of studying so far of it? Nature is going to do what nature wants to do there is nothing we can do to control what it does.
So these guys are claiming global warming speeds up overturning circulation.
And then there is this piece of junk science from Stefan Rahmstorf’s group at Pottsdam Institute, as reported in 2015 by the fake climate news outlet WaPo:
“Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans — with potentially dire consequences”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/23/global-warming-is-now-slowing-down-the-circulation-of-the-oceans-with-potentially-dire-consequences
Q: So Which is it?
A: It is whatever they need it to be to bring home the grant money gravey train.
…and the heat hiding in the deep ocean slows it down
Let them try and figure that one out
Maybe they are talking about the underwater volcanic vents releasing heat and CO2 which like land-based volcanic activity releases the same things?
Too bad they don’t understand there is not one thing humans can do about it.
Well they’ve “proved” 2 of the 3 possible states and decided both are bad. Speeds up, bad, slows down, also bad. Now they just need to figure out a way to show that no change is bad too, and that we caused it, and all bases will be covered. It’s settled.
No change is also bad.
see IPCC AR5 Summary for Policy Makers, page 8:
“There is no observational evidence of a trend in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), based on the decade-long record of the complete AMOC and longer records of individual AMOC components. {3.6}”
Whatever happens is bad, and it’s all the fault of capitalism in particular and evil humanity in general.
joelobryan,
Good find! Even within the “consensus” there is no consensus which way it goes…
Even so, the speed of overturning deep ocean waters doesn’t influence atmospheric CO2 levels one ppmv, as long as the overturning removes as much CO2 where it sinks in cold polar waters as it releases in warm areas where the waters return to the surface.
The deep oceans contain about 38,000 GtC, mainly as bicarbonates. 100 ppmv extra in the atmosphere is about 50 GtC as CO2. The change in the deep oceans then is simply negligible.
The same for the circulation speed: the current CO2 exchange between atmosphere and deep oceans is about 40 GtC/year, both directions. Even if you increase that a tenfold, that doesn’t change anything in the atmosphere. Only the difference between the sources and the sinks does that.
The 80-100 ppmv extra CO2 in 5,000 years only needed a difference of 0.01 GtC/year between the deep ocean upwellings and the deep ocean sinks to give the difference, no matter if the historical exchange was 40 or 400 GtC/year…
“But it has not been clear how the carbon actually got out of the ocean to cause the CO2 rise.”
If I were a lawyer I would object because he makes assumptions not in evidence. How does he know that the CO2 rise didn’t have a different cause? The only reason we can discount is that it was human caused.
The only pure Carbon molecule that I know of is diamond. Other than that, what other atoms were the Carbon atoms attached to? What happened to them either in the Ocean or atmosphere?
I have read that atmospheric CO2 was roughly 250 ppm during the pre industrial period. (Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.)
“It happened roughly in two steps during the last deglaciation – an initial phase from 18,000 to 15,000 years ago, when CO2 rose by about 50 parts per million, and a second pulse later added another 30 parts per million,” Du said.
In other words, the CO2 level 20000 years ago was roughly 170ppm, below starvation level for plants.
How are we here?
Graphite is also a pure carbon compound, and, like diamond, is also not CO2.
I stand corrected. Thank You. As Roseanne Roseannadanna said…”It’s always something.”
Those are both crystalline forms of carbon. It can also exist in an amorphous form.
Also graphene (an atomic monolayer of graphite) and fullerenes, the spherical forms of which are called Buckyballs.
We are here because your figures are wrong obviously, if they were right we wouldn’t be talking about them.
It didn’t affect us. It’s only our ancestors that were wiped out.
Grandma does not like tall tales about her root cellar. Give back the cookie jar now and we’ll talk it over about what has been learned.
The “carbon” released is just a bit less than that released since the industrial rev by humans. This is the fake news riding on the study. Even if they actually got the mechanism right, the accuracy indicated by this statement is completely bogus. And why is it that they can’t go with the good news. They have to use it to scare us about what might jump out at us from Grandma’s root cellar. Perhaps this is more transition lit back out of the alarmist hell that we have seen much of of late.
To me the most important aspect seems that these Nature authors explicitly say (although of course not in their Abstract) that the CO2 rise is the consequence and not the cause of the temperature rise.
Yep.
