AJ: Oh, and either come up with that Eemian map, or a one or two sentence reason why it isn’t absolutely critical to your case.
BPL: No, I’ve decided to simply ignore your babbling about the subject, because you’re a hostile, insulting boor. You’re not in a position to dictate to me what I should talk about. I talk about what I find interesting, not what you find interesting, and I talk with people I find congenial, not unpleasant, aggressive types like yourself. Go find another person to bully. I don’t care to talk with you about anything, and if I had a way to filter you on this blog, I’d do it. I don’t like you, and I wish you’d go away. Clear?
mike, you are confusing absolute increase with relative increase. CO2 (in the range from about 1 to 1440 ppmv) affects temperature logarithmically, not algebraically. As long as CO2 is growing, the absolute difference year to year will always increase, but it does not follow from that that the rate is accelerating. The rate IS accelerating, but your numbers do nothing to prove that. You need the percentage increase year over year, not the increase in ppmv.
Overview opinion? Short and Long term solutions to AGW/CC rest upon using / channeling the combined wisdom/power/knowledge of Climate sciences
We know all we need to know in order to set broad and local policy. Because simplicity is the only approach that both preserves resources and allows creation of resilient, antifragile systems, the usefulness of climate science is shifting to fine tuning mitigation efforts. Or should be.
tech R&D
Why? We need no new tech for simplicity.
economics
Why? what has it to say about how a community allocates resources? Nada. Economics, first, is voodoo. It’s a construct, not a thing you can reach out and touch. It’s nothing more tan a collection of bad ideas that we can just as easily stop following.
t takes zero economics knowledge to design a sustainable town, city, region or bio-region.
politics
Why?
mixed with sound Business Principles
There is no such thin, and certainly none that would apply a commons-based system of trade. Business principles are nothing more than fancy words for taking more from the system than one puts in and hoarding it for yourself. Sustainable systems cannot abide this. All hoarding for individual use is a drag on the system and ends up as waste in some form.
and Advertising (aka mass psychology & beliefs)
Education is preferred. I accept no propaganda as being legit, and advertising is propaganda.
use the tools we already have that helped to cause the problem to fix the problem.
You can’t fix a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it. – Einstein
No need to reinvent the wheel, yet.
Economics and modern society are the reinvention of the wheel. Simplicity is going back to the wheel what brung ya.
My first response to you was dead on.
Thomassays
Hi. Again I ask RC to consider asking Dr Charlie Vernon (The Godfather of Corals) to contribute a specialty article on Climate Change here. Vernon is an excellent public communicator and a cutting edge scientist in his field who is still active despite his retirement several years ago now. He quotes valid science and focuses on the ‘facts’ and then what those facts actually mean for reefs and life in the oceans into the future. He does use the word ‘extinctions’ and does not care that he is regularly labeled as ‘alarmist’ by some sections of the media – the facts are the facts.
Today he was ABC Radio National again. The demise of the Great Barrier Reef
Dr John (Charlie) Veron: Scientist and author, former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. He goes into some details about the recent severe bleaching event of the GBR and the basic science of corals why the GBR and all thew others cannot recover and are doomed long term already. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/is-this-really-the-end-of-the-great-barrier-reef-as-we-know-it/7497180 (look for links to the audio – about first 15 minutes of the whole show)
Vernon will soon launch a ‘Corals of the World’ website that aims to preserve the Great Barrier Reef in digital form. Can you believe that? Because it will no longer exist in physical form. His opinion is all gone by 2050 no matter mitigation occurs, because it is already too late due to lag times from GHG emissions etc. See ‘beta’ site: http://coralsoftheworld.com/
He also mentions the newly approved Adani (Carmichael) Coal Mine in Qld that will produce 3.5 billion tons of CO2 he says. I saw a Greens rep say that if this huge mine was a nation it would be 7th in GHG emissions but have not yet checked that claim. It’s been approved by BOTH major Political parties in Australia despite several court challenges and mooted public and scientific outrage similar to the Tar Sands and Oil pipeline situation in canada/usa.
This new ‘Corals of the World’ website will be launched later in JUne in Hawaii at Bridging Science to Policy – THE 13TH INTERNATIONAL CORAL REEF SYMPOSIUM (ICRS)https://sgmeet.com/icrs2016/
The Symposium will bring together an anticipated 2,500 coral reef scientists, policy makers and managers from 70 different nations in a forum to present the latest research findings, case histories and management activities, and to discuss the application of scientific knowledge to achieving coral reef sustainability.
Chuck Hughessays
Frankly, to me this all boils down to my bulldogging about the Eemian versus your stonewalling about the same. So, in your opinion, am I justified in continuing to ask?
Comment by Alfred Jones — 10 Jun 2016
Do you go by Al or Fred? I’ve been reading your diatribes and broadsides with interest. Waiting for you to say something of substance so I can respond.
BPL at 152: Yes, I have been thinking about the “rate of increase” term and wondering if it means different things to different people. I am using it in this sense: CO2 used to rise at a rate of 0.73 ppm per year. then it rose at a rate of 1.6 ppm per year. Then it rose at a rate of 2.1 ppm per year. Now it appears to be rising at a rate of over 3 ppm per year.
In any reasonable basic time frame (year or decade) that a person wants to review, the absolute level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increase. and in the level of increase has grown larger as years have passed.
I am not looking at the rate of increase in this way: EXAMPLE ONLY, FOR ILLUSTRATION ONLY the increase in ppm per decade is 0.5 ppm each decade. So 60’s it was say 0.73, then it rose .5 and in the 70s, the rate of increase was 1.23, then it rose .5 again and in the 80, the rate was 1.73, another decade, another .05 ppm etc…. In that sense, if anyone wants to track the numbers, they might determine if that rate of increase is increasing.
Maybe it would be more clear if I stated the amount of annual increase is increasing?
The bottom line is still the same: the concentration of CO2 is rising in the atmosphere and the level of ocean acidification follows the atmosheric concentration trend to some extent. Rising ocean acidification and global temperature rise related to ghg accumulation in the atmosphere are both bad for a lot of living things on the planet and our species should be concerned about those issues. The most obvious measure of our species’ concern and response to those issues is the co2 saturation in the atmosphere. That measure at MLO:
Daily CO2
June 10, 2016: 405.81 ppm
June 10, 2015: 403.16 ppm (2.65 ppm, a very noisy number, but at a lower level than we have been seeing so far this year. Is this el nino fading? is this stimulated vegetative growth? I don’t know, but I will pose those two as possibilities. And, mainly, I would say, let’s wait and see if June monthly CO2 increase comes in at under annualized rate of 3.0 ppm. That would be an encouraging number given the numbers on heat and CO2 that we have been seeing this year.)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm (3.76 ppm increase)
Cheers,
Mike
Piotrsays
BPL; 152: “As long as CO2 is growing, the absolute difference year to year will always increase”
Say, in year 0 it is 400ppm, in year 1: 403ppm, in year: 2 404 ppm. So “CO2 was growing” yet “the absolute difference year to year” did not (dpCO2/dt was 3ppm/yr, then became 1ppm/yr). “Always increase”?
BPL: “but it does not follow from that that the rate is accelerating.”
again, why? Have another hypothetical example: “in year 0 it is 400ppm, in year 1: 401ppm, in year: 2 404 ppm.” (404-401) > (401-400) so mike and I would say: the rate of rise of CO2 has increased from 1ppm per yr to 3 ppm per yr. I think this would be a valid statement.
What you propose is to compute a _specific_ rate of increase (1/yr).
But why would the specific rate would be the only correct rate to use? If I am interested in fluxes and pools of C, and specifically in the mismatch between the emissions (Gt C/yr) supposedly decreasing in 2015, and the rise in pCO2 (which can be converted to Gt C/yr too) at the very least – not slowing down – wouldn’t my absolute rates be more relevant to the problem I was discussing than your specific rates?
… to estimate the rate at which CO2 is increasing.
There are many ways to do so. One is to compute annual averages and take the differences from year to year (I computed annual averages April-through-March so as to include the most recent data, and compensated for those few months with missing data). Another is to fit a smooth curve which can also estimate the rate of increase….
Converting to anomalies using a baseline of 1960 to 1989. Then calculating the first and second derivatives of the series. The trend of the first derivative is 0.0281ppm/year/year. i.e. the slope gets steeper by 0.0281ppm per year each year. This has an R2 of 0.5216. The second derivative (how fast the steepening of the slope is getting) has a slope of 0.0014ppm/yr/yr/yr, and an R2 of 0.0013 – the acceleration is not itself accelerating.
The average interannual increase is around 2.1ppm. The increase this year will probably exceed 3ppm over last year.
Jan to May CO2 anomaly is roughly equal to June to December (the conversion to anomalies removes the seasonal cycle) (scatter plot linear regression slope 1.002, R2=1.000). However years like 1998 can show a deviation from this by up to about 1ppm. That noted, given that this year so far has been around a 72.7ppm anomaly I add this to the baseline average for the year, and this year is likely to be about 403ppm (404ppm – 1ppm for the El Nino).
