by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
This is an update of my CO2 budget model that explains yearly Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1959 with three main processes:
- an anthropogenic source term, primarily from burning of fossil fuels
- a constant yearly CO2 sink (removal) rate of 2.05% of the atmospheric “excess” over 295 ppm
- an ENSO term that increases atmospheric CO2 during El Nino years and decreases it during La Nina years
The CO2 Budget Model
I described the CO2 budget model here. The most important new insight gained was that the model showed that the CO2 sink rate has not been declining as has been claimed by carbon cycle modelers after one adjusts for the history of El Nino and La Nina activity.
If the sink rate was really declining, that means the climate system is becoming less able to remove “excess” CO2 from the atmosphere, and future climate change will be (of course) worse than we thought. But I showed the declining sink rate was just an artifact of the history of El Nino and La Nina activity, as shown in the following figure (updated through 2022).
The model also showed how the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo caused a large increase in rate of removal of CO2 from the atmosphere (not a new finding) due to enhanced photosynthesis from more diffuse sunlight. This contradicts the popular perception that volcanoes are a major source of atmospheric CO2.
I attempted to get the results published in Geophysical Research Letters, and was conditionally accepted after one review. But the editor wanted more reviewers, which he found, who then rejected the paper. The model is straightforward, physically consistent, and agrees with the observed Mauna Loa CO2 record, as shown in the following plot.
2022 Update: CO2 continues to Rise Despite Renewable Energy Transition
As I have pointed out before, the global economic downturn from COVID had no measurable impact on the Mauna Loa record of atmospheric CO2, and that is not surprising given the large year-to-year variations in natural sources and sinks of CO2. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise, mainly due to emissions from China and India whose economies are rapidly growing.
The following plot zooms in on the 2010-2035 period and shows the Mauna Loa CO2 rise compared to my budget model forced with 3 scenarios from the Energy Information Administration (blue lines), and also compared to the RCP scenarios used by the IPCC in the CMIP5 climate model intercomparison project.
The observations are tracking below the RCP8.5 scenario, which assumes unrealistically high CO2 emissions, yet remains the basis for widespread claims of a “climate crisis”. The observations are running a little above my model for the last 2 years, and only time will tell if this trend continues.
But clearly the international efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are having no obvious impact. This is unsurprising since global energy demand continues to grow faster than new sources of renewable energy can make up the difference.
Ok so what is the ocean part of this again- as CO2 in atmosphere goes up so does the Co 2 in the ocean or is something else involved.
“economic downturn from COVID had no measurable impact on the Mauna Loa record of atmospheric CO2, and that is not surprising given the large year-to-year variations in natural sources and sinks of CO2.”
Indeed, John, you are right. Remarkably, no one on either side of the climate debate ever mentions a law that has been known, at least by chemists, since the mid 19th century, the Le Châtelier Principle (LCP). It states that in an interactive multi-component system (chemical composition, physical states, pressure, temperature, etc.) a forced change in any one of the components
induces adaptive changes to the other components such as to resist the forced change. This means that the perturbing change ends up being much less than expected.
A very simple example is, if the atmosphere is warmed by the sun, or any other agent, its heating will induce expansion of the volume of the atmosphere which is a cooling action so that once the reaction is completed, the final atmospheric temperature will be much less than expected (by climate models, which are said to follow from “the physics”). Enthalpy changes, wind and ocean currents, etc also counter the heating. Read Willis E’s many articles on the earth’s temperature governor for more.
Another is, if CO2 is increased in the atmosphere, its partial pressure increases and this increases its solubility in seawater thereby reducing the amount added to the atmosphere by burning carbon. In addition, the added CO2 stimulates plant growth further drawing down added atmospheric CO2 (photosynthesis is an endothermic reaction so this CO2 causes cooling) .
