What is the statistical relationship between CO2 concentration level and Global change in Temperature?

Dear Keegan and Jayachandran,

Thanks for the reply. I have been through the SPM-IPCC-AR5 but couldn't get that equation.

So I was looking for that equation which produce this plot:

Dear Sania Binte Mahtab ,

Thank you for pointing out.

Yeah, I was referring to CO2-equivalent concentration levels only, which may include other GHGs like NO2, CH4, other F gases etc...

Best Regards,

Abhay

Graham W Griffiths

Dear Abhay Pratap Singh ,

The relationship given in the IPCC report (referenced below) for "radiative forcing" is:

Delta_F = alpha * ln(c/c0), W/m^2

where:

alpha = 5.35

c0 = unperturbed concentration of CO2, ppm

c = CO2 concentration, ppm

Thus, for c=2*c0, we get Delta_F = 3.708, W/m^2

Using the relationship given in IPCC report for "base temperature sensitivity",

alpha0 =dTs/dFs = 0.266 K/(W/m^2)

we get,

Delta_Ts = 0.266*3.708 = 0.986, K

This must be regarded as a simplification of a very complicated process, but it does provide some idea of cause and effect.

Of course, other green house gasses also affect the temperature change. So for c and c0 we should really use the combination of CO2 plus CO2 equivalents of other greenhouse gasses.

Ref:

[IPCC-01] IPCC (2001) Radiative Forcing of Climate Change, in Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis: Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Third AssessmentReport of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, CUP, pp349-416

I hope that this helps.

Kind regards,

Graham W Griffiths

The temperature rise caused by a doubling of the concentration of CO2 is called climate sensitivity. It is still being investigated but the value will not be known until it has happened. The first IPCC report suggested it was between 1.5 and 4.5C. In the latest report, AR5, the values are 1.5 and 4.5C. So not much progress is being made :-(

Abdelhalim Zekry

The equations brought by Graham can be expressed in a single equation to calculate the rise in temperature dT because the increase of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere C:

dT= alpa0* alpha ln (C/C0) in degree centigrade

with alpha0= 0.266 degree centigrade/ w/m^2,

alpha= 5.35 w/m^2,

The constant will be alpha* alpha0= 1.42 degree centigrade

Assume doubling the CO2 concentration, then

dT for doubling=0.984 degree centigrade.

So finally we have

dT= 1.42 ln (C/C0) degree centigrade.

and for every doubling to temperature the rise in temperature will be about one degree centigrade.

One has to assume that the above equation remains linear in ln (C/C0)

This can be valid so long as the CO2 concentration is still small compared to the major air gases.

Graham W Griffiths

Dear Abdelhalim Zekry,

Kind regards,

Graham W Griffiths

The data says CO2 has little if any effect on climate. Temperature is now about what it was in 2002. CO2 has increased since 2002 by 40% of the increase 1800 to 2002.

Five agencies report average global temperature. It has increased about 0.5 K since 1950. This has slightly increased the growing season but winter and freezing still happens in essentially all the places it has for decades. Plants still must sort through about 2400 molecules to find one they can use to make food. The planet is still impoverished for CO2 but is much better than it was in 1900 when plants had to sort through about 3300 molecules to find one they could use.

This graph shows the fraction of CO2 for various times and conditions.

Dear Abhay,

May I refer you to a paper just about a linear correlation of one in very non-linear complex system, just as the climate is.

you don´t have to read it, just look at the figures and graphs.

DOI: 10.4236/ojbiphy.2015.51001
10.4236/ojbiphy.2015.51001
License
CC BY 4.0

my point previously was, in complex systems, one can find linear correlation of one between variables that although they are tightly coupled, ARE NOT CAUSALLY RELATED

Janusz Pudykiewicz

It is known that on long timescales there is a linear relationship between temperature and concentration of CO2. The situation changes when we analyze shorter time intervals. The most common reason for this is the presence of delays in the Earth system. In the simplest case, the projected temperature rise depends not only on the actual CO2 content, but also on past CO2 emissions.

The prediction mentioned in the question is most likely related to certain delay terms included in the models. Before analyzing the actual equations used in calculations, it helps to get a sense of how the time delayed system works. In the attached file we see two solutions of the Ikeda equation. They illustrate how the traditional sensitivity to the initial conditions is further complicated by the "memory effects".

Janusz Pudykiewicz

According to the report of the London Geological Society:

“The geological record contains abundant evidence of the ways in which Earth’s climate has changed in the past. That evidence is highly relevant to understanding how it may change in the future”.

Dan there are very few studies which are denying the CO2 impact and at the same time there are studies which are claiming that its actually the impact of CO2.

However IPCC is confirming and it seems that CO2 along with others GHGs significantly contributing to global change in temperature.

Dear Dr Kenneth M Towe Thank you so much for your input and discussion. Its really helpful.

Thanks!

Abhay

Dear All,

Thank you so much for your reply and discussions.

I found that there is Linear-Log relationship between Global change in temperature and Global atmospherics CO2 concentration levels.

(The Radiation theory confirms the same).

Abhay

Dariusz Prokopowicz

Many research centers indicate a close correlation between the scale of greenhouse gas emissions, including CO2 and the rate of rise of the average temperature on the planet Earth.

