April 7th, 2020 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The COVID-19 disease spread is causing a worldwide shutdown in economic activity as business close, airlines cancel flights, and people shelter in their homes. For example, there was a 28% decline in global commercial air traffic in March 2020 compared to March of last year.
Last month I described a simple method for removing the large seasonal cycle from the Mauna Loa CO2 data, and well as the average effects from El Nino and La Nina (the removal is noisy and imperfect), in an effort to capture the underlying trend in CO2 and so provide a baseline to compare future months’ measurements too.
What we are looking for is any evidence of a decline in the atmospheric CO2 content that would be strong enough to attribute to the economic downturn. As can be seen, the latest CO2 data show a slight downturn, but it’s not yet out of the ordinary compare to previous month-to-month downturns.
I personally doubt we will see a clear COVID-19 effect in the CO2 data in the coming months, but I would be glad to be proved wrong. As I mentioned last month, those who view the economic downturn as an opportunity to reduce atmospheric CO2 would have to wait many years — even decades — before we would see the impact of a large economic downturn on global temperatures, which would occur at great cost to humanity, especially the poor.
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There will be no decline, as expected, since the ManMade CO2 is rather marginal, as most of we already know. It’s highly probable that man is only accountable for 3% of the CO2 production every year or even less. The biosphere dynamics completly offsets this value.
However wait for “the adjustment” 😀
Can we stop referring to CO2 in the term associated with toxins? Parts per million is used to make a tiny amount sound significant to the gullible masses. The increase in atmospheric CO2 since pre-industrial times of around 130 ppm translates to thirteen thousandths of one percent. It’s background noise. How do you even measure that amount accurately in open atmosphere? If a passing sparrow breathes out about ten meters upwind of the sensor it would make more difference that that.
The Keeling Slope (it is only curving slightly) has be “sloping” for 60 years. There is a standing claim that a proportion of the additional volume, in PPM, is contributed by the human activity of burning fossil fuels.
An alarm that the human portion is significant and … alarming … must hinge on a claim that the percent is large. Otherwise, the claim would be that Mother Nature is at fault.
The higher the claim of human contribution (50%?) the more a pause in emissions should ding the slope.
Two factors: 1) what amount/percent of the human dump is now (of will be soon) paused?; and 2) is there a lag between the contribution moment and registration at Mauna Loa?
This is a test.
It’s been interesting how the desperate global warming alarmists look at the shutting down of industries world wide and noticed from satellite images how much clearer the air is especially over China. What aggravated me about this comment as a suggestion that we need to reduce CO2 and we could have a cleaner world misdiagnoses an odourless , colourless gas ,with real pollution. Hopefully if Trump’s re-election doesn’t get derailed by the virus in his next term he gets rid of the CO 2 endangerment finding.
Looks like the oceans take up 2X the CO2 previously assumed.
https://newatlas.com/environment/study-ocean-absorbs-double-co2/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=8fbba0a614-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_08_01_45&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-8fbba0a614-76703908
I have a new attitude toward the hysterical community:
“You’re going to do what you’re going to do and there isn’t a damn thing we can do to stop you since you’ll have the full force of the law behind you, so please at least have the decency to shut the hell up about it.”
March 2020 CO2 Levels at Mauna Loa Show No Obvious Effect from Global Economic Downturn
Why would we expect to? Even if we accept the postulate that any increase in CO2 is attributable to burning fossil fuels, we would expect a 4ppm increase in 1 year – that is only 0.33 ppm per month. The curve is not a straight line (which it would be close to if everything was attributable to burning fossil fuels).
So how would we be able to measure a decrease of 0.33ppm?
Ironically I think that yesterday’s reading (released today) has just broken the all time high record –
This is normally met with huge publicity and a fanfare from the Greens, GW crowd and certain media – I bet they remain silent on this as they start to realize that Manmade CO2 makes up about 3% of the total:
https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
I detect an interesting experiment happening.
From google, not sure how accurate that is:
“Human activities—mostly burning of coal and other fossil fuels, but also cement production, deforestation and other landscape changes—emitted roughly 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2015. ”
So assuming a 20% reduction of this for March 2020 would in about 1 billion metric tons less than expected.
