http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/07/carbon-dioxide-and-temperatures-ice.html

2009/3/26Pei-Yu Chueh

CO2 vs temperature: ice core correlation & lag

Lubos

Outline

• How to reconstruct the past climate?

• Objection: An Inconvenient Truth

• Some questions

• Possible explanation

• Others’ comments

Vostok ice core, Antarctica

Temp↑δD↑

Correlations between the temp. and the concentrations extracted from the ice

core

An Inconvenient Truth

• Al Gore's answer : the temperature was determined by the concentrations of carbon dioxide.

Some questions

1. All the correlations in a satisfactory way.

If you choose one of the gases, your explanation will be asymmetric and it won’t explain all the correlations in a satisfactory way

Some questions

• 2.Basic numbers

ice age 180ppm

Interglacials 280ppm

100ppm

+8℃

280ppm in 1800

380ppm in 2005

+0.7 ℃

100ppm

Some questions

• 3. 1940~1975 economic boom

CO2 ↑

but temp ↓

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Possible explanation

1. Coke in a car

Originally contains 4 volumns of CO2

CO2 leaks a bit

internal volume is 1 cube meter

Coke385ml

CO2

(106 ml)

CO2CO2CO2CO2

Possible explanation

Henry’s law : Hot liquids are not able to absorb gases so well.

Warmer ocean

outgassing

Possible explanation

2. The frequency of fires

Temp↑ Frequency of fires ↑ CO2 ↑

3. The growth of plants and animals depends on temperature

4. Physics tells you quite clearly that the ability of water to bind gases is more important an effect for the correlation than the greenhouse effect

Possible explanation

5. CO2 lagged behind the temp about 800 years

now past

Possible explanation

800 years↑CO2

↑temperature

• oceans are large and it simply takes centuries for them to warm up or cool down before they release or absorb gases.

Possible explanation

• 19,000-17,000 years ago : deep sea temperatures increased by 2 Celsius degrees or so

• 1,000 years later : CO₂ increases

Lowell Stott, Axel Timmermann, Robert Thunell: "Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO₂ Rise and Tropical Warming"

Possible explanation

• Not only the CO₂ lags by 1,000 years but the sea surface temperatures in the tropics lag, too.

• The deep ocean warmed much earlier than the surface.

Lowell Stott, Axel Timmermann, Robert Thunell: "Southern Hemisphere and Deep-Sea Warming Led Deglacial Atmospheric CO₂ Rise and Tropical Warming"

• The warm water came from the South

• Perhaps “increasing southern spring insolation” occured

• Followed by albedo feedback

Possible explanation

• Also, it is believed that the 800-year period is also the mixing time for the deep ocean.

• There is a limit to the amount of natural CO2 that can be released

→making a never-ending cycle of temperature increase unlikely

Never-ending increasing?

X 50

Others’ comments

• Sun controls cosmic ray

• Sunspot activity↑

• Cosmic ray↓

• Clouds↓

• More energy gets to the ground

• Ground heats up

• Temperature↑

Charles Jordan said…

Others’ comments

Average sunspot activity has been going up and can account for most of the heating we see in the last 50 years.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

The End ~