An Inconvenient Scientist

[Embar Angylwrath]

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/impacts.html

Not real sure what you're trying to illustrate here. Care to expound?

Reference material since the subject of El nino and La nina has been introduced.

If you go to that link, search on "carbon dioxide", the search takes you to another link, which is a dead link. What reference material are you citing? Please cite the reference material you think has CO2 data in it.

[Embar Angylwrath]

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/g ... n06306.htm

I don't see any answer here about quantitative CO2 retention in seawater in relation to temp. Perhaps you can point me to the part of this link that addresses this?

http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId ... and=eschol

I'm no chemist but I think what you are looking for is in there.

That's eough chemistry to make my eyes bleed again, but if you sort through it, you'll see that generally, CO2 is released when the oceans warms, and is absorbed when the oceans cool. The article then takes on the finer points of all the small factors that slighlty increase or slightly decrease the ability of seawater to absorb/release CO2.

What is your opinion about how oceans both a) dump and absorb CO2 into the atmosphere, and b) affect global temperatures?

[Kulaf]

I don't believe it says that at all. I believe that since the ocean is a carbon sink that as the ocean warms its ability to absorb CO2 is reduced......and as it cools its ability to absorb CO2 increases. This is probably tied in to the biologic part of the process which likely suffers as the oceans warm and become less alkaline.

[Embar Angylwrath]

So is it your understanding that the oceans ALWAYS are uptaking CO2 and never release it? That temp only regulates the rate at which the oceans uptake CO2?

[Kulaf]

Of course not.....but clearly the ocean absorbs more than it releases. The biologics convert it as part of coral making and I am sure there must be depostis and processes at depths humans have not fully explored.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Let me ask it another way. Do oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere when the ocean water warms?

[Kulaf]

That would be hard to me to say. As I said I am not a chemist and thus it stands to reason I am not a chemical oceanographer. I have no way of knowing if the rate of absorbtion is greater than the rate of release at the point of contact between the ocean and the atmosphere.

Do you?

[Embar Angylwrath]

I can tell you that a body of water will release dissolved gases when it warms. Pretty basic physical chemistry.

And I also don't think you iunderstand the biological side of it either. It is true that oceanic biological organisms fix carbonate ions as carbonates. You mentioned corals as one type. There are also plankton that do it was well. However, it becomes more difficult for those organisms to fix carbonate ions as carbonates (predominantly calcium carbonate) if the CO2 level rises in ocean waters (which it will if the oceans cool, since cooler water can absorb more gas). When the cooler water absorbs more CO2, the amount of carbonic acid rises in the seawater. The seawater beomes more acidic, and as the acidity rises, it becomes more difficult for those carbon fixing organisms to form carbonates. So a warming ocean makes it easier for corals and the like to make carbonates. This is somewhat offset in that warmer water also affects the carboante reaction (it inhibits it).

Now... back to the oceans belching CO2 as they warm. Looking at landmass, oceans and atmosphere, the oceans contain over 90% of the CO2. Let me repeat that... over 90%. So I think you can see that even a small perterbation in ocean chemistry could release massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

From NASA...

Ocean water also holds tremendous quantities of carbon dioxide, 40 times more than the atmosphere. It absorbs almost half of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide dissolves in the frigid waters near the Arctic and Antarctic. In the winter, this cold water sinks as part of the ocean’s overturning circulation and carries the carbon dioxide into the deep ocean. After hundreds of years, mixing from winds and tides pulls this water back to the surface. As the water warms, it releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

http://oceanmotion.org/html/background/climate.htm

I'll say it again.. the oceans are the terresttial moderators of climate. Thay always have been. And we just don't know enough about atmospheric-oceanic dynamics to say that human produced CO2 is the cause of global warming, especially since its been much warmer on this planet before humans ever existed, and we're emerging from an ice age and the atmosphere was warming anyway (don't beleive me, look it up).

[Kulaf]

And I also don't think you iunderstand the biological side of it either. It is true that oceanic biological organisms fix carbonate ions as carbonates. You mentioned corals as one type. There are also plankton that do it was well. However, it becomes more difficult for those organisms to fix carbonate ions as carbonates (predominantly calcium carbonate) if the CO2 level rises in ocean waters (which it will if the oceans cool, since cooler water can absorb more gas). When the cooler water absorbs more CO2, the amount of carbonic acid rises in the seawater. The seawater beomes more acidic, and as the acidity rises, it becomes more difficult for those carbon fixing organisms to form carbonates. So a warming ocean makes it easier for corals and the like to make carbonates. This is somewhat offset in that warmer water also affects the carboante reaction (it inhibits it).