Well of course, Ocean Temperatures needed to rise to force the release of CO2 into the atmosphere…Cold Water holds more CO2
This is the stake through the heart of the CAGW hypothesis. No warmist has ever given a convincing explanation of why CO2 always changes AFTER temperature.
Wilt,
With the exception of a few, most scientists – even in the IPCC – accept that historically CO2 follows temperature. What they insist is that in the past 165 years – and beyond – humans have added a lot of CO2 above what is “normal” for the current (ocean) temperature as seen over the past 800,000 years in ice cores. That gives (part) of the temperature rise since about 1950, according to the IPCC.
The lag of CO2 after temperature during the last deglaciation says nothing about the (probably small) effect of the 110 ppmv CO2 rise in the past 165 years on temperature…
it is both.
Of course the science of carbon absorption and emission by the ocean—and planet-wide—is well-understood, all sources of carbon emissions and all carbon “sinks” are accounted for and well-defined, and we know with absolute certainty that only human fossil fuel use and land-use changes are increasing the CO2 saturation of the atmosphere. Uh-huh, right.
It couldn’t possibly be that CO2 is being dredged up by the deep ocean and released into the atmosphere already. Ocean-dredged CO2 is only a problem when it can be used to paint a nightmare scenario of dramatically accelerating human CO2 emissions. It can’t possibly be a primary contributor of CO2 emissions all by itself. Because the science is settled.
stinkerp,
You don’t need to know anything of any natural flow to know that the oceans ánd vegetation are sinks for CO2, not sources.
We know with reasonable accuracy global fossil fuel use and its CO2 emissions. We know with high accuracy the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The difference between these two is what nature releases or absorbs.
Currently about half what humans emit (as mass, not the original molecules) is absorbed by oceans and vegetation.
the study author said
“So far the ocean has absorbed about a third of the total carbon emitted from fossil fuels,”
That would mean that the land has absorbed 43% of the total carbon emitted from fossil fuels since the land sinks are 33% higher than the ocean sink. Therefore the remaining 24% emitted by man has ended up in the atmosphere.
The atmosphere exchanges 23 times the amount of CO2 with the oceans and land , than man puts into the atmosphere every year. And even with that input by man , the net CO2 increase is only 2 ppm by volume per year and this net increase % of CO2 in the atmosphere hasnt changed much nor accelerated. Considering that we have been heavily emitting fossil fuels since 1950, then that would seem to negate their argument that there is a tipping point for ocean CO2 absorption. If there was a tipping point and that we were getting near the tipping point, you would see a large change in net CO2 in the atmosphere. The data does not support that.
When I say that the land sinks are higher than the ocean, what I mean is the yearly exchange. Even though the total amount of carbon in the oceans is 2 times that of on land, the amount of interchange per year is more with the land than with the oceans. So the focus of the study seems to be on the minor player here. Land and plants are a bigger yearly delta exchange than the oceans are. The oceans exchange is much more dependent on temperature changes. Alarmists always point to might, possibly could, models show, calculations show, statistics show, and every other wanna be conclusion NOT supported by the facts. The fact is; net CO2 in atmosphere goes up 1/2% per year Since 1200 ppm by volume would be ideal for plants, it will take 216 years to get there. GO China Go.
Alan,
While it is true that the seasonal biological cycle is larger than the ocean cycle, it is the oceans which were responsible for the increase in CO2, as the increase in biomass during interglacials is far larger than during glacial periods, biomass is an inreasing sink with higher temperatures…
Alan,
The “tipping point” is based on the Bern model, which assumes a saturation of different sinks at different levels of CO2 emissions.
The only reservoir where that is proven is the ocean surface. That has a fast exchange rate with the atmosphere (less than a year), but because of chemistry, is already in equilibrium at 10% of any change in the atmosphere.
That isn’t the case (yet) for the deep oceans, where any CO2 that sinks with the waters is isolated from the atmosphere for some 1000 years and the cold sinking waters near the poles are highly undersaturated in CO2.
That is aboslutely not the case for the biosphere, which only grows better with more CO2.
In reality, the oberved sink rate still is the same now as 60 years ago (about 51 years e-fold or 35 years half life time) and there is no sign of saturation in sight…
Ferd.
Nice to see you around again.
Not read all of your comments here, but if you do not mind, can you clarify your position for me in one given point
Do you accept or not, that in the last period of ~ 2 decades the CO2 concentration has increased but still there seems to be no any signature of any acceleration of it detected or observed???
