how was this done ?

[rb1957]

From WUWT, Roy Spencer's article "atmospheric CO2 increases" how did he go from fig 1 to fig 3 ? i get that he's converting ppmV to mmtC ... so that as the proportion of CO2 increases, so many million of tons of C were added to the atmosphere, but fig 3 doesn't look like i'd've expected it to, given fig 1 ... very specific, identifiable annual rises and falls (almost tidal) ?


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[zdas04]

I've looked at the ppmV data till my eyes crossed. The only thing in nature with that kind of regularity day/night, the turn of the seasons, and the phases of the moon. Even tides are a lot more variable than that data. I've counted peaks and valleys and it looks like there is a minimum and a maximum in each year on an increasing trend line with nearly 100% correlation to some increasing function. Hawaii is close enough to the equator that summer/winter variability is reasonably small (not zero, but closer to zero than Point Barrow Alaska). The only thing that makes any sense is that the data that every one is plotting is based on a 180 day moving average of data with normal variation. If that is actually what is happening, then that fact seems to be buried pretty deep, I've never found a climate scientist that wondered about the regularity of that data.

Figure 3 is just confounding. Without talking about the shape of the black line, I can't understand how the stuff that people are adding is greater than the whole. I understand that some amount of the CO2 spewed out of people's mouths and termite mounds is taken up by plants without going into the atmosphere, but the relationship of the red and black lines seems to say that 100% of "natural" CO2 is taken up by plants and the oceans and 60% of man-made CO2 doesn't make it to man the greenhouse walls. Puzzling.

As to the black line in Figure 3 to Figure 1. I would guess that fewer computer models were used in Figure 3. Figure 1 looks like an artifact of some fertile imagination. Figure 3 looks kind of like you would expect data to look. I guess I'd have to find the article to understand what the emissions in figure 3 were "inferred" from, we've been told over and over that the Mauna Loa CO2 data is the purest raw data in the history of man.



David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. —Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[rb1957]

fig 1 is attributed to Mauna Loa measurements. i'd've thought that fig 3 was a "sipole" factoring of fig 1 ? that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere meant X tons of Carbon were added.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[rb1957]

fig 1 looks to be NOAA data.

is it reasonable to extrapolate this as a global measure ? or are models used to corelate CO2 measured in Hawaii to the global average ?? (that sounds like a crock)

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[moltenmetal]

I don't know how to answer your question because I haven't read the paper much less did I write it.

I can definitely answer David's 1st paragraph question about the annual variation in the CO2 concentrations. The repeatable seasonal variation in the atmospheric CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa has to do with the terrestrial biomass difference between the northern and southern hemispheres- in fact, this can be used to estimate the biological uptake rate of atmospheric CO2, among other things.

 

[zdas04]

moltenmetal,
I'm not doubting you, just trying to understand. If I understand correctly, one hemisphere has a bit more ability for plants to uptake CO2 at the height of the growing season than the other hemisphere does. That makes the data make a lot more sense. Thank you.

But, doesn't that also say that magnitude of CO2 in the atmosphere is dominated by biological processes and not anthropogenic processes? Motor fuel use (for example) outside of the tropics shows a weak seasonality with more cars on the road in summer than winter. Electric use shows a definite seasonality with summer air conditioning being dominant. Other industrial uses (the base load) don't show much seasonality. It seems to me that when I superimpose the seasonality of generation on the seasonality of uptake, I'd see a lot more noise than the NOAA data shows. I'm still scratching my head.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. —Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[IRstuff]

Figure 1 is NOAA Mauna Loa data, can can be directly accessed from ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt Some description of the data is here:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full

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[cranky108]

Not having looked at the graph, there should be a seasonability of CO2 in the athmospheare. I would think there are a few reasons for this. There is a time of the year called the duldrums when there is no wind, and was naimed by seamen 100's of years ago. This band moves North and South during the year, and would have the effect of reducing the mixing of the air from place to place. Another is that the Northern hemesphear is more inductrialed than the South, for no other reason than there appears to be more land mass than the South (please do get into land mass issues).

It is true that electric usage is higher in the US in the Summer, and wind power is greatest in the Winter, but also auto travel is less efficent in the Winter.
Winter also requires heating in the North, which is an increased usage of gases, wood, and other fuels, at different efficency and CO2 rates.

So yes there is going to be some seen changes in CO2 concertration just because of differences in the seasons.

This should also change depending on dry and wet years, or tree growth rates from faverible and disfaverable conditions.

If the measurments diden't show these, then we should have a reason to question them.

 

[moltenmetal]

David- no worries, just repeating what I've read for your benefit because it seems you missed that detail. I was surprised by the annual sawtooth when I first saw the data, many years ago- but not nearly as unpleasantly surprised as I was to see the overall, rather unmistakeable trend in the data.

