A week is a long time in politics climate science: Nonsense debunked in WaPo, begininngs of recovery in the ozone hole, revisiting the instrumental record constraints on climate sensitivity…
Lots of lessons there.
Usual rules apply.
Climate science from climate scientists...
@Steve #39,
Good question. I see your confusion. And you are right, It doesn’t add up because you are mixing net numbers with gross numbers. The best analogy I can give you is this:
Lets say a you have a giant swimming pool. You start to fill it with a hose that has a rate of flow of 10 gallons per hour. But the pool has a drain too. And the maintenance man forgot to close the drain before he started filling the pool. So it is draining at 9 gallons per hour. The flow into the pool is 10 GPH. The flow out of the pool is 9 GPH, So the flux is 1 GPH. It takes a while, but eventually the swimming pool does start to fill. The is described as an increasing stock of water in the pool. However, the deeper water gets, the higher the pressure at depth. So the drain gradually starts flowing faster and faster until it equals 10 GPH, the same as the hose. 10 in 10 out = 0 flux. At that point the system is stable, so this pressure increase at depth effecting the drain is called a stabilizing feedback. Lets suppose the maintenance man notices how slow the pool is to fill up, but doesn’t notice the drain is open. He might turn up the pump to the pool, increasing the hose flow rate to 15GPH. When that doesn’t work he increases it again to 20 GPH. He keeps doing this over and over, but still the pool wont fill completely up. It only reaches the new higher stable level then stops. This can be seen as an amplifying feedback.
So how does this simplified analogy relate to what we were discussing with soils? The flow of carbon into vegetation is extremely large, but the flow back into the atmosphere from respiration as that stored energy gets used either by the plant, or by whatever eats/rots the plant is almost equally as large. This carbon is called labile carbon, because it cycles in and out so quickly. However, under certain various conditions, a % of that carbon doesn’t return to the atmosphere quickly. It gets locked by various means in the soil, or the ocean floor, or in permafrost or limestone etc…. This carbon is called stable carbon because it stays there long term without returning to the air.
So the biosphere has many flows both in and out, and many feedbacks both amplifying and stabilizing, and the net sum of it all is the flux to the atmosphere. Since it is so complex it is difficult to deal with, researchers often take a single slice and describe it in these terms as a stocks and flow problem. So sometimes you might see ocean fluxes alone, or soil fluxes alone. In these cases the “pool”/stocks might be considered the soil or the ocean, instead of the pool being the atmosphere. But add up all these slices and you get back to the main flux to the atmospheric pool….the net flux… Because that is what is causing AGW, that atmospheric pool of carbon is rising dramatically.
For a long time climate scientists discounted/minimized the potential of agriculture to mitigate AGW because it was thought that almost all biomass was labile carbon. It was thought that adding vegetative uptake would quickly be followed by decay, for a net flux far too small to effect atmospheric stocks for long. They even developed a mathematical model, the Roth C model, to mathematically predict the movement of carbon in and out of soils, based on this mostly labile carbon and its decay and return to the atmosphere.
But then in 1996 a soil scientist from the USDA discovered a molecule very common in soils that bypasses the Roth C labile carbon pathways. Glomalin is both stable itself, and when it finally does decay most of that carbon binds tightly to the soil mineral substrate. Further investigation found it is produced by symbiotic fungi in the root zone called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), not the saprophytic fungi involved with decay. It is a different molecular pathway than the labile carbon described by the Roth C model. We now call this the Liquid carbon pathway, because it starts with plant liquid saps being fed directly to AMF. I never becomes part of the plant’s measured biomass. Even further investigation found that under the right conditions 30% – 40% or more of the total products of photosynthesis of certain plants colonized by AMF are sent on the liquid carbon pathway. This opens up the possibility that agricultural systems can be managed to optimize this effect and rapidly store large quantities of carbon long term in the soil.Or to use the analogy above, we found another hose and it is HUGE! We just need to turn on the pump and start pumping carbon into the soil.
Mike: I think it is a shame that we waste so much time on a foolish idea like a war on terror
AJ: Oh come on! In 2014 USA, terrorists were 3.6% as dangerous as bathtubs. We MUST spend every possible penny increasing terrorism. A million dollars spent recruiting ten terrorists by killing one ignorant slob is a fortune well burned… It’s not like anti-slip bath decals are sexy or profitable. (and don’t forget to worship those who suck down tax dollars doing the “job” of destroying our safety. ALL Republicans LOVE big government and want to drastically increase its size, as long as the government is limited to killing and caging non-white people.)
Ramp up the war to create terrorism. Plus, by ignoring AGW, we can multiply our efforts. Climate refugees make grand terrorist recruits. Kill some at a million dollars a head and there will be plenty left to hate us. We CAN increase the toll to bathtub levels! Who cares if it destroys the planet in the process?
Alfred,
It’s a moot point, though, since humans are not about to go extinct tomorrow. However, if we do move to 100% renewable energy, then aerosols will gradually decrease and eventually that will add a significant amount of warming (NASA have estimated that aerosols mask half the warming, so I guess we should expect more than 1C of extra warming, eventually). But it’s not going to happen overnight.
Michael Mann, though, once calculated that CO2 (as distinct from CO2e) concentration cannot exceed 405 ppm for us to have a chance of limiting warming to less than 2C. As it’s been above 405 for several months, I guess we must be close to missing the limit agreed in Paris. Mann thought it would take 3 years (i.e. end of 2018) to reach 405 ppm. I wonder how he views things now.
Alfred Jones
“NOT continuing solar radiation management would be immediately catastrophic” . Yes, indeed, it’s about time we did something about the distance this planet travels from the sun. We need to take real action on climate change.
Ignorant Pontificator (i.e., me, BPL): Well, not weeks. The annual global average only goes up about 0.2 K per decade.
AJ: And just when I thought you couldn’t say anything dumber. Do you even know what aerosols are?
BPL: Why, yes, Al, I include them in the radiative-convective models of planetary atmospheres I write.
And just when I thought you couldn’t say anything dumber:
AJ: Please start breathing more than twice a day. It might get those neurons to fire. On the other hand, your streak of being wrong 19,927 times in a row is nothing to be sneezed at!
