Carbon cycling and storage and it's relation to AGW?

Question

Two carbon cycles exist separated by long term, known as geological, and short term, known as biological, time scales. The biological carbon cycle comprises of photosynthesis, digestion, metabolism, respiration, oceanic inhaling and exhaling based on temperature, chemical alterations that enable various lifeforms to use in shells, and so on. The geological carbon cycle consists of sedimentation and storage for 100s of millions of years and longer. Humans are taking carbon out of the geological carbon cycles and pumping it back into the biological carbon cycle. Regardless, if you think this is the way fossil fuel deposits and so on are formed or you believe an alternate theory, you should agree that humans are messing with various carbon cycles and that human emissions, at over 30gt per year, are the major cause of atmospheric increase, at roughly 2ppm or 15gt per year.

(Friedlingstein, 2010) - http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n12/full/ngeo1022.html - Shows anthropogenic CO2 emissions at over 30 billion tons per year.
(Scripps Oceanographic Institute data) - http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/in_situ_co2/monthly_mlo.csv - Shows CO2 atmospheric increase at over 2ppm per year

Given recent satellite measurements of changes in outgoing and downward longwave radiation showing more longwave energy remaining in the troposphere

(Harries, 2001) - http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html?fb_page_id=11296750277& - Shows measurements of outgoiong radiation decreasing at specific greenhouse gas absorption wavelengths
(Griggs, 2006) - http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4204.1 - An update to the study above that includes AIRS
(Wang, 2009) - http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD011800.shtml - Measurements of downward longwave radiation showing an increase in wavelengths attributable to certain greenhouse gasses

And the resultant energy imbalance of all known factors

(Murphy, 2009) - http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/index/cms-filesystem-action/user_files/ih/papers/murphy_etal2009.pdf

Given this data, how can anyone claim that the current warming is not due mainly to human contribution? How can they continue stating falsehoods about such things as the Urban Heat Island Effect when satellite measurements show otherwise? I am aware that the ocean is the major carbon sink as well as plants and so on. What other carbon sinks are there on the biological time scale? What other carbon sinks are there on the geologic time scale? How do you propose that atmospheric carbon is increasing if it is not due to anthropogenic emissions? Perhaps someone can also go into depth about how oceanic exhaling and inhaling of CO2 relates to temperatures and why, given the increase in unnatural atmospheric carbon, why the oceans are not exhaling CO2 during this warming period.

Answer 1

Currently, some of the CO2 from the combustion is being dissolved by the Ocean because of Le Chatelier's principle, the idea that if a system at equilibrium is disturbed, it will change in the direction of the equilibrium and has nothing to do with the geological cycle.



The truth is that the geological cycle is to slow to be significant until humans stop burning fossil fuels, whether to stop global warming or because we run out of fossil fuels. (What a delightful future denialists are trying to steer us into. Even if they turn out to be right, future generations will still lose, because they will be freezing their rear ends off.)



The biological also can not be a significant sink for man made CO2. If the biological cycle were not balanced, particularly if it could have a net rate of CO2 removal equivalent to what humans are adding by the combustion of hydrocarbons, in a few million years, trees would be thousands of miles high. Well, except for one problem; the biological cycle did not use up CO2 in the time before SUVs.



Jeff



DaveH is using the HadCRUT dataset. Try downloading the data from

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/










A strait line response of temperature to CO2 would be expected if CO2 were the sole influence on climate. No one says that the Sun, ENSO and volcanoes have no effect. A strait line response is not a projection of climate models. For one thing, to draw a strait line, you do not need a supercomputer, only a ruler.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction-intermediate.htm

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988_Hansen_etal.pdf



The difficulty with Dave's link is that you need a special program to open it.



edit



OK! Dave. I have the data file on Excel.



Jeff! Was it 2005 or 2008 that you noticed to be cold. From my inspection of the graph, it is 2008 which is cold.