Moreover, increased CO2 dissolution in the ocean stimlates plankton and shellfish growth, removing carbon dioxide from the seawater, thereby making room for more dissolved CO2. Climate models to reality are like model electric trains to a hundred car Union Pacific train full of iron ore.
”A very simple example is, if the atmosphere is warmed by the sun, or any other agent, its heating will induce expansion of the volume of the atmosphere which is a cooling action so that once the reaction is completed, the final atmospheric temperature will be much less than expected”
I’ve been saying the same thing for years. In fact rather than ”much less than expected” it could very well turn out to be zero or so close to zero it makes no practical difference. ECS? Pfft…
If the current excess is 415 ppm, per MLO – 295, equilibrium ppm = 120 ppm, then 2.05% of that, about 2.5 ppm, has gone into ocean and land sinks.
The graph shows that percent is constant, after ENSO adjustments
Each year, about 4 ppm is added by humans to air.
Each year, about 2.5 ppm remains added to the air.
It would be interesting to quantify the NET CO2 uptake of flora (ocean and land), on a year-by-year basis, for the past 45 years.
During earlier times, that net uptake must have been enormous to create all these fossil fuels.
“But clearly the international efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are having no obvious impact.”
Well, the diagram shows we’ve diverged from RCP8.5, and are getting close to 4.5. That’s not bad.
Nick, most rational folks never called anything about RCP8.5 “divergent” in any sense,
We just called it “bullshit”.
IPCC climate “science” = junk.
Congruent with Stokes’ utterances.
What a ridiculous comment to post.
Make up an artificially high graph and when it’s not reached claim success.
You should be working for the canadian government, you’d fit right in with Trudeau.
You get it all backward. It is RCP8.5 which quickly diverges from reality.
You are starting to talk like a politician. 1) Scare people with an imaginary crisis. 2) Nothing is done yet the crisis doesn’t take place. 3) Claim you have saved people from the crisis.
The RCP8.5 was the scenario in which nothing was done. The region it diverged is that something was done.
Garbage, the RCP8.5 was never realistic. It is full of wild assumptions such as a doubling of Earth’s population to 12 billion by 2100 and doesn’t take into account of advances in technological innovation.
You’re usually quite a solid analyst, but I think the emission/concentration ambiguity is catching you out here.
Fair enough, RCP 8.5 is the concentration pathway, so you’re technically correct.
However, RCP 8.5 approximates the earlier Scenario A concentrations (and RCP 4.5 is more or less Scenario B)
Unless the IPCC was being particularly obtuse, the concentration Scenarios were supposed to map 1 to 1 with the emissions Scenarios.
Thus Scenario A emissions nominally correspond to Scenario A (and by extension RCP 8.5) concentrations. Because the retained fraction of CO2 has fortunately turned out to be much lower than the IPCC originally thought, the actual concentrations quite closely match RCP 4.5. despite emissions closely matching Scenario A.
It’s not so much that something was done, as plain good luck.
I was going to say, “Exactly right!”, but there is this part which I trust was just disingenuous politeness?
Not at all. Nick’s analysis of various W&S installed capacity levels and the effect on storage requirements was quite solid.
We need to separate the technical and political/philosophical aspects.
Let’s assume an exponential growth and extrapolate this fantasy eighty years in to the future.
Oh dear!
Doom and gloom awaits us caused by a science fiction fantasy.
Assumptions without proof can be dismissed without proof.
Yes of course Nick. We respect your religious beliefs. The evil spirits were driven off when the virgin was thrown into the volcano. If we relent in our quest to throw virgins into the volcano on a regular basis, the evil spirits will surely return!
Dr Hansen’s GISS-NASA, in more than a decade of computer model work generated his three scenarios – a do nothing , some control and a DRASTIC Reduction of all fossil fuels version. After two decades of real world data: Man’s actual Carbon emissions is much less than his best projection. To Approach that result Hansen said that only BANNING all Coal use could ever get US to that point of BLISS ! ! !