Wiki: As of 2018, … approximately 3210 gigatonnes of CO2 (equals about 410ppm)
gigatonnes and billion metric tons are the same unit, so the effect is less 1/1000 per month
(The ratio gets a bit better if we talk about CO2 above an assumed equilibrium somewhere near 280ppm CO2, but based in that estimate, it will be a couple of months before we see a decline by 1ppm from that effect and we have a natural annual oscillation of about 4ppm)
the co2 levels have almost nothing to do with human activity or lack thereof.
It’s my fault. The weeds on my hillside are sequestering and growing at a rate more than enough to explain the decrease.
Once we have a few months more data, we can do an analysis to determine what level of CO2 production versus the world-wide production would be required to see at the sensitivity of the instrument at Mauna Loa. This will establish a ceiling value for the contribution of human activity to the much larger non-human produced amount. Perhaps we will be able to detect a significant signal in the data and further refine this value. Currently estimates for the anthropogenic production of CO2 relative to the rest of the world vary from 3-5%, which is entirely too imprecise to risk ruining the world’s economy and causing so much illness, discomfort, malnutrition, and premature deaths.
“Currently estimates for the anthropogenic production of CO2 relative to the rest of the world vary from 3-5%”
Please provide a link showing us how 3 to 5% is determined.
Stokes above is saying closer to 50%, that’s an order of magnitude higher than your source. And he does provide some math to go with. That said, some math using numbers above:
Now = 3200 Gt
3200*(280/410) = 2200 Gt ~107 yrs ago
Therefore, 3200-2200 = 1000 Gt delta attributed to humans. I read that to mean humans have contributed ~30% to the present CO2 concentration in our atm.
However, per Stokes humans have liberated 2000 Gt over the period in question.
Therefore, 1000 – 2000 = negative 1000 Gt…where did it go?
Plant life?? Sea shells?
3% — 50%
It’s going to be interesting to see how fungible the claims become during this “pause” in emissions.
At the root of the AGW position, it is easier to support warming due to “A” if the CO2 consensus is a high number. That way (obviously) the contrast between the putative pre-Keeling reconstructions and the 60-years of measuring is dramatic. Settled. Hockey-whacky.
However, if no ding in the slope appears, it will be easier to construct alt explanations* why not if the “A” contribution is downsized to be small.
REALLY interesting.
* in event of a ding, what if the claim becomes “in response to an easing of emissions, the oceans have been releasing more carbon.” That would be interesting.
It will be REALLY fascinating.
Studying McRae’s link on C balance…finally an actual source to go with the fungible numbers. The sinks may explain Stokes missing 1000 Gt and perhaps much more.
I do understand transition to equilibrium and occasionally have to make such predictions…how long will it take to warm 100’s of tons of steel along with a little water too boot? Simple problem but the answer still depends on knowing and controlling all the variables you can and then making educated guesses about the variables you cannot control like, say, the weather.
I’m going to go with McRae’s 8% if The Physics Model Carbon Cycle for Human CO2 makes sense once I’ve had time to digest it.
RE: stations
The Scripps Program shows 14 stations. Link:
https://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/atmospheric_co2/sampling_stations.html
I downloaded one set, Alert,CA, which has recorded since 1985. It would take a healthy does of time, energy, and concentration to pull down 14 stations and see:
a) do the numbers agree with Mauna Loa?
b) has there been any abnormality in the slope recently?
I am not available to parse all that out, but someone ought to be watchdogging the stations.
Thanks! Downloaded South Pole and Alaska data (aka “consider the extremes” and then guess what may be going on in the middle). Plots interesting, no surprise the SP is a fairly constant rise and AK is a saw tooth wave but following the same trend line. What is interesting is the amplitude of the saw tooth has gone from roughly 13 ppm ca 1962 to 20 ppm in 2020.
If we accept base line as 280 ppm and the Stokes assertion that humans account for the net gain of 1000 Gt in the past ~ 107 years then human influence is only ~10 Gt/yr.
Yet the saw tooth in AK is a nominal 124 Gt/yr that I will attribute to causes other than human.
Speculation:
1) Alleged human influence on CO2 atm concentration is around 1 order of magnitude less than seasonal fluctuations allegedly at AK.