The monthly figures are exciting for recent months. But isn’t it best to use annual averages?
The Atlantic and Pacific seas have been very low due to warmth and wind (probably a result of the El Nino). The Beaufort Sea accounts for much of the low extent right now (~25% IIRC) and that is in the state it is in because of the wind not warmth. Preconditioning plays a role (long term decline of sea ice), but so does it everywhere and much of the pack is similar in state to other recent years (e.g. Siberian coast and Central Arctic also the Canadian Arctic Archipelago).
wrt the level of CO2 in atmosphere and question of when it might drop, here is an exchange I had with Mike McGee, founder of co2.earth back in March.
I asked: Lots of folks are feeling warm and fuzzy about the recent IEA report that indicates carbon emissions have leveled off for past two years. I think this is not that impressive because these numbers seem very soft to me and only cover the industrial/fuel sector. I read scientists saying that CO2 ppm readings like MLO lag behind carbon emissions. Do you happen to know approximately how long the lag is?
Mike McGee answered: the global carbon project reported a 0.6% increase in annual global carbon emissions in 2014 and they project a slight decline for 2015. At present, it might be the start of carbon emission declines in times of economic growth although longer term projections at, say, climateinteractive.org, suggest that global emissions can be expected to resume in the years and decades ahead. In any case, a critical and tougher milestone is to level off atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (not simply annual global emissions). This happens after global CO2 emissions drop by about 50% (based on something called the airborne fraction of how much CO2 remains in the atmosphere and how much sinks to land and ocean). For more info, google IPCC FAQ 10.3 to get an explanation of what it takes to stabilize atmospheric CO2 in the short term (>50%) and long term (essentially 100% reduction). So, there is a sequencing: emissions need to drop first, and as long as global emission cuts are less than half, atmospheric CO2 will keep rising. I believe the time lag is essentially the time it takes us to cut global CO2 emissions in half (I’ve heard 57% as a more precise figure.) That’s the story for CO2 which is the main GHG. Other GHGs (and aerosols that have a counteracting cooling effect) have their own properties and contribution to net global warming and climate change.
Daily CO2
June 11, 2016: 407.40 ppm
June 11, 2015: 403.22 ppm (noisy number back up at 4.18 ppm increase rate after a couple of days in the 2 range)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
I stick with my earlier projection: We should see June monthly average ppm drop to around 407.0. We should see the year end with a december monthly average reading of 405.2. But let’s give that prediction an additional reduction of 1.5 ppm for loss of El Nino bump, so I think we end the year at abt 403.7 and we post an increase of around 3.5 ppm for 2016. These are not good numbers.
I think I am doing primitive observational science by watching these numbers in much the same way that early astronomers watched the movement of celestial bodies and tried to suss out the basic mechanics of the solar system. It’s not elegant, but it is what I can do with a few tools, some imagination and a lot of curiosity. Thanks to those here who understand my primitive scientist approach.
NASA GISS has posted for May with the global anomaly +0.93ºC, the first sub+1ºC anomaly since September last year and also below the peak anomaly of the 2007 El Nino (+0.96ºC) – so May 2016 comes in 8th warmest on the record. A comparison of recent anomalies with their 1997/98 equivalent shows no sign of the resurgent temperature rise through the early summer that was seen in 1998.
……….1997/98 … 2015/16
Dec … +0.59ºC … +1.09ºC
Jan … +0.60ºC … +1.12ºC
Feb … +0.88ºC … +1.33ºC
Mar … +0.61ºC … +1.28ºC
Apr … +0.63ºC … +1.09ºC
May … +0.71ºC … +0.93ºC
Jun … +0.77ºC
Jul … +0.70ºC
Aug … +0.67ºC
cr at 163: Yes, annual or decadal comparison are definitely the way to go for evaluating large time scale trends. (large time scale to our species).
But if I only post the annual number, and I only review the annual numbers, this public science project of trying to understand the trends of carbon dioxide accumulation in atmosphere really stretches out and does not have the ability to persuade others to really look at this critical number.
I am pleased to see the various analyses of “rates of increase.” The questions raised are deeper in the math than I need to go for my purposes. My sense of this is that it is pretty simple: more CO2, more heat, more extinctions etc. The solution is also pretty simple, our species has to go on a crash diet to reduce CO2 emissions. I don’t see any signs of a crash diet yet, I think we are tinkering with the diet so to speak.
Guardian article says some silly stuff like IPCC quote that we need to draw the line at 450ppm. Dr. Mann said in 2014 that we need to stay under 405, but he does not want to talk about that now that we have blown by 405 ahead of schedule.
Here is something that we should all be thinking about: if we have a baseline CO2 level of 430 ppm plus (maybe a CO2e number in the 510 ppm range?), can you imagine how the next monster El Nino event is going to play out on the planet? It’s easy to predict the next El Nino and the CO2e number in that time frame – say 2035? – and decide, uh-oh, I don’t think I want to be around for that one. That one appears to promise a pretty hot time on the old planet.
The various manners by which we calculate and define the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere are moot to folks who are dying in heat waves. CO2 goes up, heat goes up. Heat goes up, more of us go down. That’s how it appears to me. That’s what we should be talking about in no uncertain terms imho.
The ambient amount of CO2 in the air, in ppmv, is the basic value of interest. Its first derivative, the growth rate, is its velocity. Its second derivative is the acceleration.
Do a linear regression of CO2 level on elapsed time. If there is a positive and significant upward slope, then the velocity is positive and CO2 is rising. Now do a quadratic regression on the same data. If the coefficient of the time-squared term is positive and significant, the rate is accelerating. (You can also do a partial-F test on that coefficient.) That’s what it means to say the rate of increase is accelerating.
Jon Kirwansays
Re: @163
From: Chris Reynolds
hello
The monthly figures are exciting for recent months. But isn’t it best to use annual averages?
Yes, it certainly is. But I think Mike is using annual figures. If I recall, he cited a prior year value against a current year value. (May 31, 2016 of 407.01 ppm vs May 31, 2015 of 403.44 ppm.) he used the word “daily” there, but this is really an annual average comparison. Think about it. It is the integrated state of affairs at one date minus the integrated state of affairs at a date one year prior. The subtraction of two integral values is inherently an averaged result. It would be different of course if he had compared two adjacent daily values, which is a finite differencing, and then multiplied it by 365. But that’s not what he did.
Mike, please, please, take the time to understand what Chris Reynolds posted for you.
Deniers often post unadjusted, unconsidered raw numbers — CO2 or temperature or sea level — and claim they know what’s happening based on nothing but their eyeballs. Over and over, we try to tell them to do the arithmetic. Assuming you’ve taken Stat101 it’s half an hour’s effort. If you haven’t, all you need is basic arithmetic, no other prerequisites to taking the course.
You know where to find the lessons, right? Tamino’s giving them right now.
Thomassays
(amateur) Video compilation of the radio interview with Dr John (Charlie) Veron, otherwise known as the ‘godfather of coral’.
It appears that a study has been published raising a concern about concentration of warmth in global north as trigger to warming feedback loop that could increase CO2 in atmosphere.
Paper title: Potential carbon emissions dominated by carbon dioxide from thawed permafrost soils
“Increasing temperatures in northern high latitudes are causing permafrost to thaw1, making large amounts of previously frozen organic matter vulnerable to microbial decomposition2. Permafrost thaw also creates a fragmented landscape of drier and wetter soil conditions3, 4 that determine the amount and form (carbon dioxide (CO2), or methane (CH4)) of carbon (C) released to the atmosphere. The rate and form of C release control the magnitude of the permafrost C feedback, so their relative contribution with a warming climate remains unclear5, 6.”
One of the reasons that I am tracking CO2 levels on an almost daily level is that I think we are already seeing a bump in CO2 levels from sources other than the usual anthropogenic sources. The daily levels are quite noisy, but I think the question that Killian asked a couple of months ago is still a primary question: where is all this CO2 coming from?
The answer is from everywhere, from el nino, from fossil fuel burning, from agriculture, from deforestation, from soil drying, from permafrost thawing, on and on. It is very difficult to track each of these sources and calculate the exact impact of each source. It is pretty darn easy to track and monitor the global impact through the MLO numbers.
It makes sense to track CH4 levels, but I am staying busy with CO2, not feeling need to start parsing CH4 levels.
Anybody read and have thoughts about this study?
Cheers,
Mike
Omega Centaurisays
We justly criticize deniers for the global warming has stopped arguments. I.e. using too short a time series and often cherry picking start/stop times can produce misleading results. A similar dynamic operates when discussing annual CO2 concentrations. There is a lot of CO2 “noise” in the climate system, so short term annual trends can be misleading when used to estimate emission rates.
Sorry Chris, I misread things earlier. Mike is reporting monthly averages, I think, and annual figures would be less noisy (though delayed), as you say.
As my penance, I just downloaded and checked the difference between the most recent annual average and the year prior to that. I get a delta-figure of 2.86 ppmv (centered on December 10th.)
Thomassays
#126, 129, 139 near 10 Jun 2016 about climate change ‘induced/caused’ extinctions.