Regarding Dave's claim that oceans are exhaling CO2, it is even though they have been absorbing CO2 up to now, they could start exhaling CO2 when the Earth's temperature reaches a tipping point. However, I see no evidence from the graph to indicate that such a tipping point, which I would expect to see as a sharp increase in the slope of the ramp component of the graph. Unless Dave is referring to the sine wave component, which is the seasonal variation of CO2.

Answer 2

I had trouble getting past your abstracts to reading the actual articles you show. However, here is a nice review article: http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/sci_team/meetings/201001/presentations/land/liang.pdf

As for the outgoing radiation dropping in the relevant range for "specific greenhouse gas absorption wavelengths", I am having trouble imagining how that could be very important since there is not much left there anyway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_Transmission.png

According to the Stefan–Boltzmann law, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan-Boltzman_Law

increasing the temperature by 1 kelvin the increased outbound radiation would be proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature increase. Thus, since the average global temperature is about 14 Centigrade = 289 Kelvin, a 1 K increase would raise it to 290 K.

289^4 = 6.98 MK^4

290^4 = 7.07 MK^4

increase = 1.39%

Current Outbound radiation = 239 W/sq m (Wild 2008, Tellus)

A 1.39% increase to bump the temperature up a kelvin would be:

0.0139 * 239 = 3.32 W/sq m

So, checking the Wikipedia graph or any other one you prefer to show out going longwave radiation verses wavelength, how much do you figure that the average global temperature would go up if ALL outward bound CO2 radiation (including that emitted from the thermopause) were stopped? Care to integrate?



As for the downward radiation, as you add more greenhouse gas, these gases will absorb energy by collisions with other molecules, and emit predominately in the same range as their absorption wavelengths. Thus, more of the light would be likely to be emitted in the relevant ranges, and show increasing downward radiation even as they get more efficient in blocking upward radiation at relevant wavelengths.



Your last link uses 3.2 W m-2 K-1 [Soden and Held, 2006]. http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/bjs0601.pdf

This is close to the number I calculated above. However, they go through many calculations to attempt to alter that number with feedback theories, but in the end, most energy leaving the atmosphere is generated by the atmosphere itself, and thus, the number would be little affected by these other things that will not change much over a few Kelvins.



While methods used to calculate CO2 sensitivity includes feedback from water vapor (assuming it to be positive), people often fail to account for the interference of greenhouse gases with the absorption of energy for each other. When those effects are taken into account, the number is about 0.5 Kelvins for a doubling of CO2. http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2011/EGU2011-4505-1.pdf



As for the ocean, cold water does indeed absorb CO2 more readily than warm water does. The equilibrium shifts with temperature. However, when atmospheric concentrations raise, the rate of absorption by the oceans does increase also. The temperature of Earth has not changed nearly as much as atmospheric CO2 concentrations have. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/offset:289/from:1957/plot/esrl-co2

Thus, the rate of CO2 absorption has gone up faster than the rate of CO2 release. Other factors besides temperature do affect how well water holds CO2, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1155057.stm

but such things are poorly understood at this time.

Answer 3

carbon taxes are a scam. In 2008 I proved that all non solids that rise into the upper atmosphere separate into nothingness to 350 million people including the 43,000 scientists Ex- President Bush hired to find the cause and the solution of Global Warming. In 2010 or 2011 A Television Station in Ohio hired experts to check Nature's atmosphere and found it contain gases that separate all non solids into nothingness that also concured with my proof. This summer watch the news for forest fires and watch the helicopters drop their loads on the fires. Now ask yourself WHERE'S THE SMOKE= that lack of smoke is what nature's gases already separated after riseing to a certain heigth. Mike

Answer 4

“Given this data, how can anyone claim that the current warming is not due mainly to human contribution?”



The warming effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere is instantaneous. It should then be amplified by feedbacks.



However, recent observations don’t match this hypothesis.



http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6136/5917099494_aba725cf32_b_d.jpg



Below are the sources. The data in the chart above is exactly as presented in the sources, i.e. no smoothing, filtering or averaging is applied.