2) Plant life and perhaps mollusks presently enjoy favorable conditions. Assuming 550 Gt of biomass on this planet I can say as one who watches nature closely that 124/550 saw tooth could be explained by biological activity but if the oceans are cooling, and based on the winter rain in my region they appear to be, then the oceans may be sponging up a bit of the 124 Gt as well, purely in solution, non-biologic.
That said, as a skeptic watching the sh*t show on TV and Mauna Loa as well it is still important to understand at this moment:
1) What is the human contribution to annual CO2 rise opposed to the alleged SP and AK data? 3%? 5%? 8% 30%? 50%? A defensible value does matter at this very moment in history.
2) Say the human nominal is around 10 Gt/yr then how much has the Coronasarus bit out of that? Should the price of gasoline be our metric, if so it’s dropped ~50% during this scamdemic.
3) Based on gasoline price say in the last 2 months humans have emitted 1 Gt less than usual. Thus, 415*1/3260 ~= 0.1 ppm negative impact on atm CO2 concentration….too small to measure. In my world anyway.
4) And, that seems to be what the measurements are showing?
5) Time for some more Grand QuinQuina!
meiggs,
Do AK and SP agree with the current full measurement at Mauna Loa? Namely:
Apr. 10, 2019 413.85 ppm
last record Dec 2019:
CO2 “filled” column
SP 408 ppm
AK 417.99 ppm
Krakatoa eruption will be the reason it keeps rising…for now.
meiggs
Thanks! I’d say those two numbers amount to relative correlation. As always, it is the curving trend I care about, not the spot-on ‘accuracy’ of a single stations’ recordings.
1) So, 14 stations in the Scripps Program. Can you see any reason why a download and spaghetti chart with 14 lines on it could not be made, say, weekly for the next 2 months, and inspected for dings in the historical slopes?
2) I notice that their stations are oriented +/- a little on the longitude of the Scripps location in California. What would you guess is the reason for that? [not hinting any conspiracy, just curious]
re 14 stations: I looked at the CA (min-point but not Mauna Loa) site but the data appeared to be too fractured to deal with in the free time I have. The SP and AK encompassed about the same time span and were poles apart. But if you are looking at the data as it unfolds from before CV to whenever CV settles out then I still think we are looking at a ~0.1 ppm human impact…maybe the data is that precise but I have no way of knowing. So the only way to know is to monitor closely and see what unfolds…I’d say go for it if you have the time.
re longitude: I noticed the same and have no idea. My first thought was I would like data from the geographic center of the Asian continent as all the scripps stations are on sea shores or islands excepting the SP but even it is not all that far inland and appears to be well within the reach of the circumpolar JS fresh off that big ocean. A data source as far from the ocean as possible would be of interest.
With the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 only a small percentage of the total carbon-cycle, any change in the former would take some time to show up in the well-mixed atmosphere, and the change would have to last for a significant time.
General comment: In many posts at WUWT it’s difficult to tell if the author is joking or is genuinely nuts. When we speak face to face we can tell from someone’s facial expression or the tone of their voice if they are joking. But in written text those clues are missing. So someone invented smiley faces to serve that purpose. / sarc also works.
I can’t tell if you post is a general snark at WUWT, with a side-swipe at Dr. Spencer, or not. Please stamp it.
We hominids evolved symbolic language to overcome the limitations of facial expression and grunt intonations. Some hold-outs of course have never really accepted this innovation.
If we do enter another Great Depression, we may replicate the effect of the last one, the natural experiment in 1929-1931, when global human CO2 production went down by 30%, CO2 did not change its indolent rise, and temperature kept rising… until it dropped 10 years later.
Then during WWII and postwar reconstruction, when we produced quite a bit of CO2, global CO2 levelled off, and temperature dropped slightly but significantly enough to produce alarms about the Oncoming Ice Age (see Time and Newsweek and ScienceNews in the early ’70s).
CO2 is not in control of temperature at this time, at these levels. We are not in control of CO2.
If there is any good news in this pandemic it may be putting AGW to rest so we can concentrate on other things. St. Greta may retire to her cell.
From your link:
“In the first week of March, commercial traffic was down 3.9% below 2019 levels. In the final week of March, commercial traffic declined 62.9% from the same period in 2019.”
I live nine miles to the east of O’Hare Airport and planes on final approach pass directly over my building. At the evening rush I have counted as many as 15 planes visible in the pattern. Recently it is more like two or maybe three. Air traffic is down a lot more than 28%.