Sit back for another 3 decades and there will be probably thousands of species going extinct when the coral reefs ecosystems collapse and the downstream tipping points that will trigger across the ocean’s ecosystems.
“The average interannual increase is around 2.1ppm. The increase this year will probably exceed 3ppm over last year.”
Mike says: Are you providing an average interannual increase for the entire time frame of 1960 to 1989? If yes, please consider splitting that time frame to decadal as is done here: https://www.co2.earth/co2-acceleration
this is what that website shows for decadal rates of increase:
2005 – 2014 2.11 ppm per year
1995 – 2004 1.87 ppm per year
1985 – 1994 1.42 ppm per year
1975 – 1984 1.44 ppm per year
1965 – 1974 1.06 ppm per year
1959 – 1964 (6 years only) 0.73 ppm per year
I am inclined to believe you when you say the acceleration is not accelerating.
but it also appears clear that the rate of increase as measured in ppm is increasing because the 3 ppm increase this year that you and I both expect is a larger number than the 2.1 ppm increase, thus, an increase in the rate of increase as measured in ppm, the simple measure that I am using.
Now, at the end of the day, no matter how you parse these numbers, it appears that the concentration of CO2 and CO2e in atmosphere is rising and that is causing us problems that will likely only increase over time. Once we get to this consideration, it is possible to conclude that we really should do something/anything to bring the increase of CO2 and CO2e to a halt, and then continue to do something/anything to allow this number to start dropping toward some “safe” number, maybe that number is 350. I don’t know about that, I just know that as the days and years pass, we are moving away from the climate that we evolved in and into an environment that will drive a lot of species into extinction.
Daily CO2
June 12, 2016: 407.26 ppm
June 12, 2015: 402.46 ppm (back in the 4 ppm plus range)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
A lot of folks here are really good with the number crunching, but I will ask quite directly: what is the top number that we should contemplate for the CO2 and CO2e saturation of the atmosphere? IPCC and others like to talk about 1.5 degrees or 2.0 degrees, but we all know these are soft theoeretical numbers driven by a lot of really hard, real world numbers, like CO2 and CO2e saturation of the environment.
Dr. Mann said in 2014 that we should not go above 405 ppm. I like that number, but we have blown by it. Is it possible for folks here to apply their math skills to calculating the impact of the saturations, the increase in saturation, the impact when the next large, hot El Nino occurs and advise on how that will work for us?
Chris, I think you are projecting an annual ppm for 2016 to be 404.0 (403.0 baseline and 1.0 for EN)
Mike is projecting the following for 2016:
Jun monthly 407.0
Jul 405.3
Aug 404.1
Sep 402.8
Oct 403.1
Nov 403.4
Dec 403.7
If those are close to the monthly averages, then I come up with 2016 annual ppm at 404.6.
If we see numbers that are lower than these, I would be very happy about that. Numbers above these should cause us to ask: where is all this CO2 coming from?
Warm regards
Mike
Piotrsays
re: BPL 168
Barton, I am not sure why do you explain to me 1st and 2nd derivative when the question was something else – your telling mike that his absolute rates (in ppmv/yr or ppmv/yr^2) are wrong and your relative (percentage) rates are right:
” You need the percentage increase year over year, not the increase in ppmv.” BPL 152
To which I asked why the rates of absolute increases in CO2 (ppmv/yr, ppmv/yr^2) are wrong, and argued that not only are they valid, but for the problem at hand – reconciling the supposedly decreasing emissions with the at least not slowing down of the increase in atm. CO2 – it is the absolute values that are relevant ^*.
Piotr
—
^* for why I think so – see the post you are answering; Piotr, 160
Thomassays
One traffic stats site suggests “Realclimate.org has received an estimated 77,100 visits over the last 30 days.”
I roughly estimate that there are ~30-50 regular visitors who actually post comments here across a month – which represents only 0.06% of regular visitors who read this site’s articles and/or comments.
Given this I do not assume that a comment made here is necessarily intended or directed at regular posters here, unless so stated.
173: “There is a lot of CO2 “noise” in the climate system, so short term annual trends can be misleading when used to estimate emission rates.” (rising rates/acceleration/the future)
OK fine. Surely that is self-evident. Yet it’s also patently self-evident to me that Mike (who seems to be the target of such comments) is not in fact “estimating emission rates of CO2 ppm” – be it past, present or future.
Mike is not calculating long term CO2 ppm rate acceleration, nor in the short term.
Mike is not making forecasts or projections or predictions about CO2 ppm numbers nor is he predicting the current or future rates of growth in same.
So what is the issue here? Mike should not be using scientific data to emphasize a conflict between energy use figures for CO2 emissions vs credible verifiable scientific data on atmospheric month to month, year over year, and alert visitors to RC where that data is found so they can look at ALL the historical statistics about that for themselves, if they want.
Or Mike should not be making regular heads up reports about the actual scientific recording of CO2 ppm data on RC ………
Seriously, this would be the last thing that pro-agw/cc science proponents could be upset about or spend their time to ‘criticize’. Mike is reporting the facts and the truth of scientific data. And offering up his opinion and take away message about that on a public forum created for that purpose. He is not distorting that ‘factual’ Data nor twisting what it represents and means. I have not seen him do that. That’s what disorientated denialists tend to do, isn’t it?
IF what Mike is doing here is worthy of criticism then it follows that such an opinion/belief would also conclude that ALL the websites that report daily and monthly and yearly figures need to be equally criticized and/or silenced. That seems quite unreasonable to me no matter how confused ‘some people’ are about that ‘data’.
But that’s me. The data that Mike is posting is accurate, meaningful and can be useful to others. Each to their own?
Thomassays
I think it was Rosling of Gapminder who said a few years back that it’s likely that ~4 billion people of the 7 billion on earth have never heard about AGW or CC or GHGs or CO2 issues.
I can imagine a Zimbabwean mother of 4 who makes a tough living from sewing or crafts who last week got her first smart phone after she got connected to a solar power system in her village courtesy of the UN or Bill Gates. That somehow she was told about RealClimate.org and AGW/CC but she had never heard of co2.earth nor the rapid growth in CO2 ppm and it’s accurate monitoring at multiple locations worlwide such as MLO.
No one can predict what that ‘knowledge’ will mean to her, her family, the local village or her nation over the short term once she knows it.
Multiply that mother x 4 billion others who also have been kept in the ‘dark’. Merely a ‘thought experiment’ about the potential power of knowledge, fwiw.
siddsays
Cutting fossil CO2 emissions cannot immediately be reflected in falling CO2 concentrations. The last time i looked at it, i think i found that to see a statistically significant CO2 concentration drop over next decade, anthro fossil CO2 emission would have to drop between 50 and 60% immediately and remain there. I think my estimate assumed that land+ocean uptake remained the same.
But our hosts surely have calculated this in multiple ways. Perhaps they could comment.
> would also conclude that ALL the websites that report daily and monthly and yearly
> figures need to be equally criticized and/or silenced.
Nothing wrong with copying figures off the source sites, though pointing to them is preferred.
Second and third hand info tends to come without the information needed to understand it.
What I criticize is claiming the opinion based on eyeballing a picture is a
good basis to tell other people something real is happening about the real world.
Mostly that’s the denier “snowball” congresspeople and their ilk.
Occasionally some enthusiastic young person with his heart in the right place falls into doing the same thing.
Reality is plenty scary. Understanding how we understand data shouldn’t be ignored just because arithmetic is hard. Tamino’s teaching this stuff online right now. Why not learn?
Arithmetic really isn’t that difficult. Statistics 101 is right up there with elementary science courses that rely on statistics to assess data.
When you don’t know what’s happening, telling other people your opinion is — boring.
> the problem at hand – reconciling the supposedly decreasing
> emissions with the at least not slowing down of the increase
Piotr, please tell me you haven’t yet read the MIT “bathtub model” pages?
Because if their explanation isn’t sufficient to answer this question, I sure don’t know what would help you better.
Digby Scorgiesays
Mike @172
Another contributor to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is the ocean. As the ocean becomes warmer it can hold less and less carbon dioxide. This is part (all?) of the reason for the projected acceleration in the Keeling curve.
As for your little project monitoring atmospheric CO2 levels, what would be interesting to me is a plot of the measured values on a graph of the projected values — remember I gave you some data for the latter. It would be fascinating to see how the measured and projected values compare as the years pass. In 20 years we should be at 465 ppm or thereabouts, assuming humanity remains addicted to fossil fuel and cannot kick the habit.
Richard A. Betts, Chris D. Jones, Jeff R. Knight, Ralph F. Keeling & John J. Kennedy
Nature Climate Change (2016)
doi:10.1038/nclimate3063
Published online 13 June 2016
The recent El Niño event has elevated the rise in CO2 concentration this year. Here, using emissions, sea surface temperature data and a climate model, we forecast that the CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa will for the first time remain above 400 ppm all year ….