Yes, the biological flows are large. The concentration in the atmosphere is like the level in a tank. The flow in or out doesn't matter really- all that matters is the size of the tank and the difference between the two total flows in and out. Regrettably, the size of the tank is finite, and the mass of fossil carbon stored over a billion years or more is enormous, so if we keep going the way we're going, the level will continue to rise. The "tank" in this case is really a whole series of tanks, each with its own input and output flows and its own accumulation positive or negative- the atmosphere itself, dissolved gases in the oceans, and the various natural carbon "sinks" and sources both geological and biological. The rates into and out of those various secondary tanks can vary greatly also, and each has its own equilibria. Some of those individual rates have time constants on the order of days, others on the order of centuries, and others on the order of hundreds of thousands of years, so it's possible to tease out which ones are going to respond quickly enough to be of relevance to the atmospheric concentration on the human timescale.

It's a very complex system, but what we see is that inexorable increasing trend, which from what I've read, happens to coincide in timing, isotopic composition and rough magnitude to what would be expected from our historical fossil carbon emissions. While correlation doesn't guarantee causation, it's a stretch to imagine an alternative explanation that is going to fit the data better.

As to mixing effects in the atmosphere due to winds etc., if it were a significant effect I would expect the data to look quite a bit more variable than it is.

One thing the data makes quite obvious is that there's no way that volcanic eruptions are sufficient to explain the increase or would overwhelm human-generated emissions. I've seen that claim made here and elsewhere and have swatted it down as specious, because it clearly is. Mt. St Helens, Pinatubo etc. are barely blips on the measurement.

 

[zdas04]

With the peak (and the valley for that matter) increasing with time, doesn't that mean that the ability of the plants to uptake CO2 is also increasing? It seems like there are a number of forces at work here.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. —Galileo Galilei, Italian Physicist

 

[moltenmetal]

Yes, definitely plants are absorbing more CO2 than they used to. Estimates are that biomass productivity rates increase perhaps 10-15% for every doubling of atmospheric CO2. But biomass uptake and biomass permanent storage are different things entirely- and not all plants are affected equally. Murphy says the weeds will grow faster than the crops, and the crops will grow faster but the nutritional value of the product cereals etc. will not be increased to the same extent- and that's regrettably what the data says also, again from what I've read.

 

[cranky108]

It would be true the nutritional value of the product would not increase, but man has found ways to increase the amount of product produced per square foot. Which if the human population were not increasing, would require less square feet to feed the population. Not that I like GMO's, but plant cross breeding has increased crop production so much in the last several hundred years.

If you notice that plants don't grow much in deep water, so if there is a way to reduce the depth of the seas, you can increase the area that plants grow on. Which would increase the carbon capture by water plants.
What to do with thousands of tires.

 

[SomptingGuy]

[OT] Dumping thousands of worn tyres in landfill is a.k.a. carbon capture.

- Steve

 

[IRstuff]

"With the peak (and the valley for that matter) increasing with time, doesn't that mean that the ability of the plants to uptake CO2 is also increasing?"

Without detrending, it's not possible to tell. After detrending, the peaks and valleys are more obvious, and the excursions have only increased by about 1.1%, compared to the 25% change in total level. The fact that you see an upward trend says that the plant uptake is nowhere near keeping up with the basic CO2 increase. The uptake is only manifested in the change from the local minimas to the following local maximas.

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[cranky108]

I was suggesting tires for reafs, not land fills. But that is a good point, that land filling plant products is a form of carbon capture, even if it is for a short time.

 

[rb1957]

how much crap would out-gas from the tires into the water ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[rb1957]

is the data behind this Mauna Loa graph available ? I was thinking that you could extract some emissions from the year to year change in the data ... but eye-balling the graph suggests many more zero events.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[moltenmetal]

I prefer building wooden houses to dumping tires as a means of reasonably permanent carbon capture. Even at the end of its life, which can easily be 100 years if properly maintained, the wood in a house can be recycled into paper and then burned or composted, giving lots of use before it goes back as CO2 to the atmosphere. Post construction wood recycling is done here- there are services which will collect the wood if it's segregated during demolition, which of course takes some care and labour, but they shred up the nails without a problem. Personally, I burned all the wood demo debris from my own large home reno project in my woodstove to heat my shop, collecting about eight pails of nails from the ashes. Free fuel, in return for the bother of sawing and stacking it all.

I am skeptical of artificially driven carbon capture and storage schemes because they're enormous resource wasters. Better by far to just waste less of the source fuel.

 

[rb1957]

if the saw-tooth nature of the fig 1 (the Mauna Loa CO2 data) is seasonal, then it is reasonable to assume that the northern hemisphere is out of phase with the southern, yes? year-to-year deltas still would have some meaning, no?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[IRstuff]

The links I provided above will lead you to the NOAA site that has the data from Mauna Loa and other places

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