It’s concentrations rather than emissions, and probably more along the lines of “we can live with it” rather than “best”
Nick, yes, you’re Correct, the {something” was reducing “fossil fuels” as a percentage of total energy consumption from 81% to 80% (but actually increasing total consumption). It could be argued that we did less than nothing.
Cue the Monkees, “I’m a believer”
Then I saw Mann’s graph….Now I’m a believer..
Nick: Although I usually agree with you, RCP8.5 always was a high side rather than central estimate of “business as usual”, with assumption of no attempt to continue energy efficiency improvements that have already been going on for reasons other than AGW, along with high side estimates of population growth and economic growth, along with projection that increase of energy demand will be met almost entirely with fossil fuels. From late 2008 through now, my expectation of atmospheric CO2 has been to roughly track RCP4.5 until RCP6 starts approaching RCP4.5, then track a tangent line segment that starts on a concave downward part of RCP4.5 around 2045-2050 and ends on a concave downward part of RCP6 around 2075-2079 and is above both between 2045-2050 and 2075-2079, and after that tracking close to RCP6.
Have you ever read such garbage as this:”a large increase in rate of removal of CO2 from the atmosphere (not a new finding) due to enhanced photosynthesis from more diffuse sunlight. This contradicts the popular perception that volcanoes are a major source of atmospheric CO2.
Volcanoes produce CO2 and without our burning of stuff, esp fossils, they were the only real source of ‘fresh’ CO2
Life on Earth needed volcanoes as the process of Life on Earth produces Limestone, classically in the ocean where all CO2 tends to go simply because of its tendency to dissolve in water.
By the same process that makes cement, subduction at tectonic plate boundaries, heating and subsequent volcanism brought the CO2 back into the atmosphere and hence the Life/Carbon Cycle
Sunlight is already diffuse – I measured it on summer’s day of crystal clear blue sky with my own little solar-power-meter.
I stood outside, in a field, 100+ metres away from anything and noted 5 readings:
The Big Question is, how did the solar power meter still see 450Watts coming from a clear blue sky while facing directly away from the sun?
Why did it still see so much facing a right-angles to the sun?
The CO2 level was reduced following Pinatubo (you’re not gonna wanna hear this) because the volcano temporarily put the brakes on and actually reversed Soil Erosion.
All that dust and smut and smoke coming off the mountain contained the myriad micro-nutrients and trace-elements that plants, bacteria and critters (including us) absolutely need and are increasingly lacking in this modern world.
esp Iron and a lot of that would have fallen into The Ocean.
Iron is The Liebig Limiter in the ocean, life would have bloomed/exploded in the water upon its arrival. That’s where most of the CO2 went.
In fact, in any world. Soil Erosion is a natural occurrence – it is = The Process of Life.
The volcano would have also released (recycled) immense amounts of Sulphur and as any modern farmer will tell you, Sulphur is a vital a fertiliser as is the classic threesome of NPK.
Most agricultural fertilizers now are formulated as NPK+S
Out all that together and life (plant and bacterial) all around the globe would have absolutely blossomed.
Think of it like when the California Poppies bloom after a rain storm.
Pinatubo caused a Goodness Storm and life on Earth responded.
And some muppets contrive a theory about ‘diffuse sunlight’ – jeeez, are we in some deep sh1t here or what.
This is gonna be a 2-parter and the next bit will explain why CO2 is rising and why Soil Erosion is the cause and especially, how the explanation for it is staring everybody in the face’
It’s in one of the graphs of this essay if you zoom in close enough
But its now 04:30BST and I’m going for my Seconde Sleepe. See you in the coffee shop later today for Pt 2
“The Big Question is, how did the solar power meter still see 450Watts coming from a clear blue sky while facing directly away from the sun?
Why did it still see so much facing a right-angles to the sun?”