Lead author Professor Richard Betts, of the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter, said: “The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is rising year-on-year due to human emissions, but this year it is getting an extra boost due to the recent El Niño event — changes in the sea-surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This warms and dries tropical ecosystems, reducing their uptake of carbon, and exacerbating forest fires. Since human emissions are now 25 per cent greater than in the last big El Niño in 1997/98, this all adds up to a record CO2 rise this year.”
… this has been rising at an average rate of 2.1 parts per million, but using a seasonal climate forecast model and statistical relationship with sea temperatures, Professor Betts and colleagues forecast the rise this year to be a record 3.15 +/- 0.53 parts per million. The average concentration in 2016 is forecast to be 404.45 +/-0.53 parts per million, dropping to 401.48 +/- 0.53 in September before resuming their ongoing rise next year…..
Is the rate of increase increasing?
Tony Weddlesays
Quite right, Barton, I should have said first mammal extinction. I’m not sure if the Golden Frog (or is it Golden Toad) has been shown to have been made extinct through climate change, do you have a link?
Chuck Hughessays
If those are close to the monthly averages, then I come up with 2016 annual ppm at 404.6.
If we see numbers that are lower than these, I would be very happy about that. Numbers above these should cause us to ask: where is all this CO2 coming from?
Warm regards
Mike
Comment by mike — 14 Jun 2016 @
Mike, I like what you’re doing. Let the critics explain it. I think it would make for a great RC post from the experts who run this site. It makes sense that daily CO2 levels would be ‘noisy’ but why are emissions going down and CO2 levels still rising?
Unless and untill the Keeling Curve changes directions I’m not buying the emissions going down story. The only other possible explanation I can see is that the Earth’s systems have taken over and are running the show. That wouldn’t surprise me in the least, given all the other things that are happening.
I also won’t be surprised to see an ice free Arctic very soon. I think we know it’s coming. What then? Surly that would cause another dramatic spike in CO2 levels. Are we there yet?
My point was that Mike’s increasing absolute levels of CO2 do not prove that CO2 growth is accelerating. A linear increase over time would also result in increasing absolute levels of CO2. In fact, so would a whole class of decelerating trends. You need different math to prove acceleration. Period.
#177, Barton–Yes, we (probably) have lost a couple of species due to climate change previously, notably the golden amphibian you mention. But in the interest of pedantic accuracy, let me point out again that that was Costa Rican, not Brazilian, and a toad, not a frog. Confusingly enough, there is also a golden frog, extinct in the wild–but it’s Panamanian.
You probably missed my earlier comment on all that, so here’s the link:
Great (well, I would think so!) for those who would like to pick up a few of the bio/ecological basics, such as the ‘species-area relation’ (used, among other things, to estimate possible extinction rates.)
Unless and untill the Keeling Curve changes directions I’m not buying the emissions going down story. The only other possible explanation I can see is that the Earth’s systems have taken over and are running the show.
To a considerable degree, Earth’s systems have always ‘run the [CO2} show’ on short time scales. That’s why there’s such a noticeable annual cycle in the Keeling curve.
The amazing things, to me, are 1) how well integrated the Keeling curve is, in the sense that you see less change of rate around ENSO variations than you might think; and 2) how closely balanced natural fluxes must be over the long term, given both the stability seen in the ice core record and the change seen during the anthropocene.
Anyway, Dr. Ralph Keeling, Director of the Mauna Loa Observatory (and son of Charles Keeling, for whom the curve is named) has this to say about the question:
The ocean and land sinks for CO2 currently offset only about 50 percent of the emissions. So the equivalent of 50 percent of the emissions is still accumulating in the atmosphere, even with stable emissions. To stabilize CO2 levels would require roughly an immediate roughly 50 percent cut in emissions, at which point the remaining emissions would be fully offset by the sinks, at least for a while.
…A permanent stabilization at current levels therefore requires both an immediate 50-percent cut as well as a slow tapering thereafter, eventually approaching zero emissions. The recent stabilization in emissions might be viewed as a very small first step toward the required cuts.
Have sent request off to Mike McGee at CO2.earth to see if he can add an automated widget that gives the kind of annualized number that JK talks about at 175. It seems that some folks want to see the numbers crunched in that manner. That number does not matter for my purposes which have to do with increasing public awareness of the buildup of CO2 and CO2e in the atmosphere. For that purpose, the relatively simple immediate daily average annual comparison, coupled with the past monthly average annual comparison, linked to the website that breaks down the entire record of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is sufficient.
Daily CO2
June 13, 2016: 407.36 ppm
June 13, 2015: 402.58 ppm (in the 4 plus range, the daily average number needs to keep falling to hit the 407.0 that I expect to be the June 2016 monthly average)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
I am off to eastern OR for a few days of hiking and camping in the wild.
why are emissions going down and CO2 levels still rising?
Unless and untill the Keeling Curve changes directions I’m not buying the emissions going down story….
Chuck Hughes, please tell me you have not yet read or understood the MIT/Stearman “bathtub model” — because if that doesn’t answser you r question, I’m at a loss how to explain it.
You’re not unusual in not understanding this, mind you. Graduate students in science studied have the same misconception about how the world works.
But it’s really not all that hard if you read through the description, look at the pictures, maybe run the interactive modeler online.
You know how to find this stuff. Please, work through it and come back.
> Hank appears to be implying that he think
[falsehood]
> Hank, I intend to make fun of you for your position until you whine
[trolling]
and later
Hank, please stop responding to my posts. I will do the same for you.
Sorry, Mike. While you make claims based on eyeballing pictures, I’ll comment.
While you make up straw men to attack from my comments, I’ll comment.
When Gavin or one of the other contributors here says we’re off track, I’ll stop.
As long as they think the conversation here is educating people, they leave us free to keep talking.
I’d love to see you respond to my comments — about how to detect trends statistically.
You can learn this stuff. You can be a good example by learning the basics on detecting trends.
… Keeling’s son, Ralph, … is a co-author on the Met Office paper.
“Back in September last year, we suspected that we were measuring CO2 concentrations below 400 ppm for the last time,” he said in a statement. “Now it is looking like this was indeed the case.”
“There is a possibility we may see 400ppm again but it seems unlikely,” said Prof Gavin Foster from the University of Southampton.
He wrote a blog last year in which he considered the implications of returning to the climate conditions of the Pliocene – the last time Earth had 400ppm.
“The world was a different place back then – global temperatures around 3C warmer than the pre-industrial and sea-levels were around 20m higher (due to retreat/collapse of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets).
“With global temperatures likely to top 1C above pre-industrial levels [in 2015] and CO2 now likely to stay above 400pppm, it appears we are well on the way to a Pliocene-like future.”
Tamino has a new post on the rate of increase of CO2 and CH4. And the news ain’t good.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/global-warning/
The conclusion is abundantly clear: that what we need to do — slow, and eventually halt, the increase of greenhouse gases — isn’t being done. The situation isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse.
As dangerous as is our own dumping greenhouse gases in the air, there’s an even greater danger. We’ve already warmed the Earth substantially, and it continues to get hotter. When it does, stores of Carbon naturally locked safely away in places like the ocean and the soil can be released, to increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere even if we stop burning fossil fuels.
from that: “The necessary solution is clear, and has been all along: slow, and eventually halt, the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. We know their concentration is still increasing, but at what rate? Is the rate of rise at least slowing?
Unfortunately, no. It’s speeding up…
When we were warned in 1986, CO2 concentration was about 347.5 ppm (parts per million), but now it’s about 404.5 ppm. The 1986 value was already 25% higher than the pre-industrial level, today’s value is 45% higher.
It’s a bit of a surprise how well the increase matches a system where the rate of increase is rising steadily. That would imply that the concentration is a quadratic function of time…
that means that the rate at which CO2 is increasing has been steadily getting faster. A direct measure of the rate of increase (by a sophisticated method, but simple ways paint essentially the same picture) also suggests a steady increase in the rate at which CO2 is rising..
In 1960 CO2 was only going up by less than 1 ppm/year, but now it’s increasing by more than 2 ppm/year. And, alas, it shows no sign of slowing down — just going faster and faster”
after that Tamino moves on to methane. Can others read this post at Tamino and give an opinion as to what it means wrt to my CO2 project that has created so much resistance here? It’s pretty dense material and I am just a poor country boy trying to understand the nature and direction of the universe. I am easily confused.
Warm regards
Mike
Piotrsays
Barton,189: “My point was that Mike’s increasing absolute levels of CO2 do not prove that CO2 growth is accelerating. A linear increase over time would also result in increasing absolute levels of CO2”
Except that Mike here didn’t use the “increasing absolute levels of CO2″, but increasing rate of _increase_ in absolute levels of CO2” – see for example his post 95, where he compares the increases in pCO2 from several decades.
Do you say that when he wrote in his post 95 that:
in 2005–2014 the increase in CO2 was avg. 2.11 ppm per year,
in 1995 – 2004 was 1.87 ppm per year and
in 1985 – 1994 was 1.42 ppm per year
– then he didn’t prove his statement made in post 90 that “the rate of [CO2] increase is rising” ??
Piotrsays
Hank: “Piotr, please tell me you haven’t yet read the MIT “bathtub model” pages?”