Whiten,
I haven’t looked at the latest figures, but the economical crisis has made that during several years, human emissions didn’t acellerate and were rather constant. As CO2 levels in the atmosphere still increase with a constant supply above the sink rate, the sink rate increased and the increase in the atmosphere therefore didn’t accellerate.
According to what I have read, 2017 was a new record year in CO2 increase, thanks to increased emissions (thanks to China…), but I haven’t seen the official figures yet…
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em6.jpg
Hello Ferd
Thanks for the response
You seem to accept that there is no any CO2 concentration acceleration during the last 2 decades, the period of the warming hiatus, the period of no further warming.
Unless you do not accept the hiatus, then you need to seriously consider that a lack of a similar hiatus in the CO2 yearly emission wold create a condition of CO2 concentration acceleration.
As far as I can tell anthropogenic CO2 emission does not have any thing to do with a hiatus what so ever, regardless of any acrobatics.
cheers
As I understand the ratio, a bit less than 60% of C02 comes from the ocean, and a bit less than 40% comes from animal (including humans) respiration.
IPCC shows CO2 flux of about 80 petagrams/yr for ocean, and 120 pg/yr for land biology.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter06_FINAL.pdf
Sure, let’s base all our policies on ‘if’, ‘might’, and scary speculation. The lower classes will die out faster by implementing them and save the global planners from waiting on climate to accomplish their attrition.
[QUOTE FROM ARTICLE]”there is a circulation pattern in the Pacific that begins with water around Antarctica sinking and moving northward at great depth a few miles below the surface. It continues all the way to Alaska, where it rises, turns back southward, and flows back to Antarctica where it mixes back up to the sea surface.”
If the water rises near Alaska and turns back southward, wouldn’t it release the CO2 in the tropical areas of the Pacific (where it is in contact with warmer air and more sunshine) rather than near Antarctica, where the air is cold and the sea is ice-covered half the year?
Also, if the water’s round trip takes “almost 1,000 years”, is Mr. Du predicting a sudden jump in CO2 concentrations around the year 3000? Wouldn’t that give mankind plenty of time to deal with the consequences?
For far too long climate scientists have been getting away with this nonsense.
All the world’s media and politicians keep saying that there are more extreme weather events now than before. The climate scientists have fed them this false information . Here is Canada’s tornado data. I have asked Environment Canada where is the data after 2009?
https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/65658050-7a80-4da3-9a09-da137c203a34
Canada’s tornado data like every other tornado data in the world DOES NOT SHOW ANY INCREASE IN ACTIVITY. The same goes for every other extreme weather event except for river hillcrest overflow which shows minor increase.
THERE ARE NO MORE TORNADOS,HURRICANES/CYCLONES,FLOODS,WILDFIRES,STORMS,DROUGHTS, NOR SURFACE TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THAN THERE EVER WERE.
THE BIG LIE OF THE MEDIA AND POLITICIANS HAS NOT BEEN COUNTERED BY CLIMATE SCIENTISTS. In fact climate scientists like Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt keep pushing this lie. Is there no honour left in this world or is it all groupthink and religion?
“Is there no honour left in this world or is it all groupthink and religion?”
Didn’t you get the memo? Humans are BAD and capitalist humans are even worse. Honour is a bourgeois concept and does not apply to freedom fighters saving the world from humanity.
Humm,
And where exactly does that 500 year to 800year after warming when the CO2 levels peak, as is evident in the ice-core data, come into this argument? Do the ocean cycles hold the key to why there is this lag period? Can “the analysis of neodymium isotopes in North Pacific sediment cores.” be used to to shine a light on this lagging CO2 increase after warming periods.
The Medieval Climate Optimum was how long ago?
Never miss a chance to balyhoo CO2 as a poison gas, do they?
There is no science behind GCM code
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In an earlier posting I detailed that it was not possible to calculate the emission profile of a gas because the Voight profile equation has no closed form solution. In addition that equation is only good for grey bodies or blackbodies that have an emission spectrum that is independent of any variance in electromagnetic properties. Gases like CO2 and water vapour are non grey bodies and should not be confused with blackbodies or gray bodies. All the radiation transfer equations are only valid for blackbodies or gray bodies. Anybody using a pyrgometer to measure the back radiation of CO2 and H2O are just fooling themselves especially considering that the instruments default to an emissivity factor of 1 which is certainly not true for CO2 nor H2O.