You might like to read and consider:
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/why-the-sky-is-blue/
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/the-fluorescing-sky/
Peta,
Without knowing the wavelength response of your instrument, it is not possible to determine why it reads 450 watts aimed at North 55 degrees. Most instruments fudge the overall reading from a narrower wavelength range in which the detector is most sensitive….having made assumptions in their built-in calculations between sensor and readout as to what the sensor was going to be pointed at by the user.
My previous reply seems to have transitioned from “Awaiting for approval” (I thought “for” was redundant) to have completely vanished, as perhaps unapproved? What went wrong?
Was it really so unapprovable? Here it is again. I just wanted to contribute the links.
_
“The Big Question is, how did the solar power meter still see 450Watts coming from a clear blue sky while facing directly away from the sun?
Why did it still see so much facing a right-angles to the sun?”
You might like to read and consider:
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/why-the-sky-is-blue/
https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/the-fluorescing-sky/
_
Ross Matheson
Auckland, New Zealand
The natural sourcers always have a magical rapid sink for the fossil co2.
copy Similar to clouds, volcanic eruptions increase the proportion of diffuse light reaching Earth’s surface. As Farquhar and Roderick show in their Perspective, this change in the geometry (rather than intensity) of light can have a profound influence on photosynthesis and the carbon cycle. They highlight the research article by Gu et al ., who have measured changes in net COexchange following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. Volcanoes, pollution, and greenhouse gases may all increase diffuse light, with important consequences for Earth’s carbon cycle and climate.
You learn something new every day around here. 🙂
Might that be at least partially from iron fertilization of phytoplankton resulting from the volcanic ash?
Or maybe many weather station operators all over the world wanted to see whether Pinatubo would have any effect….and went out to calibrate their thermometers and dust out the spider webs to make sure their stations were accurate…..and after the initially cooler readings, it just took a couple of years for the sensors and Stevenson screens to get dusty again….
The greening of earth due to more warmth and more CO2 is increasing, also in the oceans. That changes albedo and also the minimum temperature as the reaction with CO2 at night is exothermic. This is where most of our CO2 is going.
Also, there is still an immense amount of free ions in the oceans that want to react with carbonate. The reaction contant K for each of the carbonate salts is strongly dependent on temperature. In time to come the temperature of the oceans may drop in wich case more carbonates precipitate which would change the bicarbonate and then the partial pressure of CO2 in the air will drop. In such a scenario, the CO2 in the air may drop quite suddenly.
Conclusion: more carbon is better
Why would that be when cooler temperatures increase the solubility of CO2 and CaCO3?
Hi Clyde
It is how the chemistry works.
e.g. Ca++ + CO3– + cold => CaCO3 (s)
So when water gets cooler more carbonates that are still in ion form will precipitate. This removes CO3 from the system. This will affect the bi-carbonate concentration and the system (in equilibrium) will want to correct taking more CO2 from the atmosphere.
.
CO2 (g) + 2H2O + cold => H3O+ + HCO3-
This process will even go more rapidly when the air (arctic/antarctic) is also getting cooler (which it usually will be when the current gets cooler), and as you correctly said: cooler temperatures (in arctic/antarctic) will make that CO2 from the air dissolves more easily.
I think you have it backwards. It is well known by geologists that calcium carbonate is precipitating from the sea water in the Bahamas from warming.
Clyde
You can do the test where you cool a solution of potassium carbonate or any other carbonate. At some point the dissolved salt will precipitate.
But if the bicarbonate increases it throws all things out of balance and CaCO3
may precipitate as a result.
Sorry about that misunderstanding. It is all about pH and concentration and temperature and pressure.
Too many variables.
That is one of the inherent problems with the whole issue of anthropogenic influences. In order to handle the issues, one resorts to simplifications, which then risks getting the wrong answer because things are left out.
True. You know what. I always add bicarbonate to my pool, to keep it at ca. 100 ppm in the water. The reason for this is to precipitate any free calcium that is in the water (most algae need calcium to be able to live). So it seems to me concentration is more important and significant than temperature.