I have looked briefly at the website – unless I missed something – it answers question I didn’t ask (“why CO2 increases if emissions stabilize”) and doesn’t deal with the question I did ask (if the emissions indeed fell, why rate of _increase_ in CO2 didn’t fall too).
AJ: Oh, and either come up with that Eemian map, or a one or two sentence reason why it isn’t absolutely critical to your case.
BPL: No, I’ve decided to simply ignore your babbling about the subject, because you’re a hostile, insulting boor. You’re not in a position to dictate to me what I should talk about. I talk about what I find interesting, not what you find interesting, and I talk with people I find congenial, not unpleasant, aggressive types like yourself. Go find another person to bully. I don’t care to talk with you about anything, and if I had a way to filter you on this blog, I’d do it. I don’t like you, and I wish you’d go away. Clear?
mike, you are confusing absolute increase with relative increase. CO2 (in the range from about 1 to 1440 ppmv) affects temperature logarithmically, not algebraically. As long as CO2 is growing, the absolute difference year to year will always increase, but it does not follow from that that the rate is accelerating. The rate IS accelerating, but your numbers do nothing to prove that. You need the percentage increase year over year, not the increase in ppmv.
http://retractionwatch.com/2016/06/07/conservative-political-beliefs-not-linked-to-psychotic-traits/#more-38705
Overview opinion? Short and Long term solutions to AGW/CC rest upon using / channeling the combined wisdom/power/knowledge of Climate sciences
We know all we need to know in order to set broad and local policy. Because simplicity is the only approach that both preserves resources and allows creation of resilient, antifragile systems, the usefulness of climate science is shifting to fine tuning mitigation efforts. Or should be.
tech R&D
Why? We need no new tech for simplicity.
economics
Why? what has it to say about how a community allocates resources? Nada. Economics, first, is voodoo. It’s a construct, not a thing you can reach out and touch. It’s nothing more tan a collection of bad ideas that we can just as easily stop following.
t takes zero economics knowledge to design a sustainable town, city, region or bio-region.
politics
Why?
mixed with sound Business Principles
There is no such thin, and certainly none that would apply a commons-based system of trade. Business principles are nothing more than fancy words for taking more from the system than one puts in and hoarding it for yourself. Sustainable systems cannot abide this. All hoarding for individual use is a drag on the system and ends up as waste in some form.
and Advertising (aka mass psychology & beliefs)
Education is preferred. I accept no propaganda as being legit, and advertising is propaganda.
use the tools we already have that helped to cause the problem to fix the problem.
You can’t fix a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it. – Einstein
No need to reinvent the wheel, yet.
Economics and modern society are the reinvention of the wheel. Simplicity is going back to the wheel what brung ya.
My first response to you was dead on.
Hi. Again I ask RC to consider asking Dr Charlie Vernon (The Godfather of Corals) to contribute a specialty article on Climate Change here. Vernon is an excellent public communicator and a cutting edge scientist in his field who is still active despite his retirement several years ago now. He quotes valid science and focuses on the ‘facts’ and then what those facts actually mean for reefs and life in the oceans into the future. He does use the word ‘extinctions’ and does not care that he is regularly labeled as ‘alarmist’ by some sections of the media – the facts are the facts.
Today he was ABC Radio National again. The demise of the Great Barrier Reef
Dr John (Charlie) Veron: Scientist and author, former chief scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. He goes into some details about the recent severe bleaching event of the GBR and the basic science of corals why the GBR and all thew others cannot recover and are doomed long term already.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/is-this-really-the-end-of-the-great-barrier-reef-as-we-know-it/7497180 (look for links to the audio – about first 15 minutes of the whole show)
Vernon will soon launch a ‘Corals of the World’ website that aims to preserve the Great Barrier Reef in digital form. Can you believe that? Because it will no longer exist in physical form. His opinion is all gone by 2050 no matter mitigation occurs, because it is already too late due to lag times from GHG emissions etc. See ‘beta’ site: http://coralsoftheworld.com/
He also mentions the newly approved Adani (Carmichael) Coal Mine in Qld that will produce 3.5 billion tons of CO2 he says. I saw a Greens rep say that if this huge mine was a nation it would be 7th in GHG emissions but have not yet checked that claim. It’s been approved by BOTH major Political parties in Australia despite several court challenges and mooted public and scientific outrage similar to the Tar Sands and Oil pipeline situation in canada/usa.
This new ‘Corals of the World’ website will be launched later in JUne in Hawaii at
Bridging Science to Policy – THE 13TH INTERNATIONAL CORAL REEF SYMPOSIUM (ICRS) https://sgmeet.com/icrs2016/
The Symposium will bring together an anticipated 2,500 coral reef scientists, policy makers and managers from 70 different nations in a forum to present the latest research findings, case histories and management activities, and to discuss the application of scientific knowledge to achieving coral reef sustainability.
Frankly, to me this all boils down to my bulldogging about the Eemian versus your stonewalling about the same. So, in your opinion, am I justified in continuing to ask?
Comment by Alfred Jones — 10 Jun 2016
Do you go by Al or Fred? I’ve been reading your diatribes and broadsides with interest. Waiting for you to say something of substance so I can respond.
Thanks.
> Hank appears to be implying that he think
[falsehood]
> Hank, I intend to make fun of you for your position until you whine
[trolling]
Please stop. I’m bored.
Climate change in the Sunday comics:
http://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge
BPL at 152: Yes, I have been thinking about the “rate of increase” term and wondering if it means different things to different people. I am using it in this sense: CO2 used to rise at a rate of 0.73 ppm per year. then it rose at a rate of 1.6 ppm per year. Then it rose at a rate of 2.1 ppm per year. Now it appears to be rising at a rate of over 3 ppm per year.
In any reasonable basic time frame (year or decade) that a person wants to review, the absolute level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increase. and in the level of increase has grown larger as years have passed.
I am not looking at the rate of increase in this way: EXAMPLE ONLY, FOR ILLUSTRATION ONLY the increase in ppm per decade is 0.5 ppm each decade. So 60’s it was say 0.73, then it rose .5 and in the 70s, the rate of increase was 1.23, then it rose .5 again and in the 80, the rate was 1.73, another decade, another .05 ppm etc…. In that sense, if anyone wants to track the numbers, they might determine if that rate of increase is increasing.
Maybe it would be more clear if I stated the amount of annual increase is increasing?
The bottom line is still the same: the concentration of CO2 is rising in the atmosphere and the level of ocean acidification follows the atmosheric concentration trend to some extent. Rising ocean acidification and global temperature rise related to ghg accumulation in the atmosphere are both bad for a lot of living things on the planet and our species should be concerned about those issues. The most obvious measure of our species’ concern and response to those issues is the co2 saturation in the atmosphere. That measure at MLO:
Daily CO2
June 10, 2016: 405.81 ppm
June 10, 2015: 403.16 ppm (2.65 ppm, a very noisy number, but at a lower level than we have been seeing so far this year. Is this el nino fading? is this stimulated vegetative growth? I don’t know, but I will pose those two as possibilities. And, mainly, I would say, let’s wait and see if June monthly CO2 increase comes in at under annualized rate of 3.0 ppm. That would be an encouraging number given the numbers on heat and CO2 that we have been seeing this year.)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm (3.76 ppm increase)
Cheers,
Mike
BPL; 152: “As long as CO2 is growing, the absolute difference year to year will always increase”
Say, in year 0 it is 400ppm, in year 1: 403ppm, in year: 2 404 ppm. So “CO2 was growing” yet “the absolute difference year to year” did not (dpCO2/dt was 3ppm/yr, then became 1ppm/yr). “Always increase”?
BPL: “but it does not follow from that that the rate is accelerating.”
again, why? Have another hypothetical example: “in year 0 it is 400ppm, in year 1: 401ppm, in year: 2 404 ppm.” (404-401) > (401-400) so mike and I would say: the rate of rise of CO2 has increased from 1ppm per yr to 3 ppm per yr. I think this would be a valid statement.
What you propose is to compute a _specific_ rate of increase (1/yr).
But why would the specific rate would be the only correct rate to use? If I am interested in fluxes and pools of C, and specifically in the mismatch between the emissions (Gt C/yr) supposedly decreasing in 2015, and the rise in pCO2 (which can be converted to Gt C/yr too) at the very least – not slowing down – wouldn’t my absolute rates be more relevant to the problem I was discussing than your specific rates?
Piotr
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/co2-status-report/
It’s hug a climate scientist day (week)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/10/are-you-prepared-and-ready-for-hug-a-climate-scientist-day-week
Mike,
1998 saw a peak in interannual increase due to that El Nino. This year?
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Converting to anomalies using a baseline of 1960 to 1989. Then calculating the first and second derivatives of the series. The trend of the first derivative is 0.0281ppm/year/year. i.e. the slope gets steeper by 0.0281ppm per year each year. This has an R2 of 0.5216. The second derivative (how fast the steepening of the slope is getting) has a slope of 0.0014ppm/yr/yr/yr, and an R2 of 0.0013 – the acceleration is not itself accelerating.
