by Joachim Dengler
This post is the first of two extracts from the paper Improvements and Extension of the Linear Carbon Sink Model.
Introduction – Modelling the Carbon Cycle of the Atmosphere
When a complex system is analyzed, there are two possible approaches. The bottom-up approach investigates the individual components, studies their behavior, creates models of these components, and puts them together, in order to simulate the complex system. The top-down approach looks at the complex system as a whole and studies the way that the system responds to external signals, in the hope to find known patterns that allow conclusions to be drawn about the inner structure.
The relation between anthropogenic carbon emissions, CO2 concentration, and the carbon cycle has in the past mainly been investigated with the bottom-up approach. The focus of interest are carbon sinks, the processes that reduce the atmospheric CO2 concentration considerably below the level that would have been reached, if all CO2 remained in the atmosphere. There are three types of sinks that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere: physical oceanic absorption, the photosynthesis of land plants, and the photosynthesis of phytoplankton in the oceans. Although the mechanisms of carbon uptake are well understood in principle, there are model assumptions that cause divergent results.
The traditional bottom-up approaches are typically box-models, where the atmosphere, the top layer of the ocean (the mixed layer), the deep ocean, and land vegetation are considered to be boxes of certain sizes and carbon exchange rates between them. These models contain lots of parameters, which characterize the sizes of the boxes and the exchange rate between them. The currently favored model is the Bern box diffusion model, where the deep ocean only communicates by a diffusion process with the mixed layer, slowing down the downwelling carbon sink rate so much, that according to the model 20% of all anthropogenic emissions remain in the atmosphere for more than 1000 years.
I challenge this claim by questioning some of these assumptions. How does the Bern Model explain the high yearly absorption rate of more than 6% of the 14C from the bomb tests for 30 years after 1963? How does a downwelling diffusion model work, when the CO2 concentration in the deep ocean is higher than in the top layer? Empirically there is evidence that ocean absorption is still increasing and there is no sign of saturation.
The top-down models in contrast do not typically look at the details of the sink mechanism. On the basis of mass conservation, they measure the actual empirical sink rate as the difference between anthropogenic emissions and the CO2 concentration growth in the atmosphere, and investigate how this empirical sink rate is related to CO2 concentration. This is justified with the assumption that all contributing sink effects can be approximated with sufficient accuracy by linear functions of CO2 concentration.
The Linear Carbon Sink Model
Atmospheric concentration growth is the difference between all emissions and all absorptions – this is the carbon mass balance described by the continuity equation. Emissions are split between known anthropogenic emissions and unknown natural emissions. For simplification, the relatively unknown emissions caused by land use change are included in the unknown natural emissions. This is justified on the basis that the measurement error of land use change emissions is very large anyways, and by transferring a badly known contribution to the unknown contributions, we do not lose important information.
Obviously emissions, absorptions, and concentration must be measured using the same unit. The natural unit for evaluating mass conservation would be Pg (petagram), but atmospheric masses are usually measured as concentration, relative to the total mass of the atmosphere. For emissions and absorption, their masses translate into potential concentration change. Therefore, ppm is used here consequently, where 1 ppm (parts per million) is equivalent to 2.12 PgC (Petagram Carbon).
The difference between the unknown absorptions and the unknown natural emissions is defined as the sink effect during the time interval of typically a year, implying tacitly that the annual net absorptions are larger than the annual net natural emissions. On the other hand, the same sink effect is known from measurements of anthropogenic emissions minus the concentration growth. Together both statements are equivalent to the continuity equation, where annual concentration growth equals all (anthropogenic and natural) annual emissions minus all annual absorptions. This is displayed in Figure 1. The sink effect is modelled linearly with a constant absorption coefficient a expressing the proportionality of the absorptions to CO2 concentration and a constant n representing the annual natural emissions
Figure 1. The measured yearly sampled time series of anthropogenic emissions and yearly CO2 concentration growth. Both effects are measured in or have been converted to ppm, in order to guarantee comparability. Their difference is the growing carbon sink effect.
The estimated parameters of the least squares fit with annual data from 1959 to 2023 are a=0.0183, n=5.2 ppm. The equilibrium concentration which is reached when anthropogenic emissions are assumed to be zero, is C0= n/a = 284 ppm.
When reconstructing or predicting modelled CO2 concentrations, it is carried out by calculating the concentration growth from the mass balance equation and recursively reconstructing the concentration from emissions (equation (6) in the paper).
Figure 2 shows the comparison of the actual measured CO2 concentration with the predicted concentration data 2000–2020, using only data from 1950–1999 for the estimation of the model parameters. This shows the high quality of the prediction based on the linear model, using only data before the prediction time interval for estimating the model parameters. The 95% confidence interval of the prediction error, displayed as the grey shaded area, is extremely small, the actual deviations are much smaller still.
Figure 2. Model estimation with measured data from 1950–1999. The prediction of CO2 concentration is done by using the real emission data and the model. The grey error bar shows the estimated 95% confidence interval based on error propagation of the modelling residual error variance. Direct prediction comparison is possible due to the availability of the actual concentration data from 2000–2020.
Another way of getting a sense for the quality of a model is to compare the model reconstruction with the original data within the range, from which the model was built. Figure 3 displays the comparison of the actual CO2 concentration data with their model reconstruction based on the linear model over the whole time range from 1959 to 2023. Surprisingly, the actual concentration is a bit smaller than the one predicted by the model. This suggests that in the near future no saturation of the sink effect is to be expected.
Figure 3. The measured CO2 concentration (in ppm) is compared with the concentration reconstruction based on the linear model. The parameters of the model are estimated from emission and concentration data of the whole time range from 1959–2023.
Identifying the Inflection Point in the CO2 Concentration
An important consequence of the linear sink model needs to be mentioned. When we look again at Figure 1 we clearly see that the large short term variability of the concentration growth is reflected in the sink effect. This variability is removed in the sink model, without changing the trend of the data. Therefore, the reconstructed concentration growth also does not exhibit its original short-term variability; its only “noise” is caused by the anthropogenic emission data.
From a recent publication of the CarbonBrief Project, we know that global emission data have been constant for more than 10 years. For constant emissions the linear sink model implies declining concentration growth, due to increasing sink effect while concentration increases. Figure 4 shows that the measured yearly concentration growth data have an absolute maximum in 2016 and a declining trend afterward. But the concentration growth data, when stripped of short-term effects by means on the linear sink model, have their maximum already in 2013 and are declining since then. This means that the concentration graph has an inflection point in 2013, turning from concave to convex behavior. The effect appears even clearer when emission data are also smoothed. This is a remarkable validation of a model prediction — the fact that atmospheric carbon concentration growth is declining since 2013 has not been published before.
Figure 4. Comparison of the measured atmospheric CO2 concentration growth (in ppm) with the reconstruction of concentration growth by means of the linear sink model from both the original anthropogenic emission data as well as the smoothed anthropogenic emission data.
Figure 4 also explains why the significant Covid-19 related drop in anthropogenic emissions in 2020 did not have any visible effect on concentration growth. The reconstructed “noise-free” concentration growth clearly reflects the drop in emissions. But it so happened that this coincided with a positive spike in the “random” component of the concentration growth originating from natural emissions.
Making Land Use Change Emissions Consistent
When comparing the ex-post prediction in Figure 5 of 2000–2020 concentrations using the linear model with data from 1950–1999, where emissions caused by land use change were included (copied from the previous post), with the new prediction in Figure 2 without explicit land use change emissions, it is obvious that the predictive quality has become considerably better when discarding explicit land use change emission data for estimating the model parameters.
Figure 5. Prediction of 2000–2020 concentration with data from 1950–1999 from previous post. Emissions caused by land use change had been included as anthropogenic emissions. This graph is included for comparison with the better prediction in Figure 2, which does not explicitly include emissions from land use change. The grey area represents the 95% confidence interval of the predicted data.
This does not mean that there are no land use change emissions; it rather means that the best assumption is that they have been constant between 1950 and 2000 and beyond. It is a direct consequence that constant annual land use change emissions are interchangeable with natural emissions, and we are free to interpret a part of the measured natural emissions as land use change emissions.
The most likely annual value of the land use change emissions during this specific time interval can be inferred from the assumption about the equilibrium CO2 concentration by postulating an equilibrium concentration value without land use change emissions, and let land use change account for the difference to the actually measured equilibrium concentration. This obviously assumes that the ocean and land sink mechanisms have remained rather stable over the time of observation.
Let’s postulate that the “real” equilibrium CO2 concentration value should be the same as the preindustrial assumed value of 280 ppm. The estimate of the equilibrium based on anthropogenic emissions is 𝐶0=284 ppm. Therefore, we can infer that between 1950 and 2020 the most likely annual value of the Land Use Change emissions LUC is
𝐿𝑈𝐶=((284ppm−280ppm)*0.0183)*2.12 PgC/ppm = 0.15 PgC
The measured data constrain the possible range of the land use change emissions. Increasing their assumed value implies lowering the equilibrium CO2 concentration. With the most likely equilibrium concentration of 280 ppm the best estimate for land use change emissions, they are 0.15 PgC per annum. Obviously changing the assumption of the “real” natural equilibrium value to e.g. 270 ppm, would consequently change the inferred Land Use Change emissions to 0.54 PgC.
The postulated value of land use change emissions may contradict the state-of-the-art literature, depending on the value of the assumed equilibrium concentration. I see, however, no other possibility to reconcile the four constraints of anthropogenic emission measurements, concentration growth measurements, consistent sink coefficient, and equilibrium concentration consistent with preindustrial value of 280 ppm. The satisfied consistency of these constraints is reflected in the quality of prediction, as shown with the ex-post prediction of the 2000–2020 concentration data in Figure 2.
Future Emission Scenarios
To make predictions, assumptions about future CO2 emissions have to be made. Obviously, the standard scenarios of IPCC AR6 are a possible first choice. They have, however, severe handicaps. Originating from the time of exponential emission growth, at least 2 IPCC scenarios (SSP5-8.5 named “Avoid at all costs” and SSP3-7 named “Dangerous”) are so far from reality and even from the availability of fossil fuel resources that it is not meaningful to discuss them. For more than the last 10 years, global emissions have been constant within the range of measurement error. This knowledge is not yet reflected adequately in official emission statistics of the International Energy Agency, but also in these statistics there are no significant global emission changes since 2018.
Therefore, approximately constant emissions are to be considered as the worst-case scenario in the real world. This is slightly above the IPCC scenario SSP2-4.5 named “Middle of the road” during the second half of this century.
At the other end of the scale, the IPCC scenario SSP1-1.9 named “Most optimistic” is equally in denial of reality, because it assumes global emissions will to be cut to zero by 2050. None of the large countries that dominate global emissions has any plans to reduce emissions to zero. Also, SSP1-2.6 named “Next best”, with zero emissions after 2050, ignores industrial transition times, even if there was the political will. Both these scenarios also ignore the stabilizing effect of natural carbon sinks on CO2 concentration, which is the key message of this post.
Therefore, I want to focus on four scenarios, displayed in Figure 6, which are less restrictive than SSP1-2.6. First, the mentioned worst-case reference scenario with constant future emissions, extrapolating the recent 5 years.
Figure 6. Historical CO2 emissions until 2022 and from 2023 emission scenarios 0%, 0.3%, 1%, and 2% annual emission reductions.
Then, the IEA “Stated Policies” scenario, which is the most likely future emission scenario according to extensive research about existing policy decisions, approximately reducing worldwide carbon emission by 0.3% per annum, strictly speaking after 2040. This, in fact, corresponds closely to the IPCC SSP2-4.5 emission scenario.
A more severe emission reduction scenario would be 1% per annum, reducing worldwide emissions by 50% every 70 years, and finally the most aggressive reduction scenario with 2% reduction per annum, reducing emissions by 50% every 35 years. This comes close to the SSP1-2.6 “Next best” scenario without reducing to zero completely.
The predictions based on the discussed linear carbon sink model for all four scenarios are shown in Figure 7. With the linear carbon sink model, all four emission scenarios will not raise the CO2 concentration beyond 520 ppm, and the three emission reduction scenarios will reach the peak concentration within this century. I do not draw conclusions about consequences for global temperature here, because the difficult question of climate sensitivity is clearly beyond the scope of this post.
Figure 7. Historical CO2 concentration time series until 2022 and from 2023 concentration prediction scenario from linear carbon sink model with 0%, 0.3%, 1%, and 2% annual emission reductions.
For future historians, I include Figure 8, in order to be able to compare the same scenarios with the CO2 concentration predictions after 2022 from the Bern model of the 2013 publication. The IPCC predictions are based on similar models to the Bern model, with comparable outcomes.
Figure 8. Historical CO2 concentration time series, measured in ppm, until 2022 and from 2023 concentration prediction scenario from Bern model with 0%, 0.3%, 1%, and 2% annual emission reductions.
The prediction result of the 1% per annum reduction scenario from the Bern model corresponds to the constant emissions prediction scenario result from the linear sink model, and the 2% per annum reduction scenario from the Bern model corresponds to the 0.3% reduction scenario from the linear sink model. Therefore, the question of which model is correct may greatly affect future policy decisions.
Within the next 10 to 20 years, it will be easier to see which model will come closest to reality.
Conclusions
The linear carbon sink model is primarily a consequence of mass conservation resp. the continuity equation. From measurements we see an increasing sink effect which has been a strict linear function of CO2 concentration for the last 65 years. When this statistically highly significant model is accepted for the past – where its validity is obvious –, important implications follow.
By removing the “noise” from the CO2 concentration growth while keeping the trend, the modelled concentration growth data exhibit a clear maximum in 2013 and a declining trend since then. This is fully consistent with the fact that since more than 10 years anthropogenic emissions have been approximately constant. The fact that concentration growth declines when emissions are constant, is a nice validation of the linear carbon sink model.
The linear carbon sink model introduces a strict relation between the measured data, and the model parameter of equilibrium concentration. When the traditional natural equilibrium without anthropogenic emissions of 280 ppm is accepted, then the assumed constant rate of land use change emissions of the last 65 years is restricted to 0.15 PgC per annum.
The linear carbon sink model has proven to be of high predictive value. The concentrations of the years 2000-2020 have been predicted with high accuracy from the 2000-2020 anthropogenic emissions and the model built with the 1950-1999 data.
There is one potential weakness in the linear carbon sink model. The oceanic and photosynthesis sink systems are of finite size, but the model assumes no saturation effect. This contrasts with the box and diffusion models used by other researchers. The Bern model, in particular, claims that the foreseeable capacity of the natural sink systems is effectively only 4 times larger than the atmosphere, with the result, that 20% of all emissions remain in the atmosphere for at least 1000 years. Up to now, not the slightest sign of saturation of the natural sink systems can be detected. We can assume, therefore, that there will be no drastic change of this in the near future.
The simple fact that both models can explain the emission and concentration data of the past very well, makes it necessary to check the deviations in the future. For this purpose, 4 possible emission scenarios have been evaluated by both models, and future researchers and historians will find out which model will have made the better predictions of CO2 concentrations.
Modelling is bunk.
The Wiki notes
he business practices of this articles publisher, MDPI, have attracted controversy with critics suggesting it sacrifices editorial and academic rigor in favor of operational speed and business interests.
It was included on the Beal list of predatory open access publishing companies in 2014, but removed in 2015 following a successful appealwhile applying pressure on Beal’s employer.[28] Some journals published by MDPI have been critcized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Norwegian Scientific Index for lack of rigor and possible predatory practices.
Why not just comment on the content of the article, instead of attacking the vehicle?
Many so called “peer reviewed” articles are not much more than hokum dressed up to embrace the latest fashion fad.
As far as the article is concerned, strikes me as a very simple consolidation of very complex processes using fairly broad simplifying assumptions.
Because its author admits it to be inconclusive and inconsequential—
“I do not draw conclusions about consequences for global temperature here, because the difficult question of climate sensitivity is clearly beyond the scope of this post.”
Had you read it ,you might be as underwhelmed as I.
Considering the fact that – apart from the rather precise CO2 measurements at Maona Loa – most measurements have large error bars ( anthropogenic emissions are „measured“ from tax evaluations !), there is not much more you can do apart from simplify assumptions. When you look carefully, you will find out, that the „model“ is in fact a general Taylor series of the measured sink effect, stopping after the linear term, because all others are statistically insignificant. (The test for a higher order term had been done in a previous paper)
… in the world of engineering, you can simplify your way into meaningless results, particularly when dealing with inherently very complex considerations.
“Because its author admits it to be inconclusive and inconsequential— ”
Sadly a level of humility and scientific objectivity which is totally lacking in the corrupt world of institutionalise climate pseudo-science.
Thanks, Joachim.
As they cool, oceans absorb more atmospheric CO2.
You are correct. You may be interested in the second part, where I extend the model by temperature. It will appear here, but you can read that also in the underlying cited paper.
“Newer findings on ocean influx [10] and phytoplankton…”
Spreading fears like demonic climate pornographers looking for the missing global warming to emerge from the depths of the oceans like a flaming chariot from hell and delcare the heat is hiding as Trenberth did (“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t”), people in white coats can’t be far behind. Fact is, when oceans are cooling there is no global warming.
As summer sea ice extent decreases in the arctic, uptake increases. The biological pump also overwhelms the effect of warming oceans. https://x.com/drjamesehansen/status/1740375861717794908?s=46
“As summer sea ice extent decreases in the arctic, uptake increases. ”
Good point. There are warmer waters where the temperature dependency is small. In cold waters it is almost an order of magnitude greater. There the sensitivity of out-gassing/absorption is very dependent on SST.
CO2 cycle at Alert Canada, compared to Artic sea ice area.