More and more research centers operating in different countries and investigating climate change state that the progressing greenhouse effect on Earth is already a fact. As a result, the risk of increasingly frequent and increasingly dramatic climate disasters is increasing. Man has less and less time to counteract these negative processes.

It is necessary to change the development strategy based on intensifying the exploitation of the Earth's resources on the sustainable development strategy. It is necessary to develop new energy technologies based on renewable energy sources to slow down the progressing greenhouse effect of the Earth in order to reduce the risk of dramatic natural cataclysms. It is necessary to develop ecological innovations, while it may not be too late. It is necessary to save the Earth through destruction for future generations.

In view of the above, I am asking you to answer the following question: Is the greenhouse effect on Earth already objectively recognized by the climate research centers as an irreversible process?

I invite you to the discussion

Dariusz Prokopowicz

In my opinion, information obtained from various research centers, meteorological centers, satellites, etc., then collected and processed in Big Data database systems should help in more and more precise prediction of new, unfavorable weather phenomena, including climatic cataclysms and others. In this way, earlier and in a more planned way, crisis management systems can be organized in the situation when the predetermined flood disaster becomes real and will happen. Gradually increasing computing power of powerful computer servers managing platforms of Big Data database systems, implemented artificial intelligence, increasing number of verified historical data on the overall climate phenomena on Earth will allow in the future more precisely, more accurately determine the level of threats, risk value, predict time, place and scale adverse weather events, i.e. also cataclysms that threaten people's lives.

Contemporary XXI century is, among other things, the age of national and globally recognized growing problems regarding environmental protection, ecology, protection of ecosystems and species of various life threatened by extinction, growing risk of climatic cataclysms associated with the progressing greenhouse effect on Earth, exhausting some categories of resources necessary for development modern industries, the need for energy transformation, conversion of classic sources of energy based on minerals to renewable, ecological energy sources. In view of the above, the question becomes more and more relevant: Should the dimension and scope of ecological knowledge in contemporary education and schooling systems be increased in the context of the growing problems of the modern world?

Please reply. I invite you to the discussion

Howdy folks,

Maybe as Kenneth stated in his first answer CO2 is not important in the Climate Change discussion, and not 'catastrophic'. Maybe the Californian wildfires are just a statistical exception.

But facts are facts, California is still bone dry and burning like Paradise in Hell. More than a thousand Californians are missing in the Californian hellfires. and the death toll is still rising. Californians did not see that coming.

In Western Europe harvests are,... how to put it: 'catastrophic?' Only farmers saw it comin.

In Siciily - for the first time in recent history - riverbeds which have been dry for decades suddenly drowned many families - asleep during the night - in a torrential flashflood due to a nightly tropical rainfall attack. No Sicilian expected this to happen. Sicilians did not see it coming.

True, as US president Trump stated, Californians should have kept their forest clean and tidy. No wildfire would have ignited. Ain't that the truth folks?

And yes Sicilians should not have built houses in dry river valleys, And yes it's much cheaper to build a house out there in the riverbeds for sure. Cynically, the Californian wildfires did not make a difference between rich and poor. In Sicily the flashfloods did.

Climate Change can be quite cynical, typically nobody sees it comin, ain't it folks?

It's like war, suddenly it's there before you know it,... to starve you,... or to kill you,... fast,... in a big nuclear flash!

Have a nice day y'all.

Frank

Agreed, climate has changed in the past and wildfires have occurred in California before, but not on this scale. Man-made climate change has intensified the Santa Ana winds and dried out the forests. Without climate change, fires of the intensity at Paradise would not have happened.

" The Santa Ana-driven fires happen mainly in the fall, after the summertime dryness and before the rain, when the vegetation is very vulnerable to fire. The very low moisture of the Santa Ana winds has a desiccating effect on the vegetation, drying it out still further. By mid-century, climate change will have driven down the relative humidity of the Santa Ana winds even more, increasing their ability to spread fire. " See; https://www.ioes.ucla.edu/news/alex-hall-how-climate-change-is-fueling-southern-california-wildfires/

Ken,

f you deny that climate change is making California wild fires worse, then you cannot complain if you are called a denier. The hundreds of people who burnt to death in the town of Paradise is reminiscent of the deaths in Nazi death camps. These fires can only get worse unless we stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

Harlan Glen Kelly

This is False Equvalency comparing Nazi death camps to this very unfortuante California loss of life. No-one denies climate change that recognizes natural phenomena as it is, which is part of our day to day existance.

Nature is exact; it is not just. Change is also not managible. Events that are subject to change can only be anticipated. Adaptive solutions must be put in place. Future planning for current and new developments will need to include a new suite of rules to protect the public interest. Blame and irrelivancy is not a solution. Working together could be?

Howdy folkies,

Abhay's question, just to recap was and still is: 'What is the statistical relationship between CO2 concentration level and Global change in Temperature?'

Indeed, Global mean measurements of LST and SST as well as CO2 mixing ratio's are not for the taking, especially for CO2. However, remote sensing techniques for SST and LST have advanced that much so that accuracies of 0.1°C are obtained with thermal IR observations. Moreover JAXA's GOSAT platform is dedicated to the observation of CO2 and methane. Since its launch in 2009, a quite interesting dataset has been obtained which closely matches monthly global seasonal variations of CO2 mixing ratio's measured at ground level and interpolated globally.