Dr. Spencer wrote, “I personally doubt we will see a clear COVID-19 effect in the CO2 data in the coming months, but I would be glad to be proved wrong.”
Dr. Spencer, why would you be glad to be proved wrong?
Henry Pool April 12, 2020 at 8:28 am
Phil.
you seem to think that water vapor is not a gas. Therefore my observations / examples are not ‘valid’.
No, water vapor is a gas which is why your descriptions of elastic scattering from water vapor are mistaken.
I once secretly looked into the cuvette holder to see what happens when you turn the wavelength dial slowly to the wavelength where I was supposed to measure. What I saw happening is exactly as I described: the light comes back to you, to the direction of the source, but also scattering somewhat to the left and to the right and all around. You never observed this? It is real nature. 62.5% in the direction of the light source. Just like I told you. But then you always disagree with that. So why would you continue going into discussion with me?
What you are describing is Mie scattering, which is elastic scattering from particles not from a gas.
I have observed it many times, I even co-invented an instrument that uses this scattering to measure particle size. The reason I comment on your posts on this subject is not to change your mind but to point out your errors to others.
Phil.
Must say, I will have to check it, but I thought that the law Lambert-Beer applied both to gases, liquids, or dissolved molecules in liquids, etc.
iow wherever we used spectroscopy.
But anyway, that is off topic. The question, that evolved from the post, is what the effect is of 0.01% CO2 that was added to the atmosphere over the past 60 years or so.. I showed my calculations (at the beginning of the thread) and I calculated that it is next to nothing.
The real mass is in the oceans and seas. The extra warming in the atmosphere came from the oceans.
Indeed, there was extra warming that heated the oceans. It must have been from more UV that came through our atmosphere? Mostly.
Anyway, that’s my story.
Henry Pool April 13, 2020 at 5:03 am
Phil.
Must say, I will have to check it, but I thought that the law Lambert-Beer applied both to gases, liquids, or dissolved molecules in liquids, etc.
iow wherever we used spectroscopy.
Beer-Lambert law applies to absorption not elastic scattering, limited to weak absorbers.
As to the effect of the added 100ppm CO2 of the order of 2W/sq m
Phil. says
As to the effect of the added 100ppm CO2 of the order of 2W/sq m
Henry says:
there we have it! These are Phil. ‘s original ‘calculations’
Don’t they remind you of the 1.7 W/m2 nonsense coming from the IPCC?
Click on my name to read my final report on all of that…
Pool: 0.0000007 W/m^2
meiggs: 0.0000358 W/m^2
Phil: 1.7000000 W/m^2
Make up your mind Henry, you just said that you thought the Beer-Lambert law applied. Here’s the spectrum of the IR emissions of the earth, what would the B-L tell you about doubling the concentration of the CO2 concentration?
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/CLASS5/EarthBB.jpg
yes,
phil.
remember that the gaps you see are due mostly to clouds, water (l, e.g. rain) and water (s, snow, hail), etc. Nothing to do with CO2 (g)?
You agreed with me that normal RH and CO2 is a gas. There is not much mass. If it gets hit by light in the extinction area it has to go back. Hence we can pick up the radiation specific to the extinction areas of CO2 via moon back on earth. Remember Turnbull et al about the earth shine?
I would say that the implication of Lambert Beer is that if there is twice as much CO2, twice as much back radiation (15 um) will go to earth and twice as much back radiation in the sun’s spectrum, especially 0-5 um, goes back to space.
However, twice as much of [almost] nothing is still nothing?
See my calculation at the beginning of this thread. (I think it is now the second comment)
Henry Pool April 14, 2020 at 6:58 am
yes,
phil.
remember that the gaps you see are due mostly to clouds, water (l, e.g. rain) and water (s, snow, hail), etc. Nothing to do with CO2 (g)?
No Henry, there are no clouds in that spectrum, the large absorption structure at 15 microns is absorption by CO2.
You agreed with me that normal RH and CO2 is a gas. There is not much mass. If it gets hit by light in the extinction area it has to go back.
No it gets absorbed!
Hence we can pick up the radiation specific to the extinction areas of CO2 via moon back on earth. Remember Turnbull et al about the earth shine?
Yes I do, unlike you I knew what she was talking about
Busy topic. Goes WAY off course down every rabbit hole.