BPL: Are you getting any kind of treatment or counseling?
Nemesis @34.
Indeed. As a Brit, I have to google Washington Times to learn that it is possibly doing God’s work rather than reporting the news. But even so, is it proper for such a rag to resort to quoting from a crappy little UK-based deny-o-blog? Just to demonstrate how far off into La-la-land such a quote is, the deny-o-blog in question “Greenie Watch” (if you want a good laugh at it see it here.), its strap-line displays the CRU bar graph of HadCRUT4 but only up to 2010 (perhaps mimicking the strap-line of the UK’s Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy who also show a graph of global temperature on the strap-line). Mind, the swivel-eyed loons who run “Greenie Watch” are far too ‘off with the fairies’ to be worried by any dramatic rise in global temperature that would be shown by any AGW. They describe the content of the CRU graphic thus:-
and for good measure reinforce this worldview in the blog’s side-bar that kicks off by stating (presumably the same author)
The author of this second quote is one ‘John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia’ who gave up on ranting at Social Science “because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners.” He now concentrates on ranting at Climatology and ‘health-related science’ (in the form of what is or isn’t a healthy diet) because he was surprised to find within there “the same impermeability to facts and logic.” This is an interesting thought. Unlike this Dr Ray, most folk deep in denial never have the first inkling that they are themselves impermeable to facts and logic.
@ #34 (Nemesis)
If these quotes are taken in the right context, I think he’s miscommunicating the many uses of climate models (outside of projecting the impacts of anthropogenic climate change).
Data assimilative methods help us start the ocean from a more realistic mean state, over a much more continuous grid than would be developed through pure observations. E.g., this helps us make better operational seasonal-decadal forecasts.
Newer perturbed initial conditions single model ensembles (CESM-LE, GFDL) allow us to study the long-term interplay between anth. climate change and internal climate variability.
Otherwise, there are plenty of ways to use climate models outside of the CMIP greenhouse gas emissions scenarios to glean knowledge about the Earth system, test hypotheses, etc.
I think it’s silly to say that, because we are likely observing the impacts of climate change today, we should shut down all our state-of-the-art models and studies utilizing them. This implies that the climate scientist’s job was only to detect AGW, prove its existence, and then move on?
Another quote from the article : “What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we’ve spent years developing increasingly are unnecessary because we can see climate change, the impacts of climate change, now…”
Perhaps the quote was lifted in the wrong manner and he meant that we don’t need models to *prove* AGW anymore, and need to start taking action?
#39, Steve Fish–
Hi, Steve. No, I don’t claim much insight on carbon cycle, and in fact I would say that I’ve found much of the discussion between you and Scott somewhat confusing so far. (Characteristically, that hasn’t stopped me from weighing in from time to time, as you have noticed. It’s a character flaw on my part, I suspect.)
Anyway, I do have one comment, which is that I have not heard that “…50% of anthropogenic C02 goes into the oceans and the rest remains in the atmosphere to increase global warming gasses.” The version I’ve repeatedly gotten on that is that the total natural uptake of anthro emissions is ~50%. That’s partitioned between terrestrial and marine sinks, of course. For example, this ORNL diagram:
https://public.ornl.gov/site/gallery/originals/BioComponents_Carbon.jpg
As you can see, that splits it out like this:
Anthro flux: 9 GtC/yr
Terrestrial uptake (anthro component): 3 GtC/yr
Marine uptake (anthro component): 2 GtC/yr
Net atmospheric increase: 4 GtC/yr
So that would be land plants taking up ~33% of human carbon–not that far off the 25%-30% you mention. (I’m also ignoring the issue of C versus CO2 here, presuming it’s not significant in this context.) Similarly, the 5/9 total absorbed carbon equates to 55% of the anthro flux, which is in good agreement with what I’ve read elsewhere, and is close to the 50% you mention.
I’d enthusiastically second your suggestion of an RC article on the topic.
#40–Scott, yes of course. Fertilizers are usually ‘spec’ed in terms of “N-P-K” numbers, where the “N” of course stands for “Nitrogen”–and even gardeners as inept as I have been aware of that for many decades now.
However, the specific demonstrations that 1) nitrogen is a primary limiting nutrient in response to CO2 fertilization, and that 2) by incorporating data on mycorrhizae and soil nitrogen one can better model plant responses are apparently new.
You seem to be saying that, in your opinion, phosphorus is more of a limit than nitrogen. That looks like a straight disagreement with the story I linked. But I’d note that you seem to be coming at the question from the point of view of cultivation when you say “trivially easy.” The modelers, on the other hand, need to be able to deal with *uncultivated* flora, too. So maybe it’s not so much a contradiction as a contextual difference.
#44, Ed–Done, thanks. It can’t hurt (other than adding a tad more ‘environmentalist spam’ to my inbox.)
Re: Comment by Scott Strough — 4 Jul 2016 @ 9:48 PM, ~#40
You say: “You might ask how huge? More than all the fossil fuel emissions!”
Please provide a reliable reference for this statement. Steve
Some good news on CO2 sats:
Daily CO2
July 5, 2016: 405.40 ppm
July 5, 2015: 402.43 ppm (2.96 ppm increase in noisy daily number)
June CO2
June 2016: 406.81 ppm
June 2015: 402.80 ppm (4.01 ppm increase in slightly less noisy number)
The June monthly is .19 under my projection of 407.0 I am encouraged by the slightly lower number. It may be that the EN falloff of 1.5 ppm that I expect happens more quickly than I have guessed and factored in to my monthly average projections. Anyway I look at it, I like to see a number that comes in under my projection rather than over because I have a significant interest in trying to tease out indications that significant new sources of CO2 have come on line or that existing carbon sinks are no longer functioning as they did under previous conditions.
Similarly, the very noisy daily average number is under 3 ppm and that’s so much more appealing than a number of 4 ppm and above.
On the other hand, the June average at 4.01 ppm is a terrible number. Maybe we will see that differential close over the balance of the year and bring us back into the merely awful range of CO2 increase of around 3.0 ppm. It would be disastrous to achieve a plateau with annual increase of 3 ppm, but it would be even worse to see the annual increase trend keep rising as it has been doing pretty consistently in the time frame of records (1958 forward).