I took the liberty to investigate - based on two satellite based datasets - on a yearly basis whether a relationship can be observed between satellite based temperature anomaly data at the global scale (yearly basis) and atmospheric yearly mean global CO2 mixing ratio's.

I obtained the following result (see the graph).

It seems that on a global yearly basis Land (LST) and Sea (SST) temperature temperature anomaly is related to atmospheric global mean CO2 mixing ratio quite strongly. This does not mean that this relationship is causal. To answer that question somewhat more analysis of these datasets is required (more validation and higher spatio-temporal resolutions). However, when global mean CO2 mixing ratio's measured at ground level are compared with the GOSAT satellite measurements on a monthly global mean basis, the correspondence is striking.

JAXA's GOSAT (like missions) give the opportunity to develop new CO2 (and methane) mixing ratio missions with a much higher spatial and vertical resolution. In that way the mapping of the natural uptake (sink mapping) as well as the mapping of emissions from densely populated area's (cities) will become a reality. Ostrich policy politicians can then put their heads out of the soil, and start discussing based on hard and big datasets to face new realities as they will be corroborated pretty soon I figger. JAXA already presented some nice examples of what we can expect at higher resolutions in the space, time and atmospheric pressure dimensions.

Hence no time to waste!

Cheers,

Frank

The ENSO dear Kenneth is a regional phenomenon in the Pacific. The relationship between CO2 and temperature anomaly established here above is based on RS data and is three dimensional and global. That's the only way to investigate the existence or non-existence of the type of relationship suggested by Abhay.

What's your alternative for the methodological approach I applied Kenneth? It is easy to falsify a global relationship based on the Pacific ENSO only.

Other systems exist in other oceans as well Kenneth, the Gulf stream in the Atlantic, the Monsoon regime in the Indian Ocean, Arctic and Antarctic impacts on the oceans and climate. Besides that there are enormous continental surfaces as well like Eurasia, whith a stretch of about 10.000 km of Taiga forests as a huge sink. Think about Greenland, the Sahara, the Gobi and its enormous loamy sandstorms in Mongolia and China, the Himalayas, which stop the Monsoon rains, and create huge deserts in inland Asia, (Taklimakan desert) all in the Northern hemisphere. Besides this there are (also or maybe still?) large continental sinks like the (rest of) the tropical rainforests in Indonesia, Africa and South America. Is the ENSO prime in all this? I have my doubts Kenneth. Can you corroborate ENSO being prime and global in your conviction that there is no realtionship betwen global mean CO2 and global mean temperature anomaly?

Time to convince me, because by making the exercise based on the comparison between RS and field data myself, I followed the way to convince myself that there is a clearcut relationship between CO2 and temperature at the global scale.

Whether it is causal and regionally valid as well, remains to be proven. At the global level and with the boundary conditions I have mentioned my doubts have disappeared to be honest.

Cheers mate,

Frank

Harlan Glen Kelly

Allan Savory on TED talks UTube 22 minutes is well worth your time,

How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate ... - YouTube

https://youtu.be/vpTHi7066pl

Leonid V Vladimirov

The statistical relationship between CO2 concentration level and Global change in Temperature is negligible

Dear Dr Frank,

Thanks so much for replying and participating in the discussion.

I'm not a domain expert, so won't be able to claim from Climate science point of view, but I can play with mathematical statistics well. So considering the projections of IPCC AR5 as base, I tried to explore the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration level in PPM ( yearly mean data from NOAA) and Global change in temperature anomalies (Land and Surface data from NOAA). Yes there is linear relationship (and can form a linear regression equation), but if we try to come up with the forecast of IPCC's AR5 document, this below Lin-Log form work better than simple linear regression.

So final equation could be

temp = B0+B1*log(CO2)

which produces the results in 'Capture' file, which is in line with the IPCC plot names 'aa'.

Please correct me know if I'm wrong at some of time.

Best Regards,

Abhay

Hi Abhay,

Are you sure that the graph depicting temperature change ifo CO2 mixing ratio is what you intend to show? It looks quite well to the graph you get when plotting CO2 fixation (NPP in gC/m²/s-1) in function of CO2 mixing ratio. I added as well the NPP reponse in function of temperature. Completely different.

See the added graphs of the NPP vs CO2 and temp relationships.

What exactly does the blue graph represent, what scale (leaf, canopy, global ecosystem scale,...?).

I am just trying to understand what you present.

Cheers,

Frank

Hi Kenneth,

Exactly, global mean temperature when I calculate it from the model I presented here above, based on RS data of C02 mixing ratios and LST/SST, globally averaged in three dimensions (spatially and according to atmospheric pressure in the troposphere) is around 45% indeed. However, temperature increase rate as measured with the RS approach is 0.104°C/10ppmC02, globally. Hence the absolute temperature increase between pre-Industrial CO2 levels and now - as we speak - is 1.3°C or 57% higher than the the rise you mention?

To be honest, when comparing the current climate change to earlier, natural ones, three distinctions must be made.

First, it must be clear which variable is being compared: is it greenhouse gas concentration or temperature, and is it their absolute value, their anomalies or their rate of change?