Dr. Spencer’s model has a low bias that is shown in the last two years. Atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing on average by 3 ppm per year. This projects about 450 ppm by 2035. That’s about 10 ppm higher than the model.
“All models are wrong. Some models are useful.” George Box.
…and it was higher in other years. Look at the long-term trend… it is flat. The annual uncertainties in natural sources and sinks of emissions, and even anthropogenic emissions, are so large that two years of minor deviations should not be used to infer anything.
Hi Roy,
Your model projects 445 ppm by 2035. It is 418 ppm in 2022. So it proposes an increase of 2.1 ppm/year.
I’m afraid it is too low. The rate of increase now is 2.5 ppm/year.
I made this graph in 2018. It is in my book. I think you received a copy. If not, you can get one on my ResearchGate page. It is Gaussian smoothed.
The rate of increase has been relentlessly increasing since 1950, except for the effect of the Pinatubo eruption that you also noticed.
Even if the rate were to stop increasing (highly unlikely), your model would have already failed, as it requires to drop now to 2.1 ppm/year and stay there, or show a progressive decrease from the current value of 2.5 to about 1.6 by 2035.
It is not difficult to get models to reproduce the past. Reproducing the future becomes a lot harder. The golden rule of forecasting is to be conservative and assume about a 2.8 ppm/year average increase until 2035, which would give a value of 455 ppm by 2035, which is above your model high and RCP4.5, but below RCP8.5.
Even if CO2 levels were to have a flat rate of increase, which would be huge news, we would still reach 450 ppm by 2035. Only a really big volcanic eruption or a humongous economic downturn could prevent that.
The world is getting greener, satellite imaging proves it. CO2 being the main limiting factor on Earth for photosynthesis means: more CO2 = more plants consuming it. A decrease of natural sinks in relation to an increase in CO2 didn’t make sense at all. Your new model, corrected for dissolved CO2 in the oceans due to ENSO temperature changes makes perfect sense. Probably the publisher feared problems coming from alarmists and chose the additional reviewers accordingly, although “usually” the author is also allowed to propose reviewers. If it walks like censorship, swims like censorship …
Eric,
….And more animals eating all that greenery. The abundance led to the Animal Kingdom.
At the very late strategies of that Kingdom, we, another animal, came along
Have got my coffee and composed Part 2
sigh. It Is Huuuuge. 1200 words and only one picture. Nobody wants that
Maybe I should Submit Story – maybe someone might do it for me?
The beast is a Dropbox in 2 versions: Word and pdf
Here’s the first few paras:
First:
This is bollox:”Humans Keep Emitting, Nature Keeps Removing“
The entire point, the reason why CO2 levels are rising is because Nature is NOT Removing
Spoiler: Nature is not removing because of Soil Erosion
The very real problem with soil erosion is that it is in almost and in all ways: Glacial.
It is why Mars is like what Mars is like, it is why Ice Ages occur: Soil Erosion is = Natural Variation.
It is ‘glacial’ on many timescales,
Sometimes it is really quick e.g. Dust Bowl Era and in China right now
Sometimes a bit slower such as the Little Ice Age set off by Henry 8th, slower still in what the Aborigine did to Australia or really really slow when ‘Nature’ is left to its own devices
i.e. ‘normal’ 100,000 year Ice Ages
But even they are a relatively new phenomenon.
As far as we are concerned right here and now, our problem is that we have no historical data on the state of the soil. Perfectly none and nobody’s even measuring it now, such is the fixation with trivia, minutia and models masquerading as science and not least: CO2.
/end first few paras
Also, attached is The Graph. See if you can work it out.
(It does help if you have any farming experience)
It came from here Wonky Thoughts but you can see the same almost anywhere – even zooming in on the graph in the essay itself.
pdf version=
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9gpu898dvsxnmi9/Here%20we%20are%20Part%202%20of%20Soil%20Erosion.pdf?dl=0
word version=
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j0nggpu67ggi43yv2cnps/Here-we-are-Part-2-of-Soil-Erosion.docx
Nature is removing co2 from the atmosphere in linear proportion to the concentration.