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/co2_nh_ice_area_1985/
For some time now, I nhave been asking around about how a location can be dentified as either source or sink for the purpose of subtraction to give changes and their size. It is easy to contemplate a location being a sink and source at the same time, or even changing status from one to the otrher in the course of a day or a season. This does not seem easy to model, top down or bottoms up. It is hard to do in retrospect because f low data availability
There have been phytometer studies. For example, in 1983, Alcoa (Australia) displayed by a roadside east of Perth a large tree in a container instrumented to measure growth factors going in and out. Does anyone have a link to the rsults? Earlier Mount Isa Mines had instruments deployed downwind up to hundreds of km monitoring their SO2 smokestacks. Links?
Then there is the complication of local sinks versus global sinks. At a coal fired electricity station, some of that chimney CO2 is absorbed by local sinks near the chimney, so it never makes it to the global weather station at Mauna Loa or wherever. Yet the Mauna Loa numbers are often modelled as total oncentrations, such as in graphs showing global temperatures and global atmospheric CO2.
Joachim, are these matters known and settled, or are the models still to include them?
Geoff S
That’s absurd.
What is absurd, Russell?
Geoff S
It is not so important to look at individual locations. As you see from the cited paper, all my conclusions can be drawn from the two time series of anthropogenic emissions and global concentrations (from e.g. Maona Loa). The remaining „noise“ is to a large degree caused by temperature fluctuations, which will be discussed in the second part.
You have to be aware that compared to the big natural sink systems biosphere and oceans, everything else is minute, and all measurements have considerable error bars. In order to get meaningful results, you have to use global emissions and concentrations.
Joachim,
“the big natural sink systems biosphere and oceans”
How do you know how big they are?
Geoff S
Geoff,
Well, for knowing the size of the carbon sinks I also depend on public knowledge such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle,
which says that oceans contain 38000 PgC and the living plants contain 600..1000 PgC
Doing a lot of calculations helps a bit to judge whether these numbers are valid and consistent.
Thank you for an interesting if somewhat confusing article. I hope to get some clarification. The articles you linked were also very interesting. Nice to see NPP and Q10 get some love.
“On the other hand, the same sink effect is known from measurements of anthropogenic emissions minus the concentration growth.”
But if anthro-emissions are absorbed just as readily as natural then sinks could be 10 times larger and and natural sources 10 times larger and we still wouldn’t know.
“This shows the high quality of the prediction based on the linear model, using only data before the prediction time interval for estimating the model parameters.”
How is this not circular reasoning? If the modelled result comes from a determination on observations? It tells us nothing other than whatever is going on is still going on.
“This suggests that in the near future no saturation of the sink effect is to be expected.”
Was there an expectation of that the sink effect would be saturated? It’s mentioned in one of the articles you linked, which was waved off as nonsense – it clearly was.
“An important consequence of the linear sink model needs to be mentioned.”
This paragraph makes no sense to me and I’ve read it >10 times. “This variability is removed in the sink model, without changing the trend of the data”…so its a smoothed trend applied to noisy data? Why not just say that? Or are you trying to say that the high variability is inappropriately removed for some reason?
What do you mean by “noise” added by anthropogenic data? This makes no sense. Could you clarify this paragraph.
“we know that global emission data have been constant for more than 10 years.”
And we also know that during the period of the greatest increase in anthro-emissions, the increase in rate of atmos-CO2 was far more modest, and during covid when emissions dropped, atmos-CO2 increase was unaffected. That suggests that anthro-CO2 and atmos-CO2 increase are de-coupled.
Instead, there is an imbalance between NPP and Q10 that is temperature lead. Temps increase Q10 (by definition) and extra CO2 increase NPP. Since NPP always lags Q10, during periods of a warmer climate, atmos-CO2 must necessarily increase. Anthro-CO2 is the cherry on top, a cherry which meddles a bit with land use changes.
“For constant emissions the linear sink model implies declining concentration growth, due to increasing sink effect while concentration increases.”
Firstly, it took me ages to work out what you meant by “concentration growth”. Given the graph is in ppm I am assuming you mean the growth in atmos-CO2 in ppm. Is that right? Or is it the concentration growth RATE? If so why would the linear model imply declining concentration growth, or as I would prefer to have it put the rate of growth in atmos-CO2?
“…Implies declining concentration growth…while concentration increases.”
So the rate of AtmosCO2 growth is declining. Is that right? I gotta say this sentence is incredibly unclear. What actually ARE you trying to say? What should happen to NPP, Q10, and atmos-CO2 in the linear model you are critiquing?
“But it so happened that this coincided with a positive spike in the “random” component of the concentration growth originating from natural emissions.”
*Sucks air through teeth* It “so happens”. What if they were not unrelated? How about comparing another period when emissions dropped during the energy crisis in the 70s? What happened to increases in atmos-CO2 then?
I’m not a fan of linear models in the natural world. It doesn’t mean they are not right, but the natural world is full of chaos and surprises. But I can comment on linearity with respect to Q10 and NPP based on my own research.
The rate of increase in NPP and Q10 – IS – linear but only within a certain range. It’s just that the range is within the variability of temps and CO2 for their climate, which makes sense. If they couldn’t cope with those variations they wouldn’t live in those climates.
For example, in boreal forrests increase in soil respiration (Q10) is linear with temperature within the range it varies by. If temps drop or exceed that range, respiration stops or is highly muted. According to experiment, increase in NPP is linear with available CO2. However if it drops below a certain level it stops altogether. Given respiration and biomass growth exist in the same environment there is some linearity there.
But I am troubled by a model that is derived so naively by observations. I think that it’s circular reasoning to say that because a model derived from what you’ve seen means that must be what is always going to happen. It doesn’t tell you anything…nothing of interest it would seem to me.
Another point is, if you are saying that because emissions have stopped increasing in the last 10 years, it means that the increase in the rate of growth of atmosCO2 has also fallen, you also have to account for the fact that there was a pause in warming ~ 1997-2015 which can also reduce the rate of growth by halting the increase in Q10.
You touched on what I think is an important point, but doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention:
“If temps drop or exceed that range, respiration stops or is highly muted. According to experiment, increase in NPP is linear with available CO2. However if it drops below a certain level it stops altogether.”
The inverse of that is, as Earth warms (whatever the reason) respiration in Boreal forests should increase, particularly in the Winter, because the respiration is shut down less frequently with Winter warming. Therefore, during the seasonal ramp-up phase, the rate of biogenic emissions of CO2 should increase.
Yes, and most global warming is in winter – our winters are warming but summers not so much. I hadn’t thought of your point though…because there are less freezes halting respiration altogether, it means warmer winters would cause even more respiration than a linear function of temperature.
The seasonal swing in CO2 in northern latitudes has been increasing, but at a slower rate.
I think part of the reason the seasonal swing in CO2 concentrations hasn’t been increasing as fast the past two decades is the pause in summer sea ice decline (sea ice inhibits GPP). Another is possibly less winter emissions growth due to increasing efficiency and less winter emissions due to milder winters.
https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1789441732691579359?s=46
“But it so happened that this coincided with a positive spike in the “random” component of the concentration growth originating from natural emissions.”
*Sucks air through teeth* It “so happens”. What if they were not unrelated? How about comparing another period when emissions dropped during the energy crisis in the 70s? What happened to increases in atmos-CO2 then?
I’m not a fan of linear models in the natural world. It doesn’t mean they are not right, but the natural world is full of chaos and surprises. But I can comment on linearity with respect to Q10 and NPP based on my own research.
The rate of increase in NPP and Q10 – IS – linear but only within a certain range. It’s just that the range is within the variability of temps and CO2 for their climate, which makes sense. If they couldn’t cope with those variations they wouldn’t live in those climates.
For example, in boreal forrests increase in soil respiration (Q10) is linear with temperature within the range it varies by. If temps drop or exceed that range, respiration stops or is highly muted. According to experiment, increase in NPP is linear with available CO2. However if it drops below a certain level it stops altogether. Given respiration and biomass growth exist in the same environment there is some linearity there.
But I am troubled by a model that is derived so naively by observations. I think that it’s circular reasoning to say that because a model derived from what you’ve seen means that must be what is always going to happen. It doesn’t tell you anything…nothing of interest it would seem to me.
Another point is, if you are saying that because emissions have stopped increasing in the last 10 years, it means that the increase in the rate of growth of atmosCO2 has also fallen, you also have to account for the fact that there was a pause in warming ~ 1997-2015 which can also reduce the rate of growth by halting the increase in Q10.
I think for the questions you are asking and your comments the post is not made. You should really look into the paper, the link to it is in the first introductory sentence of the post. E.g. I discuss the question of linearity there. And many issues that you raise.
By the way, if you are troubled by a simple law found by observation of nature or guessing, listen to Feynman, that‘s how science works; https://youtu.be/EYPapE-3FRw?si=0wsbQaVEiJtdKOfw
And a linear relation if measured data is certainly not a circular argument, in particular if it holds for more than 70 years, and if it allows reliable predictions.
In order to understand others you may have to let go some preconceived ideas, at least for a moment. E.g. your concepts of NPP or Q10 do not appear in my equations – it may be worth thinking about why not, and why it is legitimate to ignore them, when asking for the consequences of anthropogenic emissions.
Joachim, I think the main problem here is how you are expressing yourself. It’s not clear.
For example; “if you are troubled by a simple law found by observation of nature or guessing, listen to Feynman, that‘s how science works”
No, science does not work by listening to Feynman, something I am pretty sure he would have agreed with. I know that’s not what you mean, but it’s not a bad example of how you are making your case.
The reason I am “uncomfortable” with linear models describing nature, is because nature very rarely behaves in a linear fashion. I described cases and caveats for linearity in my last post.
And the fact that a linear relation holds for 70 years is not in itself convincing. A robust description of the mechanisms at play is what would convince, which is why leaving out NPP and Q10 as integral parts of that model makes me uneasy. I have pretty much come to reject the “mass balance argument” as a model because it is trivially true and misleads too easily as to what is going on. This is why I question why NPP and Q10 are left out. It’s something I have been over many times before. I personally don’t think a model that does that is likely to be valid.
I have read through your post several times and I am making my way through the actual paper, and I am not saying you are wrong by any stretch, just that I can’t make out what it is you are trying to say half the time….hence all the questions.
“… because nature very rarely behaves in a linear fashion.”
Keep in mind that any curve can be approximated by a linear function over short intervals. Whether that is acceptable or not is determined by the accuracy required for an application and how closely the non-linear function approaches linearity over a critical range. Even the ‘wrong’ approximation can be useful if it is more easily calculated than the exact answer, or the exact answer cannot be obtained from the non-linear function other than by approximation. A linear function is also more easily comprehended by a human for purposes of intuitively understanding how a system behaves. From personal experience, I have found that very complex systems can be approximated by a series of linear functions, that are essentially correct, but whose aggregate results are not obvious from even linear contributions.
I suppose you are aware of the fact, that in this case we are not talking about a linear function, but about a (discrete version of a) linear differential equation, the solution of which may be anything but linear.
Your „Covid“ comment tells me that you have not read the post carefully, because I have given an explanation for the fact that concentration growth was not affected by the emission reductions – they were overcompensated by short term variability which – as is described in the main paper and will be described in a follow up post as being caused by temperature (as you indeed suggest).
If you are interested in my view how concentration reacts on emissions and temperature, you will either need to take the trouble of reading the cited original paper or wait until the second post is out.
I did read your post carefully, it’s just that I may not have understood it. In fact I read your post several times, and also most of the accompanying links (which I really liked btw). That is the reason for my questions here.
I still don’t understand your response; that they were “over-compensated” by short term variability. What do you mean by “over-compensated”? That isn’t clear what could be causing the “over-compensation”.
In order to understand my response, you need to look at Figure 4. The orange “clean” version of the concentration growth clearly show the Covid downward dent in 2020. But the “actual” blue concentration growth has a larger upward spike in 2020 (it was even larger in 2019), which more than compensates the downward dent.
Right so I know about the “dent” and I know that short term CO2 variability is greater than human emissions. What you’re saying that there was a short term spike in natural emissions which more than compensated for the dip in anthropologic emissions.
The point is that changes to human emissions has no impact on the long term trend. If humans were responsible for tipping the balance, it ought to be reflected on those few occasions where emissions were lower.
There are 2 arguments regarding accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere;
1) human emissions impose a long term trend on noisy natural changes in atmosCO2 which balance to zero over the long term.
2) the drivers of that noise cause the noise to add up one way or the other over longer periods causing a natural trend, and human emissions are just added to that.
Argument 1 assumes the carbon cycle is in balance – that’s the basis of the mass balance argument – it’s implied that the amount CO2 exchanged between sinks and sources in the biosphere are in balance, and the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is entirely anthropogenic.
Argument 2 says that the drivers of variability on short time scales also apply on long time scales. A tree represents multiple time scales of sinks and sources; leaves represent short term absorption and release, a branch medium term and a trunk long term. This is even the IPCC’s model. Since NPP is CO2 dependent and Q10 is temperature dependent, we should see atmosCO2 change after a change in T, and an increase in NPP follows, offsetting the increase in CO2.
So I am trying to understand the linearity in your model, when the components are non-linear and interdependent. You are coming at it from a completely different angle than I have seen. I am having some difficulty wrapping my head around it.
An alternative interpretation is that the role of anthropogenic emissions is over stated. If you haven’t seen them, you might want to look at the following articles:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/22/anthropogenic-co2-and-the-expected-results-from-eliminating-it/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/11/contribution-of-anthropogenic-co2-emissions-to-changes-in-atmospheric-concentrations/
Clyde … has anyone published a paper that essentially confirms your 2022 paper on WUWT? Have you considered submitting that for publication in a journal? Just curious. Thanks, I enjoyed it.
Bill, I’m retired and don’t need to pad my CV. My contributions are offered to try to understand what I consider to be an important subject. I don’t think that those whose livelihood depends on supporting the current paradigm are going to be receptive to seriously considering a Doubting Thomas’ opinions, should I manage to get past the gatekeepers of a major journal. I contribute to a couple blogs that seem to have a readership of intelligent people who are not willing to drink the Kool-Aid, at least not without asking “Why,” and “Where is the proof?” I’ve submitted 15 articles to WUWT that have been published, without any of the commenters dealing what I would consider a fatal blow to my position.
For example, the Empirical Rule in statistics states that a good first estimate of the standard deviation is +/- 1/4th the range. That would lead one to suggest that the standard deviation of the global annual temperature is at least several degrees Fahrenheit, and probably 10s of degrees. Yet, NASA, and others, insist that they know the precision of the annual mean to +/-0.005 degrees F. None of the Defenders of Truth (as they see it) have made an argument at to why the Empirical Rule is at odds with the claims made by the ‘experts.’
Thanks, Clyde. Keep it up. I enjoy reading your work, not least because you write well, a lost art among scientists … and in general.
Thank you for the compliment, Bill.
Thanks again to Clyde Spencer. It’s been interesting to notice the ignoring of historical fact, which I guess is less interesting than modeling and predicting. But Feynman welcomed both forms of observation, with the guessing based on historical data.
In 550 million years there has never been a temperature trend reversal preceded by a CO2 change. In the Great Depression, human industry worldwide declined by 30%, 1929-1931, and CO2 continued its languid rise unchanged, with temperatures continuing to rise till 1941 when they began a slight decline to 1972, again with no change in the rate of CO2 rise *despite WWII and post-war reconstruction*. Thus the “Oncoming Ice Age!” scares in the early 70s (see Time and Newsweek and ScienceNews in the early ’70s).
Arrhenius discovered the exponential decline of the GHG effect of CO2, and the calculations are now correct. See MODTRAN at U of Chicago. 50% of the GHG effect of CO2 is in the first 20 ppm, and so the next doubling to 800 ppm will increase its GHG effect by around 3%, in theory.
Meanwhile, its beneficial effect on plant life increases arithmetically, making them grow bigger and faster and resist drought. Indeed, 30% or more of the increase in agriculture since 1950 is attributed to CO2 increase.
The easy conclusions are:
CO2 is not in control of climate and
We are not in control of CO2
Thanks again to Clyde Spencer. It’s discouraging how the historical data is ignored in favor of modeling and predicting. Feynman acknowledges both in his description, with the historical approach often used for the guess.
In 550 million years there has never been a temperature trend reversal preceded by a CO2 change. Fluctuations in our ~4% addition annually to the atmospheric contributions have not made the slightest difference in the languid rise of CO2 over the last 180 years. Our contribution began to be measurable in 1880, while the escape from the LIA began before 1840. We note no effect on CO2 rise for 1929-1931 and for 2020, despite our decreases in output (30% in 1929-1931 and perhaps 17% of a much higher production in 2020). That latter greatly disappointed Arizona State University climate scientist Randall Cerveny who, unaware of 1929-1931, expressed his disappointment: “We had had some hopes that, with last year’s COVID scenario, perhaps the lack of travel and the lack of industry (that 17% drop in output) might act as a little bit of a brake. But what we’re seeing is, frankly, it has not.”
He is also seemingly unaware of the exponential decline in CO2’s GHG effect, discovered by Arrhenius, and the math is now correct. The next doubling to 800 ppm will increase its GHG effect by around 2%. Also no effect from WWII and postwar production. Its insignificance is clear in the exponential decay of the GHG effect of CO2, 50% in the first 20 ppm, first discovered by Arrhenius, and now the math is correct. The next doubling of CO2 to 800 will increase its GHG effect by less than 3% (MODTRAN at U of Chicago).
Meanwhile, its beneficial effect on plant life increases arithmetically, making them grow bigger and faster and resist drought. Indeed, 30% or more of the increase in agriculture since 1950 is attributed to CO2 increase.