The average interannual increase is around 2.1ppm. The increase this year will probably exceed 3ppm over last year.
Jan to May CO2 anomaly is roughly equal to June to December (the conversion to anomalies removes the seasonal cycle) (scatter plot linear regression slope 1.002, R2=1.000). However years like 1998 can show a deviation from this by up to about 1ppm. That noted, given that this year so far has been around a 72.7ppm anomaly I add this to the baseline average for the year, and this year is likely to be about 403ppm (404ppm – 1ppm for the El Nino).
The monthly figures are exciting for recent months. But isn’t it best to use annual averages?
With regards your quote from Joe Romm, and the subject of sea ice. This year is a very poor indicator of years to come as it follows an extremely warm winter due to the El Nino.
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YZP-fCrs-hY/Vyo0EPQl2tI/AAAAAAAAC7Q/3i4Zy3BNR9of6gSju-WrAZzMmNNXoApYwCLcB/s1600/Sfc%2BTemp.png
The Atlantic and Pacific seas have been very low due to warmth and wind (probably a result of the El Nino). The Beaufort Sea accounts for much of the low extent right now (~25% IIRC) and that is in the state it is in because of the wind not warmth. Preconditioning plays a role (long term decline of sea ice), but so does it everywhere and much of the pack is similar in state to other recent years (e.g. Siberian coast and Central Arctic also the Canadian Arctic Archipelago).
A nice take on “Climate’s changed before”: https://xkcd.com/1693/
wrt the level of CO2 in atmosphere and question of when it might drop, here is an exchange I had with Mike McGee, founder of co2.earth back in March.
I asked: Lots of folks are feeling warm and fuzzy about the recent IEA report that indicates carbon emissions have leveled off for past two years. I think this is not that impressive because these numbers seem very soft to me and only cover the industrial/fuel sector. I read scientists saying that CO2 ppm readings like MLO lag behind carbon emissions. Do you happen to know approximately how long the lag is?
Mike McGee answered: the global carbon project reported a 0.6% increase in annual global carbon emissions in 2014 and they project a slight decline for 2015. At present, it might be the start of carbon emission declines in times of economic growth although longer term projections at, say, climateinteractive.org, suggest that global emissions can be expected to resume in the years and decades ahead. In any case, a critical and tougher milestone is to level off atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (not simply annual global emissions). This happens after global CO2 emissions drop by about 50% (based on something called the airborne fraction of how much CO2 remains in the atmosphere and how much sinks to land and ocean). For more info, google IPCC FAQ 10.3 to get an explanation of what it takes to stabilize atmospheric CO2 in the short term (>50%) and long term (essentially 100% reduction). So, there is a sequencing: emissions need to drop first, and as long as global emission cuts are less than half, atmospheric CO2 will keep rising. I believe the time lag is essentially the time it takes us to cut global CO2 emissions in half (I’ve heard 57% as a more precise figure.) That’s the story for CO2 which is the main GHG. Other GHGs (and aerosols that have a counteracting cooling effect) have their own properties and contribution to net global warming and climate change.
Daily CO2
June 11, 2016: 407.40 ppm
June 11, 2015: 403.22 ppm (noisy number back up at 4.18 ppm increase rate after a couple of days in the 2 range)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
I stick with my earlier projection: We should see June monthly average ppm drop to around 407.0. We should see the year end with a december monthly average reading of 405.2. But let’s give that prediction an additional reduction of 1.5 ppm for loss of El Nino bump, so I think we end the year at abt 403.7 and we post an increase of around 3.5 ppm for 2016. These are not good numbers.
I think I am doing primitive observational science by watching these numbers in much the same way that early astronomers watched the movement of celestial bodies and tried to suss out the basic mechanics of the solar system. It’s not elegant, but it is what I can do with a few tools, some imagination and a lot of curiosity. Thanks to those here who understand my primitive scientist approach.
Mike
NASA GISS has posted for May with the global anomaly +0.93ºC, the first sub+1ºC anomaly since September last year and also below the peak anomaly of the 2007 El Nino (+0.96ºC) – so May 2016 comes in 8th warmest on the record. A comparison of recent anomalies with their 1997/98 equivalent shows no sign of the resurgent temperature rise through the early summer that was seen in 1998.
……….1997/98 … 2015/16
Dec … +0.59ºC … +1.09ºC
Jan … +0.60ºC … +1.12ºC
Feb … +0.88ºC … +1.33ºC
Mar … +0.61ºC … +1.28ºC
Apr … +0.63ºC … +1.09ºC
May … +0.71ºC … +0.93ºC
Jun … +0.77ºC
Jul … +0.70ºC
Aug … +0.67ºC
cr at 163: Yes, annual or decadal comparison are definitely the way to go for evaluating large time scale trends. (large time scale to our species).
But if I only post the annual number, and I only review the annual numbers, this public science project of trying to understand the trends of carbon dioxide accumulation in atmosphere really stretches out and does not have the ability to persuade others to really look at this critical number.
I am pleased to see the various analyses of “rates of increase.” The questions raised are deeper in the math than I need to go for my purposes. My sense of this is that it is pretty simple: more CO2, more heat, more extinctions etc. The solution is also pretty simple, our species has to go on a crash diet to reduce CO2 emissions. I don’t see any signs of a crash diet yet, I think we are tinkering with the diet so to speak.
Record rise of CO2 Study was published in Nature but I can’t access, so I have to read about it at Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/13/carbon-dioxide-levels-in-atmosphere-forecast-to-shatter-milestone
Guardian article says some silly stuff like IPCC quote that we need to draw the line at 450ppm. Dr. Mann said in 2014 that we need to stay under 405, but he does not want to talk about that now that we have blown by 405 ahead of schedule.
Here is something that we should all be thinking about: if we have a baseline CO2 level of 430 ppm plus (maybe a CO2e number in the 510 ppm range?), can you imagine how the next monster El Nino event is going to play out on the planet? It’s easy to predict the next El Nino and the CO2e number in that time frame – say 2035? – and decide, uh-oh, I don’t think I want to be around for that one. That one appears to promise a pretty hot time on the old planet.
The various manners by which we calculate and define the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere are moot to folks who are dying in heat waves. CO2 goes up, heat goes up. Heat goes up, more of us go down. That’s how it appears to me. That’s what we should be talking about in no uncertain terms imho.
Warm regards,
Mike
Piotr 160,
The ambient amount of CO2 in the air, in ppmv, is the basic value of interest. Its first derivative, the growth rate, is its velocity. Its second derivative is the acceleration.
Do a linear regression of CO2 level on elapsed time. If there is a positive and significant upward slope, then the velocity is positive and CO2 is rising. Now do a quadratic regression on the same data. If the coefficient of the time-squared term is positive and significant, the rate is accelerating. (You can also do a partial-F test on that coefficient.) That’s what it means to say the rate of increase is accelerating.
Yes, it certainly is. But I think Mike is using annual figures. If I recall, he cited a prior year value against a current year value. (May 31, 2016 of 407.01 ppm vs May 31, 2015 of 403.44 ppm.) he used the word “daily” there, but this is really an annual average comparison. Think about it. It is the integrated state of affairs at one date minus the integrated state of affairs at a date one year prior. The subtraction of two integral values is inherently an averaged result. It would be different of course if he had compared two adjacent daily values, which is a finite differencing, and then multiplied it by 365. But that’s not what he did.
Or am I missing something?
Mike, please, please, take the time to understand what Chris Reynolds posted for you.
Deniers often post unadjusted, unconsidered raw numbers — CO2 or temperature or sea level — and claim they know what’s happening based on nothing but their eyeballs. Over and over, we try to tell them to do the arithmetic. Assuming you’ve taken Stat101 it’s half an hour’s effort. If you haven’t, all you need is basic arithmetic, no other prerequisites to taking the course.
You know where to find the lessons, right? Tamino’s giving them right now.
(amateur) Video compilation of the radio interview with Dr John (Charlie) Veron, otherwise known as the ‘godfather of coral’.
‘Demise of the Great Barrier Reef’ – The Canary in the Coal Mine – 2016 Bleaching
https://youtu.be/ALM2Cjf6HTY
It appears that a study has been published raising a concern about concentration of warmth in global north as trigger to warming feedback loop that could increase CO2 in atmosphere.
Paper title: Potential carbon emissions dominated by carbon dioxide from thawed permafrost soils
“Increasing temperatures in northern high latitudes are causing permafrost to thaw1, making large amounts of previously frozen organic matter vulnerable to microbial decomposition2. Permafrost thaw also creates a fragmented landscape of drier and wetter soil conditions3, 4 that determine the amount and form (carbon dioxide (CO2), or methane (CH4)) of carbon (C) released to the atmosphere. The rate and form of C release control the magnitude of the permafrost C feedback, so their relative contribution with a warming climate remains unclear5, 6.”
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3054.html
One of the reasons that I am tracking CO2 levels on an almost daily level is that I think we are already seeing a bump in CO2 levels from sources other than the usual anthropogenic sources. The daily levels are quite noisy, but I think the question that Killian asked a couple of months ago is still a primary question: where is all this CO2 coming from?