Second, local changes must not be confused with global changes. Local climate changes are often much larger than global ones, since local factors, as I mentioned earlier her above in this thread (e.g., changes in oceanic or atmospheric circulation) can shift the delivery of heat or moisture from one place to another and local feedbacks operate as well (e.g., sea ice and topographic feedbacks). Large changes in global mean temperature, in contrast, require global forcing, such as a change in greenhouse gas concentrations or a change in incoming solar radiation.

Third, it is necessary to make distictions in interpretation for differences in magnitude of the time scales considered. Climate changes over millions of years can be much larger and have different causes (e.g., continental drift and hence large changes in global topography !!!) compared to climate changes on a centennial time scale.

The main reason for the current concern about climate change is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (and some other greenhouse gases), which is very unusual for the Quaternary period(about the last two million years). The concentration of CO2 is now known accurately for the past 650,000 years from antarctic ice cores. During this time, CO2 concentration varied between a low of 180 ppm during cold glacial times and a high of 300 ppm during warm interglacials. Over the past century, it rapidly increased well out of this range, and is now about 405 ppm. For comparison, the approximate 80-ppm rise in CO2 concentration at the end of the past ice ages generally took over 5,000 years. Higher values than those at present only occurred millions of years ago, as you indicated in the Eocene for example which is roughly 50 million years ago.

Additioally, temperature is a more difficult variable to reconstruct than CO2 (a globally well-mixed gas), as it does not have the same value all over the globe, so that a single record (e.g., an ice core) is only of limited value. Local temperature fluctuations, even those over just a few decades, can be several degrees celsius, which is larger than the global warming signal of the past century of about 0.8°C.

More meaningful for past and present global change is an analysis of large-scale (global or hemispheric) averages, where much of the local variations are averaged out and hence, variability is smaller (and the accuracy of the estimates higher). Sufficient coverage of instrumental records goes back only about 150 years and for RS even much less (for CO2 and methane only 10 years back).

Further back in time, compilations of proxy data from tree rings, ice cores, etc., go back more than a thousand years with decreasing spatial coverage for earlier periods. While there are differences among those reconstructions and significant uncertainties remain, all published reconstructions find that temperatures were warm during medieval times, cooled to low values in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and warmed rapidly after that. The medieval heat balance (climate forcing) levels are uncertain, but may have been reached again in the mid-20th century, only to have been exceeded since then. These conclusions are supported by climate modelling as well. The period before 2,000 years ago, is characterised by temperature variations which have not been systematically compiled into large-scale averages. They therefore do not provide hard evidence for warmer-than-present global annual mean temperatures going back through the Holocene (e.g., the last 11,600 years).

There are strong indications that a warmer climate, with greatly reduced global ice cover and higher sea levels, prevailed until around 3 million years ago. Hence, the current heat balance is unusual in the context of the past millennia, but not unusual for longer time scales for which changes in tectonic activity (which can drive natural, slow variations in greenhouse gas concentration) become moreand more relevant in the interpretation of climate change. A changed global topography over millions of years is crucial to enable an exact description of the changes in climate forcing. the same is true for changes in the solar constant, which is not at all constant within the frame of millions of years. Do we have records of the solar radiation output over time spans of millions of years Kenneth?

A different matter is the current rate of warming. Are more rapid global climate changes recorded in proxy data? The largest temperature changes of the past million years are the glacial cycles, during which the global mean temperature changed by 4°C to 7°C between ice ages and warm interglacial periods (local changes were much larger, for example near the continental ice sheets). However, measurements indicate that global warming at the end of an ice age is a gradual process taking about 5,000 years. Hence, it is clear that the current rate of global climate change is much more rapid and unusual compared to Quaternary changes. The much-discussed abrupt climate shifts during glacial times are not counter-examples, since they were due to changes in ocean heat transport, which is unlikely to affect global mean temperature.

Further back in time, beyond the era covered by ice core data, the time resolution of sediment cores and other archives does not resolve changes as rapid as the present warming. Hence, although large climate changes have occurred in the past, there is no hard evidence that these took place at a faster rate than the present warming rate trend which I estimated based on satellite Earth Observation data. If projections of approximately 5°C warming in this century (the upper end of the range) are realised, then the Earth will have experienced about the same amount of global mean warming as it did at the end of the last ice age; there is no evidence that this rate of possible future global change has been matched by any comparable global temperature increase of the last 50 million years.

Convince yourself and look at the graph I add here. A typical example of a process in a feed forward mode. It presents the last 1000 years of CO2 data from Antarctic ice core CO2 estimates. Convincing no?

Cheers,

Frank

Sear Frank,

You appear to be a little confused about statistical association

and causality. You cannot prove causality using statistical association. Climate planetary scale is complex non-linear system.

Frank,

Try this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI for

How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change | Allan Savory

Instead of tell me what to read, tell me what it is in the papers, will you?

Just look at the figures in this paper that has to do with another non-linear complex system and see tha high linear correlation coefficenst between state variables that ARE NOT CAUSALLY RELATED

DOI:
10.4236/ojbiphy.2015.51001

Jenna Bader

The late eocene era had the highest temperatures at 30 C (86 F), this is much lower than we are experiencing now.

(http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/tertiary/eocene.php)

The ocean acidification and temperature rise is killing the coral reefs, which have evolved to thrive in the stable conditions BEFORE carbon dioxide was emitted into the atmosphere in outrageous quantities.