The easy conclusions are:
CO2 is not in control of climate and
We are not in control of CO2
We can and should decrease/eliminate our particulate and chemical pollution – lithium pollution products, eg. And recognize acceptable production of CO2.
jimww:
You want to talk about the geological history of atmospheric CO2. You imply that the present atmospheric carbon increase is merely business as usual from natural sources and talk about the “languid rise of CO2 over the last 180 years.” That is patent nonsense. One of the more dramatic increases in the geological record occurred 56 million years ago when natural processes (volcanism while Greenland was separating from Europe) added 10,000 GT over a period of 3000-5000 years, leading to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum . But the current rate of increase from anthropogenic sources is an order of magnitude larger. See Voosen, P., 2022: Hidden Carbon Layer Sparked Ancient Bout of Global Warming, Science, Vol 377, Issue 6601, 12-13.
It’s a brand-new ballgame we are in. Inaccurare claims and soft, wishful thinking don’t help.
“But the current rate of increase from anthropogenic sources is an order of magnitude larger. ”
Actually that is not true. At the end of the Bolling-Allerod, CO2 rose to at least 425ppm. And there have been excursions of more than 100ppm in <100 years in the past. See: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379113000553
Agnostic,
OK, the stomata data again. It looks like noise to me, but it gives the dwindling “it’s not our fault” crowd something to hang onto.
You wrote earlier
“I have pretty much come to reject the “mass balance argument” as a model because it is trivially true and misleads too easily as to what is going on.”
Indeed, the mass balance argument is simple, but it is most certainly not circular reasoning as some have claimed without explanation. DATA show that net global uptake is positive from natural processes. Can you please give us a detailed quantitative explanation of what, in your opinion, is going on that is consistent with the mass balance argument and takes us humans off the hook for atmospheric CO2 rise? Don’t just say “natural sources are bigger” and ignore natural sinks.
“Can you please give us a detailed quantitative explanation of what, in your opinion, is going on that is consistent with the mass balance argument and takes us humans off the hook for atmospheric CO2 rise? Don’t just say “natural sources are bigger” and ignore natural sinks.”
I have never ignored natural sinks. Natural sources are bigger – orders of magnitude bigger than human sources and they vary by greater than the mount of human emissions.
Nor even am I saying that humans are “off the hook”. I am saying that we do not know the extent of natural sources because they vary so much and sinks also vary. The only thing we know with any kind of precision are human emissions.
What is going on that is “consistent” with the conservation of mass is varying residence time of carbon in sinks. Residence time in soils, biomass etc vary from a few days or hours to 1000s of years. You only need a slight shift in residence time to drive large changes in atmosCO2. No mass is created or destroyed. The rate at which sinks that have trapped carbon release that carbon CHANGES which is generally driven by temperature. Human emissions are the cherry on top.
Think of a tree; its leaves represent short time scales (annual/seasonal), branches medium time scales of decades, and its trunk longer time scales of centuries. That is TRAPPED carbon. If a branch decays faster than it grows, what happens to atmospheric CO2?
“OK, the stomata data again. It looks like noise to me, but it gives the dwindling “it’s not our fault” crowd something to hang onto.”
Firstly, I don’t care what the crowd does or does not want to hang on to. I only care about the evidence and the science. Secondly, if you are looking at stomata data and just seeing noise, either you are biased beyond help, or not actually looking at the data.
Stomata show very clear correlation with atmospheric CO2 from herbarium experiments as well as and comparisons with living plants and air flask measurements. The advantage is with stomata is that they are very high resolution and high accuracy. Stomata are formed each season based on the ambient level of CO2. CO2 is the only thing that affects their density.
The disadvantage with stomata is 1) they are non-contiguous as measurement of long term CO2 changes, 2) they become much less sensitive to changes beyond a certain level atmosCO2 – typically around 400ppm. Up to that level, there is a very linear correlation. They are superior to ice cores for detecting short term >100 year variations in CO2 because ice cores suffer from diffusion (amongst other problems) which acts as a low pass filter for short term fluctuations.
If you want to understand better how leaf stomata act as a way to measure atmospheric CO2, then I can recommend this paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.182420699
and/or this one: https://tinyurl.com/2343m86x
Agnostic,
“The only thing we know with any kind of precision are human emissions.”
We also know the rise in atmospheric CO2 with precision, and (-) the difference between that and human emissions is the net global uptake by natural processes.
“If a branch decays faster than it grows, what happens to atmospheric CO2?”
The carbon atoms in a branch all came from the atmosphere or the soil. A given decaying tree may temporarily be emitting at a faster rate than it was absorbing when it was growing, but a STABLE forest then has more branches growing than decaying, and NOTHING happens to the atmospheric CO2 level.
But in fact, data show that the forests are not stable. VEGETATION IS INCREASING stimulated by higher CO2 levels. I am sure you have heard that, as many cite it as a supposed benefit of burning fossil fuels. So in fact, taking a global average, the carbon intake of growing branches exceeds the emissions of decaying ones. Yes there are many timescales to deal with, but conservation laws allow you to reach rigorous conclusions without looking at every detail. THE EXTRA CARBON IN THE ENHANCED VEGETATION HAS TO HAVE COME FROM SOMEWHERE.
I do not believe you have made a coherent argument that an appreciable fraction of atmospheric CO2 rise is natural.
David Andrews:
Oh, “This time it’s different”? Of the 8 major forcings, CO2 at this time is possibly the least powerful because of the logorithmic decline of its GHG effect (see MODTRAN, UofChicago). You can sift the historical data for speculative confirmation of your assumption but the fact is that the correlation of CO2 with climate change is not better than the correlation of sex with marriage. No necessary or sufficient causation in either case. At these levels, the link is loose.
The PETM? https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo578 Generously, they state “atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increased during the main event by less than about 70% compared with pre-event levels. At accepted values for the climate sensitivity to a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration1, this rise in CO2 can explain only between 1 and 3.5ºC of the warming inferred from proxy records.” And even that only if the model is correct, which is not yet proved. Note the increase in CO2 at the onset of Antarctic glaciation.
Climate of the Past, Present and Future Javier Vinos, 2022 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Javier-Vinos/publication/363669186_Climate_of_the_Past_Present_and_Future_A_scientific_debate_2nd_ed/links/63296077071ea12e36487da9/Climate-of-the-Past-Present-and-Future-A-scientific-debate-2nd-ed.pdf?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/temp-and-co2-l.gif and
Yes, I call that languid.
https://climatecite.com/wp-content/uploads/co2improved-780×366.png Note the lack of CO2 decline 1929-1931 and in 2020, and the absence of increase during WWII and post war production.
Jimmww,
I notice your temperature graph cuts off in 2013. I guess you are 10 years behind.
You cite Javier Vinos? But he doesn’t believe in peer review.
jimmww,
Further to your comment, to rebut my 2022 Science article by Voosen, you referenced a 2009 paper https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo578 The Voosen article I referenced was actually a summary for popular consumption. The technical article it cites is https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abk0604 . The abstract of this 2022 paper in its entirety is
“Characterizing past climate states is crucial for understanding the future consequences of ongoing greenhouse gas emissions. Here, we revisit the benchmark time series for deep ocean temperature across the past 65 million years using clumped isotope thermometry. Our temperature estimates from the deep Atlantic Ocean are overall much warmer compared with oxygen isotope–based reconstructions, highlighting the likely influence of changes in deep ocean pH and/or seawater oxygen isotope composition on classical oxygen isotope records of the Cenozoic. In addition, our data reveal previously unrecognized large swings in deep ocean temperature during early Eocene acute greenhouse warmth. Our results call for a reassessment of the Cenozoic history of ocean temperatures to achieve a more accurate understanding of the nature of climatic responses to tectonic events and variable greenhouse forcing.”
First you showed us a 10-year old temperature plot, then tried to rebut a 2-year old article with a 15-year old article. Peer-reviewed science advances.
David Andrews: You haven’t been able to question the accuracy of any of my statements of fact, only criticize the antiquity of the unrefuted references and disparage the 180-year graph of CO2 with a reference to a 56-million year-ago event.
I can’t say I’m surprised at your indifference to the absence of any effect on CO2 trend by human production or lack of it. That’s characteristic of the devout believer, impervious to anything in the historical record that should imperil his belief. Like ignoring the other 7 major forcings.
You clearly have no fact to contribute, only poo-pooing the inconvenient.
Jimmww,
I am not interested in participating in a pxxxing contest, so I will not take the bait. I am interested in constructive dialogue that changes opinion, and I won’t be able to change your opinion, or that of anyone reading this, if I call you names or impugn your motives.
You mention my “indifference to the absence of any effect on CO2 trend by human production or lack of it”, and as an example you have cited the apparent lack of response of measured atmospheric CO2 to the emissions dip caused by COVID shutdowns. Let me try to show you why the COVID dip, shown in this link: IMF graph of COVID emissions drop, is hard, or even impossible, to see in the classic Mauna Loa plot with the seasonal wiggles.
Perhaps you thought that the atmospheric CO2 content should show a similar 10-15% notch in 2020, but that of course would be wrong. A change in emissions would be expected to lead ultimately (not right away) to a change in the SLOPE of the atmospheric increase, measured in ppm/yr, not in its value. We should therefore look for it in this NOAA plot of Annual CO2 increase. Note that the first graph I linked which shows a clear drop of 10-15% in emissions in 2020 is plotted by quarter, not year. An estimate of the annual emissions deficit for all of 2020 is 4.6%. Could we see a 4.6% drop in Annual CO2 increase in 2020? Look at the NOAA graph. 4.6% of 2.3 ppm/yr is .1 ppm/yr. The graph is far too noisy to see a drop of this magnitude, although as it happens, 2020 is indeed about .2ppm/year below 2019 and 2021. By the way, the noise in the annual CO2 increase graph is, I believe, from natural fluctuations, not from measurement error or emission fluctuations. But the steady upward trend is our fault.
You are not the only one spreading the myth that the apparent lack of an effect of COVID shutdowns on atmospheric CO2 “proves” humans are not responsible. That is why I have gone into this detail.
Jimmww,
[reposting, hopefully with working links this time]
I am not interested in participating in a pxxxing contest, so I will not take the bait. I am interested in constructive dialogue that changes opinion, and I won’t be able to change your opinion, or that of anyone reading this, if I call you names or impugn your motives.
You mention my “indifference to the absence of any effect on CO2 trend by human production or lack of it”, and as an example you have cited the apparent lack of response of measured atmospheric CO2 to the emissions dip caused by COVID shutdowns. Let me try to show you why the COVID dip, shown in this link: https://www.imf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Emissions-COTW-Chart.jpg is hard, or even impossible, to see in the classic Mauna Loa plot with the seasonal wiggles.
Perhaps you thought that the atmospheric CO2 content should show a similar 10-15% notch in 2020, but that of course would be wrong. A change in emissions would be expected to lead ultimately (not right away) to a change in the SLOPE of the atmospheric increase, not in its value. We should therefore look for it in this NOAA plot of Annual CO2 Increase: https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_gl_anngr.png . Note that the first graph I linked which shows a clear drop of 10-15% in emissions in 2020 is plotted by quarter, not year. An estimate of the annual emissions deficit for all of 2020 is 4.6%. Could we see a 4.6% drop in Annual CO2 increase in 2020? Look at the NOAA graph. 4.6% of 2.3 ppm/yr is .1 ppm/yr. The graph is far too noisy to see a drop of this magnitude, although as it happens, 2020 is indeed about .2ppm/year below 2019 and 2021. By the way, the noise in the annual CO2 increase graph is, I believe, from natural fluctuations, not from measurement error or emission fluctuations. But the steady upward trend is our fault.
You are not the only one spreading the myth that the apparent lack of an effect of COVID shutdowns on atmospheric CO2 “proves” humans are not responsible. That is why I have gone into this detail.
David Andrews – “Let me try to show you why the COVID dip, shown in this link: IMF graph of COVID emissions drop, is hard, or even impossible, to see in the classic Mauna Loa plot with the seasonal wiggles.
…
Look at the NOAA graph. 4.6% of 2.3 ppm/yr is .1 ppm/yr.
…
By the way, the noise in the annual CO2 increase graph is, I believe, from natural fluctuations, not from measurement error or emission fluctuations. But the steady upward trend is our fault.”
———-
Good Grief! So you agree that the 30% decrease in human CO2 emissions 1929-30 or the ?30% increase in WWII and postwar, produced no measurable change in the global CO2 trend. And that natural emissions overwhelm any changes in human CO2 production.
And then you have the audacity to insist that the upward trend in CO2 is our doing. Outrageous.
And you ignore, among other things, that the steady trend upward since 1840 has been associated with multi-year stretches of declining global temperatures. And that global CO2 now is close to the lowest in the last 500 million years – 8,000 ppm at that time, 4,000 ppm at the start of the late-Ordovician Ice Age, 1800 ppm for the dinosaurs… No tipping point, no crisis.
Please, no hand-waving arguments, just historical data. Thanks.
David Andrews: “Yes there are many timescales to deal with, but conservation laws allow you to reach rigorous conclusions without looking at every detail. THE EXTRA CARBON IN THE ENHANCED VEGETATION HAS TO HAVE COME FROM SOMEWHERE.”
As I have said elsewhere, many times, yes of course it does. It comes from carbon that has been trapped during cooler periods. The idea that mass has to be conserved is trivially true and is misleading, because it leads people to think that there has to be an INSTANTANEOUS balance between mass going into and out of the atmosphere.
I’ll try again. Think of a tree: it has leaves, branches, and a trunk. They represent short term, medium term, long term capture of carbon. Short term processes capture and return carbon seasonally. A branch traps that carbon as it grows. It is NOT returned to the atmosphere.
The processes that govern the capture and return of carbon are different. The first is dependent on available CO2 and the second is dependent on temperature. That means, during cooler periods, the rate of decay of your branch is slower. But the CO2 in the atmosphere is still high because of the previous warm period. That means it can still grow at (nearly) the same rate. More CO2 is absorbed by GPP than can be released by Q10. Atmospheric CO2 decreases.
We see this on short timescales – it’s very obvious. We also see it on long timescales with CO2 changes lagging temperature. The SAME processes occur on medium timescales as well, and we can see that clearly in stomata records, but we don’t see it in ice cores because of the diffusion effect. We do actually see it – the movement agrees with stomata, but in a much more muted way.
Agnostic,
You don’t have it yet. “Mass” or more specifically carbon conservation has nothing to say about whether atmospheric inputs and outputs are balanced. Carbon conservation simply says whatever imbalance exists must be reflected in changes to the carbon inventories. And this IS true instantaneously as well as for defined time periods. Look at the well constrained numbers for human emissions from 1950 to 2010 posted elsewhere, and the total rise in atmospheric CO2 in that period, and tell me what you can say about changes in non-atmospheric reservoirs in that period.
David Andrews: “You don’t have it yet. “Mass” or more specifically carbon conservation has nothing to say about whether atmospheric inputs and outputs are balanced. Carbon conservation simply says whatever imbalance exists must be reflected in changes to the carbon inventories. ”
No – I DO have it – it is you that seems to miss the extent of the carbon stores locked away in soils and deep ocean.
Again I refer you to the model of a tree. Leaves are the instantaneous exchange on seasonal/yearly and also daily timescales.
A branch represents medium timescales about a century or so. Trees (and GPP generally) lock away that carbon as they grow, which came from the atmosphere. But the carbon that got INTO that atmosphere also came from “branches” – those century scale stores. Those “stores” are virtually inexhaustible. “Branches” is just a model – just to illustrate that there can be difference in the rate a branch grows compared to the rate it decays. It is in fact the entire biome – primarily soils.
Think about the concept of “residence time” if that helps. You have nearly the entire mass of land covered with soil all with trapped CO2 which it emits, and being replenished at different speeds. You only need to alter that a very slightly to have a dramatic effect on atmospheric concentration.
No carbon created or destroyed. But the store of carbon is vast and virtually inexhaustible. If it is removed from the atmosphere faster than it released, CO2 levels go down. If it is released into the atmosphere faster than it is captured, CO2 levels go up. We see this on all time scales, the primary driver of which is temperature.
Agnostic,
“No carbon created or destroyed. But the store of carbon is vast and virtually inexhaustible. If it is removed from the atmosphere faster than it released, CO2 levels go down. If it is released into the atmosphere faster than it is captured, CO2 levels go up. We see this on all time scales, the primary driver of which is temperature.”
Yes, exactly.
Also I would like to add that the periodical forest fires is the mechanism by which the fossil coal was created.
When trees burnt, they are not burnt completely, because the carbonized trunks do not favor the fire and they stop burning.
When fallen on ground the coal is sequestered in thousands of meters deep coal mines.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Agnostic,
You ducked a question I asked before. From Ballantyne, A. P. Alden, C.B., Miller, J.B., Tans, P.P. ,2012: Increase in observed net carbon dioxide uptake by land and oceans during the past 50 years, Nature, vol 488 pp 70-72. doi:10.1038/nature11299.
Between 1960 and 2010:
Cumulative human emissions = 350 +- 29 PgC
Atmospheric Accumulation = 158 +- 2 PgC
How many net Pgs of carbon came into or left land/sea reservoirs reservoirs in that period? GIVE ME A NUMBER PLEASE. NO MORE HAND-WAVING ABOUT BRANCHES AND LEAVES.
(Answer Net Global Uptake = 192 +- 29 PgC)
Pingback: Implications of the Linear Carbon Sink Model - Climate- Science.press
Reminds me of results I got from a still simpler top-down approach. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371220923_The_airborne_fraction_of_anthropogenic_CO2_emissions_A_mistaken_concept
You remark in your Research Gate paper that “The idea that the planet absorbs a certain share of CO2 in the atmosphere is highly plausible.” I find it more than “highly plausible.” I would be surprised to find that it isn’t true because it is well known by physical chemists that the solubility of CO2 in water is a function of the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. Think of charging a soda bottle with a high-pressure CO2 cartridge. It is the mechanism by which it is claimed that the ocean pH is decreasing as more carbonic acid is generated by CO2 dissolving in sea water.