The answer is from everywhere, from el nino, from fossil fuel burning, from agriculture, from deforestation, from soil drying, from permafrost thawing, on and on. It is very difficult to track each of these sources and calculate the exact impact of each source. It is pretty darn easy to track and monitor the global impact through the MLO numbers.
It makes sense to track CH4 levels, but I am staying busy with CO2, not feeling need to start parsing CH4 levels.
Anybody read and have thoughts about this study?
Cheers,
Mike
We justly criticize deniers for the global warming has stopped arguments. I.e. using too short a time series and often cherry picking start/stop times can produce misleading results. A similar dynamic operates when discussing annual CO2 concentrations. There is a lot of CO2 “noise” in the climate system, so short term annual trends can be misleading when used to estimate emission rates.
Regarding extinctions. This may be the first known case of extinction due to climate change. A slippery slope.
Re: @163
Sorry Chris, I misread things earlier. Mike is reporting monthly averages, I think, and annual figures would be less noisy (though delayed), as you say.
As my penance, I just downloaded and checked the difference between the most recent annual average and the year prior to that. I get a delta-figure of 2.86 ppmv (centered on December 10th.)
#126, 129, 139 near 10 Jun 2016 about climate change ‘induced/caused’ extinctions.
https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2016/06/barrier-reef-rodent-first-mammal-declared-extinct-due-climate-change
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/14/first-case-emerges-of-mammal-species-wiped-out-by-human-induced-climate-change
Sit back for another 3 decades and there will be probably thousands of species going extinct when the coral reefs ecosystems collapse and the downstream tipping points that will trigger across the ocean’s ecosystems.
YW 174,
First known case of a _mammal_ extinct from climate change. AGW has already taken out the Brazilian golden frog, for instance.
Hank, please stop responding to my posts. I will do the same for you. I am listening and speaking with other folks here.
Thanks
Mike
cr at 163 says:
“The average interannual increase is around 2.1ppm. The increase this year will probably exceed 3ppm over last year.”
Mike says: Are you providing an average interannual increase for the entire time frame of 1960 to 1989? If yes, please consider splitting that time frame to decadal as is done here:
https://www.co2.earth/co2-acceleration
this is what that website shows for decadal rates of increase:
2005 – 2014 2.11 ppm per year
1995 – 2004 1.87 ppm per year
1985 – 1994 1.42 ppm per year
1975 – 1984 1.44 ppm per year
1965 – 1974 1.06 ppm per year
1959 – 1964 (6 years only) 0.73 ppm per year
I am inclined to believe you when you say the acceleration is not accelerating.
but it also appears clear that the rate of increase as measured in ppm is increasing because the 3 ppm increase this year that you and I both expect is a larger number than the 2.1 ppm increase, thus, an increase in the rate of increase as measured in ppm, the simple measure that I am using.
Now, at the end of the day, no matter how you parse these numbers, it appears that the concentration of CO2 and CO2e in atmosphere is rising and that is causing us problems that will likely only increase over time. Once we get to this consideration, it is possible to conclude that we really should do something/anything to bring the increase of CO2 and CO2e to a halt, and then continue to do something/anything to allow this number to start dropping toward some “safe” number, maybe that number is 350. I don’t know about that, I just know that as the days and years pass, we are moving away from the climate that we evolved in and into an environment that will drive a lot of species into extinction.
Daily CO2
June 12, 2016: 407.26 ppm
June 12, 2015: 402.46 ppm (back in the 4 ppm plus range)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
A lot of folks here are really good with the number crunching, but I will ask quite directly: what is the top number that we should contemplate for the CO2 and CO2e saturation of the atmosphere? IPCC and others like to talk about 1.5 degrees or 2.0 degrees, but we all know these are soft theoeretical numbers driven by a lot of really hard, real world numbers, like CO2 and CO2e saturation of the environment.
Dr. Mann said in 2014 that we should not go above 405 ppm. I like that number, but we have blown by it. Is it possible for folks here to apply their math skills to calculating the impact of the saturations, the increase in saturation, the impact when the next large, hot El Nino occurs and advise on how that will work for us?
Chris, I think you are projecting an annual ppm for 2016 to be 404.0 (403.0 baseline and 1.0 for EN)
Mike is projecting the following for 2016:
Jun monthly 407.0
Jul 405.3
Aug 404.1
Sep 402.8
Oct 403.1
Nov 403.4
Dec 403.7
If those are close to the monthly averages, then I come up with 2016 annual ppm at 404.6.
If we see numbers that are lower than these, I would be very happy about that. Numbers above these should cause us to ask: where is all this CO2 coming from?
Warm regards
Mike
re: BPL 168
Barton, I am not sure why do you explain to me 1st and 2nd derivative when the question was something else – your telling mike that his absolute rates (in ppmv/yr or ppmv/yr^2) are wrong and your relative (percentage) rates are right:
” You need the percentage increase year over year, not the increase in ppmv.” BPL 152
To which I asked why the rates of absolute increases in CO2 (ppmv/yr, ppmv/yr^2) are wrong, and argued that not only are they valid, but for the problem at hand – reconciling the supposedly decreasing emissions with the at least not slowing down of the increase in atm. CO2 – it is the absolute values that are relevant ^*.
Piotr
—
^* for why I think so – see the post you are answering; Piotr, 160
One traffic stats site suggests “Realclimate.org has received an estimated 77,100 visits over the last 30 days.”
I roughly estimate that there are ~30-50 regular visitors who actually post comments here across a month – which represents only 0.06% of regular visitors who read this site’s articles and/or comments.
Given this I do not assume that a comment made here is necessarily intended or directed at regular posters here, unless so stated.
173: “There is a lot of CO2 “noise” in the climate system, so short term annual trends can be misleading when used to estimate emission rates.” (rising rates/acceleration/the future)
OK fine. Surely that is self-evident. Yet it’s also patently self-evident to me that Mike (who seems to be the target of such comments) is not in fact “estimating emission rates of CO2 ppm” – be it past, present or future.
Mike is not calculating long term CO2 ppm rate acceleration, nor in the short term.
Mike is not making forecasts or projections or predictions about CO2 ppm numbers nor is he predicting the current or future rates of growth in same.
So what is the issue here? Mike should not be using scientific data to emphasize a conflict between energy use figures for CO2 emissions vs credible verifiable scientific data on atmospheric month to month, year over year, and alert visitors to RC where that data is found so they can look at ALL the historical statistics about that for themselves, if they want.
Or Mike should not be making regular heads up reports about the actual scientific recording of CO2 ppm data on RC ………
Seriously, this would be the last thing that pro-agw/cc science proponents could be upset about or spend their time to ‘criticize’. Mike is reporting the facts and the truth of scientific data. And offering up his opinion and take away message about that on a public forum created for that purpose. He is not distorting that ‘factual’ Data nor twisting what it represents and means. I have not seen him do that. That’s what disorientated denialists tend to do, isn’t it?
IF what Mike is doing here is worthy of criticism then it follows that such an opinion/belief would also conclude that ALL the websites that report daily and monthly and yearly figures need to be equally criticized and/or silenced. That seems quite unreasonable to me no matter how confused ‘some people’ are about that ‘data’.
But that’s me. The data that Mike is posting is accurate, meaningful and can be useful to others. Each to their own?
I think it was Rosling of Gapminder who said a few years back that it’s likely that ~4 billion people of the 7 billion on earth have never heard about AGW or CC or GHGs or CO2 issues.
I can imagine a Zimbabwean mother of 4 who makes a tough living from sewing or crafts who last week got her first smart phone after she got connected to a solar power system in her village courtesy of the UN or Bill Gates. That somehow she was told about RealClimate.org and AGW/CC but she had never heard of co2.earth nor the rapid growth in CO2 ppm and it’s accurate monitoring at multiple locations worlwide such as MLO.
No one can predict what that ‘knowledge’ will mean to her, her family, the local village or her nation over the short term once she knows it.
Multiply that mother x 4 billion others who also have been kept in the ‘dark’. Merely a ‘thought experiment’ about the potential power of knowledge, fwiw.
Cutting fossil CO2 emissions cannot immediately be reflected in falling CO2 concentrations. The last time i looked at it, i think i found that to see a statistically significant CO2 concentration drop over next decade, anthro fossil CO2 emission would have to drop between 50 and 60% immediately and remain there. I think my estimate assumed that land+ocean uptake remained the same.
But our hosts surely have calculated this in multiple ways. Perhaps they could comment.
sidd
> would also conclude that ALL the websites that report daily and monthly and yearly
> figures need to be equally criticized and/or silenced.
Nothing wrong with copying figures off the source sites, though pointing to them is preferred.
Second and third hand info tends to come without the information needed to understand it.
What I criticize is claiming the opinion based on eyeballing a picture is a
good basis to tell other people something real is happening about the real world.
Mostly that’s the denier “snowball” congresspeople and their ilk.
Occasionally some enthusiastic young person with his heart in the right place falls into doing the same thing.
Reality is plenty scary. Understanding how we understand data shouldn’t be ignored just because arithmetic is hard. Tamino’s teaching this stuff online right now. Why not learn?