Mike
@
Chris Reynolds: 4 Jul 2016 at 3:31 PM
Hi Mr. Reynolds
Yes, I do look at the CET, daily, monthly, seasonal and annual data, (btw, it is that on my personal urging the Met Office has change their method of the CET annual calculations since 01/01/2015)
When I find something of interest in the data as in the case you refereed
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET2015.gif
I tend to put it on line here or elsewhere, usually accompanied by a short comment, which may or may not agree with established view. I’m somewhat surprised that you would readjust your views on basis of a single article (written nearly 10 years ago), which I found less than convincing.
MR at 53 says: Michael Mann, though, once calculated that CO2 (as distinct from CO2e) concentration cannot exceed 405 ppm for us to have a chance of limiting warming to less than 2C. As it’s been above 405 for several months, I guess we must be close to missing the limit agreed in Paris. Mann thought it would take 3 years (i.e. end of 2018) to reach 405 ppm. I wonder how he views things now.
Dr. Mann position in March 2016:
Michael Mann, an atmospheric science professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, who is unaffiliated with NOAA, said the carbon dioxide milestone shouldn’t be over-interpreted.
“This spike is almost certainly due in substantial part to the ongoing El Niño event, which is a fleeting effect that increases carbon dioxide concentrations temporarily,” Mann said. “Carbon dioxide concentrations are a lagging indicator, and they don’t accurately reflect recent trends in the more important variable — our actual carbon emissions.”
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/unprecedented-spike-co2-levels-2015-20125
I subscribed to Mann tweet line and asked him to reconcile these two positions and he blocked me. Maybe you will have better luck asking Dr. Mann to explain why he walked back the 405 ppm number warning from 2014. Give it a try. I am sincerely curious about why Dr. Mann abandoned the 2014 405 limit once we hit that magic number.
on separate thread under discussion: I think it is clear that we will see increased global warming from loss of aerosols as we transition to “cleaner” energy sources. I think it is also clear that we cannot really stand more heat on the planet if we hope to slow the large processes of sea ice loss, sea level rise and increase of CO2e from warmed natural sources. This loss-of-aerosol heating rebound situation will almost certainly trigger some poorly thought-out geoengineering solutions to replace the cooling effect of the fossil fuel aerosols as countries like India work to reduce the impact of killer heatwaves.
We have painted ourselves into a tight corner with the amount of CO2 we have released from natural sequestration of fossil fuel deposits. There are things we could do, but I think that starts with a global crash diet to give up fossil fuels and I think we are in the prisoner’s dilemma on that one.
We should nonetheless remain hopeful and take comfort in the fact that our species does have some impulses toward abstract values like justice and compassion. It is a beautiful and mysterious thing that any protoplasm beings can have these impulses.
Cheers,
Mike
https://robertscribbler.com/:
“average carbon dioxide levels measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory saw record rates of rise for the month. According to NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory, June of 2016 saw average carbon dioxide levels that were 4.01 parts per million higher than June of 2015. That’s a huge jump in the atmospheric concentration of a greenhouse gas that rose by about 1 part per million every year during the 1960s and during recent years has risen by an average of about 2 parts per million.
NASA CO2
(NASA graphic provides a stark paleoclimate contrast to the human carbon dioxide spike. The current rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 levels is faster than at any time in the last 60 million years and, possibly, faster than for any period in which life occupied planet Earth. Image source: NASA.)
Last year saw a record annual rate of atmospheric CO2 increase of around 3.05 parts per million. But the first six months of 2016 have so far greatly outstripped even 2015’s nasty rise — currently tracking 3.59 parts per million above the first six months of the previous year.
I am not sure these folks have really shown their work, but the numbers and conclusions look right to me.
Read’m and weep.
Mike
Carbon dioxide: no longer a long-lived gas?
It is said that under ‘ordinary conditions’ carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries. As Skeptical Science explained, individual carbon dioxide molecules have a short life time of around 5 years in the atmosphere as they are absorbed by oceans and vegetation but similar molecules are released. The balance between the two gives a time scale for CO2 warming potential out as far as 500 years.
In IPCC AR5 this has changed. Faced with the difficulty of controlling world carbon dioxide emissions a new plan has emerged. This is to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The IPCC’s report on mitigation assumes the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere can be reduced by removing CO2 from the atmosphere – Matching emissions with extractions can reduce the CO2’s atmospheric lifetime to zero. (e.g. Your car emits CO2 into the atmosphere and BECCS takes it out – lifetime zero)
So, “Is carbon-dioxide now a short-lived gas?
“the models used vary in what they include, and some feedbacks are absent as the understanding and modeling of these is not yet advanced enough to include.”
AJ: That’s a bit like a fireman telling somebody to just go into the kitchen to cook dinner in their burning house because we know how much heat the oven is putting out, and since we don’t know the BTU output of a raging house fire, we’ll just pretend it’s zero. It’s like all climate scientists have totally forgotten what error bars are for! Assigning values which you know are wrong (zero) to, not merely scientific stuff, but critical policy issues is immoral. (i.e., if the house were abandoned and unwanted, then ignoring the fire’s heat until you can better quantify it is fine. Sending someone into a burning house is negligent homicide.)
————
Karen Street: I do now remember reading that inertia over the next decade in warming would be compensated for by CO2 and CH4 and etc leaving the atmosphere
AJ: Thanks for bringing up this interesting topic. We’re emitting about 5-6ppm per year. Though the Rule of Thumb says 50-55% of emissions are removed, there is no actual link between emissions and removal. Removal is about weather and relative concentrations between the sinks. So, before taking other effects into consideration, CO2 would start dropping by perhaps 3ppm/yr, with the rate of reduction lessening over time. That’s why it *might* be possible for us to get back to 350ppm even without anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 removal. Of course, we’re talking decades and lots of luck with regard to how natural systems will react.