Thanks, that is fully consistent with the simple linear model as presented here.
These converging observations and conclusions show that the time has come for a mainstream paradigm shift.
That’s why I advised you to read the paper. Figure 8 in the paper shows how temperature fluctuations explain what I call “random” in this post (for didactic reasons, because there will be a separate post to discuss the temperature enhanced model)
Besides that, it is important not to confuse a (temporary) reduction of emissions with changes in concentration. The effect of emissions ist distributed over more than 50 years, therefore (small) changes in emissions have hardly any effect on concentration growth.
As you may notice, it required quite a bit of smart analysis to make the stagnation of emissions since 10 years visible in the concentration growth.
Joachim,
Two comments:
1. A 2012 Nature letter also concluded that natural sink rates were growing, using data from 1950 to 2010. See https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11299
Sinks had to be increasing in order for the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere to remain at about 45% of human emissions as human emissions increased. This paper made no attempt to extrapolate sink rates into the future under different emission scenarios as you do.
2. You ask “How does the Bern Model explain the high yearly absorption rate of more than 6% of the 14C from the bomb tests for 30 years after 1963?” and link to a paper by Harde. You should be aware that Harde’s paper is just plain wrong. The radiocarbon community usually quantify measured 14C amounts with the variable “delta 14C”. This is the deviation of the measured 14C/12C ratio from a standard, expressed in parts per thousand. Isotope RATIOS are what are needed for carbon dating, and isotope ratios are what a mass spectrometer most accurately measures. It is NOT a concentration measurement, but Harde and a few others mistakenly thought it was. The atmospheric 14C CONCENTRATION has actually been increasing since about 2000. See https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2024.27 Including a reference to a wrong paper weakens your own, but I recognize that Harde’s paper is not central to your argument. As there has been discussion about unreliable publishing houses, I must note that Science Publishing House that published Harde’s article has a reputation similar to MDPI.
Yes, nuclear tests in the stratosphere produce radioactive carbon because 14C is formed by the absorption of a neutron by a nitrogen atom.
Nuclear tests in high latitudes have had a very negative impact on the climate, by affecting the ozone zone.
Thanks for pointing to the Nature article which confirms the idea of growing sinks. Unfortunately the authors relate the sink effect to emissions (via wrongly assuming constant airborne fraction), which is physically meaningless, but probably helped to get it published in Nature.
Only when you relate the sink effect to concentration, you will have the conceptual possibility of reaching the „net zero“ situation in the sense of the Paris agreement („equilibrium between sources and sinks“) without reducing emissions to zero.
Regarding C14, could it be that you totally misunderstood the issue? I am not talking about carbon dating, but about the decay of atmospheric C14 concentration during the 30 years after the 1963 test ban treaty. The atmospheric C14 bomb pulse curve is well known (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_pulse), but only few people published the (easy to determine) decay time constant of appr 15 years. Harde is one of the few, and his calculations are correct. C14 values after 2000 are meaningless in this context, because after 30 years the pulse vanished in the background noise.
Joachim,
Ballantyne et al. just present data showing the growth of the sinks. They don’t assume constant airborne fraction, nor do they try to model the future behavior of the sinks as you do, although that is a very important thing to try to model.
The Wikipedia plot you reference is not of CONCENTRATION. It is a plot of the deviation of the ISOTOPE RATIO 14C/12C from a standard. You are making the same mistake that Harde (and Salby and Berry and Essenhigh and Starr) all made. Since the denominator of the ratio has not been constant over the last 70 years, Harde is fitting a distortion of the concentration curve, and it matters. See plots in https://doi.org/10.1017/RDC.2024.27 if you want to see how the 14C concentration really behaves.
Harde talks about “absorption” and you talk of the “vanishing pulse.” But neither overall carbon nor radiocarbon disappear, they just get redistributed (except when radiocarbon decays in 5000 yrs). An anthropogenic carbon atom we put into the atmosphere, that at the moment is perhaps in a surface ocean or biosphere reservoir, hasn’t gone away. It remains part of the fast carbon cycle and may be back in the atmosphere next year. The fast cycle carbon inventory has been increased. To “go away” or “be absorbed” in a practical sense, it needs to find its way to a place that exchanges very little with the atmosphere, e.g. the deep ocean. The reason your speculations on how future atmospheric carbon levels will depend on emission reductions has no credibility, at least with me, is that the data you used to make your fits is insensitive to the processes that matter: the ones that remove carbon from the fast cycle rather than just moving it around within the cycle.
The absorptive capacity of photosynthesis in the oceans is unlimited. It is known that diatoms and other algae prefer cooler waters with more nutrients. Cyanobacteria, on the other hand, which have historically mastered warm oceans and produced most of the oxygen present in the atmosphere, can thrive unhindered by their ability to absorb free nitrogen.
The production of C14 in the stratosphere by galactic radiation should also be considered. C14 is produced in high latitudes and, in the form of CO2, gradually descends into the troposphere as a molecule with a molecular weight greater than N2 and O2.The highest rate of carbon-14 production takes place at altitudes of 9 to 15 kilometres (30,000 to 49,000 ft) and at high geomagnetic latitudes.
The rate of 14
C production can be modelled, yielding values of 16,400 or 18,800 atoms of 14 C per second per square meter of the Earth’s surface, which agrees with the global carbon budget that can be used to backtrack, but attempts to measure the production time directly in situ were not very successful. Production rates vary because of changes to the cosmic ray flux caused by the heliospheric modulation (solar wind and solar magnetic field), and, of great significance, due to variations in the Earth’s magnetic field.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#cite_note-25
Pingback: Climate Etc.Implications of the Linear Carbon Sink ModelClimate Etc. – Watts Up With That?
“The atmospheric 14C CONCENTRATION has actually been increasing since about 2000. ”
The atmosphere concentration of CO2 has increased since 2000 – and of course this increase holds both C14 and C12 – as ocean CO2 does. Fossil CO2 is free from C14 but the increase in the atmosphere is only partly due to fossil emissions.
Harde and others are right when the look at the bomb curve and conclude that the atmosphere absorbs most of the fossil CO2 that we emit.
Johan,
“Fossil CO2 is free from C14 but the increase in the atmosphere is only partly due to fossil emissions.”
Be careful about trying to deduce the CAUSE of atmospheric CO2 increase (“due to”) from its present isotopic composition. That is one of the mistakes made by Skrable et al. in a 2023 Health Physics article. The large, more-or-less balanced two-way exchanges (i.e. mixing of atmosphere and land/sea carbon inventories) erase the isotopic signature.
“Harde and others are right when they look at the bomb curve and conclude that the atmosphere [?] absorbs most of the fossil CO2 that we emit.”
I think you meant to say “land/sea reservoirs absorb most of the fossil CO2 we emit.” Yes, the 55% they absorb is most of it, but that leaves plenty in the atmosphere. The key question, which Dengler gives an opinion on, is how the system would respond to reduced levels of human emissions.
I assume you have looked at Figure 2 in the Radiocarbon article I linked.
Very nice.
This is conservative. Sinks are increasing non-linearly, growth seems to lag concentration increase. The recent pause in summer arctic sea ice decline is likely temporarily slowing sink growth. https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1800218323491205571
yes “land/sea reservoirs absorb”
“Yes, the 55% they absorb is most of it, ..”
In the end, since the oceans contain aprx 40 to 50 times the amount of carbon compared to the atmosphere – only 2-3% of what ever we emit will remain in the atmosphere. The question is how long time this will take; the rapid decline of 14C in the atmosphere since 1963 tells us that this process is rapid – decades rather than hundred of years. Claiming that only 55% is absorbed would mean that the atmosphere and ocean/biosphere is in a 1:1 ratio – if that would be the case then the 14C from the bomb experiments would not decrease as rapid as they have. We could not have constructed a better experiment to determine the speed and outcome of the atmosphere – ocean mixing.
Johan,
You have not looked at Figure 2 in the Radiocarbon article cited previously, or you would not have argued “the rapid decline of 14C in the atmosphere since 1963 tells us that this process is rapid – decades rather than hundred of years.”
I agree in principle with your statement “In the end, since the oceans contain aprx 40 to 50 times the amount of carbon compared to the atmosphere – only 2-3% of what ever we emit will remain in the atmosphere.” But you need to go from two-box-thinking to three-box-thinking. You need to know how fast the surface ocean exchanges carbon with the deep ocean to get the full time scale. You cannot get it from the initial steep fall of 14C concentration, which only involves the surface ocean. You might also want to look at Figure 4 of the Radiocarbon article which shows a steady excess of surface ocean 14C since the bomb pulse which does not seem to be going anywhere.
I suspect that we have over estimated the terrestrial biosphere sink in the past (it’s based on mass balance assuming a fairly steady ocean sink). I think this is due to underestimating the arctic ocean biological uptake growth. I think part of the reason the seasonal swing in CO2 concentrations hasn’t been increasing as fast the past two decades is the pause in summer sea ice decline (sea ice inhibits GPP). Another is possibly less winter emissions growth due to increasing efficiency. https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1789441732691579359
Good thread showing non-linearity. https://x.com/vgrubsky/status/1708335261695008985
David,
I don’t think you need to go to a three-box model to get a good description of what is happening in the atmosphere on a decade basis. If a two-box model is sufficient to describe what we see then there is no point in introducing a model with surface ocean layer. If the bomb curve would look like a combination of two relaxation processes then yes a third box would bee needed but that is not the case – what we see is explained well enough with a two-box model.
Time will tell; if the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is mainly from fossil sources the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere will remain the same (and consequently concentration go down), if it is mainly from the oceans it will go up since (and concentrations remain low).
Johan,
You haven’t looked at the data, and your analysis is wrong. As predicted by Caldiera in 1998, the amount of atmospheric 14C measured in ppm or tons or number of atoms has been going up since about 2000. Meanwhile, the fraction of the atmospheric carbon which is 14C , which delta 14C measures, has been steadily decreasing. All of this confirms that anthropogenic carbon is the source of the rise. Because of “isotopic disequilibrium fluxes” (i.e. mixing of carbon inventories) humans putting 14C-free carbon into the atmosphere has actually increased the amount of 14C in the atmosphere. You need to understand isotopic disequlibrium fluxes to understand the data. Nature is subtle.
“…the amount of atmospheric 14C measured in ppm or tons or number of atoms has been going up since about 2000.”
Which is expected if the increase of CO2 that we have seen is mainly from the oceans.
“.. the fraction of the atmospheric carbon which is 14C , which delta 14C measures, has been steadily decreasing. ”
Marginally decreasing i.e. what we could expect from a small Suess effect. If the increase that we have seen of CO2 is mainly fossil origin C14 will drop quite dramatically – time will tell.
Johan,
Your naive analysis ignores the mixing between land/sea and atmospheric carbon inventories. You know that large natural emissions and absorptions, i.e. exchanges, of carbon occur. Woudn’t you expect isotopic differences between the reservoirs to get washed out in the process? Of course you would. Read the Seuss paper; he knew that would happen in 1956! Peer-reviewed science incorporates all this quantitatively. But you have company in the misinformation published by Harde and Skrable. I have explained it to both of them to no avail. They don’t rebut the simple argument. They just ignore it because it is inconvenient for them.
“….the modelled concentration growth data exhibit a clear maximum in 2013 and a declining trend since then.”
There was a short negative blip from 1979-80 in Fig.4 that didn’t change the overall positive trend, so you could be seeing a temporary respite in 2013 towards a still possible future upward-going trend.
“Emissions are split between known anthropogenic emissions and unknown natural emissions. For simplification, the relatively unknown emissions caused by land use change are included in the unknown natural emissions.”
While there is potential in this model, it has a missing component, like Dr. Roy Spencer’s sink model.
By assuming all of the increase in atmCO2 is only from man-made emissions (MME), you have completely left out the ongoing and growing positive ocean outgassing contribution to atmCO2, that according to my analysis, has grown with the ocean temperature increase and ocean warm area size ≥25.6°C, while the ocean CO2 sinking area below this threshold has gotten smaller.
https://i.postimg.cc/qRDB86H9/12m-ML-CO2-lags-12m-SST-by-5-months.png
The ≥25.6°C area that produces the vast majority of ocean CO2 outgassing today is inside the green belt in the tropics in this SST plot, an area that has grown by 50% since 1854 (ERSSTv5 data):
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/cb/sst/sst.daily.current.png
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/files/fluxmap.jpg
“inside the green belt” – surrounded by the green belt
The surface of the warm ocean is shrinking.https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/contour.small.gif
Ireneusz, that map is a static view, so no one can tell if the warm area ≥25.6°C is growing or shrinking from that image.
This map updates daily, and the warm ocean surface in the Southern Hemisphere will decrease.
Ireneusz Palmowski, thank you for presenting the real-time update of ocean surface temperature. Do you have a consecutive series, say at 4 month intervals (3 charts), to demonstrate cooling progression since mid 2023? Or whatever demonstrable measure you have available; or is it your analysis that ocean surface cooling will advance going forward because of La Niña. Just curious. Thanks.
The surface temperature of the Southern Hemisphere’s oceans drops sharply in winter because in July the Earth is in orbit farthest from the Sun and it is the middle of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Other than that, ENSO is neutral and will remain so. La Niña for now is not developing.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino34.png
Thanks, Ireneusz.
“Figure 4 shows that the measured yearly concentration growth data have an absolute maximum in 2016 and a declining trend afterward. But the concentration growth data, when stripped of short-term effects by means on the linear sink model, have their maximum already in 2013 and are declining since then. … This is a remarkable validation of a model prediction — the fact that atmospheric carbon concentration growth is declining since 2013 has not been published before.”
I wouldn’t be so sure. It is too early to say, but there has been three Niñas is succession, and your figure lacks 2023 data. According to Mauna Loa records 2023 displayed an absolute maximum in CO₂ growth, significantly above that of 2016.
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/contour/contour.small.gif
The [CO2] spike looks about right given the current temperature spike. For 10-year periods the sensitivity is about 4.9 ppm/°C, as shown in the upper, left plot. For shorter periods the sensitivity is closer to 1-2ppm/°C. [CO2] lags temperature by six months.
https://localartist.org/media/CO2_Temp_FRF_1st_detrend.png
https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_June_2024_v6_20x9-scaled.jpg
I wasn’t able to exactly reproduce NOAA’s numbers, but I got close. Anyway, it’s interesting to see what the underlying data is doing. If NOAA had chosen a different 12-month interval, the results would have looked very different. As they use an interval from Jan-Dec, I’ve plotted their numbers at the end of the calendar year, e.g. the 2023 data appears at 2024.
https://localartist.org/media/CO2_Annual_Growth.png
There will be a spike because of the unusual weather. I expect a rebound in uptake to follow. And I expect uptake to increase as sea ice decline resumes in 10-15 years.
Last time we saw similar weather.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/23/jcli-d-18-0159.1.xml
When you look carefully, you will see the 2023 data in the diagram.
The tiny marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus was discovered in 1986 and accounts for more than half of the photosynthesis of the open ocean. Circadian rhythms were once thought to only exist in eukaryotic cells but many cyanobacteria display a bacterial circadian rhythm.
“Cyanobacteria are arguably the most successful group of microorganisms on earth. They are the most genetically diverse; they occupy a broad range of habitats across all latitudes, widespread in freshwater, marine, and terrestrial ecosystems, and they are found in the most extreme niches such as hot springs, salt works, and hypersaline bays. Photoautotrophic, oxygen-producing cyanobacteria created the conditions in the planet’s early atmosphere that directed the evolution of aerobic metabolism and eukaryotic photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria fulfill vital ecological functions in the world’s oceans, being important contributors to global carbon and nitrogen budgets.” – Stewart and Falconer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria
Prochlorococcus is abundant in the euphotic zone of the tropical oceans. It is probably the most abundant genus on Earth: one milliliter of surface seawater can contain 100,000 or more cells. Worldwide, the average annual abundance is (2.8 to 3.0)×10^27 individuals (for comparison, this is approximately the number of atoms in a ton of gold). Prochlorococcus is ubiquitous between 40°N and 40°S and dominates oligotrophic (nutrient-poor) regions of the oceans. Prochlorococcus is mainly found in the temperature range of 10-33° C, and some strains can grow at depths with low light (<1% surface light). These strains are known as LL (Low Light) ecotypes, and strains occupying shallower depths in the water column are known as HL (High Light) ecotypes. Moreover, Prochlorococcus are more abundant in the presence of heterotrophs that have catalase capacity. Prochlorococcus do not have mechanisms to degrade reactive oxygen species and rely on heterotrophs to protect them. The bacterium accounts for about 13-48% of global photosynthetic oxygen production and is part of the base of the oceanic food chain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prochlorococcus
Enjoyed your article.
However, I’m confused by why the upper section determines delta C/Delta T as 66.5 ppm/degrees C while the ice core section determines that delta C/Delta T is 13.5 ppm/ degrees C.
If your model could follow a half million years of the Vostok Ice Core, wouldn’t it be best to use those factors to determine how fast CO2 levels would fall in the future under various emissions scenarios?
To be honest, this is still a bit of an open issue in the sense that I have a few explanations, but not a “rock-solid” theory. The key factor which is different, is the time unit. It is 1 year with the modern data, and 100 years with the ice core data.
I started to make experiments by smoothing/subsampling the modern data, and indeed, the temperature change effect on CO2 became smaller with growing scale.
Let’s put it that way: Your question is subject to further research.
Joachim,
The most interesting result in your paper is the contrast between Figures 11 and 12 that show the difference between the linear sink model and the Bern (or IPCC) model’s projections of concentration trajectories for the next century under different emission reduction scenarios. (I am looking at the full paper, not the excerpt.) As you note, choosing between the two is ultimately an empirical question. But the comments below indicate my uneasiness with the linear carbon sink model, in its original form.