Arithmetic really isn’t that difficult. Statistics 101 is right up there with elementary science courses that rely on statistics to assess data.
When you don’t know what’s happening, telling other people your opinion is — boring.
> the problem at hand – reconciling the supposedly decreasing
> emissions with the at least not slowing down of the increase
Piotr, please tell me you haven’t yet read the MIT “bathtub model” pages?
Because if their explanation isn’t sufficient to answer this question, I sure don’t know what would help you better.
Mike @172
Another contributor to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide is the ocean. As the ocean becomes warmer it can hold less and less carbon dioxide. This is part (all?) of the reason for the projected acceleration in the Keeling curve.
As for your little project monitoring atmospheric CO2 levels, what would be interesting to me is a plot of the measured values on a graph of the projected values — remember I gave you some data for the latter. It would be fascinating to see how the measured and projected values compare as the years pass. In 20 years we should be at 465 ppm or thereabouts, assuming humanity remains addicted to fossil fuel and cannot kick the habit.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3063.html
Nature Climate Change | Commentary
El Niño and a record CO2 rise
Richard A. Betts, Chris D. Jones, Jeff R. Knight, Ralph F. Keeling & John J. Kennedy
Nature Climate Change (2016)
doi:10.1038/nclimate3063
Published online 13 June 2016
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160613130700.htm
Is the rate of increase increasing?
Quite right, Barton, I should have said first mammal extinction. I’m not sure if the Golden Frog (or is it Golden Toad) has been shown to have been made extinct through climate change, do you have a link?
If those are close to the monthly averages, then I come up with 2016 annual ppm at 404.6.
If we see numbers that are lower than these, I would be very happy about that. Numbers above these should cause us to ask: where is all this CO2 coming from?
Warm regards
Mike
Comment by mike — 14 Jun 2016 @
Mike, I like what you’re doing. Let the critics explain it. I think it would make for a great RC post from the experts who run this site. It makes sense that daily CO2 levels would be ‘noisy’ but why are emissions going down and CO2 levels still rising?
Unless and untill the Keeling Curve changes directions I’m not buying the emissions going down story. The only other possible explanation I can see is that the Earth’s systems have taken over and are running the show. That wouldn’t surprise me in the least, given all the other things that are happening.
I also won’t be surprised to see an ice free Arctic very soon. I think we know it’s coming. What then? Surly that would cause another dramatic spike in CO2 levels. Are we there yet?
Piotr,
My point was that Mike’s increasing absolute levels of CO2 do not prove that CO2 growth is accelerating. A linear increase over time would also result in increasing absolute levels of CO2. In fact, so would a whole class of decelerating trends. You need different math to prove acceleration. Period.
#177, Barton–Yes, we (probably) have lost a couple of species due to climate change previously, notably the golden amphibian you mention. But in the interest of pedantic accuracy, let me point out again that that was Costa Rican, not Brazilian, and a toad, not a frog. Confusingly enough, there is also a golden frog, extinct in the wild–but it’s Panamanian.
You probably missed my earlier comment on all that, so here’s the link:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/06/unforced-variations-june-2016/comment-page-3/#comment-655603
In it, I also made some general comments about extinction, and my take on Elizabeth Kolbert’s “Sixth Extinction,” which is here:
http://hubpages.com/literature/Elizabeth-Kolberts-The-Sixth-Extinction-A-Summary-Review
Great (well, I would think so!) for those who would like to pick up a few of the bio/ecological basics, such as the ‘species-area relation’ (used, among other things, to estimate possible extinction rates.)
#188, chuck–
To a considerable degree, Earth’s systems have always ‘run the [CO2} show’ on short time scales. That’s why there’s such a noticeable annual cycle in the Keeling curve.
The amazing things, to me, are 1) how well integrated the Keeling curve is, in the sense that you see less change of rate around ENSO variations than you might think; and 2) how closely balanced natural fluxes must be over the long term, given both the stability seen in the ice core record and the change seen during the anthropocene.
Anyway, Dr. Ralph Keeling, Director of the Mauna Loa Observatory (and son of Charles Keeling, for whom the curve is named) has this to say about the question:
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2016/05/23/why-has-a-drop-in-global-co2-emissions-not-caused-co2-levels-in-the-atmosphere-to-stabilize/
Have sent request off to Mike McGee at CO2.earth to see if he can add an automated widget that gives the kind of annualized number that JK talks about at 175. It seems that some folks want to see the numbers crunched in that manner. That number does not matter for my purposes which have to do with increasing public awareness of the buildup of CO2 and CO2e in the atmosphere. For that purpose, the relatively simple immediate daily average annual comparison, coupled with the past monthly average annual comparison, linked to the website that breaks down the entire record of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is sufficient.
Daily CO2
June 13, 2016: 407.36 ppm
June 13, 2015: 402.58 ppm (in the 4 plus range, the daily average number needs to keep falling to hit the 407.0 that I expect to be the June 2016 monthly average)
May CO2
May 2016: 407.70 ppm
May 2015: 403.94 ppm
I am off to eastern OR for a few days of hiking and camping in the wild.
Play nice,
Mike
Chuck Hughes, please tell me you have not yet read or understood the MIT/Stearman “bathtub model” — because if that doesn’t answser you r question, I’m at a loss how to explain it.
You’re not unusual in not understanding this, mind you. Graduate students in science studied have the same misconception about how the world works.
But it’s really not all that hard if you read through the description, look at the pictures, maybe run the interactive modeler online.
You know how to find this stuff. Please, work through it and come back.
I think you’ll get it.
Mike has written above, at different times
and later
Sorry, Mike. While you make claims based on eyeballing pictures, I’ll comment.
While you make up straw men to attack from my comments, I’ll comment.
When Gavin or one of the other contributors here says we’re off track, I’ll stop.
As long as they think the conversation here is educating people, they leave us free to keep talking.
I’d love to see you respond to my comments — about how to detect trends statistically.
You can learn this stuff. You can be a good example by learning the basics on detecting trends.
Try Robert Grumbine’s workbook if you aren’t up to taking Tamino’s on line course.
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/01/results-on-deciding-trends.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36521068
Tamino has a new post on the rate of increase of CO2 and CH4. And the news ain’t good.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/global-warning/
The conclusion is abundantly clear: that what we need to do — slow, and eventually halt, the increase of greenhouse gases — isn’t being done. The situation isn’t getting better, it’s getting worse.
As dangerous as is our own dumping greenhouse gases in the air, there’s an even greater danger. We’ve already warmed the Earth substantially, and it continues to get hotter. When it does, stores of Carbon naturally locked safely away in places like the ocean and the soil can be released, to increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere even if we stop burning fossil fuels.
tamino has a post that covers some climate stuff today including CO2 concentrations.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/global-warning/#more-8625
from that: “The necessary solution is clear, and has been all along: slow, and eventually halt, the increase of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. We know their concentration is still increasing, but at what rate? Is the rate of rise at least slowing?
Unfortunately, no. It’s speeding up…
When we were warned in 1986, CO2 concentration was about 347.5 ppm (parts per million), but now it’s about 404.5 ppm. The 1986 value was already 25% higher than the pre-industrial level, today’s value is 45% higher.
It’s a bit of a surprise how well the increase matches a system where the rate of increase is rising steadily. That would imply that the concentration is a quadratic function of time…
that means that the rate at which CO2 is increasing has been steadily getting faster. A direct measure of the rate of increase (by a sophisticated method, but simple ways paint essentially the same picture) also suggests a steady increase in the rate at which CO2 is rising..
In 1960 CO2 was only going up by less than 1 ppm/year, but now it’s increasing by more than 2 ppm/year. And, alas, it shows no sign of slowing down — just going faster and faster”
after that Tamino moves on to methane. Can others read this post at Tamino and give an opinion as to what it means wrt to my CO2 project that has created so much resistance here? It’s pretty dense material and I am just a poor country boy trying to understand the nature and direction of the universe. I am easily confused.
Warm regards
Mike
Barton,189: “My point was that Mike’s increasing absolute levels of CO2 do not prove that CO2 growth is accelerating. A linear increase over time would also result in increasing absolute levels of CO2”
Except that Mike here didn’t use the “increasing absolute levels of CO2″, but increasing rate of _increase_ in absolute levels of CO2” – see for example his post 95, where he compares the increases in pCO2 from several decades.
Do you say that when he wrote in his post 95 that:
in 2005–2014 the increase in CO2 was avg. 2.11 ppm per year,
in 1995 – 2004 was 1.87 ppm per year and
in 1985 – 1994 was 1.42 ppm per year
– then he didn’t prove his statement made in post 90 that “the rate of [CO2] increase is rising” ??
Hank: “Piotr, please tell me you haven’t yet read the MIT “bathtub model” pages?”
I have looked briefly at the website – unless I missed something – it answers question I didn’t ask (“why CO2 increases if emissions stabilize”) and doesn’t deal with the question I did ask (if the emissions indeed fell, why rate of _increase_ in CO2 didn’t fall too).