But without aerosols, temperatures in the northern hemisphere spike, which almost assuredly finishes off the Arctic Sea Ice, bringing even more warming. Microbial activity in the arctic increases, releasing CH4 and CO2. Fires in boreal (and other) forests spike and the Amazon suffers greatly. The fires spread soot, which drops albedo, further increasing temperatures, especially over the remaining ice. More melting. At least the fires replace the aerosols until the next rain. Fertilizer applications and irrigation stop so net planetary productivity declines, but plowing stops so soil emissions decline. We’ve taken over the whole biosphere. Removing us changes everything on every level. Does net CO2 go up, down, or massively spike? Folks who blithely say GHGs will coast downwards aren’t thinking about systems.
To sum it up, in my opinion you nailed it. A few weeks for the aerosols to wash out, spiking temperatures over land and especially over polluted areas, a decade for the rest of the lion’s share of the results to evolve, (Ocean surface thermal inertia is at that scale, but how long does it take to burn entire forests when there’s no firefighting involved? 90% of wildfires are anthropogenic, but surely at least that many are put out by us as well. And our forests aren’t natural anymore. Instead of perhaps 40 2′ diameter trees per acre, we have 250 5″ trees. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3080972/ns/weather/t/wildfires-nature-taking-its-course/#.V3-HcSMrLeA Guess which burns better?) What happens to thermohaline circulation when soot-covered Greenland sheds massive quantities of fresh water?)
———
Geoff: Apart from McDougall et.al. considering permafrost emissions, has anyone?
AJ: Ice has a large thermal mass. The average annual difference in temperature between now and 1880 is small. Permafrost melts slowly. (In fact, most current permafrost melt is caused by the difference between the last ice age and preindustrial..) And remember, every inch that melts represents another inch of insulation for the remaining permafrost. Thus, permafrost melt DECELERATES as opposed to accelerates.
Now, melt does not equal degraded by bacteria into methane. What we are seeing with bubbling lakes and whatnot is largely an increase in the bacterial growth season as opposed to significant melt. The bacteria are just grazing the active layer during the summer. Seriously, given a 3C temperature difference (preindustrial to present) and 100 feet of insulating soil, just how fast do you think that 101st foot will melt? (Though water migration can throw a wrench. And permafrost melts from the bottom too via geothermal heat. Stuff is always more complicated…)
From Wiki on Prudhoe Bay:
Time (yr) Permafrost depth
1 4.44 m (14.6 ft)
350 79.9 m (262 ft)
3,500 219.3 m (719 ft)
35,000 461.4 m (1,514 ft)
100,000 567.8 m (1,863 ft)
225,000 626.5 m (2,055 ft)
775,000 687.7 m (2,256 ft)
“Calculations indicate that the time required to form the deep permafrost underlying Prudhoe Bay, Alaska was over a half-million years.”
So yes, over thousands and hundreds of thousands of years permafrost can melt. Our issue is not permafrost melt so much as active layer expansion and degradation*, and that is largely self-limiting, especially when one considers the offsetting biomass increase due to longer plant-growing seasons.
*When there’s 10′ of active layer and 4000′ of permafrost, then 10′ of melt represents a 100% increase in active layer but a mere 0.25% permafrost loss. Since all those scary “carbon in permafrost” numbers are based on the 4000′, the reality is obviously way different than the fear-mongering.
Btw, has anybody taken the biggest elephant of all in the room into account?
https://i1.wp.com/meetinggroundonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/wolrd_military_spending_barchart_large.png
” Backdraft from the U.S. Military Budget
… Exact figures are impossible to come by since the carbon emissions of the military are exempt from international reporting due to strong-arming by the US delegation to the Kyoto Convention on Climate Change in 1997 and, later, by an executive order issued by the duplicitous Obama. However, the Pentagon did state that in 2013 it used 90,000,000 barrels of crude oil, which was 80% of the federal government’s total consumption. However, this figure does not include the oil used by its many contractors overseas or by the “defense industry” domestically. Nor does it account for carbon pollution from the acts of war, such as fires from bombings. Researcher Barry Sanders, author of “The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism,” describes the Pentagon’s contribution to carbon pollution as “the worst BP oil spill every day.” …
There can be no economic justice in an economy that is fundamentally unjust, and there can be no effective response to Climate Change without discarding that economy and dismantling the war machine that supports it.
Lisa Savage, a Code Pink coordinator, elaborated on the 2013 Pentagon carbon contribution that Sonnenblume quotes, saying that if the 90 million barrels of crude oil used that year burned as jet fuel would produce more than 38 million metric tons of CO2, not including the carbon from thousands of bombs and resulting fires. She writes that:
Corporate media reports on alarming climate change never mention the Pentagon. Newspapers and television stations run puff pieces on air shows like the Navy’s Blue Angels without noting that the jets from a typical show generate about 300,000 pounds of CO2 into the air. A photographer at the Great Maine Air Show in 2012 captured a runway covered with a wall of flames that organizers said was a “simulated bombing.” Carbon generated by burning napalm for entertainment? Unknown.
But air shows, halftime shows and other displays produce just a bit of the Pentagon’s carbon footprint. With thousands of military bases, fleets of aircraft, trucks and transport ships, legions of contractors and a seemingly endless supply of weapons the Pentagon spews carbon 24/7. And don’t forget the carbon load for cooling the warehouses filled with surveillance equipment used by the Pentagon’s National Security Administration (NSA)…”
http://meetinggroundonline.org/backdraft-of-the-u-s-military-budget/
Do you see the elephant in the room ?! It’s an ugly and huge elephant, protecting the system of doom from any grand scale change regarded to CO2 emissions reduction. No, you can’t have the cake and eat it at the very same time- unless you like to die of suffocation. That simple.
EVERYBODY should eat that, because it’s the MAIN KEY, the ESSENCE of it all:
” There can be no economic justice in an economy that is fundamentally unjust, and there can be no effective response to Climate Change without discarding that economy and dismantling the war machine that supports it.”
http://meetinggroundonline.org/backdraft-of-the-u-s-military-budget/
someone might want to take on tracking global forest fire extent and impact the way I have committed a bit of time to monitoring and trying to understand the CO2 sats.