1. The linear carbon sink model constrains CO2 concentration to return to its pre-industrial 284 ppm value if emissions go to 0, through the C0 parameter which is input, not fit. I do not believe there is any such constraint in the Bern model, and that accounts for much of the difference in the trajectories.
2. The timescale for the return to 284 ppm in the model is the reciprocal of your a0 parameter which the fit finds to be .0183. Although nominally dimensionless, since this acts on an annual difference, it corresponds to a time constant of 1/.0183 = 54.6 years. Physically, this would represent things like mixing between surface water and deep water that disrupt the concentration equilibrium between the surface ocean and the atmosphere. You don’t quote an error on a0, but measuring ocean mixing time scales through their effect on sink growth does not sound very accurate to me.
3. A model whose parameters have been determined in one situation (rising atmospheric CO2) does not necessarily describe what happens in a different situation like falling or zero emissions
David, here my answers to your points:
1. C0 is not an input, it is determined from the data, via the fit parameters a0 and n0, C0=n0/a0, the derivation is in the old paper https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/14/3/566, equation 7 + the surrounding text.
2. You are right, this time I haven’t given the error for a, in the old paper (https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/14/3/566), Table 6 you can find it. The value for a there is different, because I had been using the measured land use change emissions then (finding out, after the paper was out, that the reconstruction quality without LUC is a lot better). The standard error 0.0005 is the same.
3. This is indeed the question which raises most discussions.
Pragmatically we can expect CO2 concentration to rise for the next 50-70 years. Until then the current logic should apply. What happens with emissions, is irrevant, only the resulting concentration counts. There is one thing I can guarantee – there will not be a sudden drop to e.g. half the emissions. A 1% drop of worldwide emissions per annum is currently the most I can imagine.
In the early to mid holocene, CO2 in methane concentration decreased as temperatures increased. My guess is that as temperature increases in northern latitudes, biosphere uptake increases. So much so, that it overwhelms the increased outgassing from increased ocean circulation and warming. https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1801329517773885850
Joachim wrote “Figure 4 shows that the measured yearly concentration growth data have an absolute maximum in 2016 and a declining trend afterward. But the concentration growth data, when stripped of short-term effects by means on the linear sink model, have their maximum already in 2013 and are declining since then. … This is a remarkable validation of a model prediction — the fact that atmospheric carbon concentration growth is declining since 2013 has not been published before.”
…
Never published before?
It is in the data.
Here is a graph I made in 2022. Several more in following months. Seen on WUWT blog and Jo Nova.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/uahaug2022.jpg
This could still be the case for thousands of years, due to the Earth’s position in orbit. Heat loss in the Southern Hemisphere’s oceans in winter will always be higher than warming in summer. During El Niño, temperatures may rise.
https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/products/ocean/sst/contour/index.html#ocean-18
https://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/data_current/5km/v3.1_op/animation/gif/sst_animation_30day_pacific_930x580.gif
Thanks Aaron
“While the drought in most regions was largely driven by the tropical Pacific SST conditions, an extreme positive phase of the Indian Ocean dipole and warm North Atlantic SSTs, both likely aided by the strong El Niño in 1877–78, intensified and prolonged droughts in Australia and Brazil, respectively, and extended the impact to northern and southeastern Africa. Climatic conditions that caused the Great Drought and Global Famine arose from natural variability, and their recurrence, with hydrological impacts intensified by global warming, could again potentially undermine global food security.”
What you display, is a temperature graph, not a concentration growth graph.
If there is a group of people who can prove me wrong, then it is this one, and I would in fact be pleased to find a quotable source .
I have no more academic ambitions, however a passion to spread the truth.
But you have yet to show me something convincing.
There are those of us who use measurement and those who use ambition. May these two streams again come together, as they have been in better periods of science. The present science treatment of Climate Change is a digression into modernism that we could do without.
Geoff S
Good post, Geoff.
Isaac Newton said: “No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”
Current temperatures in Argentina.
https://i.ibb.co/QQhstj5/ventusky-temperature-5cm-20240713t1200.jpg
‘The observed ocean heat content trends were calculated by Josh K. Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Craig Leohle of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. Loehle’s calculations have a smaller margin for error than Willis, because Willis only uses annual average data. The heat deficit shows that from 2003-2008 there was no positive radiative imbalance caused by anthropogenic forcing, despite increasing levels of CO2. Indeed, the radiative imbalance was negative, meaning the earth was losing slightly more energy than it absorbed.’ ~Wm DiPuccio
Wags brings us ‘news’ from 16 years ago. How did that hold up?
“In 2023, global full-depth ocean heat content (OHC) reached a record increase of 464 ± 55 ZJ since 1960, with strong heat gain observed in the Southern and Atlantic Oceans. OHC was 16 ± 10 ZJ higher than in 2022, continuing the long-term increasing trend that started in 1960.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00539-9
There are so many important insights to be gained from this paper:
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/10/1297
“The current enthalpy is still ca. 600 ZJ below the medieval maximum 1000 years ago grounded on the 2000 years OHC reconstruction reported by Gebbie and Huybers [11]. This would be compensated in only 50 years with the presently observed +0.8 W/m2 net flux and in about 100–200 years for the average rate as during the 20th century.”
e.g., showing poor performance of global warming models resulting from that the underestimation of, ‘decadal natural variabilities in the tropical regions,’ such as decadal changes in AMO is a major factor.
Joachim wrote “continuity equation where annual concentration growth equals all annual emissions minus all atmospheric absorption.”
It is not logical to assume this is valid.
Within that annual interval, there are CO2 processes that operate on shorter time cycles, such as daily. There are also plausible cycles that have longer time bases, such as the volcanic CO2 flowing to the air for typically a few years after eruptions.There might also be shorter and longer cycles within the absorption side of the equation.
An annual time base is a convenience, but it is out of coordination with the summed effect of other regular and irregular emission and absorption cycles that harm analyses like attribution models.
Why introduce more uncertainty by artificial definitions?
The truth is that the continuity equation must hold at all (!) time scales. Therefore it is legitimate to begin with a one year scale.
There are others who calculate the balance over the last 170 years. That must necessarily also hold.
I have started to do monthly calculations, with very interesting results.
Mathematically we have a first order differential equation, and you can integrate that over any time interval you like.
Trivially the continuity equation without modeling must hold at all time scales. When you start modeling, e.g. constant natural emissions, life becomes interesting at those time intervals and scales when the model fails.
Then the question to extend/enhance the model arises.
In the forthcoming post there will be two such situations.
It is very hot in Greece right now. Athens afternoon the temperature reaches 39C. At night it falls to 27C, so it is preferable to go out early in the morning.
Map of temperatures for the next week, from Tuesday and after till July 22-23 by meteorologist Ioannis Kallianos:
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1pUVPC.img?w=768&h=568&m=6
I recommend these forecasts.
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=41.6;20.1;4&l=temperature-2m&t=20240714/1300
Thank you, Ireneusz.
And this is an everyday updated prognosis!
And it is clearly explains the why island Crete Northern side is 3-4C cooler than its Southern side!!!
A strong planetary wave has emerged in the southern polar vortex. It will gradually affect pressure changes in the lower layers of the stratosphere and may bring surprising weather to the southern hemisphere.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_WAVE1_MEAN_JAS_SH_2024.png
Ren,
Thanks for alerting us to the risk of surprising weather in the southern hemisphere.
Please can you elaborate and provide some more context.
With the recent unusual cold in S.America, S.Africa and Australia I am guessing more cold weather ahead?
Yep. It’s called Winter.
The polar vortex will be blocked in the southern Indian Ocean. Polar cyclones are bypassing the ozone patch on the Australian side and pushing Antarctic air into southern Australia.
https://i.ibb.co/YcKFDBZ/gfs-t50-sh-f00.png
https://i.ibb.co/7yDqCnV/gfs-t30-sh-f00.png
https://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/webAnims/tpw_nrl_colors/ausf/mimictpw_ausf_latest.gif
The blocking of the southern polar vortex is now evident over the southern Indian Ocean, where an ozone surge is visible. It is the distribution of ozone in the stratosphere that affects the polar vortex pattern and circulation in the stratosphere.
https://i.ibb.co/Z1S1WMb/gfs-t10-sh-f00.png
https://i.ibb.co/X7q9wXw/gfs-z10-sh-f00.png
From Theodoros Kolydas, Director of Greece National Meteorological Agency:
“While Western Europe is experiencing temperatures below normal levels of 1-2°C (Iberia), Eastern Europe is experiencing temperatures 10 to 12°C above normal. We should be considered “lucky” with positive deviations not exceeding 5 to 7 °C from normal.”
–
So here in Greece we should be considered “lucky”!!!
Link to the temperatures map for to-day July 15, 2024 for Europe:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GSh2j7wWEAAkomN?format=png&name=small
“Stochastic assessment of temperature–CO2 causal relationship in climate from the Phanerozoic through modern times”
Demetris Koutsoyiannis, July 10, 2024
https://www.aimspress.com/article/doi/10.3934/mbe.2024287
If you haven’t seen it … Demetris is still plugging away.
Billfabrizio,
Tell me when Demetris puts a statistical confidence level on his scribblings. Until then I will not waste my time.
Dave … as I read it, a non-scientist, he keeps repeating the phrase ‘potentially causal system’ … ‘at the direction 𝑇→ [CO2]’. He’s not saying he has found proof. He is saying, essentially, this looks interesting and maybe somebody else should take it further.
I can’t answer your question. But, his email is listed on the paper. Why don’t you ask him? I would think you would want to know if ‘at the direction 𝑇→ [CO2]’ is possibly true? At what rate, etc? I certainly want to know, as the implications are enormous.
Bill Fabrizo:
You wonder whether Demitros’s conjecture is correct because of its enormous implications.
What is an even more enormous FACT is that CO2 has NO climatic effect.
All of our modern warming, since circa 1980, has been caused by decreased amounts of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere due to global “Clean Air” and Net-Zero activities, and since 2020, the low-sulfur fuel mandate for maritime shipping.
See my article “Scientific proof that CO2 does NOT cause global warming”
https://wjarr.com/sites/default/files/WJARR-2024-0884.pdf
Bill,
I asked Demetris about error analysis last fall. After a few of his evasions I asked point blank:
” Can you fill in the blank in the following statement: “ My statistical analysis shows with ____% confidence …”
His response:
“Do you see anywhere in our paper the word “confidence” (except an informal appearance in the acknowledgments)? I think: No. So, I am afraid I cannot obey your order to fill that gap.
Please feel free to do it yourself. It will take you a couple of papers, and your result will most probably be erroneous, because, by asking that question, you give away that you are not aware of the developments about significance testing in climate and geophysics. As a beginning, I would suggest reading:
– My paper “Climate change, the Hurst phenomenon, and hydrological statistics”, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 48 (1), 3–24, doi:10.1623/hysj.48.1.3.43481, 2003.”
So evidently in Greek hydrology circles you can now make statistical inferences and not back them up with confidence levels. I am afraid Demetris would flunk a freshman physics lab course.
On the issue of confidence, one might first weigh veracity with shades of cautious prudence; in this case between Demetris not applying a confidence level to his work, juxtaposed to the audacious 100% consensus confidence level, sometimes colloquially referred to as the “it’s settled” theory. It’s astonishing the latter has been culturally sold as given “fact”.
Who should be trusted more? Belief is coerced, good science isn’t coercive.
Dave … I’m definitely not the guy to evaluate your statistical confidence level criticism of Demetris. As far as I know, you may be correct. What concerns me is the issue of directionality, and bi-directionality, of [CO2] and T. It’s an 500lbs gorilla in a room, full of 500lbs gorillas. Another chubby primate is the percentage of A-CO2 for yearly CO2 emissions, which Demetris, and several others, put at approximately 4%. I could go on, and maybe you can refute the central point of each one. But here’s the thing: from what I’ve heard so far, no one has. And this is troubling, because these disagreed upon/contested items are not even close. Which means, for me, that the policy decisions I’m faced with seem extreme and difficult to rationalize.
Bill,
On my confidence level criticism of Demetris:
I am not making a technical argument, I am just pointing out the absence of any discussion of uncertainties You don’t have to be a scientist or know any math to understand that a statistical inference needs to be qualified by confidence levels or something similar. Demetris’ paper is at best incomplete, and he brushed off my suggestion to fix it. You might ask yourself why.
On gross natural emissions being much greater than human emissions:
No one disputes that, but so what? Do you not understand the conservation of carbon argument, sometimes called the “mass balance” argument, and the associated concept of “net global uptake” by natural processes? Joachim Dengler whose article we are nominally discussing, understands and accepts it, so perhaps you should argue with him. Ducking that argument by pleading “sorry, I am not a scientist” is bs. It is not complicated. You either understand it but don’t want to admit it, or you don’t want to understand it. You are either fooling yourself or trying to fool us.
On your astounding general statement “…maybe you can refute [criticisms of mainstream climate science]. But here’s the thing: from what I’ve heard so far, no one has.”
It is not clear to me whether you mean “no one has on this site” or “no one has anywhere.” In either case I suggest you expand your reading to include sites like Skeptical Science. You will find simple explanations in lay terms to help you get more comfortable with policy decisions. You will find rebuttals to both “there’s not enough CO2 to make a difference” and “there’s so much CO2 that the greenhouse effect is now saturated.” I fear that you, like some others of all political persuasions, are stuck in an information silo. Regrettably, that applies to more than climate science.
Dave … what I try to point out is, at the end of the day, I am emblematic of the person you need to convince. Why? Because I vote and pay taxes. Obviously, most of us are non-scientists. That said, for climate issues, I do read more than Climate Etc. Why you would think that’s my only source … I’ll leave to you. I take the issue seriously enough, and view the uncertainty as large enough, that I go out of my way to engage with CO2 warmists (for lack of a better term) as yourself precisely to get a more complete picture.
In the end, Dave, that’s all we can do … appeal to each other’s reason. I’m sure you’ll agree, that takes more than an equation. It takes an explanation of a concept. Negative comments will always happen, as we are all human. But it takes away from the ‘sense-making’.
Thanks for the conversation.
Bill,
Yes, concepts beat equations. If we humans put 100 CO2 units into the atmosphere and the level goes up by 45 units, how much are natural processes contributing to the rise?
What part of carbon conservation do you not understand?
At this point I like the Jack Nicholson line from A Few Good Men: “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”
Dave … interesting choice. Do you see yourself ordering a ‘code red’ because skeptics don’t behave properly? How do we have to behave to not be tied up and beaten (to death)? What exactly is the truth we can’t handle? ;-)
“Yes, concepts beat equations.”
Agree. Biden steps down. Harris will be dumped (though Biden endorsed Harris for obvious reasons). Maybe Kennedy beomes new VP choice in new ticket? Objective, reign in dividing votes, and appear moderate (it was lied about before). Stay tuned for the new top of ticket.
Yes, climate is politics. Climate was never THE exestential crises–though heavily feigned as such.
The existential threat is the Left losing its grip on politics.
“This constant lie is not intended to make the people believe a lie, but to make no one believe anything anymore”
-Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
She nailed you, Billy boy
Okay, Dave … I’ll bite. What is my lie?
David asked “What part of carbon conservation do you not understand?”
Easy.
The uncertainty bounds on the data.
Geoff S
sherr001,
You are grasping at straws. The uncertainty in peer-reviewed science is well quantified. See Ballantyne, A. P. Alden, C.B., Miller, J.B., Tans, P.P. ,2012: Increase in observed net carbon dioxide uptake by land and oceans during the past 50 years, Nature, vol 488 pp 70-72. doi:10.1038/nature11299. You will learn that between 1960 and 2010:
Cumulative human emissions = 350 +- 29 PgC
Atmospheric Accumulation = 158 +- 2 PgC
therefore Net Global Uptake = 192 +- 29 PgC
You and Bill Fabrizio you are in an information silo, talking to yourselves.
Dave … this mini-thread, which has been quite interesting, started over my posting of Demetris’ recently published paper in the journal Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering. The conversation has meandered quite a bit. Yet, I don’t see where he was actually refuted, or attempted to refute, anything in his paper. Maybe I couldn’t see it because I’m locked in my silo? (Occasionally, I have been known to get a little corny.) Or, maybe there was a ‘truth’ you provided that I couldn’t handle? (Those ‘truths’ can be pretty slippery.) Or, maybe I am so ensconced in a lie (conscious or otherwise) that I have participated in a narrative that invalidates belief itself? (Whew! That’s a tough one.)
Well, I really was just curious about T→[CO2], or the reverse, or bi-directionality … and how it relates to the discussion of a warming climate.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Bill,
I may have overestimated your ability, as a non-scientist, to understand the argument against the Koutsoyiannis paper. That is why I questioned your integrity. But since you insist that I spell it out in detail once again, you are apparently honestly confused.
It is quite possible, even likely, that in the geological past temperature increases stimulated ocean CO2 outgassing. It is perhaps possible that seasonal CO2 variations in the current era have a temperature component. But the trend that matters is the steady increase, year over year during the industrial age, in atmospheric CO2 concentration. Is that a natural phenomenon caused by an unexplained temperature increase, as K. suggests, or is it the result of human activities, principally the burning of fossil fuels? I will not repeat the numbers given a few posts above that unequivocally show that natural processes are on balance REMOVING carbon from the atmosphere in the present era, not adding it. You can see that the uncertainty is small. This result is in direct conflict with K.’s hypothesis that it is temperature induced outgassing, not human emissions, that is the cause. Should we prefer K’s hypothesis, that comes with no statistical backing, over the Ballantyne result with tight error bars? Anyone with a predilection to do so has an obligation to address the Ballantyne, or IPCC data. The silence on this point is deafening.