References for the provenance of this graph ?
https://klimaathype.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/the-real-business-as-usual-emissionscenario/
Several references. Thank you.
Simply look at the CO2 trend in the COVID Shutdown Era, it did absolutely nothing to shut down the economies of the world and stop burning fossil fuels, absolutely nothing.
That is because the current emission is higher than the sink. Emissions and sink are decoupled. You would need an emission reduction to 20GtCO2/y so see an effect in atmospheric concentration.
Current annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions are about 35 Gt. You are claiming that a 43% decrease (15/35) would be necessary to detect a change? We aren’t dealing with a binary phenomenon here! I find your claim incredulous.
As I have pointed out previously, the detection sensitivity is increased if monthly data are used to reveal the seasonal variations. A 3.71 PPM annual range, which is easily observable, is about 29 GT CO2. In other words, we see, and characterize, reductions of greater magnitude every year.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
Read carefully the criticism of Ferdinand Engelbeen there…
Maintaining 20 GtCO2/y will stabilize the atmospheric CO2 concentration to the current value of 430 ppm.
You didn’t respond to my assertion that we can easily measure atmospheric changes very much smaller than 15 GT per annum. Assuming for the sake of argument that Ferdinand is correct, it isn’t necessary to reduce the emissions to 20 GT, because while reductions smaller than that may not stabilize the atmospheric concentration immediately, there should be a reduction in the rate of increase. The question becomes, “What is the lower limit, or least reduction in emissions, that is detectable?” It appears that it has to be greater than a double-digit percentage decrease per month. Which raises the question of why it is so large. It is always good to go back and re-examine initial assumptions when an experiment doesn’t behave as expected.
And the mass balance example from a tyre warehouse
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/#comment-3483903
I disagree with Anders’ first statement: “… the mass balance is always fulfilled, anytime, …” Systems not only can be unbalanced, but probably are unbalanced more often than they are balanced. Any time there is a change in a forcing parameter, there is a time delay, or lag, as the system re-equilibrates. If the original forcing parameter changes again before equilibrium is reached, then the rate of change is changed.
While the tire warehouse may have periods of time when the incoming=outgoing, there are times when the sales people have to tell potential customers, “I’m sorry, but we are temporarily out of that particular tire.” Or, alternatively, a particular tire doesn’t sell well, and to make room for a more popular tire, they may have a sale and reduce the price to reduce that particular line of tire, and then order the more popular tire when they have room for it. Long-term, an inventory may approach a balance of incoming=outgoing. However, it is a constantly changing relationship where true equilibrium is only reached when the company goes out of business and liquidates its remaining inventory.
Here’s a Really Wild Card from me. did you expect less.
Volcanoes, Sulphur, Cooling, Geo-engineering
When volcanoes go off, the generally accepted meme is that:
Soot, ash and smoke blot out the sun.Causing coolingSulphur pushed high into the sky creates aerosol clouds that reflect sunlight. Causing more coolingRe #1 OK yes, when you’re on the ground and any cloud of anything gets between you and the sun – it feels and becomes cold.
No surprises, El Sol does heat the ground and the air.
But what about in the cloud of ash/smoke itself – does it not ‘get hot’
How can it not. It’s made of dark coloured low albedo stuff.
Errrrm hang on, doesn’t that trash the GHGE. The GHGE says that CO2 absorbs energy and that that energy comes down to the ground and makes it warmer.
A Black Cloud in an otherwise clear sky ith a bright sun must get extremely hot.
So why does it cause cooling when a cloud of CO2, supposedly ‘absorbing energy and getting hot’ causes surface warming?
Re #2 The amounts of Sulphur on any planetary scale are miniscule.