Furthermore, CARBON DIOXIDE IS MORE SOLUBLE IN COLD WATER THAN IN WARM WATER. So, our continued emissions of CO2 are only making the problem worse, since increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere leads to increasing air temperatures and, consequently, warming of the oceans. Try the science experiment yourself at: (https://www.climate.gov/teaching/resources/how-does-temperature-affect-solubility-co2-water)

Jenna Bader

I have a Bachelors of Science degree in Environmental Science, with a focus on Energy and Climate. I don’t see that your sources are credible. I have studied the science, the evidence, and performed the calculations. I did not hear this information from “the news”. Show me the peer-reviewed sources.

21st Century drought-related fires counteract the decline of Amazon deforestation carbon emissions

C?digo de Refer?ncia: C0000798

Idioma: Ingl?s

Autor: Luiz E.O.C. Arag?o (Remote Sensing Div, National Institute for Space Research); Liana O. Anderson (National Centre for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters - CEMADEN); Marisa G. Fonseca; Thais M. Rosan; Laura B. Vedovato;Fabien H. Wagner; Camila V.J. Silva; Celso H.L. Silva Junior; Egidio Arai (Remote Sensing Div, National Institute for Space Research); Ana P. Aguiar (Earth Systems Sciences Center, National Institute for Space Research); Jos Barlow; Erika Berenguer (Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University); Merritt N. Deeter (National Center for Atmospheric Research); Lucas G. Domingues; Luciana Gatti (Instituto de Pesquisas Energ?ticas e Nucleares - IPEN-CNEN); et al.

Fonte: Nature Communications, V 9 art.n. 536, 13 Feb 2018. 12 p.

Resumo: Tropical carbon emissions are largely derived from direct forest clearing processes. Yet, emissions from drought-induced forest fires are, usually, not included in national-level carbon emission inventories. Here we examine Brazilian Amazon drought impacts on fire incidence and associated forest fire carbon emissions over the period 2003-2015. We show that despite a 76% decline in deforestation rates over the past 13 years, fire incidence increased by 36% during the 2015 drought compared to the preceding 12 years. The 2015 drought had the largest ever ratio of active fire counts to deforestation, with active fires occurring over an area of 799,293 km(2). Gross emissions from forest fires (989 +/- 504 Tg CO2 year(-1)) alone are more than half as great as those from old-growth forest deforestation during drought years. We conclude that carbon emission inventories intended for accounting and developing policies need to take account of substantial forest fire emissions not associated to the deforestation process.

Given this latest flat temperature and two previous 30+ year downtrends in temperature with relentlessly rising CO2, demonstrate that CO2 has little if any effect on average global temperature. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com

Rolando Barahona Rosales

Dear Dan,

I am a little bit confused. To what temperature data are you referring to? Temperature have been steadily rising and these last 10 years are among the warmest on record. For example, 2018 was declared the fourth warmest year on record by NASA (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/06/climate/fourth-hottest-year.html) and, currently, the warmest year on record is 2016. Yet, apparently, that won't be for long, as 2019 is expected to take up that mantle.

This and many other data are unequivocally showing that climate change is happening right here right now. Is difficult to see it otherwise.

Best regards,

RBR – The graph is a plot of the numerical data as reported by the agencies, identified for the years as abscissa. Links to two of them are provided in http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com Ref 4 & 23. The CO2 is from Keeling, ref 21.

The planet had been in a warming trend so the warmest years should be at the end of it. Since about June 2015 the climate has been experiencing the aberration of an el Nino which is still playing out. I expect 2019 to be interesting.

The 9 month smoothing masks the rapid fluctuation in reported measurements. This is what unsmoothed data looks like:

Gustavo Nouel-Borges

It is clear that the increase in temperature positively and linearly affects the CO2 content in the atmosphere. This is a multivariate issue, if you want to study it from there, you must determine main components and analyze the available information to achieve a reliable model. Now, the environmental variations of the biological or living CO2 sources are complex responses depending on the latitude where the living processes occur. For example, an increase in temperature in a forest plantation under tropical conditions could translate into an acleration of biomass accumulation and CO2 fixation. While the same, in a humid forest of temperate climate, could have the opposite effect by accelerating growth of bacteria and fungi of the forest floor, despite the fact that more plant biomass is fixed in the trees.

Johan Montelius

You could take a look at how the rate at which CO2 concentration changes relative to global temperatures. Download data from Mauna Loa and UAH and do some plotting. You might ask yourself: what is the horse and what is the wagon.

Johan Montelius

The carbon cycle is of course very complex but if we want to study the atmosphere it might be enough to treat all other reservoirs as one black box.

The increase of C14 from the nuclear bomb tests in the late 1950 to 1963 gives us an opportunity to study how the CO2 of the atmosphere changes with time. The decline in C14 from the test ban in 1963 shows that CO2 in the atmosphere quite rapidly is mixed with the oceans and land biota.

If this is true then - the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is not dominated by burning of fossil fuel. If it is not from fossil fuel, then where does it come from?

Study the relationship of temperature and increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Is temperature driving CO2 in the atmosphere? Is what we see a natural process?