It is ironic that we are discussing this on a thread nominally about the linear sink model, which of course embraces the Ballantyne point of view. Perhaps Joachim Dengler would like to comment on the merits of Koutsoyiannis’s paper.
Dave … my responses to you were tongue in cheek, a sort of humor you apparently don’t share. You can go on, if you wish, but be careful of your own … error bars.
“The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.” Parsimony is insight. Confidence is a number.
JoeF … thanks, you summarized in 15 words what I was fumbling about. What took you so long to comment? Just kidding … ;-)
Severe Weather Update: Strong and windy cold front to sweep across south-east Australia.
https://i.ibb.co/cXnwyMQ/ventusky-temperature-2m-20240719t1800.jpg
https://www.weatherzone.com.au/snow
Recent fresh snow has taken the natural depth to season highs and now visibility is good and nights will be cold enough for snow guns to powder the runs. Melt will be minimal in the next few days given it’ll only warm a little above freezing and a few additional flurries are possible. Some flurries are a chance as low as about 800 metres early on Friday. This weekend, another round of decent snowfall is expected but beware of reduced visibility. Thankfully, strong winds will ease during the weekend. By Sunday, expect to experience the deepest natural snow for the season to date, nudging close to 100cm at the higher resorts. Snowfall is expected to cease temporarily next week, but crisp nights will allow snow guns to maintain the runs. Visibility looks excellent on Wednesday when the cover should be in great nick. Looking ahead, there are indications of further snowfalls in the lead-up to the following weekend. Season-high depths are a fair chance, potentially going past 100cm for some.
https://www.weatherzone.com.au/snow
Somewhat late in the running here…
Very nice article!
A few additions that may be added to the story, to make it even more robust:
– The equilibrium CO2 level between ocean surface and atmosphere can be calculated with the formula of Takahashi, based on near one million seawater samples. The in/decrease of pCO2 of any seawater sample by temperature changes is independent of the initial pCO2, temperature or composition of the seawater:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967064502000036
∂ln pCO2/∂T=0.0423/K
or more readable:
(pCO2)sw @ Tnew = (pCO2)sw @ Told x EXP[0.0423 x (Tnew – Told)]
If you use that over recent to ice core times, that will largely fit.
The long term CO2/T changes are dominated by the ocean surface temperatures…
About the Bern model: the problem is that they assume an even surface that isolates the deep oceans from the atmosphere. In reality, 90% of the ocean surface is in fast, direct contact with the atmosphere with only 7 ppmv average difference, but at the “edges”, there is direct downwelling of water into the deep oceans with a lot of CO2 and an enormous difference in pCO2 between the cold ocean water (minimum 150 μatm in the THC sink place of the N.E. Atlantic) and the atmosphere at 425 μatm and at the upwelling side (near Peru/Chile) up to 750 μatm.
That causes a near constant overturning of about 40 PgC as CO2 between the equator and poles, where it sinks into the deep oceans to return some ~1000 years later at the equator.
See Feely et al at:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml Feely ea. start
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtm Feely ea. maps
The uptake in the surface is very modest: only 10% of the change in the atmosphere, due to the Revelle/buffer factor or about 0.5 PgC for an increase of 5 PgC/year in the atmosphere.
The deep oceans in contrast absorb some 2 PgC/year in only 5% of the ocean surface…
Indeed there is a near fixed linear ratio between more permanent storage in C3-type plants (all trees and most plants on land) up to over 1000 ppmv. That is by far not yet reached.
There is no limit for the uptake of the deep oceans, because what sinks now into the deep still is highly undersaturated for CO2 en will stay that into the far future, as long as there is some floating ice to provide the low temperatures that are needed.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/ocean_balance.jpg
Does this make sense?
The seasonal swing in CO2 in northern latitudes has been increasing, but at a slower rate in recent decades.
I think part of the reason the seasonal swing in CO2 concentrations hasn’t been increasing as fast the past two decades is the pause in summer sea ice decline (sea ice inhibits GPP). Another is possibly less winter emissions growth due to increasing efficiency and less winter emissions due to milder winters.
While sea ice maintains low temperatures for dissolving gas, the biological pump may be a bigger factor. Access to light and warmer temperatures could enhance productivity even if CO2 doesn’t dissolve as quickly.
In the early to mid holocene, atmospheric CO2 and methane both declined as northern latitudes warmed and the arctic summer was often ice free.
https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1789441732691579359?s=46
https://x.com/aaronshem/status/1801329517773885850?s=46
Sorry a bit late in reply…
Bio-life certainly played and plays a role in the CO2 uptake in the northern latitudes, but temperature is the main one.
Even if in summer there was no ice, there still were enough cold waters at the surface in winter to restart the sinks into the deep oceans, bringing extra CO2 ánd oxygen into the deep ocean bottom.
That may have been different during the Cretaceous, where there was no ice at all at the poles an several anoxic events took place with black shale deposits as result:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4631894/
Thanks, I greatly appreciate your comments. Lot of food for thought, which requires some time to evaluate.
I‘ll come back to you.
Thank you, Ferdinand.
Do you give any credence to the possibility that our vast global coal measures are at all times under slow oxidation, so that a small concentration but a large weight of CO2 is being released into the air? If so, should this be included in mass balance work?
I have found it hard to find uncontaminated chemical analysis of gases in the air in coal mines, but what I can glean is that CO2 and CO are sometimes both above atmospheric levels.
Geoff S
Geoff, as far as I remember, they did make an inventory of the natural releases (including methane and permanent coal seem fires) from coal beds and that all together was quite small, but I didn’t keep the reference…
The same for volcanic vents: based on years of monitoring one of the five most active subduction volcanoes on earth: mount Etna, Sicily, Italy, the total of all subaerial volcanoes emitted less than 1% of current human emissions:
https://www.nature.com/articles/351387a0
Undersea volcano emissions in general don’t reach the atmosphere due to the extreme high pressure and undersaturated waters for CO2 (and other gases).
Thank you Ferdinand. As usual you are quick to respond with useful extra information, a trait that I wish more people would follow.
And more about the first linear model by Ir. Peter Dietze, already from 1992, and the follow-up discussions between him and Dr. Fortunat Joos, inventor of the Bern model and other scientists:
See: http://www.john-daly.com/carbon.htm
Discussions at:
http://www.john-daly.com/dietze/cmodcalc.htm
https://www.john-daly.com/dietze/cmodcalD.htm
You are the first person to mention John Daly’s website on the climate blogs that I regularly visit.
When posting a comment, I instruct people to go to “Station Temperature Data” and check out temperature plots of the various locations around the world. In particular, I instruct them to obtain chart for Death Valley.
The temperature plots are fairly flat which means that the
increasing CO2 in from 1923 to2001 did result in a measurable increase air temperature.
The temperature data from many weather stations falsify the claim by the IPCC that CO2 causes global warming.
The reason that CO2 can not global warming is quite simple. There is too little CO2 in the air. Presently, there is only about 0.8 grams of CO2. per cubic meter of air. At 20 deg. C, 1 cubic of air has a mass of 1.20 kg. This small amount of CO2 can only heat up such a large mass of air by only a very small amount.
Harold,
I am sorry to be critical, but you are promoting material that has been in common use for a decade or so, as if you are new to this topic and unaware of a huge history over that 10 years. You then infer that those of us who do not refer to John Daly are not fully educated, when many of us appreciated and learned from his studies back then.
Do you know that you are doing this?
Geoff S
The investigator, John Daly, WAITING , ( versus- weighting ) for Greenhouse.
http://www.john-daly.com/
Harold,
How much heat is retained by CO2 has not the slightest resemblance with the so called greenhouse effect: that is about its radiation physics, not its heat physics.
The bulk of O2/N2 and several other gases (neon, argon,…) in the atmosphere don’t retain any IR radiation at all, only a few gases do: CO2, O3, H2O, N2O, CH4, about all gases with more than two atoms in their molecule.
That is what the greenhouse gas effect is: capturing IR radiation in specific wavelengths and either distributing that extra energy to all neighboring molecules as heat by collisions or re-sending that in all directions, including back to the surface…
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Provable Nonsense!
This is an important source that I was not yet aware of. I know Mr. Dietze and about his early contribution, but I had no adequate source to cite.
Please have also a look at the linear sink model of LePair and Huijser http://www.clepair.net/oceaanCO2-4.html
Constant emissions assume we have the ability to sustain constant fossil fuel combustion rates. And this implies constant production rates, something that, as I have pointed out for over a decade, is impossible. We don’t have that much oil and gas resource available to satisfy humanity at a reasonable cost.
Cloud tops increase the action of the vertical temperature gradient until drops to -80 C. This is the local elevation of the tropopause.
https://i.ibb.co/sVQfZYp/himawari9-ir-04-W-202407191640.gif
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_EQ_2024.png
Tropical storms in the western Pacific will soon cause a drop in surface temperatures in the region.
https://i.ibb.co/9vxFr2C/himawari9-wv-mid-05-W-202407191630.gif
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/
Surface temperatures are slowly dropping in the equatorial Pacific, including in the Nino 4 region.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/cdas-sflux_ssta_global_1.png
For some reason, ozone waves are appearing over the Indian Ocean. They initially form in the upper stratosphere in the region of the great geomagnetic anomaly in the South Atlantic and move toward Australia in the lower layers of the stratosphere (opposite to the Earth’s rotation). Ozone is a heavy gas (much heavier than O2 and N2), so when ozone concentrations are high in a region, air pressure in the stratosphere increases and pressure in the troposphere rises.
https://i.ibb.co/djk5ycD/Screenshot-2024-07-19-20-42-15.png
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_HGT_ANOM_JAS_SH_2024.png
Ozone is diamagnetic, so it is repelled by a strong geomagnetic field. During the winter season, ozone in the stratosphere is directed toward the polar circle and at the same time repelled by the strong geomagnetic field over the pole. Therefore, it accumulates in regions with a weakened geomagnetic field.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t01_sh_f00.png
The Global Warming is an orbitally forced, slow millenials long natural PHENOMENON.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Warming will continue in the northern hemisphere for several thousand more years until perihelion shifts to May. Then the extent and thickness of ice in the north will increase because less solar energy will reach the northern hemisphere in winter.
The temperature above the 80th parallel in summer does not rise and will fall as the angle of the Earth’s axis decreases.
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plus80n/daily/daily_ts_2024.png
Well, a planet has a spherical shape, right?
Earth is a planet, so Earth has a spherical shape.
The more solar energy Earth accumulates, the warmer the higher latitudes become.
Also, the higher is the latitude on sphere, the smaller is the area.
Which means that for the same additional portion of absorbed solar energy the Global Warming will be a more and more accelerated orbitally forced phenomenon…
Some centuries ago the Gulfstream was bringing its warm waters up to the 65 degrees.
As Ireneusz explains above:
“warming will continue in the northern hemisphere for several thousand more years until perihelion shifts to May. Then the extent and thickness of ice in the north will increase because less solar energy will reach the northern hemisphere in winter.”
Now the stream is flooding with its warm waters the Arctic area up to 80 degrees.
It will take some millenials this orbitally forced natural phenomenon to be reversed.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Christos, low is moving over the Balkans.
https://i.ibb.co/YPphn9T/Screenshot-2024-07-20-16-40-05.png
SAT24
Thank you, Ireneusz.
It is 38C outside where I am right now. The meteorologist Theodoros Kolydas, Director of Greece National Meteorological Agency, promissing cooler temperatures – back to normal – on Tuesday.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1814242563169132694
Changes in the strength of the sun’s magnetic field affect the climate through changes in the ozone zone. The resulting changes in the circulation of the jet stream lead to major climate changes, especially at mid-latitudes, as happened during the Little Ice Age. The cooling will mainly affect North and South America in winter, due to the weakening of the geomagnetic field. UVB radiation, on the other hand, which is high-energy, may increase and raise temperatures in sunny regions.
http://wso.stanford.edu/gifs/Polar.gif
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_ALL_EQ_2024.png
A President Harris will hit our pocket books even heavier than Biden has with “climate change” policy and initiatives.
Back in 2019, when Harris (then a US senator from California) launched a presidential bid, her climate agenda was more ambitious than Biden’s. She supported a carbon tax and proposed $10 trillion in private and public climate spending. She also said she would work to ban fracking. That prompted Republican attacks when Biden became the Democrats’ nominee and chose her as his running mate.
In the Senate she sponsored climate equity bills and backed an effort by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline. However, she chose to leave the Environment and Public Works Committee — which her predecessor Barbara Boxer had chaired — in favor of a seat on Judiciary.
Harris has a record of fighting oil and gas companies and prioritizing environmental justice in particular. In 2016, as California’s attorney general, she sued Southern California Gas Co. for a methane leak near Los Angeles that led to the evacuation of 4,000 families. She sued BP Plc the same year for violating storage laws at roughly 780 gas stations. Both the utility and BP eventually agreed to pay millions to settle the cases.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-22/where-kamala-harris-and-her-potential-running-mates-stand-on-climate-change
Is Coal serf or King?
Wealthy Australians, in search of attractive investment returns, are emerging as an important pool of capital for financing coal projects shunned by banks due to environmental, social and governance concerns.
Income Asset Management Group Ltd. is one fund manager targeting the well-off in Australia to provide private loans to coal and other mining companies, offering investment returns of about of 12% to 13% per year.
“We can go into non-ESG deals as well like mining if a return on the credit works because our investors have appetite for good returns,” Varuna Gunatillake, director, debt capital markets at IAM said in an interview in Melbourne.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-21/rich-australians-invest-in-coal-as-banks-turn-wary
Yes, Virginia, nuclear power is the answer!
Italy has increased imports of electricity from neighboring countries as soaring temperatures boost demand for cooling.
Demand for air-conditioning — already among the highest in Europe — increased further as temperatures soared above 40C over the past week. That’s forced the Italian grid to fall back on both imports and traditional thermal capacity.
At peak times, Italy is importing as much as 3.5 gigawatts of electricity from France, the equivalent to the output of one nuclear power plant.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-22/italy-turns-to-french-nuclear-power-to-cool-heat-wave
Yes, Jimbo, If you want safe and cheap nuclear power get it from the Chinese.
“In a global first, China has successfully demonstrated a meltdown-proof nuclear fission reactor. The twin reactor design can generate 105 MW of power each and has been in the works since 2016.
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/meltdown-proof-nuclear-reactor
The pebble bed reactor was invented in the US, not China.
During World War II, Daniels joined the staff of the Metallurgical Laboratory, a part of the Manhattan Project effort by the United States to develop the first nuclear weapons. He served first as associate director of the laboratory’s chemistry division from the summer of 1944 before, on July 1, 1945, becoming overall director of that institution, a post held until May 1946. He was active in the planning of the laboratory’s immediate successor, the Argonne National Laboratory, serving as first chairman of its Board of Governors from 1946 until 1948.[3] It was in that role, in 1947, that Daniels conceived the pebble bed reactor, a reactor design in which helium rises through fissioning uranium oxide or carbide pebbles, cooling them by carrying away heat for power production. The “Daniels’ pile” was an early version of the later high-temperature gas-cooled reactor developed further at ORNL without success, but which was developed later as nuclear power reactor by Rudolf Schulten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrington_Daniels
On top of that, China is one of the most polluted countries on the planet. They let toxic chemicals spill to the ground. People walk barefoot in the puddles. China is an environmental disaster, but because the Communist government can do anything it wants, it won’t be changed.
I’m shocked, but if you use climate models to train AI, the AI finds the same patterns as the model! Who wouldda thought it?
A new, AI-enhanced simulator can match the accuracy of conventional weather forecasts and can also extrapolate how much the atmosphere has warmed with climate change. The simulator could lead to the development of weather and climate modeling tools that require a small fraction of the computing power needed today, according to the Google-led research team behind it. The research was published Monday in Nature.
Rising Temperatures
By using a hybrid approach combining standard physics-driven models with a machine-learning tool, the team avoided problems seen in experiments using only AI, said Stephan Hoyer, the Google researcher who leads the project. “We’ve really tried to try to pull apart the black box, instead of having just a pure AI model,” he said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-22/google-develops-highly-accurate-ai-enhanced-weather-simulator
Southern “el Nino” …
A small area of the southwestern Pacific Ocean, near New Zealand and Australia, can trigger temperature changes that affect the entire Southern Hemisphere, a new study has found.
The new climate pattern, which shares some characteristics with the El Niño phenomenon, has been named the “Southern Hemisphere Circumpolar Wavenumber-4 Pattern.”
Unlike El Niño, which starts in the tropics, this new pattern begins in the mid-latitudes. The study, published this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, highlights how important the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere is for our climate.
https://phys.org/news/2024-07-el-nio-south-equator.html
Jim2:
Your statement that “Unlike El Nino, which starts in the tropics” is totally incorrect”.
El Ninos are caused by decreased levels of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, either from the fallout of the injections of SO2 aerosols into the stratosphere from VEI4 or larger volcanic eruptions (which occur in both hemispheres) or because of decreased industrial activity during American business recessions, or periods of 3 years or more without such eruptions.
See: “The definitive cause of La Nina and El Nino Events”
https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2023.17.1.0124
BH – the words in italics are a quote from the article. Not “my words”. You may argue with Phys.org.
Jim2.
Thanks. I will try contacting them.
But I hope that you read the link, there is so much mis-information out there.
Could someone explain possible threshold effects to this current dialogue? Thank you
The First Conclusions
Conclusions:
1). The planet mean surface temperature equation
Tmean = [ Φ (1-a) S (β*N*cp)¹∕ ⁴ /4σ ]¹∕ ⁴
produces remarkable results. The theoretically calculated planets temperatures (Tmean) are almost identical with the measured by satellites (Tsat.mean).