Robert Scribbler has piece on global forest fires in wake of the Fort McMoney fire. It would be interesting to have a regular overview on the annual state of forest fires globally – number of acres burned, estimates of CO2 emission loads, maybe a distinction between slash and burn or industrial forestry burns and “natural” forest fire trends – fires like the ones currently burning in Siberia versus the large slash and burn fires in Indonesia.
Another thing that is not getting enough scientific scrutiny is the impact on oceans from absorbing 93% of the heat that we have created. The impact does not have to rise to the level of canfield oceans to have significant impact on ocean ecology. I think we see some signs of the ocean heating with reports of unusual sightings of aquatic life in the oceans north of their normal range. I also wonder how the really large and really small critters are doing with warmer oceans? How do whales, dolphins do in warmer oceans? What about phytoplankton, algae, krill etc – all the small stuff. We know that crustaceans lose their crustiness in acidified oceans and the crusties don’t enjoy that process, but what about other species and warmer oceans?
Been hot around the USA! Been nice and cool in the PNW for a couple of weeks. We are enjoying marine flow with the gentle rain that falls for days here. Need to replace windshield wipers sometime soon.
Cheers
Mike
RE: Nemesis 67
Thanks for that. However, your comment only begins to deal with the elephant. Industrial militarism is based on “fuels of war.” These “fuels” are based on explosives and their “delivery systems,” which are based on the same explosive materials/matter: uranium and fossil carbon. Mechanized man seems to have designed an “energy system” based primarily on explosive materials. A civilization which does not understand the difference between Matter (from underground) and Energy thereby promotes disease, corruption and a temporary existence.
Current global annual fossil subsidies: approx. $0.5 trillion. Militarism: $2 trillion. Value of stable climate: priceless. Perhaps we’ve cooked ourselves already via the production of a couple trillion tons of carbonic acid gas. The atomic phrase “meltdown” comes to mind, in many manifestations.
39 Colin Rust: “efficient altruism point of view on climate change” Roger that. I had a “lung attack” a couple of weeks ago after a really bad 4 months of pollen. The pollen season resulted in water in my lungs. The water is gone, but it may be some time before my lungs are back to normal. It is about as bad as a mild heart attack. I am slowed down a lot and not able to do all of my normal activities. My lung doctor says lung attacks lead to heart attacks if not cured.
68: Mike. I’ve been interested abut the same things, how the marine life is holding up. Came across an article lately in science daily re: studies done on molluscs specifically mussels and how the decrese in marine ph is effecting the ‘beards’ that hold the mussels on to tidal rocks. The bristles are getting thinner and weaker by 20-25% due to the relatively modest to date decrease in ph from 8.0 to 7.4-7.6. Since the mussels cannot hold onto the rocks with the same force they fall off into deeper calmer water and are eaten by whatever is up the food chain. You would also be aware of the thinning shells of zoo plankton and other larger shrimps. Cheers.
67: Nemesis. er..just how many biggest elephants can there be in the same room? I thought our obscenely high global population was the biggest elephant in the room…please correct me if I’m wrong.
New paper Climate-driven regime shift of a temperate marine ecosystem
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6295/169
2011 marine heatwave key trigger for kelp loss
Dr Bennett said the catalyst for the death of the kelp forests was a marine heatwave in 2011 that caused the primary loss of the forests followed by above-average ocean temperatures in 2012 and 2013 “that compounded the effects”.
In December 2010, immediately before the extreme marine heatwave, kelp forests covered more than 70 per cent of shallow rocky reefs in mid-Western Australia between Geraldton and Kalbarri, 400-600 kilometres north of Perth.
Dr Bennett said by early 2013 their surveys showed the dense kelp forests in this area had disappeared representing a roughly 100-kilometre range contraction and effective extinction from 370 square kilometres of reef.
Across the entire surveyed area about 960 square kilometres of kelp forest had been lost.
Dr Bennett said the research team initially thought it had made an error when it dived the reefs off Kalbarri.
“We jumped into these waters at sites we’ve been going to for the past 10 years expecting to see large kelp forests and it was just a desert, it was barren,” he said.
More http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-08/kelp-forests-of-the-sea-in-wa-slashed-by-marine-heatwave/7577934
63 mike says:
“I subscribed to Mann tweet line and asked him to reconcile these two positions and he blocked me.”
That’s ridiculously over-sensitive imo. Given he was/is a key member or the RC team, one would hope his mates would drop him a line and ask him to reply here…?
So MM says : “This spike is almost certainly due in substantial part to the ongoing El Niño event, which is a fleeting effect that increases carbon dioxide concentrations temporarily,” Mann said.
OK, so is MM saying that a “fleeting, short term, spike” in *El Nino* can cause CO2 to go nuts, 4pts above a 3pt rise from last year, almost instantaneously this year …. I’m asking the question here, is this what he means?
Because then he says, in almost the same breath: “Carbon dioxide concentrations are A LAGGING INDICATOR, and they don’t accurately reflect RECENT TRENDS in the more important variable — our ACTUAL carbon emissions.”
OK, so if that is so from where did all the recent (make that 18 months PLUS) SPIKE IN CO2 ppm concentrations come from then?
Is it a LAGGING INDICATOR from years gone by accumulating, and if not, why didn’t the 1998 El Nino make the CO2 spike by 3-4ppm that year – it went for longer than this year’s El Nino.
Like footy referees, all I am asking for is some consistency here. Because it is these kinds of “confusing contradictory messages” from various scientists and the ipcc that left themselves open to ‘attacks’ by nutters in the first place, and created most of the confusion in the public’s minds about AGW/CC as a result.
PLUS avoiding answering questions openly and repeatedly, EVEN WHEN the problem is that others do not understand for 1000 different reasons … but if climate scientists can’t answer straight questions about what they themselves have said then WHO DOES ONE ASK ?????
WUWT? Judith Curry? Jo Nova? Lord Monkton? There is a reason WHY “average people” end up there and believe them. It isn’t very smart, but it does happen.
I’d love to hear a straight answer from MM about this, and I;d a love an explanation from another 10 climate scientists about the massive leap in CO2 now, not wait until 2020-2025 when it’s too late.
And I do not care if there answer is not perfect either. An expert OPINION from the experts using maths and their knowledge would be a 1000 times better than the SILENCE ….