It has been known for a long time now that CO2 follows temperature. Indeed CO2 lags temperature by some 800 to 1,000 years. It is temperature that causes CO2, not the other way around. It is impossible for the cause to be the effect. During warm interglacial periods, where we are right now, the warm oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. 96% of all CO2 emissions come from nature, mostly from the warm oceans and most of that from the equatorial belt. During ice ages, that we have every 100,000 years, the cold oceans sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere and it is stored in the oceans. High CO2 levels have never prevented the Earth from entering into an ice age, even when CO2 was at 4,000 ppm in the Ordovician Period.

So CO2 has zero effect on the Earth's temperature. Further, the laws of thermodynamics make it impossible for CO2 to have any effect on the Earth's temperature. It is impossible for the Earth to heat itself from it's own radiation.

Adedayo Fajemisin

This a look at this link. It would probabaly answer your question https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Matthew_Turner/ec1340/lectures/EC1340_Lecture2.pdf

No this goes no where to answering the question. There are so many scientific errors in this lecture paper, too many to comment on.

"Review Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are very high relative to their levels over the past 6-800k year"

A: CO2 is the lowest it's been in the last 600 million years. The world is in a CO2 drought.

"The physics relating atmospheric CO2 to warming is elementary and uncontroversial"

A: Zero scientific evidence was given to prove this blank assertion. There's a reason for that. There are zero scientific papers in the emperical records that show, from observations based on experiment, that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes warming.

"The ice core record confirms the theoretical relationship between CO2 and climate."

A: That's correct but what is not shown, as demonstrated hereinbefore, it is temperature that causes CO2, not the other way around.

Then the lecture went straight into climate models. Models are a mathematical theory that prove nothing. They all have a false assumption that CO2 causes warming, when the science shows it doesn't. The references were mostly Hanson who has a history of producing pseudoscience. He has dozens of predictions that have all proved wrong. Lower Manhatten was supposed to be underwater about 20 years ago. His references are worth zero.

This whole lecture focuses on CO2. It states there are other greenhouse gases referring to methane, Nitrous Oxide etc. All minor trace gases. No mention of Nitrogen and water vapor.

There is no such thing as a greenhouse effect or greenhouse gases. This falsified theory is based on the fake science the Earth receives visible radiation and emits long wave IR radiation and that these gases trap IR heat emitted from the Earth the same as a greenhouse. Except we've known for more than 100 years, that is not how greenhouses work. The false theory is the glass lets in visible radiation and block the IR radiation trapping in the heat. That is wrong. The glass absorbs and emits IR radiation is all directions, half goes directly out into the atmosphere. The rest gets reabsorbed and remitted by the ground until there is none left. All the glass does is slow the escape of the IR out into the atmosphere. Greenhouses work by the glass blocking convection. These gases don't block convection in the atmosphere, they do the same as the glass, absorb and emit until all the IR escapes into space. No heat is trapped. Using the word greenhouse is extremely misleading. The correct term is Radiatively Active Gases or RAGs.

Further, this back radiation from the RAGs in the atmosphere is the Earth's own radiation coming back on itself. It defies all the laws of thermodynamics to say this radiation heats the Earth. It is impossible for the Earth to heat itself from it's own radiation. Plus the radiation is coming from some lonely molecules in the upper atmosphere at -40 to -50 deg C. Heat cannot radiate from cold to hot, heat only travels from hot to cold. It's impossible for a cold body to heat a hot body. 2nd law of thermodynamics.

The lecture paper refers to CO2 as the main RAG. Every gas in the atmosphere has RAG properties, even Nitrogen and Oxygen. CO2's absorption bandwidth is very narrow in the IR band at 14.5 microns. Nitrogen also has a narrow IR absorption band, smaller than CO2. But at 80% of the atmosphere, Nitrogen absorbs and emits more IR than CO2. The biggest RAG is water vapor. There is 100 times more water vapor than CO2 and it is 33 times more reactive to IR than CO2. CO2 is the absolute very least of all the RAGs. There is so little of CO2, at just 400PPM (it is measured in ppm because there is so little of it), it's effects are impossible to measure. 1 in every 2,500 molecules is CO2. They are extremely lonely. But just 4% of these are anthropogenic. That makes just 1 molecule in every 77,000 CO2 molecules as being anthropogenic. To even contemplate that these lonely molecules will defy all the laws of thermodynamics and heat up the planet is childish.

Of course this lecture couldn't pass it's main objective by comparing CO2 emissions to GDP and industrialized countries. The real purpose of blaming CO2 is to kill of industry and capitalism and con all the rich nations to redistribute their wealth. Climate change has nothing to do with science or climate, it is communism.

Dear Brendam, did you ever heard of Herman haken circular causality, a concept central to his synergetics? You showed an exaple of it. Planet climate is a complex system and as such will show, oscillations and sudden catasthrophes (mathematical meaning here) as emergent properties.

Johan Montelius

Dear Vera, if you plot the increase in carbon dioxide and the temperature in a diagram you will see the relationship between the two; a warmer world drives carbon dioxide.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/offset:0.3/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/derivative/scale:2.2

The question is: if if carbon dioxide is driven by temperature, how much does our contribution from fossil fuels contribute?