Planet…….Te…..Te.correct…..Tmean…Tsat.mean
Mercury..440 K….364 K…….325,83 K…340 K
Earth……..255 K….210 K…….287,74 K…288 K
Moon….270,4 K….224 K…….223,35 Κ…220 Κ
Mars……..210 K…..174 K…….213,11 K…210 K
2). The 288 K – 255 K = 33°C difference does not exist in the real world.
There are only traces of greenhouse gasses. The Earth’s atmosphere is very thin.
There is not any measurable Greenhouse Gasses Warming effect on the Earth’s surface.
There is NO +33°C greenhouse enhancement on the Earth’s mean surface temperature.
Both the calculated by equation and the satellite measured Earth’s mean surface temperatures are almost identical:
Tmean.earth = 287,74K = 288 K.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Social and environmental cost of EVs.
That success has a dark side. December’s fire was the worst in a long series of fatal accidents at IMIP and other Indonesian nickel sites. Workers have been buried under slag, crushed by heavy equipment and killed in falls. In surrounding communities, residents complain of respiratory ailments that they blame on pollution from smelters and the coal-fired power plants that sustain them. And environmentalists accuse the nickel industry of flouting regulations intended to protect ecologically sensitive islands such as Sulawesi—while expanding production of a material critical to the EVs that Western governments promote on environmental grounds.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-indonesia-sulawesi-nickel-fire
There is a marked decrease in ozone production in the upper stratosphere in the tropics. The temperature rises in the upper stratosphere when an O2 particle is broken down into individual oxygen atoms by UV below 242 and transfers kinetic energy to a neighboring particle. During the Chapman cycle, ozone is formed.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JAS_EQ_2024.png
UV below 242 nm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone%E2%80%93oxygen_cycle
Due to both ozone and oxygen growing density as we go to lower altitudes, UV photon flux at wavelengths below 300 nm decreases substantially, and oxygen photodissociation rates fall below 10-9 per second per molecule at 30 km. With decreasing oxygen photodissociation rates, odd-oxygen species (atomic oxygen and ozone molecules) are hardly formed de novo (rather than being transmuted to each other by the other reactions), and most atomic oxygen needed for ozone creation is derived almost exclusively from ozone removal by ozone photodissociation. Thus, ozone becomes depleted as we go below 30 km altitude and reaches very low concentrations at the tropopause.
Energy prices, including electricity, underlie the price of all goods and services. High energy prices mean prices for everything goes up.
The wholesale price of electricity in Britain has recently exceeded its cost in France and Spain
Industry association UK Steel is calling on the next government to tackle the cost of energy for industry. This is stated in the message of the association.
As noted in the UK Steel, new data showed that the wholesale price of electricity in the UK in the last three months more than double the price in France and Spain.
The British steel industry is largely dependent on electricity, and this demand will only grow with the advent of new technology of electric arc furnaces.
It is expected that with the transition to EAF, electricity consumption in the sector will approximately double, which will make its price a priority issue.
The data shows that over the past three months, UK producers have faced an average wholesale price of almost £66/MWh compared to £27/MWh in France and £28/MWh in France and £27/MWh in Spain.
https://gmk.center/en/news/uk-steel-calls-for-competitive-electricity-prices-for-industry/
FORD = Fix or Repair Daily (for EVs, that is)
Ford Model e had an EBIT loss of $1.1 billion amid ongoing industrywide pricing pressure on
first-generation electric vehicles and lower wholesales. Those factors more than offset about
$400 million in year-over-year cost reductions in the segment.
https://s201.q4cdn.com/693218008/files/doc_financials/2024/q2/Q2-2024-Ford-Earnings-Press-Release.pdf
In 1975 I asked our exploration team to manufacture and deploy several thousand devices to measure whatever flux of the gas Radon-222 there was, flowing from underground through the soil to the atmosphere. Radon-222 is continuously produced by decay of Radium-226 and might increase in proximity to uranium ore deposits.
We found no support for customary wisdom about the migration of Radon. It was not until we measured what was happening that we found that one should not assume what was happening.
I am not aware of any experimental parallel with what happens to CO2. I now mount the hypothesis that there are carbon-based sources of CO2 that are continuously oxidising in the soil and rock below, with probably higher concentrations where there are pre-existing coal, peat and methane deposits.
The question is, do we have a measurable or significant source of CO2 moving from underground to the air and thus adding to what is measured at Mauna Loa – but not yet reported as a source.
As I touched on earlier, there are reports of elevated CO and CO2 in the gases of some underground coal mines, but I have not found publications about whether this is a new source of CO2. It eventually will reach the air as natural erosion progresses.
This is written as speculation, to ask if it is reasonable speculation that should have been investigated to see if conventional wisdom is again in error. Given the size of the current fossil fuel demonization exercise, it seems rather important to investigate and resolve. (If The Establishment allows it.) Geoff S
The graphic shows ozone anomalies in the total column. It clearly shows excess ozone in the South Atlantic geomagnetic anomaly region, which has implications for blocking the southern polar vortex.
https://i.ibb.co/YjQc5Sq/to-g-de-e-1657217651de20240725.gif
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JAS_SH_2024.png
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2024/07/27/1800Z/wind/isobaric/10hPa/orthographic=-357.87,-50.30,285
There are only traces of greenhouse gasses. The Earth’s atmosphere is very thin.
There is not any measurable Greenhouse Gasses Warming effect on the Earth’s surface.
There is NO +33°C greenhouse enhancement on the Earth’s mean surface temperature.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Go ahead, commit econocide.
Australia’s plans to introduce stringent rules on climate disclosures are driving up concerns among businesses about compliance in one of the world’s biggest per-capita emitters.
More than 6,000 companies including listed and unlisted firms, financial institutions and asset owners will eventually fall under the auspices of mandatory rules being rolled out from January.
…
However, concerns about complying with the regulations have “paralyzed some Australian organizations,” said Kate Hart, Asia Pacific co-lead for sustainability at Kearney, a consultancy.
…
Authorities estimate the average cost of compliance to be A$1 million ($655,550) but some large organizations calculate the total is likely to be above A$3 million, said Jillian Button, head of climate change at law firm Allens.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-28/companies-paralyzed-as-australia-prepares-tough-climate-rules
The density of matter affects both absorption and emission of radiation. However, heat absorbed by the surface is immediately emitted into the atmosphere and converted into kinetic energy of gas molecules. The best example is the production of ozone in the upper stratosphere. UV energy with a wavelength shorter than 242 nm is converted into kinetic energy of atmospheric particles, and this applies to both nitrogen and oxygen.
‘”An oxygen molecule is split (photolyzed) by higher frequency UV light (top end of UV-B, UV-C and above) into two oxygen atoms (see figure):
1. oxygen photodissociation: O2 + ℎν(<242 nm) → 2 O
Each oxygen atom may then combine with an oxygen molecule to form an ozone molecule:
2. ozone creation: O + O2 + A → O3 + A
where A denotes an additional molecule or atom, such as N2 or O2, required to maintain the conservation of energy and momentum in the reaction. Any excess energy is produced as kinetic energy."
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_JAS_EQ_2024.png
Frost in South Africa.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2024/07/29/0300Z/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-337.72,-22.25,1521/loc=28.222,-29.572
Good ole fossil fuels to rescue EVs.
There is, however, a “no-duh” antidote to allay fears of being stranded mid-trip: put a charger on the car. While traditional hybrid vehicles use gas to turn the wheels, a new crop of cars are burning it exclusively to charge a large onboard battery. It’s a strategy one might expect from an 8-year-old’s brainstorm, and it’s not a particularly efficient solution or a cheap one. But in an age of janky charging infrastructure and fraught, polarizing politics, electric motors juiced by an onboard, gas-sipping generator could be a killer EV app.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-27/ramcharger-leads-wave-of-electric-vehicles-ready-to-charge-at-70-mph
You just described my Volt exactly. My only complaint with my Volt is I wish the battery was a little bigger. Mine gets about 34 miles with it’s 14KWh battery. Gas milage is about 35mi/gal. but I only fill up 2-3 times a year.
GM designed the Chevy Volt in 2007, started production in 2011 and discontinued the car in 2019. The Volt had one of the highest owner satisfaction ratings of all GM cars so they killed it.
Describes a modern locomotive- driven by an electric motor that is charged by a diesel engine.
There is sense in the arrangement.
An ICE car uses gas while idling in traffic. The idling efficiency of the engine is very low, much lower that when working at full power (which is only in long road journeys)
An electric car uses energy as it needs it to move. The charging motor is sized and run at max efficiency. If the numbers add up, and there is an ‘if’, then its an improvement on the ice.
The problem is user vanity (and psychology). The car is an extension of the person’s ego. A 900cc engined car is best for inter-city traffic and short journeys. But what you see is city cruisers with tractor engines. That or, now, a hi-price EV.
Your second point is well stated. I would add that the focus on the high-end consumer completely missed the huge opportunity of building affordable EVs of the type that have the highest utilization rates such as delivery vans, taxis, construction equipment, ambulances etc.. I doubt those expensive EVs will ever offset the emissions it took to build and recycle them.
A diesel in s diesel electric locomotive can power the electric motors in more than one locomotive in addition to powering the entire train…
Germany is infamous for it’s aggressive push into wind and solar. I believe that push is sinking their economy. Other countries in Europe are growing, but Germany struggles.
“The German economy is stuck in crisis,” Klaus Wohlrabe, head of surveys at the Ifo institute in Munich, said in a statement. “The third quarter offers little hope for improvement.”
Purchasing manager indexes and Ifo’s much-watched confidence gauge for July suggest Europe’s biggest economy started the quarter on an even weaker footing, held back by continuing weakness in the manufacturing base that previously sustained export-led growth for much of this century.
Germany’s Never-Ending Crisis Mode
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-30/france-s-economic-growth-beats-forecasts-in-boost-for-euro-area
Wind and solar in Germany are sinking the economy.
Germany is buckling under the weight of ballooning renewable energy subsidies, raising questions for governments across the world about how long they can afford to prop up green investments.
…
The trend — dubbed “electricity madness” by the nation’s biggest tabloid — comes at a sensitive time for taxpayers, who’ve experienced the fastest inflation in decades in recent years and will need to endure public spending cuts in other areas as the government wrangles to clean up its budget.
Renewables producers earned billions during the energy crisis that drove up power costs, and continue to do so via subsidies even after prices have dropped.
“We need to turn the entire regime upside down, otherwise it will no longer be financially viable,” said Nadine Bethge from the nonprofit Environmental Action Germany.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-30/germany-s-ballooning-subsidy-costs-show-challenge-of-going-green
Fossil fuels rulz.
The CEO of an electric vehicle (EV) company does not believe that electric pickup trucks are currently a viable product, he told Axios in an interview.
Peter Rawlinson, CEO of luxury EV producer Lucid Motors, told Axios that he believes internal combustion engines, and not batteries, are the only realistic option for pickup trucks. Other major auto manufacturers — such as Ford, Chevrolet and Tesla — are selling electric pickups, but Rawlinson says that they are currently too inefficient to make sense for most consumers.
“I believe that the only viable solution for an affordable, usable pickup truck today is internal combustion,” Rawlinson told Axios. “This is the wrong product, and so we’re seeing that companies are not making a viable profit by trying to make an electric pickup truck.”
https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/29/lucid-electric-vehicle-executive-pickup-trucks/
Now, the NE will feel the bite of “green energy”. The “green” part is the money leaving their bank accounts.
The cost to keep the lights on for 65 million Americans who tap into the largest US electrical grid will rise 833% starting in June.
Generators that provide electricity to the 13-state grid that stretches from New Jersey to Illinois will get a record $269.92 per megawatt-day from utilities to provide capacity over a 12-month period starting next June, according to results of an auction disclosed Tuesday. That’s up from $28.92 in last year’s auction.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-30/power-plant-payouts-on-biggest-us-grid-to-rise-to-record-in-june
More than 65 million Americans are facing the prospect of significantly higher electricity prices next year, thanks to shrinking energy supply and rising demand on the biggest US electric grid.
An increase for the year starting in June would follow a power auction held in 2023 that saw prices come in at a decade low of $28.92 per megawatt-day. The latest auction results are expected Tuesday afternoon. This time around, analysts predict prices could be two to four times higher.
The jump comes as the grid pushes to rein in an oversupply of capacity just when Virginia ramps up power demand to feed its artificial intelligence and data centers. Closures of coal and natural-gas fired plants will also remove about 4 gigawatts of generating capacity from the grid — enough to power about 3.2 million homes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-29/almost-20-of-americans-face-prospect-of-higher-electric-bills
Germany, the EU “green energy” crash test dummy, has an economy that is going down the tubes. The rest of the EU appears to be in recovery. I posted a couple of articles supporting this, but got stuck somewhere. Wind and solar tank economies. I hope the US figures this out before it’s too late!
Did you know that the German AFD is a lot like MAGA and growing fast in the last election. I bet their environmental policies are a good match to the GOP except they have coal. Dig Baby Dig.
https://www.pbs.org/video/germanys-enemy-within-nhgxas/
The truth of the matter is that Germany has flung itself against the Green Wall and didn’t stick. They are committing econocide.
BERLIN, July 18 (Reuters) – Germany faces a tough time finding ways to pay for its efforts to become climate-neutral by 2045 given the country’s current tight budget constraints.
The German cabinet passed its 2025 budget on Wednesday after months of wrangling, but this left a 17 billion euro ($18.58 billion) gap between projected spending and revenue still to be covered.
Such funding shortfalls will make the costly task of shifting industries and agriculture to low or zero emissions more difficult and could undermine some of the coalition government’s energy projects.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/how-germany-aims-get-net-zero-without-breaking-bank-2024-07-18/
“The truth of the matter is that Germany has flung itself against the Green Wall and didn’t stick. They are committing econocide.”
–
It is also a truth that Germany knows they are commiting econocide.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Climate Doomers are waking up to the fact that their “solutions” to “climate change” are nothing more than a Unicorn Fantasy.
Air New Zealand Ltd.’s decision to ditch its 2030 emissions target suggests more airlines will also have to confront a harsh reality: There’s simply not enough sustainable fuel or new, more-efficient aircraft.
This double-whammy has left the world’s commercial carriers, among the planet’s biggest polluters, without their two best decarbonization weapons. Global supply of sustainable aviation fuel will be just 0.5% of total fuel requirements this year, according to the International Air Transport Association.
At the same time, Boeing Co. and Airbus SE can’t make jets fast enough. Boeing, under pressure from regulators, has slowed output to improve quality. Airbus is so stretched it’s even turning down orders. So while next-generation jets can consume 15%-20% less fuel, wait times to get them delivered are years long.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-31/air-new-zealand-opens-door-for-other-airlines-to-dump-climate-goals
Oil is the future …
Today, Liza is the world’s biggest oil discovery in a generation. Exxon controls a block that holds 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil, worth nearly $1 trillion at current prices. The find has transformed Guyana from one of South America’s poorest countries into one that will pump more crude per person than Saudi Arabia or Kuwait by 2027. Guyana is on track to overtake Venezuela as South America’s second-largest oil producer, after Brazil.
Guyana has become the bedrock of Exxon’s post-Covid corporate revival. The Texas oil giant has a 45% share of a field that costs less than $35 a barrel to produce, making it one of the most profitable outside of OPEC. With crude currently trading at $85 a barrel, the oil field would make money even if the transition from fossil fuels caused demand to collapse and prices dropped by half.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-08-01/exxon-almost-walked-away-from-1-trillion-guyana-oil-discovery
More and more dollars wasted on CO2 mitigation.
Airline Passengers Will Be Forced to Pay for $5 Trillion Carbon Cleanup
The aviation sector’s plans to pass along the cost of decarbonization could add hundreds of dollars to the price of some flights.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-10/airline-travelers-will-pay-trillions-to-clean-up-carbon-footprint-of-flying
EV flop.
Even while some politicians demand the elimination of gasoline-powered vehicles, most Americans still don’t consider electric replacements practical.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that only 24% of American Adults believe electric cars today are practical for most drivers – a finding almost unchanged since January – while 55% think EVs are not practical for most drivers and 21% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/july_2024/most_still_don_t_see_electric_vehicles_as_practical
While I don’t doubt the survey I wonder if any of those people have driven an EV themselves? Have you driven an EV jim2? If so, how was it?
I have never driven an EV. I’m sure the acceleration would take my breath away, but I just don’t feel a burning desire to drive one.
Did you know that 40% of Americans fear flying and over 13% have never flown in a plane?
I hate flying as a passenger too, but I love piloting aircraft (I have a license).
The Bureau of Meteorology updated their AUGUST RAINFALL FORECAST sometime yesterday (1/8/24),
likely in response to the Stratosphere Warming Event over Antarctica (as of late).
With such an abrupt phenomenon occurring,
“forecast models” are once again “in shock”,
after originally suspecting a drier than average August based on historic modelling.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_HGT_ANOM_JAS_SH_2024.png
https://i.ibb.co/vdB3WwM/gfs-t100-sh-f00.png
Forecast means prediction and whilst contemporary professional human beings may be obsessed that their expert predictive methods (e.g. models) and their individual conceits (e.g. self importance) are justified because “the agenda” says they are. Reality and truth reveal that any effort to see ahead are just more proof that our species is hopelessly obsessed with its own importance.
We should live by the mantra that even a very young child has a chance of predicting something correctly in advance and all of us will get similarly “lucky” every so often sometimes as a sequence but, more often, out of the blue. Being ‘lucky’ has nothing to do with good science.
Prediction is prediction and even Nature doesn’t appear to believe in it. Perhaps meteorology needs to be a lot more humble, fragile and “human”.
Agreed. ‘Occasionally, even a blind dog finds a bone.’
Beg to disagree here: “Prediction is prediction and even Nature doesn’t appear to believe in it.”