Mike, I pasted your question into Google for you.
Picking just one from the first page of results (you might look beyond this)
http://costofcarbon.org/files/Flammable_Planet__Wildfires_and_Social_Cost_of_Carbon.pdf
Daily CO2
July 8, 2016: 405.64 ppm
July 8, 2015: 401.07 ppm (4.57 ppm increase in very noisy number)
June CO2
June 2016: 406.81 ppm
June 2015: 402.80 ppm (4.01 ppm increase in slightly less noisy number)
Ugly numbers to my eyeballs.
Mike
@58 Kevin McKinney,
Yes Kevin, I am approaching this from the cultivated farm/ranch POV. This is because agricultural land is already managed by humans. We control whether the biome will be a net sequester of carbon (sink) or a net emissions source, according to the skill and knowledge of the land manager. A wild biome is largely self adjusting and self managed. We have limited control over whether it is a net emissions source, or net sink. While it is important in the climate models to account for the wild biomes and their feedbacks/forcings, as a tool for mitigation, wild lands have only limited use. But agricultural land can be a forcing either way, depending on the management plan, so they are of primary importance in this context. Now as far as nitrogen limitation, a wild biome has many biological ways to solve nitrogen limitation. Agricultural land, when nitrogen limited, typically gets nitrogen fertilizers added. While it solves the problem, if reduces the numbers of the nitrogen fixing/cycling biota. So much like a drug addict, the more you use, the more you need to use, in an ever increasing spiral of land deterioration. But it is trivially easy in agriculture to completely avoid the need for nitrogen fertilizers, by simply taking advantage of the many ways wild biomes solved that problem. Not going to happen in one season. Also like the drug addict, takes time to wean the land from it’s nitrogen addiction. But it is well known how to do it.
@60 Steve
I made a detailed post last month quantifying it in detail with references. Maybe go back and look? I am not really interested in spamming the same post every month here at Real Climate.
Lynn Vincentnathan said It may be much much worse than they thought. The double “much” is for the Richardson study (linked in the lead post above) AND the Shaffer PETM study (just came in the news today), which suggests that sensitivity itself may increase in hotter climates:
“Warning from the past: Future global warming could be even warmer” http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/uoc–wft062316.php
Heck, I said this nearly ten years ago, now, right here on RC. The logic is simple: Under natural non-anthropogenic forcings, systems fall in a more dominoes-like sequence with the involvement of various systems somewhat spread over time. Intact systems act as hysteresis on those first exhibiting change. We, however, are removing any and all forms of hysteresis by stressing the entire ecosystem at the same time and at such a rate that, on geological scales, there essentially is no hysteresis.
Hopefully this is more obvious to Dear Readers of RC with publication of the aforementioned. Once one grasps this and internalizes it, rates of change no longer surprise. This is very important to understand. it is a primary component of my own sense of urgency. Take studies suggesting how rapid change can be even on decadal time frames, knowing there is little to no hysteresis in the system brings the risk home. Tipping points come fast and furious after the third or fourth bifurcation. I suggest we are *at least* at the second ad likely at the third. Fourth is at a significantly high probability, IMO.
For reference, look at the historical graph of ASI extent noting noticeable melt kicked in around 1953, or a 300 – 315 CO2 ppm level.
This is why I say even Bill McKibben and 350 dot org are engaging in wishful thinking. 350 leaves the ice still melting. Even 300 is at the edge of that. You want to cool the planet and stabilize ice sheets? 260 is more what we need. I wonder if even 280 would be enough.
Nemesis, a bloated military is incompatible with regenerative nee sustainable systems, so the issue is moot, really. The goal is make everyone aware of the limits, then the actions needed become largely self-evident. Once we get people to understand *any* military is unsustainable (unless they want to do it like, say, Admiral Nelson, maybe Alexander…), thus any *use* of military is worse than unsustainable, well, that will be that.
the problem, of course, is the idjits who may think they ca kill off 2/3 of hte planet and instantly have themselves a comfy 500-year future.
Here’s hoping for less idjits.
I’m technically two days late (well, one with given I’m in Korea now) with my “official” ASI scenarioing for this season. Official, anyway, so far as I say this is the one ad not in the sense it’s sanctioned by any body other than my own.
As on or two of you may be aware, I called for new record(s) for ASI last August based on analysis of the correlation between ASI and El Nino (lots of near-records and new records one or two years after EN’s.) So far, that has held up. We have been in or right at record territory for months. I’m still on board with that basic premise, particularly in terms of at least one measure of ASI, area. Unfortunately, our area data has been on the fritz. GRRRRRR. I consider this our most reliable measure of actual ice present because since PIOMAS updated their algorithms a few years back, I haven’t had much confidence in their numbers. It has passed the eye test (I know, I know… so don’t open yer yaps, PG) since then.
However, using EOSDIS for the “eye test”, it’s clear ’16 is far below ’12 in area. While the Western Arctic Ocean looks similar, most of hte rest of the ice is far less intact than in 2012 on this same date (July 9). The area of coherent ASI is only north of Canada and Greenland from west of the Parry Channel over to the northeast corner of Greenland. This extends, unevenly, only as far north as the Pole. Everything else is varying forms of degraded pack ice, ranging from widely spaced floes to loosely packed mush/floes. 2012 ice at this same time was more concentrated in most areas other than the west.
The culprit, of course, has been a weak flow through Fram since the early rush of melt. The last month has been parallel with the long term avg., but a week or so of near-zero ice loss sifted the average over to the 2012 range and there it has sat since. You can check and see the big, hanging loop that marked the middle of the 2012 season. That and the weakness of the ice are the basis of our two scenarios.
Extent
Scenario I
No matter what, since we are butted up against the 2012 arc at before it’s massive drop in ice, an average summer the rest of the way will likely mean a new 2nd lowest level, but not a new record. Officially, Scenario I is a new 2nd lowest ASI level.
Scenario Ib
Simple: The ice is far more preconditioned for melt this season than in 2012. This may allow melt equal to 2012 even with similar conditions since we need less energy and storms t make it so. Still, this seems unlikely unless winds are heading down the throat of the Fram Strait all the time. (Call if Scenario Ic.)