In any case, how many Climate Science Muppets will assert that high white clouds (Cirrus) cause warming.
They contradict themselves.
But where even very small amounts of Sulphur will have an effect is on plant life where it rains down to the ground ##
In the absence of farmer-applied NPK, Sulphur is The Liebig Limiter for a lot of places on this Earth
So, it goes like this.
Volcanoes make Sulphur……….Sulphur makes plants grow better faster stronger………..Because all plants are = water-pumps pushing water vapour into the air/sky……… extra Sulphur will cause them to transpire/evaporate/pump more water vapour…..the extra water vapour will make extra conventional clouds.And *they* do the observed ‘volcanic cooling’
## People know that Sulphur causes plants to grow
Thanks to the insane confusion about what Acid Rain is and what it does.
There is no such thing,
Acid Rain is simply more: Climate Bollox
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/1403483/British-acid-rain-helps-our-trees-says-Norway.html
Volcanic ash has a light colour
The color varies with both the mineralogical composition and size of the particles, with it being darker with lower silica content and larger particles. It also darkens with the addition of water. Not all ash looks like your example.
Explosive volcanic ash is white, because it is andesitic. Like Mount St Helens, Pinatubo and Vesuvius.
Mt. St. Helens is dacitic, not andesitic. The recent eruption of Mt Pinatubo was mostly dacite, with minor amounts of andesite. While the ancestral Monte Somma was probably andesitic, it appears from my quick reading that more modern eruptions of Vesuvius are tephrite, a more mafic rock approaching basalt in composition.
Rhyolitic ash or welded tuffs can be quite white. But, the ash tends to become darker with increasing mafic minerals. Not all ‘white’ is the same.
Which proves again that you are good at details but miss the overall concept.
Dark volcanic ash is extremely rare, as dark silicates don’t fly well.
I fail to be alarmed by the increase in CO2 because, historically speaking, it’s still really, really low, even with the recent 40 percent increase. If the planet’s vegetation (and phytoplankton) were suddenly to gain the power of speech it would no doubt say “Thanks man. Please send more.” Very little downside there, even if it is a tad warmer around the poles.
If 450 or 500 PPM somehow moderates or delays the next glacial outbreak by a few hundred years, that’s a huge win for all the planet’s life. Warmth is life. Cold is death.
Good work, Dr. Spencer, as always. And raspberries to the weakling editor who caved to the harpies of Climate Doom.
“Good work, Dr. Spencer, as always. And raspberries to the weakling editor who caved to the harpies of Climate Doom.”
The Climate Change Alarmists will allow no questioning of their religious dogma.
The soil genesis which commenced in earnest 400 million years ago, coinciding with the arrival of land plants, animals, and fungi fostered the greatest self-organizing optimization of living conditions ever known. The cycling of water, nutrients, and carbon net into the rapidly accumulating soil sponge to great depth. Sea levels and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations began to decline. With the arrival of humanity, a reversal. Net soil genesis no more; the anthropogenic era of unnatural soil exodus. The stable soil carbon sponge re-oxidized to atmosphere, water and nutrients discharged to the sea.
Anything that doesn’t imply being on the cusp of some sort of “Tip Max tipping point” is going to take a lot of guts to publish – so obviously.
I am confused by some mapping from Satellite OCO-2 data that shows the highest CO2 levels located where the higher levels of broadleaf vegetation exist. If this vegetation serves as a CO2 sink then the CO2 level in and around this vegetation should never be higher than surrounding, less vegetative, areas.
It depends on when the measurements are made. During the height of photosynthetic activity (May-Sept), atmospheric CO2 is withdrawn at a high rate. When the broadleaf (deciduous) plants die or shed their leaves, the CO2 withdrawal is suddenly stopped. Bacteria and fungi are provided with a surfeit of food that is rapidly attacked, producing an abundance of CO2.