‘Prediction’ is studying what nature determines next. Nature follows rules; prediction is trying to unravel what rules she is to apply next. Pure guesswork is blind.
IP below forecast/predicts tropical storm on 5th August. The new moon is on the 3rd, with a minor auspicious planetary orientation. It has been predicted in the past. Gravity has a lot to do with it.
MM … Lass didn’t use the word hubris, but I might … predict … that qualifies as the meaning.
Unexpected confirmation.
“Earth tide, deformation of the solid Earth as it rotates within the gravitational fields of the Sun and Moon.”
New moon today. Minor auspicious planetary orientations. 90 degrees before E-Moon-sun conjunction, Etna vents off (in full glory!). The lady is never one to hold it all in.
On August 5, a tropical storm will hit Florida hard. There will be floods.
https://i.ibb.co/Sxp5nwq/ventusky-wind-500hpa-20240804t2300-28n82w.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/MD8Dmqm/ventusky-wind-500hpa-20240806t0000-30n82w.jpg
The graph above shows a sharp jump in Southern Hemisphere temperatures from zero anomalies, coinciding in time with the SSW.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbe1f173-ba37-4cfd-bcb3-b234502cc672_1200x550.png
SSW over Antarctica is perceived by satellites as an increase in surface temperature.
https://i.ibb.co/19YYj1N/zt-sh.gif
https://i.ibb.co/WtqrMXQ/ventusky-temperature-2m-20240802t0600.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/vZgTd5K/ventusky-rain-3h-20240807t0900-33n79w.jpg
The Global Warming is an orbitally forced natural phenomenon.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
“ Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data”
“We have discussed multiple sources of uncertainty in the prediction of future tipping times of Earth system components. These uncertainties are as follows:
1) The modeling assumptions underlying the methods for tipping time estimation
2) The viability of extrapolating past forcing trends into the future
3) The reliability of using indirect fingerprints to predict tipping times of climate tipping elements
4) The uncertainties that arise from the bias and preprocessing in observational datasets with measurement uncertainties and gaps”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl4841?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_content=alert&utm_campaign=ADVeToc&et_rid=267930073&et_cid=5303699
Well! The narrower the avenue of research, the greater the possibility of missing the source of ‘tipping points’.
“major Earth system components” point to semi-millennial change in a cycle of ~980 years.
Important? >> Depends. If one is not prepared to stray from the present ‘limitations’ (or academic tether points) then the statement in the paper fits. Too great the uncertainties; too blind to see.
If one looks further, then things are different. The next cycle inflection point may hit this century, and with it a possible critical trigger point. The interglacial trace features abrupt points of change, an indication of inherent instabilities in the system (evident in the past four glacial cycles, more so in this because tipping points are identifiable).
As a complaint “Uncertainties too large to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data”, it is so. But does it serve for anything?
Let’s compare the number of days with a geomagnetic storm per year since 1932. The decline has been pronounced since 2008.
https://i.ibb.co/1dM32NF/number-of-days-with-a-ge.png
The graphic shows a decrease in temperature in the upper stratosphere above the equator, which means a decrease in ozone production in this layer. In this region, only UVC in the Chapman cycle raises the temperature.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JAS_EQ_2024.png
Currently, the least ozone in the total column is on the south side of the equator.
https://exp-studies.tor.ec.gc.ca/ozone/images/graphs/gl/current_1.gif
In the equatorial region, where there is less ozone, UVB radiation increases, which heats water vapor over the equator. This causes a disruption of the belts in the southern hemisphere along the equator. The 30-day SOI has dropped below -8.
SOI values for 3 Aug, 2024
Average SOI for last 30 days -8.54
Average SOI for last 90 days -2.77
Daily contribution to SOI calculation 0.24
From Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
“Milankovitch Cycles
The climatic event was probably a result of predictable changes in the Earth’s orbit (Milankovitch cycles) and a continuation of changes that caused the end of the last glacial period.[citation needed]
The effect would have had the maximum heating of the Northern Hemisphere 9,000 years ago, when the axial tilt was 24 and the nearest approach to the Sun (perihelion) was during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer. The calculated Milankovitch Forcing would have provided 0.2% more solar radiation (+40 W/m2) to the Northern Hemisphere in summer, which tended to cause more heating.”
(emphasis added)
Milankovitch wrongly assumed the not reflected portion of solar flux is totally absorbed. Whereas what solar energy does is to interact with surface’s matter.
Also, Milankovitch neglected the very much stronger
influence from the Southern oceanic waters accumulating properties.
Milankovitch ignored the Planet Surface Rotational Warming Phenomenon.
Milankovitch accented on the axial tilt variation, which produce a comparably small difference.
But it is the precession of the equinoxes that is the major climate changer.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
It is true precession is the basis, but when the slope decreases and precession moves away from winter in the northern hemisphere the effect of ice growth in the north accumulates.
A lower tilt will cause less ice to melt in summer, and precession will cause temperatures to drop in the north.
Yes, Ireneusz.
Also it is necessary to point out, that currently Earth is still in the millenials long the orbitally forced warming pattern.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
In 6480 years, the perihelion will shift 90 degrees and the aphelion will be in autumn in the northern hemisphere and less solar energy will reach the northern hemisphere north at the beginning of winter.
It is already a tropical storm that could strengthen to a hurricane before making landfall in northern Florida.
https://i.ibb.co/hFXHSg3/goes16-truecolor-04-L-202408031717-1.gif
Tropical Storm Debby will strengthen before making landfall in northern Florida on Aug. 5 and along the US east coast reaching New York.
https://i.ibb.co/mbkkZ05/ventusky-rain-3h-20240810t1500-39n75w.jpg
Tropical storm Debby threatens South and North Carolina.
https://i.ibb.co/gZqfcXN/ventusky-rain-3h-20240807t2100-34n78w.jpg
Climate Alarmists may have weather on their side for now, but their “climate fixes” aren’t doing so well. Just say NO!
Glencore Plc has abandoned plans to spin off its coal unit just nine months after saying it would exit the profitable but polluting business, following discussions with its shareholders who pushed back against the move.
Glencore’s announcement last year that it would split itself in two by hiving off coal marked a major strategic pivot for the company, as well as a watershed moment for the wider mining industry as the biggest shipper of coal — and one of its biggest champions — prepared to follow its rivals in exiting.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-07/glencore-abandons-plan-to-exit-coal-after-shareholders-say-no
The Green Grift isn’t working so well what with high interest rates and inflation. Low interest rates and free money made a lot of the loony Green Unicorn businesses go. It’s over.
After a drawn-out saga involving a restructuring and a management shakeup, one of the most prominent names in US solar, SunPower Corp., has now filed for bankruptcy.
Over the course of less than two years, the once-darling of the industry was forced to fire workers to cut costs, restate earnings and default on a credit agreement. In 2024, the firm replaced
its chief executive officer, restructured its operations and lost its accountant.
Industry headwinds added to the woes: High interest rates and subsidy changes in California — the US sector’s biggest market — have been a drag for solar firms that expected big growth from President Joe Biden’s signature climate law of 2022.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-06/former-manufacturing-giant-sunpower-files-for-bankruptcy
Green spin at it’s best. It should read ” especially in an economy where our capital stack was built for ideas and advances that people want and are willing to pay for rather than unicorn dreams that can’t be built”
Alarmists still haven’t figured out you can bend Mother Nature to your will just by legislation or throwing trillions of dollars at her.
“The evolution from science project to commercial outfit can be one of the hardest to pull off, especially in an economy where our capital stack was built for digital innovation rather than hardware advances,” said Chuka Umunna, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s head of ESG and green economy investment banking for Europe and the Middle East. “Helping innovative companies clear the commercial valley of death will require us to think differently about capital.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-03/climate-tech-s-dangerous-trek-across-the-valley-of-death
Alarmists tend to believe “batteries, green hydrogen, “clean” steel” don’t exist because there is no money for them. Instead, they don’t exist in the case of batteries because affordable technology isn’t there, for hydrogen – it’s just a terrible AND expensive idea, and for “green steel” – it would cause businesses that use steel to go broke. The main problem is these are D**U**M**B ideas!!
EVs. Such a deal I have for you!!
EV’s need what? More money on top of the trillions already needed for “green” projects.
Electric vehicle subsidies must be reintroduced in countries that have scrapped them if Europe wants to meet its targets for phasing out combustion-engine cars, said UK automotive supplier Dowlais Group Plc.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/evs-need-more-aid-to-retire-fossil-fuel-cars-supplier-says
Investors aren’t buying into EVs.
Investors are rushing out of electric vehicle-focused funds as growth forecasts cool and with a potential reelection of Donald Trump seen posing a further challenge to profits.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-07/ev-fund-outflows-hit-1-6-billion-as-trump-fears-add-to-slowdown
And don’t park your EV in my parking garage!
Management teams in office buildings and apartment complexes across South Korea are mulling measures to address the risk of fire after an electric vehicle explosion led to the evacuation of more than 200 families.
An unplugged electric Mercedes-Benz sedan caught fire last Thursday in an underground carpark at an apartment complex
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-07/korea-ev-explosion-prompts-charging-rethink-sparks-safety-fears
“Green” hydrogen. To expensive to even think about!
But it’s not a simple switch. Most of the businesses that could run on hydrogen would need expensive new equipment to use it, a leap they’re reluctant to make. Hydrogen produced using clean energy costs four times as much as hydrogen made from natural gas, according to BNEF. And it’s hard to build the infrastructure to supply hydrogen—not just plants to make it but pipelines to move it—when the demand may not materialize for years.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-12/why-almost-nobody-is-buying-hydrogen-dashing-green-power-hopes
Cleaning up the miracle molecule PFAS is too expensive to even think about!
“Air Force Dodges PFAS Water Cleanup in Arizona, Citing Supreme Court Chevron Ruling”
The order called for the Air Force and the Arizona Air National Guard to establish a filtration system designed specifically to remove PFAS, the estimated cost of which would be $25 million, or 0.1% of the Air Force’s annual budget, the newspaper reported.
The affected 10-square-mile site is beneath Tucson International Airport, Air Force Plant #44, and the Morris Air National Guard base. It’s been known to be extraordinarily polluted since long before the presence of PFAS was found—in fact, it was designated a Superfund site in the 1980s due to the presence of contaminants from solvents and degreasers.
Since 2016, samples from the site’s groundwater have shown extraordinarily high levels of PFAS—as much as 53,000 parts per trillion, when the allowable legal limit for drinking water is between just 4 and 10 ppt, depending on the type of PFAS.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/air-force-epa-pfas
I’m not for PFAS or other chemicals in the water, but the research on the alleged harm caused by PFAS is really sketchy.
I know a couple of federal judges in Ft. Worth who will issue a nation-wide ruling to stop the EPA/FDA/OSHA/DOE from using ‘experts’ to determine how much toxic stuff is in the environment.
“conservative groups have tactically ensured that their legal challenges to Biden administration policies get in front of Kacsmaryk, or Mark Pittman or Reed O’Connor, Republican appointees who between them hear 90% of civil cases in Fort Worth.”
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/shopping-for-the-judge-you-want-honed-to-perfection-in-texas
I think it’s Elon Musk favorite court. He has about 1/2 dozen cases before those judges. He hasn’t lost a lawsuit yet.
Jacksmith4TX:
I have done an analysis of our climate which proves that warming due to the increase of CO2 in our atmosphere is a HOAX.
Your post suggests that the Texas judges might be able to put a nationwide stay or a halt to the mis-named Biden-Harris “Inflation Reduction Act” which should destroy one of the pillars of the Democratic platform, and sway the election!
My analysis follows:
“Because of Acid Rain and health concerns, “Clean Air” legislation was passed in the 1970’s in the US and Europe to reduce the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution in our atmosphere.
This pollution peaked at 139.4 million tons in 1980, and by 2022, due to “Clean Air” and “Net-Zero” efforts, it had fallen to 73.5 million tons, a decrease of 66 million tons!
As its level gradually decreased over the intervening years, our atmosphere became less polluted, and the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface increased, causing warming to naturally occur.
However, this INEVITABLE warming has wrongly been attributed to rising levels of CO2 in our atmosphere, and, because of the wrong attribution, there is NO basis for CO2 to have ANY global climatic effect.
(IF CO2 has any warming effect, it is so small that it cannot be measured).
See: “Scientific proof that CO2 does NOT cause global warming”
https://wjarr.com/sites/default/files/WJARR-2024-0884.pdf
Would you be able to put this information before the Judges?
Burl,
“Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a scientific proof. Proofs exist only in mathematics and logic, not in science. Science relies on scientific evidence, not proof”
I would encourage everyone to read Burl’s paper and judge the veracity of his evidence for themselves.
Burl
You could be more convincing if you showed the levels of global SO2 before the US Clean Air Act and the European actions and how much of a global change took place. If those 2 sources were significant players then your case could be strengthened. I’m agnostic just because of an absence of such data.
burlhenry, I don’t see who you’ve proven anything. I had to search to find a plot of the CEDS data. To save others the trouble, it can be found here.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/CEDS-SO2-emissions-inventory-showing-global-SO2-emissions-since-1960-McDuffie-et-al_fig1_363078896
In your paper you claim that the 56 million tons change (in rate, not the amount in the atmosphere) is responsible for the temperature rise since 1980, yet the larger 80 million ton increase from 1950 to 1980 did not result in a significant decrease in temperature. How do you explain that?
See my github page for a different theory.
https://github.com/bobf34/GlobalWarming/blob/main/hybridmodel.md
Robert Cutler:
The 80 million ton increase from 1950 to 1980 resulted in enough of a temperature decrease to ignite fears of a return to a new Ice Age, but that is another issue, unrelated to our modern (since 1980) warming.
You obviously DO NOT understand what I have pointed out.
Decreasing levels of atmospheric SO2 aerosol pollution INEVITABLY increase the intensity of the solar radiation striking the Earth’s surface, and INEVITABLY cause warming.
This warming has wrongly been attributed to rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and because of the wrong attribution, there is no basis for CO2 to have ANY climatic effect.
Although CO2 levels have been rising, IF there is any warming from their rising it is overwhelmed by the warming resulting from the decrease of MILLIONS of tons of SO2 aerosol pollution.
@JackS RE: judges. Your example reminds me of President Trump for some odd reason.
burlhenry, how much of a temperature decrease would you predict for an 80 MTSO2/year increase?
Robert Cutler:
Pinatubo and Cerro Hudson erupted within less than a month of each other, and their total SO2 aerosol emissions were 22.2 million tons, which caused a temperature decrease of 0.4-0.5 Deg. C.
Based upon the above results, I would venture about a 2.0 Deg. C. decrease.
However, you asked about an 80MT/year increase, which is an enormous amount, never seen, and could result in even lower temperatures.
I wonder why you asked.
burlhenry, the 80 MTSO2/year is the change in emissions between 1950 and 1980. Temperatures declined by less than 0.2°C over this time period. This is less than 10% of what you’d predicted.
From your paper: “…56 million ton decrease noted above easily accounts for ALL of the warming since 1980”. Might I point out that temperatures increased by more than 0.7°C since 1980, at least according to the HadCRUT4 temperature plot you included.
Sorry, but your conclusions don’t make sense to me, especially since you never mention the amount of anthropogenic SO2 in the atmosphere, only the change in production rates.
Robert Cutler.
You had me confused. An “80MTSO2/year increase” in emissions did not happen.
Instead, Industrial SO2 aerosol emissions gradually FELL from a peak of 139 million tons in 1980, to 83 million tons in 2019, a decrease of 56 million tons. And as you pointed out, temperatures rose by about 0,7 Deg. C.
These aerosols do not accumulate in the atmosphere, but fall out at varying rates, so I have no idea how much is in the atmosphere, at a given time, as you ask.
CEDS data is for annual emissions, and as their amounts have decreased over the years, temperatures have naturally risen as the amount of SO2 aerosol pollution in the atmosphere has decreased.
And as I pointed out earlier, none of our modern warming has been due to rising CO2 levels.
I love how this article blames Germany’s decline on everything but the real culprit: Unreliable Green Energy!
“The economic outlook for Germany is breaking down,” ZEW President Achim Wambach said in a statement. “It is likely that economic expectations are still affected by high uncertainty, which is driven by ambiguous monetary policy, disappointing business data from the US economy and growing concerns over an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.”
Figures published in recent weeks have painted a gloomy picture for Europe’s largest economy, where output unexpectedly shrank by 0.1% in the second quarter, and July readings of private-sector activity and the business climate offered little comfort.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/german-investor-confidence-plunges-to-lowest-since-january
Almost as if proponents of offshore windmills are stabbing the whales in the back on porpoise…
I had low expectations for this effort but the graphs convinced me. Simpler isn’t always better but here the results speak for themselves.
Anyways, for decades I’ve thought the Mauna Loa data was too smooth for box models. I feel like I’ve finally the right compromise between Bern and “largely natural.”
Pingback: Conséquences du modèle linéaire de puits de carbone – Le Point de Vue
Climate doomer “solutions” continue to fail.
Just when things were starting to look up for wind power, new troubles are pulling it back down.
In recent years, soaring inflation, supply-chain chaos and rapidly rising interest rates shocked turbine manufacturers and their customers, upending a business model that depended on cheap financing to compete with fossil fuels.
Companies across the industry suffered steep losses and saw investors flee, despite the promise of huge growth as governments try to deliver on pledges to prevent a climate calamity.
This year appeared to promise a return to stability and profitability, with turbines’ main input — steel — getting cheaper, inflation cooling and interest rates starting to fall.
But a recovery is proving elusive. The bad news started in recent weeks just off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, when a turbine blade plunged into the sea, sending debris onto the beaches of the billionaire-inhabited island.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-08-22/wind-power-industry-isn-t-over-its-gloom-loop-yet