Scenario II
Conditions equal to 2012 or 2007 should equal a new record, or a relative tie (say within 200k either direction).
Regardless, with the condition of the ice, I consider it near impossible to not have a new 2nd lowest extent.
Area
Scenario I
As far as I am concerned we are still well into a new record for Arctic Sea Ice Area. It’s a massive frustration to have that data out of service. However, looking at the 2012 graphs and the condition of the ice now, it’s virtually impossible for te ice area to not be at record lows right now.
The caveat can only be that thickness counters the much larger areas of open ice we see. So long as the extent curve ends up anywhere near 2012, a new area low ca be safely called, IMO. Basically, an average ice melt the rest of the way equals a new area record. Ice loss anything like 07, 10, or 12 the rest of the way guarantees it. Only a significant gap in extent, say more than 500k km sq or more between ’16 and ’12, would put this in doubt.
Volume
See Area. I think PIOMAS is off. As of now, I consider volume to be at record lows, as with area. No way to quantify this, so… kind of a waste of my time. If anyone knows of a data set I can resolve this issue with PIOMAS with, let me know.
It’s sad because I consider volume to be the truest measure of the state of the ice. sigh…
2017
My theory is the energy from EN’s takes a while to propagate, so we sometimes see the new low the following summer (2016) or a year later (2017). If no new low this year, it may well come next year because bottom melt equals around 2/3 of direct ice melt, though loss via Fram seems to be the bigger driver of loss year-to-year. It takes time for heat to move about in the oceans, so…
Mind you, when I speak of new lows, I don’t really care about extent. Who cares how far apart the wind blows the ice? Still, I’ll take an extent low if that’s all can get. ;-)
Happy melting!
The Solar Impulse FLIES TOMORROW, Seville to Egypt. Andre Borschberg will pilot it. (Bertrand Piccard will pilot the last leg, Egypt to Dubai.)
When it flies, or is about to fly, you can SEE IT HERE:
http://www.solarimpulse.com/sitv
Bertrand Piccard takes questions, great tour of Mission Control:
.facebook.com/piccardbertrand/videos/vb.1396699343914105/1707982072785829/?type=2&theater
Flight and weather modeling is a big part of what they do. When the computer says they can fly, they go. “Sometimes I say to these guys…Do you really trust your models?” –Bertrand Piccard
@10 “It’s complete nonsense. Beckwith looking for weirdness and finding it without ever doing the analysis that would justify it. Ignore anything coming from that lot. Many previous examples of overexcited pronouncements.”
Gavin: Beckwith’s starting point is arctic warming leading to a blue water event, which would be a dramatic agw forcing. Have the effects of a blue water event on the global circulations been modeled as yet by climatologists?
More unprecedented climate change effects showing up in Australia
‘Shocking images’ reveal death of 10,000 hectares of mangroves across Northern Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-10/unprecedented-10000-hectares-of-mangroves-die/7552968
Mangroves = crabs, fish, nurseries, and biodiversity = food for humans
No mangroves means no seafood and destruction of coastlines and encroaching salt inland
Barramundi fisherman Jeff Newman has been working in the Gulf for years and has seen the mangrove dieback first hand.
“The extent of damage is a shock to me and of real concern to the [fishing] industry,” he said.
“To see it on this massive scale is unheard of.
“I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before in the past.”
Mr Newman said the death of so many mangroves could have a disastrous impact on the local fishery.
“Any healthy ecosystem survives on the mangrove forest,” he said
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-11/mangrove-dieback-concern-for-northern-fishermen/7586390
I wonder how many other events like this are occurring in less accessible places and in third world nations who don’t have the scientific university resources or an active media like in Australia telling the world about what is happening every day everywhere now.
[note the last post showing is #68 on 8th July as I send this – where are the updates … or is RC dying?]
More of a series of questions rather than a comment, centered around the idea of a “climate emergency”, an expression that I believe James Hansen has been using for some time now:
– Are we in a climate emergency right now (2016) or not?
– What is the accepted definition of a “climate emergency”?
– If we are not yet in a climate emergency, in what time frame can we expect to reach the point of a climate emergency?
– Is there a U.N. plan for when we reach the point where a climate emergency is declared? What international action gets triggered (if any) if the U.N. declared a state of global climate emergency?
– We have reached and passed the symbolic mark of 400ppm atmospheric CO2. Is that not a concentration of CO2 that should have the U.N. declaring a climate emergency?
– Should the U.N. declare a climate emergency once we reach the point of an ice-free arctic, something that is mathematically probably going to happen within the next 10~20 years? Or do we have to wait until average global temperature is 2C above pre-industrial? Or do we only declare a climate emergency once 10% of Bangladesh is under water and the Maldives have been washed away?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/07/11/the-worlds-clouds-are-in-different-places-than-they-were-30-years-ago/
Paul Beckwith and Robert both post a lot on climate change and they deserve respect for their outreach. It is good to see that real experts respond on a recent jet stream piece both seemed to have covered, but the albei the WP has excellent climate coverage (kudos to them), critic could be voiced in a more neutral way.
Both seem sincere and take part in the climate awareness for the masses, so grant them that, and maybe try to engage more with them, help them to fill the blanks and give your inside wisdom.
Nemesis #67, peopel do not understand the national security implications https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8129fPZnUY
This goes everywhere ….
Climate System (Song) #ProgressiveTrance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1KRv-ZW15Y
Mike 68: ” How do whales, dolphins do in warmer oceans?”
I don’t see warmer ocean making _directly_ a huge difference to whales – whales are able to deal with temperature swings over many degrees on timescales from a year (feeding in cold North Atlantic and then migrating to the Caribbean for reproduction) and to minutes or 10s of min. (a spermwhale diving from hot tropical surface waters into cold deep waters 100s of meters below and back).
Indirectly, yes: higher temps. may have effect either by changing the sea-ice coverage or by affecting whale food source. Sea-ice is much more important to non-whale sea mammals – seals, walruses, and polar bears which use it as a platform to reproduce, to feed and to rest. Still, narwhals, belugas and Bowhead whales may perhaps use the presence of ice as a deterrent against the killer whales which could otherwise prey on them. But the primary indirect effect of higher temps on whales would through their food supply, which goes to your other question:
Mike:” What about phytoplankton, algae, krill ?”