However, the original plot of CO2 vs the plot of “The Earth in Time” which was posted earlier should give any reasonable person cause to rethink the concept of Co2 warming. It ain’t Co2, so it doesn’t matter WHAT a Co2 molecule does. What it does NOT do is control the climate. The chart below is taken from 50 million readings over 120 years. I have been alive through over half of this period, and have lived through cold and hot spells. The most telling part of this chart is the last part – the period of the last 22 years when everyone frets about Co2 which, if both of these charts are correct, would imply that Co2 brings on COOLING!!!
https://theearthintime.com/
John
Nice graph.
How is that with Tmin and Tmean?
Henry Pool,
I am “not a fan” of TAVE (mean/average). The NOAA formula is (max-min)/2 and I hold this does not convey any truth. In fact, it breeds addiction to averages overall, which is rigid, and leads to slant toward anomaly interpretation rather than curving trend.
Here is the graph of TMIN using the same dataset. (Please remember, this data is not raw; it has been adjusted by NOAA)
It is parallel to TMAX, except the recent curving trend is flatter.
True. Tmean has problems.
T min is showing what I expected. There is an increase due to more greening.
Note the decrease of Tmin in Tandil (where they chopped all the trees) compared to increase in Tmin in Las Vegas, where they changed a desert into an oasis.
sorry. I forgot to give a link
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track/?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Aeea7a2fc-97f2-43f8-a1b0-5bb653e5a74d&pageNum=1
meiggs
http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/hadsst3gl/from:1850/plot/hadsst3nh/from:1850/plot/hadsst3sh/from:1850/plot/hadsst3gl/from:1850/trend
That is a lot of energy going into the oceans….(I would say due to more UV coming on down on us, mostly)
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/how-much-water-there-earth
So the conclusion wrt this post is the oceans are warming due to increased UV from our local star. As the oceans warm they liberate more water vapor and CO2. Thus, the CV19 induced reduction in human emission of CO2 will have no measurable influence on the steady rise of CO2.
How will the alarmists explain that?
Just for clarity for those interested
(not for Phil.)
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=BD7354299B4A47DD!5003&ithint=file%2cxlsx&authkey=!ANga7pTWp8Jzf_w
If you shift to the right hand side of my excel file you will see the IR spectrum of CO2 on the right hand side and on the left is the scale for: transmittance. Transmittance is showing the radiation that goes through the molecule.
Most gases in the atmosphere have 100% transmittance. Only about 0.8% of the whole atmosphere (which includes clouds and physical liquid – and solid water) have spectra where the molecule shows absorption. That is the radiation that will not pass through the molecule!!! It is not allowed to go through. Therefore that radiation has to go back.
62.5% of a certain amount [depending on the strength of the extinction] in the direction where it came from. The rest is scattered around.
Hence, we can pick it up that radiation specific to the IR spectrum of the relevant GH gas via the moon, i.e. Turnbull et al.
@Samuel
Sorry. Sam was right. Oxygen has a small absorption peak as well somewhere in its spectrum. However, I am not sure if we can count oxygen as a GH gas.
Henry Pool April 15, 2020 at 5:00 am
Just for clarity for those interested
(not for Phil.)
Transmittance is showing the radiation that goes through the molecule.
Most gases in the atmosphere have 100% transmittance. Only about 0.8% of the whole atmosphere (which includes clouds and physical liquid – and solid water) have spectra where the molecule shows absorption. That is the radiation that will not pass through the molecule!!! It is not allowed to go through. Therefore that radiation has to go back.
For the nth time NO! That is not what happens and is the source of your total misunderstanding of spectroscopy and quantum mechanics. The radiation is absorbed by the molecule and the energy transferred to one of the excitation modes of the molecule (electronic, vibrational or rotational), a short browse through any elementary textbook of Physical Chemistry or Molecular Spectroscopy will show you that.
Sorry. Sam was right. Oxygen has a small absorption peak as well somewhere in its spectrum. However, I am not sure if we can count oxygen as a GH gas.
Yes there is a very weak peak between 6 and 7 microns, absorption is ~10^-6 compared with the 15 micron band of CO2 which has a peak absorption at ~0.3 over a 10 cm pathlength.
So no O2 doesn’t class as a GH gas.