This mean nothing as far as their relationship goes, I found r2 coeff of 1 in avery non-linear system, the meaning was tight coupling between the variables not linear or predictivie relationship. Learn a little about these systems

There is about 50 times as much carbon in the form of CO2 and carbon hydration products dissolved in the ocean as in the atmosphere http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=17726. Solubility of CO2 in water decreases with increasing temperature. Atmospheric CO2 increase is a result of rising temperature of the oceans added to the main source of CO2 which is rotting vegetation.

It does not require scientific equipment to demonstrate that water vapor reduces the rate of cooling of the planet. Common knowledge will do. The simple observation that it cools faster and farther on dry, cloudless desert nights than it does where it is humid demonstrates that water vapor is a ghg and that its increase causes some Global Warming (about half of the total average global temperature increase 1895-2018).

WV increase has been measured and reported by NASA/RSS since 1989. Extrapolated back to 1960, the increase 1960-2002 was 7%. Further extrapolation indicates that it was about 10% lower in 1700 than 2002. WV trend 2002-2014 was flat but the aberration of el Nino action since then is still sorting out. Assessment of the sources of water vapor indicates about 86% from irrigation, 11% from cooling towers and 3% from everything else.

Multiple compelling evidence shows that CO2, in spite of being a ghg, does not contribute significantly to warming. Apparently the increased absorption by surface molecules is compensated by increased emission from CO2 molecules above the troposphere.

Increased WV has contributed to warming but is self-limiting. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com

Dan,

I read your paper "Climate Change Driver". I agree with all you say on CO2. I disagree with what you say on Water Vapor - WV. Studies show increasing WV in the atmosphere causes cooling, not warming. " SURFRAD Data Falsifies the “Greenhouse Effect” Hypothesis " at https://principia-scientific.org/surfrad-data-falsifies-the-greenhouse-effect-hypothesis/ and in the Appendix to " Planetary Core and Surface Temperatures " at http://www.climate-change-theory.com/Planetary_Core_and_Surface_Temperatures.pdf.

I have some observations from your paper. You are using adjusted data from both RSS and HadCRUT. I suspect this is misleading your research. These alterations to the data are politicized and fraudulent.

Observations show water vapor is decreasing. See:

Flaws in applying greenhouse warming to CLIMATE VARIABILITY

Dr Bill Gray; BS Geography; MS Meteorology; Ph.D. Geophysical Sciences

Emeritus Professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University

The Global Warming Policy Foundation - 2018

GWPF Briefing 30

https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/05/Gray-2018.pdf

Data from NASA-MERRA24 and NCEP/NCAR5 can be believed, upper tropospheric RH has actually been declining since 1980. See attached.

Bren,

Thanks for the comments. A couple of things to keep in mind: The altitude at 300 mb is about 10 km. The temperature there is about -50 C. Also, relative humidity depends on temperature while absolute humidity, which is what TPW is measuring, does not. A temperature increase of less than about 2 K would produce the reduction from 49% RH to 46% RH with no change in the amount of WV present, i.e. no change in TPW. The warming effect on the planet depends on absolute water vapor which cannot be determined from Fig 8 without also knowing the temperature.

It does not require scientific equipment to demonstrate that water vapor reduces the rate of cooling of the planet. Common knowledge will do. The simple observation that it cools faster and farther on dry, cloudless desert nights than it does on clear nights where it is humid demonstrates that water vapor is IR active (i.e. a ghg) and that its increase causes some Global Warming (about half of the total average global temperature increase 1895-2018). Anything that posits that increased WV does not cause warming is faulty.

I am aware of the ‘adjustments’ and compare the data from the various reporting agencies. Comparison since 2002 was shown in a graph above (2 months ago). Even agencies that should be trustworthy appear to be guilty of questionable ‘adjustments’ (graph attached).

Dan,

I think you’ve got the cart before the horse. It’s like CO2 and temp. CO2 follows temp. It is temp that causes CO2, not the other way around. I think you’ll find also that it is temp that causes the increase in TPW, not the other way around.

Does Global Warming increase total atmospheric water vapor (TPW)?

Andy May / June 9, 2018 https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/09/does-global-warming-increase-total-atmospheric-water-vapor-tpw/

You have to read through a lot of this. It’s a mish mash of climate alarmists and realists’ science papers. The author is referring to both weather and climate models. Climate models are pseudoscience. He is also referring to adjusted data that you need to look through.

The globe’s temperature since the 1650-1700 little ice age has been caused by the grand solar cycle. We are currently rising over the top of a grand solar maximum. The little ice age was a grand minima. You talk about this in your paper. You say that there are no predictions. There are a number of papers and scientists who have made predictions. The cause of these is now well known and understood. The predictions say we will have a solar minimum between 2020 and 2053 though the depth of that minimum differs between a Dalton minimum from Valentina Zharkova:

PREDICTION OF SOLAR ACTIVITY FROM SOLAR BACKGROUND MAGNETIC FIELD VARIATIONS IN CYCLES 21–23

Simon J. Shepherd, Sergei I. Zharkov, and Valentina V. Zharkov

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014ApJ...795...46S

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/795/1/46/pdf

The Astrophysical Journal, 795:46 (8pp), 2014 November 1

And

A Maunder minimum from the Russian scientist Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov.