Here situation is more difficult to predict – there may be losers and winners, or
bigger and smaller losers. First, the ice – it blocks light to the water column, but also provides a platform for ice algae, and during the break up the released algae may “seed” the bloom within the water column (and provide a pulse of food to the bottom).
Then there is temperature itself – rule of thumb – increase temp by 10C you double (or triple) the metabolic rate. Which may be good if you have enough food (because then you grow and reproduce quicker) or bad if there is not enough food (but now you are burning your food faster). And the latter is the more likely outcome:
warmer and fresher (ice melting) surface water -> more vertical stratification -> less new nutrients for algae brought by mixing to the surface waters -> less primary production -> fewer algae -> less food for zooplankton and fish -> less food for whales.
Then you may have a shift in the food web, as some species in warmer waters do better than others – if krill, capelin or herring are replaced in the warmer ocean by jellyfish, the whales feeding on the former would be screwed. On the other hand, the jellyfish-eating sunfish and turtles may quite like it …
Warmer waters are also good for some nasty dinoflagellates causing red tides which are not good to anyone (other than the dinoflagellates themselves).
Next you have the benthic life – in tropical waters the most vulnerable are coral reef ecosystems: heat waves may cause coral bleaching. Also, benthos is much less mobile than whales, so while whales could possibly compensate for rising temps by moving northward (provided that their food is there) benthic organisms might not (as adults – most of them don’t move at all, while their larval stages would have to be lucky to be passively carried by currents to their new home).
So to sum it up – while there might be a few winners, most of the ocean species would be either bigger or smaller losers.
> Both seem sincere … try to engage more with them, help them to fill the blanks
People did try, for several years.
It’s a self-esteem problem, I think.
They sincerely believe they aren’t making mistakes.
Re: poleward migration of fish
1) Thanks to Piotr for detail
2) Cheung(2013) in the context of fisheries doi:10.1038/nature12156
Fig 1. was very instructive.
sidd
Ed 70,
I’m sorry to hear you’re sick. Praying for you. Rest and read books.
Re: Comment by Scott Strough — 9 Jul 2016 @ 8:14 PM, ~#77
Scott, you have not provided any scientific references that support your extravagant assertions. Please provide a couple of peer reviewed journal articles. Steve
Summary of #65
Is carbon-dioxide now a short-lived gas?
Any answers?
Karen,
re you post #8, there is absolutly no prospect that global warming can be held of 1.5C. In fact to hold it at 2C would be a miracle. This is explained in a new paper in Nature, which is described here: http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/65526
Anyone who argues differently is either being dishonest or is extremely stupid!
Daily CO2
July 10, 2016: 405.59 ppm
July 10, 2015: 401.46 ppm (4.13 ppm increase, noisy number warning)
June CO2
June 2016: 406.81 ppm
June 2015: 402.80 ppm
We have been hanging in the 4 ppm increase range day after day with a few exceptions when it cranked down to slightly under 3 ppm. Things kind of target to hit my projection of 405.3 for the month of July. I was .19 high with June projection. Dead on to a hundredth for May, but I think my margin of error is about 0.05 so that’s just dumb luck to hit it dead on.
The important number is the differential between month of July for 2015 and 2016. I expect 4.0 differential, which is a terrible number.
Still in cool weather pattern here in Pac NW which is great. I really don’t like or need the heat.
Appreciate thoughts on ocean and forest fire stuff. I have sharp elbows and don’t mind that Mann blocked me on his tweet feed. Everybody prefers to be followed by fans, not critics. I get that. Making Michael Mann reconcile his statements seems wrong because it singles him out and I think he had enough of that with the climategate attacks.
Climate emergency? Yup. I think so. I guess we need a reality check from Ray Ladbury as to whether the heat buildup is being overblown. Maybe it’s just not a big deal? You still here, Ray?
Warm regards all
Mike
Thomas, $74–“OK, so if that is so from where did all the recent (make that 18 months PLUS) SPIKE IN CO2 ppm concentrations come from then?”
From changes in ‘natural’ fluxes, which, as the better-informed class of denier will tell you (correctly, if often with intent to mislead), are far larger than anthropogenic ones.
In a strong El Nino year, you get warm sea surface temperatures, which inhibits the uptake of CO2 by ocean; you get droughts and heat waves in many places, both of which stunt plant growth, which inhibits the uptake of CO2 by said plants; you can also sometimes get a speedup of microbial activity, which can release GHGs of at least two species faster than otherwise. Et cetera.
“…why didn’t the 1998 El Nino make the CO2 spike by 3-4ppm that year…”
An interesting question, imo. I looked at the Scripps Mauna Loa data for ’97 & ’98, just as a quick ‘sanity check.’
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/data/in_situ_co2/monthly_mlo.csv
Averaging the monthly values to derive yearly means, I got:
1997: 363.76
1998: 366.63
So the short answer to that question–at least as far as this quick and dirty check is concerned–would seem to be, “It almost did.”
Others are coming to the obvious conclusion that our species does not have the ability to respond to global warming and ocean acidification through management of carbon emissions. This will become more apparent each year as the concentration of CO2 increases in atmosphere and oceans become more acidic. We better get really good at carbon sequestration and the sooner, the better. check it here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL069563/full
Warm regards
Mike
mike @ 76 (and earlier posts)
As I understand it el Ninos are accompanied by slightly higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2 above background, owing to warmer ocean surface being less soluble to CO2.
There’s a recent study assessing CO2 sinks and sources affected by the recent Nino. Have you seen it?
Article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160613130700.htm
Study: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3063.html
Fixed link from #77 by Killian in regards to sensitivity and feedback response in hotter environments.
Warning from the past: Future global warming could be even warmer (June 23, 2016) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160623112206.htm
Imho, probable, could very well be really that exiting, and deadly. Rate and system get overwhelmed to adjust, adjustment likely rapid chaotic episodes, Unclear how cooling during a THC shutdown scenario would make an impact and final time scales.