My guess is that you are looking at the initial OCO-2 map presented at the AGU meeting, which covered the late-Fall period of the northern hemisphere. NASA hasn’t published much since then.
Please review and comment on https://retiredresearcher.com/2023/03/28/natures-net-zero-2/
Hi Fred, good work! it confirms my thinking as well on this. I left a comment there, but it needs your approval. Could I do this as a guest post from you on my own blog site?
Nino outgassing is a trivial amount CO2 per Henry’s law. I would substitute a term for soil respiration.
I suspect that tree respiration is an under-appreciated contribution as well, particularly from boreal forests.
Trillions of dollars down the tubes for no effect is a waste of everyones time and effort. As your relatives lay dying in pain from cancer, remember that Claude-Frédéric Bastiat already identified the reason in 1848. The Unseen consequences of government policy.
Nice work Dr. Spencer.
Spencer now says CO2 removal rate per year is 2.05% of excess above 295 PPM, which means time constant tau of about 49 years, which is half-life of excess above 295 PPM being a little under 34 years.
Spencer said previously in a spreadsheet of his linked from https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/04/a-simple-model-of-the-atmospheric-co2-budget/annual removal rate of 2.33% of excess above 295 PPM, which I figure is time constant tau of about 42.9 years and halflife of about 29.7 years.
Willis Eschenbach said in https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/19/the-secret-life-of-half-life/ an equilibrium of 283 PPM, and removal of CO2 in excess of of this being with a time constant tau of 59 years which is a half life of 41 years, and I worked out this as indicating annual CO2 removal being 1.695% of excess above 283 PPM. I remember seeing something saying since then something with much shorter half-life and/or time constant tau that was in close agreement with Spencer’s calculations, although I was not able to find this with almost half an hour of digging with Google. I did respond to W.E. then for explanation of the discrepancy, and he responded by saying he did best-fit for different time periods. There is another recent WUWT article claiming annual removal rate of 1.6% of excess CO2 above 280 PPM which works out to time constant tau of 62.5 years and half-life of 43 years.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/25/emissions-and-co2-concentration-an-evidence-based-approach/
(Which claims half-life of 42 years.)
There is the matter that while atmospheric CO2 above whatever equilibrium point and net annual emissions are increasing similarly to each other and as describable as close to an exponential rate, a math property of this is consistency of these with a wide range of decay curves of short term “injections” / “pulses” of CO2 into the atmosphere, including exponential decay as well as other decay curve shapes including Bern model decay curves.
I remember Willis Eschenbach criticizing one specific Bern model in
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/15/feeling-the-bern/
on basis of the permanent term in one specific Bern model (oversimplified to have only three exponential decay terms) having coefficient of 15 or 15.2 % I came up with permanent term of about 1.5% assuming zero climate sensitivity, and I think it’s about 2% with realistic climate sensitivity. This one Bern model is oversimplified, by having too few terms of exponential decay at different rates (a finite number of these only result in approximation), so that the permanent term has greatly excessive coefficient that mostly belongs to slower-decay-rate ones of the additional terms that are needed for better approximation. Disproving excessive coefficient of the permanent term in one specific greatly oversimplified version of the Bern model (which I suspect also is dependent on climate sensitivity greater than 2 degrees C per 2xCO2) does not disprove Bern models in general.
The Bern Model (which has multiple versions / variants) is based on a top thin layer of the ocean interacting with atmospheric CO2 with half-life only a little longer than that indicated by “bomb test” studies, and the multiple deeper levels of the ocean (the more the better) taking time (more time for deeper levels) to have their CO2 intake decreasing ability of the top ocean to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
The atmospheric CO2 level graph is unrealistic. The CO2 level for 1960 of 315 ppm is only 3/100ths of one percent of atmosphere. The CO2 level for 2020 is only 4/100ths of one percent of atmosphere. Therefore, the growth of CO2 level from 1960 to 2020 was only 1/100th of one percent. A graph of that difference should show almost flat-line growth.