Bicentennial Decrease of the Total Solar Irradiance Leads to Unbalanced Thermal Budget of the Earth and the Little Ice Age

Dr Habibullo Abdussamatov, of the St Petersburg Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/abduss_APR.pdf

The globe’s surface temperature is set by adiabatic auto-compression and maintained by the Sun.

Molar Mass Version of the Ideal Gas Law Points to a Very Low Climate Sensitivity

http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.earth.20170606.18.pdf

We are going to see a drop off of 1-2 Deg C between now and 2053.

But I’d like to thank you for introducing me to the difference between relative and absolute humidity.

Yes WV is a RAG but it doesn’t trap in heat or warm the Earth. It merely slows the inevitable escape of IR radiation out to space. That back radiation from WV molecules in the atmosphere is the Earth’s own radiation. The Earth can’t warm itself from it own radiation, that’s impossible.

Dear Brendam, Predictions are not possible in climate, the solar cycle is just one important component, there are others. Tje shift in magnetic poles for examples, that ís happening right now..

Bren,

Thanks for all the links. I find V Zharkova’s stuff particularly interesting. I have seen a video of one of her presentations. She is not only brilliant but has a sense of humor.

I don’t see any way to explain why “…it cools faster and farther on dry, cloudless desert nights than it does on clear nights where it is humid…” except that WV contributes to warming of the surface by slowing the rate at which radiation energy leaves it. That is the definition of what an IR active gas does, i.e. a ghg. Also, I have made lots of Hitran runs which appear to me to show lots of WV activity (and barely discernable CO2 activity) at low altitude.

As you said, WV “…slows the inevitable escape of IR radiation out to space…”. But to maintain the flux (energy rate) the driving temperature must increase. The driving temperature is the surface temperature. Therefore, increased WV causes GW.

You are right that increased temperature causes increased WV. That results directly from the widely available vapor pressure vs temperature relation for water. Higher water temperature forces more WV into the atmosphere. But WV is IR active so increased WV also causes warming. That is, WV is both cause and effect. In Bode’s original development of Control Theory it is called feedback.

I have done the calculations (Section 8 in http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com). During 1960-2002 measured WV (NASA/RSS) increased about 7%. That is about twice as much as it would have increased if calculated from just the temperature increase. I did an extensive survey of where the extra WV comes from (see Sect 9). During this period, more than 6 WV molecules were added to the atmosphere for each CO2 molecule. From 2002 to 2014 the WV trend was flat. Since 2014 a strong el Nino and a couple of weak ones are still playing out (Fig above). In any event, the WV level is self-limiting.

I am familiar with Andy May’s article and had made rough assessments of the slopes after about 1990 of the three measures of WV in his Fig 1. They came out 1.69%, 1.4% and 1.63% per decade. I had used 1.5% per decade in Sect 9 analysis obtained from regression on the available NASA/RSS WV data at the time. Close enough . . .

From evaluation of reported, measured temperatures over the years and a bunch of other considerations including paleo proxies I have concluded that there are three main contributors to average global temperature. These are combined to produce a best fit to the reported, measured temperatures. This results in a simple equation which is then used to extrapolate a couple decades into the future. The fit through 2018 is overlaid on 5-year smoothed measured in the attached. The breakdown for the % change 1909-2018 is 37.5% solar influence determined by a proxy which is the time-integral of SSN anomalies, 20.7% net of ocean cycles and 41.8% TPW. The match 1895-2018 to the 5-year smoothed data is R^2 = 0.9834.

Because so much of the temperature increase appears to have resulted from WV increase (caused by increased irrigation) and there is no indication (yet) that WV is about to decrease, I suspect that temperature decline associated with the coming solar grand minimum might be significantly mitigated compared to what happened at LIA.

I am in relentless pursuit of the truth and have the engineering/science skill to do it and evaluate what others have done. Unfortunately, much of the available information is influenced by an agenda, often one related to a paycheck. Ironically this quote by Upton Sinclair appeared in the intro to that pathetic fantasy titled An Inconvenient Truth: “It is DIFFICULT to get a man to understand something when his SALARY depends on him NOT UNDERSTANDING IT”.

Dan,

I am of opinion that the cause cannot be the effect. And that slowing the escape of IR radiation cannot produce warming. See:

Greenhouse gases cannot physically cause observed global warming

Published on January 21, 2019

Written by Dr Peter L Ward

https://whyclimatechanges.com/impossible/

I will follow your work though. You are not driven by political agenda, but rather the truth. Same as myself. You're the only person I have seen though who hypothesizes that 41.8% of our warming for this past century is driven by TPW caused by increased irrigation. We'll have our answer by 2053.

I like your parting line from Upton Sinclair.

Bren,

Peter Langdon Ward is a geophysicist specializing in seismology and volcanology. His Phd is in geophysics. He does not know how radiation heat transfer works. Heat transfer and thermodynamics are bread and butter to a Mechanical Engineer and I picked up another 9 units of HT in grad school.

His article is mostly bogus with a thin scattering of valid assertions. I suppose, because he has a Phd, he is under the delusion that he understands this stuff. He does not. His main point “Greenhouse warming theory is physically impossible” is nonsense. The consensus theory that GW is caused by increased CO2 is also wrong. There is compelling evidence that GW has been caused by increased WV; which is self-limiting.

He does not even mention water vapor. I suspect he might not even be aware that WV is IR active, i.e. a ghg.