The same holds true for absorption characteristics. The Hitran absorption database is based on gray body calculations and is not specifically accurate for pure gases even though approximations are used. Even so, most of the climate science literature gives methane as a potent greenhouse gas. However the Hitran absorption database gives H2O and CO2 as much more powerful absorbers of photon energy than methane is. In addition it assumes a common temperature between the gas and the source of radiation.
If the temperatures are different as they are in the atmosphere and the surface, then you have to use a modified Planck mean absorption coefficient equation = Integral from 0 to infinity of ( blackbody intensity * Temp of gas * coeff of spectral lines * source temp ) derivative of spectral line
divided by Integral from 0 to infinity of ( blackbody intensity * Temp of gas) derivative of spectral line
This has not been done because no one has produced an equivalent Hitran database with differing temperatures of the gas medium and a source energy flux. Thus it is not possible to determine the exact absorption energy of CO2 nor H2O in the atmosphere. THERE IS NO SCIENCE BEHIND THE GCM climate computer code. It is all a mirage.
I’m confused, as usual. According to the authors of this study, during the last glacial maximum, the Antarctic current slowed. Then the current sped up as the world warmed. Now the current is slowing. Shouldn’t that mean that we are heading towards another glacitation rather than more warming?
Are there data on the Antarctic current in recent decades? If so could you provide a link?
The study stated that it was slowing.
Wow – so not only do we have heat hiding down in grandma’s root cellar, but nasty, evil CO2 as well.
We’re doubly-doomed.
Doesn’t the biological pump send carbonate (calcium and magnesium) to the ocean floor.
does it not require something akin to a lime kiln to recreate the carbon dioxide – volcanoes will suffice if the kiln workers are feeling the cold and have stayed home.
Then, having the cold/warm/whatever temperature seawater release carbon dioxide truly tramples Le Chatelier’s principle so how does their magic neodymium get over that little hurdle?
OK, some organic material may have made it to the bottom and be dredged back up but that would be happening now at upwelling places. So is it?
No.
The rise in CO2 came from melting permafrost. As temps rose the bacteria set to work and decomposed the long frozen organics. Easy experiment to replicate – just leave the door of your home freezer open and watch it happen.
It is my assertion that a large amount of the extra CO2 in the contemporary atmosphere came from long buried organics that have been oxidised – by man effectively.
The ongoing disappearance of that material is also reducing the water content of vast areas of land, thus allowing larger variations of diurnal and annual temperatures.
The disappearance of soil organic material and the associated water it soaks up neatly explains the failure of (how many?) civilisations in the past. Explains why California is currently burning. Inside just a few centuries it will be Total Desert and the people will be gone, blaming Climate Change as they go and always have done.
The oxidiser currently is not (rising) temperature stimulation of bacteria but stimulation by water-soluble nitrogen = the “Bread from Air” as produced by Haber-Bosch process and significantly also, when anything is burned in a normal atmosphere.
Neatly explains Global Greening to boot.
All of which is entirely academic as we need to know what set off the initial rise of temperature…
I do like the term Bread from Air – it gives the impression of something for nothing and Lordy Lordy Lordy, don’t we all enjoy Free Lunches?
I think you are on the right track of looking at the calcium (and magnesium) carbonates relative to release of CO2 into the atmosphere. There is a lot to be said about sequestering and into calcium carbonate rock at the equator in warm water as the soluble alkaline earth bi-carbonate salts break down and precipitate CaCO3 or MgCO3 when they get warm. (The breakdown of the bicarbonate also releases free or dissolved CO2.) There certainly can be biology involved but to have stable carbonate rocks you have to prevent re-dilution in cold water.
However the authors talk about release of CO2 in Antarctica. There is an odd, unstable form of hydrated calcium carbonate called calcium carbonate hexa-hydrate and it has been found at the bottom of glaciers and in very deep cold water around the poles. You could envision a lot of this compound forming around or under glaciers during ice ages and this could lead to rapid release of CO2 at the poles as this unstable form of calcium carbonate breaks down.
It works like this
There are giga tons of carbonates dissolved as salts in the ocean.
HCO3-+HEAT = CO2 + OH-
Just like the first smoke from the kettle.
If it gets hotter the equilibrium shifts to the right.
No surprise waiting for us in the oceans.
Must add. If it gets colder the equilibrium goes the other way. In that case CO2 from the atmosphere dissolves in the ocean.