Mauna Loa CO2: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt

Hadcru3: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh%2Bsh/monthly (the first column after the year/month is the global anomaly).



Edit: Hi Jeff. The data isn't on the page 'jyushchy' linked. Here is the data I used. I've added the link in bits so it doesn't get interpreted by this website.



Paste this together



http://www.

metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut3/

diagnostics/global/

nh%2Bsh/monthly



Edit jyushchy and Jeff.



You don't need a special program to open it, it's just a regular txt file.

Here are three different ways you can open it into Excel.



1. Don't double click to open the link... right click and "save target as" anynameyoulike.txt. Start Excel and "Open". Then choose "fixed width" and it will arrange the columns for you.



2. Click the link to open it. In your browser "save as" to a .txt file name, then open with Excel using "fixed width"



3. Click the link to open it, 'copy' the whole text and 'paste' into 'notepad' (you'll find notepad in 'all programs', 'accessories') , then 'save as' a .txt file. Open with Excel using "fixed width".



These methods work for most data sources on the web. Only very few require special programs to manipulate them, and this is typically because they are grid cell based data that need a particular transformation to get them into a tabular format. You might wonder why in this day and age they are still using a linear file format to transfer tabular data... but if you discovered the answer to that it would probably just depress you.



Re: "I'm also curious as to why the year 2005 is so cold in the graph when 2005 is one of the warmest years on record". I have given you everything you need to either confirm or disprove the validity of the chart I posted.



Edit Jeff: I just noticed the end of your question.



"Perhaps someone can also go into depth about how oceanic exhaling and inhaling of CO2 relates to temperatures and why, given the increase in unnatural atmospheric carbon, why the oceans are not exhaling CO2 during this warming period"



The oceans ARE exhaling CO2 during this warming period. If you'd like to post this as a seperate question I'll be happy to oblige with a response.



Edit. Oh Dookie! you called me a liar again. I'm hurt.



Jeff: I see you and jyushchy speculating how I might justify the statement "The oceans ARE exhaling CO2 during this warming period". Post the question, and I'll tell you.

Answer 5

This is a good overview of global carbon dynamics, but the question is very simplistic.



Deniers "claim that the current warming is not due mainly to human contribution" because they are bound and determined to deny as much science as they think they need to in order to satisfy their psychological need to help make sure nothing ever happens in response to AGW, and that people are as confused and suspicious of climate science as possible. One important template is Crichton's Exxon-astroturf sound bite novel.



There are thus two basic answers to your question:



1) On YA, most of those denying climate science don't understand it at a high school level. In most cases, this is because they are too old for it to have been taught them then (and too lazy to get up to speed) and in some cases because they are too stupid to have understood it even if it had been taught to them. They endlessly copy and paste things like "I had to shovel two feet of snow off my driveway today, what happened to global warming?"



2) More active deniers do understand the basic science, but steadfastly lie about it. (For example, on this page: "The warming effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere is instantaneous. It should then be amplified by feedbacks." ). Skepticalscience has a good list of the palette of deceptions they shift between. Based on what I've seen here, the most common approach of these more sophisticated deniers is to pretend that there is some (usually undescribed and undocumented) magical force, a wonderful black box "natural cycle" that causes global average temperatures to rise just the way they have been rising in recent decades while also completely negating any impact of CO2 increase due to fossil fuel burning. But even the really clever deniers (who are several levels of sophistication above anyone who ever posts on YA) will not stick to ANY single claim for long enough to be utterly shown up by it. All of them, like all serial liars, must eventually shift their lies around in order to cover them.



Honest scientists on YA are amazingly willing to deceive themselves over and over again that if they just explain the science well enough that denial will diminish. They cannot face the reality that denial has fundamentally nothing to do with science; it has to do with irrational hatred and denial of the clear implications which science shows. But more than a few of the scientists and science students here are like Charlie Brown, who never stops hoping that this time Lucy will not trip him up by snatching away the football at the last minute.