But you are assuming that the rate of carbon entering the ocean is a constant......and only the oceans temperature affects the rate of absorbtion......both of which are untrue.

http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13539

Here is the danger scenario you are overlooking. Yes the rate of ocean absorbtion is greater when the ocean is cold. But what if the oceans are warming......and the rate of atmopheric CO2 is increasing. Then the ocean is going to absorb at a great rate due to increased availability and you are going to have increasing ocean acidification.....which we are right now. The worry is what is the maximum rate at which the ocean can remove CO2 and have we or are we close to that maximum.

The oceans are already acidifying.....which is why you are seeing problems with the Great Barrier Reef......and an increase in schools of jelly fish. So to put it mildly Embar.......the worst case is happening. The oceans are getting warmer.......yet still absorbing massive amounts of CO2.....thus acidifying and reducing the biological pumps ability to remove CO2. And the rate CO2 entering the atmosphere is increasing.......and the ocean has a reduced capacity to remove it.

[Ddrak]

I didn't realize partial vapor pressure was that hard a concept?

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

It's not a hard concept to understand. But it seems reaction equilibrium is.

Kulaf - what you said is true. The oceans are warming and acidifying at the same time. THowever, the oceans simply can't be warming and absorbing CO2 at the same time. In fact, simply through the warming of the ocean, the ocean is pumping out over a net 2 GtC per year into the atmosphere. Most of that happens at the equator.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Svrjhv ... 1-PA100,M1

(Sorry about the long link, but I couldn't cut and paste... the info is on page 100)

In all honesty though, the science is split on this. Some researchers say measurements indicate the ocean is absorbing about 2GtC per year, others say it is releasing that amount. The emount in dispute though, is a 4GtC swing. That's almost the calculated amount of human sourced CO2 production. For me, until that is sorted out, we can't reliably say humans are the source of climate change.

Anyway, the acidification of oceans is therefore most likely due to something interfering in the part of the carbon cycle where the carbonic acid goes from carbonic acid -->bicarbonate ion ---> carbonate ion. Much of this is driven by the amount of calcium ion available. Less calcium ion, the system backs up. Also, if there is intereference with the biological portion of the system (i.e. pollution killing or degrading the plankton and other organisms that use the calcium carbonate, which I think is a bigger issue than CO2 production) there will be higher acidification. Personally, I think what we are doing to the oceans is a bigger threat to humanity than climate change.

Also, people seem to forget the carbon cycle isn't a closed system. Its a closed system in the biosphere, ocean and atmosphere, but not in the lithosphere. Volcanos, tectonic exposure of minerals... they play a role as well, and not a very understood one.

[Kulaf]

Once again you are missing it. The oceans surface temperature is increasing. Hoever it is still absorbing CO2 by channeling it to lower depths where the oceans are colder.

So again......ocean absorbing CO2 at a great rate......getting warmer........getting more acidic.......atmospheric CO2 increasing.

Yer almost there Embar.....I know you can make the leap.

[Embar Angylwrath]

That cycle you listed.. channeling it to the depths, takes hundreds of years man. Half a millenia by most accounts. It isn't like making instant tea, dude.

[Kulaf]

http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/GDD/bio/Carb ... frame.html

[Kulaf]

That cycle you listed.. channeling it to the depths, takes hundreds of years man. Half a millenia by most accounts. It isn't like making instant tea, dude.

I think you read it wrong. It takes that long for it to return to the atmosphere due to the length of time it travels the ocean......not that it takes that long to get there.

[Embar Angylwrath]

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/ ... glhmam_5.2

Please explain. This shows 20 years of no net warming. !988-2008. That is statisitcally significant. For all you statiticians out there, what is the statistical chance of no rise in a predicited increase for over 10% of the measured data (200 years of industrial production).

In other words, if you flip a coin, and the coin is weighted so that heads is more likely to turn up than tails, and you flip that coin 200 times, with slightly more heads than tails in the beginning, yet tails turns up 10 times in a row at the end... what does that tell you about either 1) the sampling group or 2) the hypothesis?

[Kulaf]

http://www.atmos.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt

Please explain to me how this huge mass of data can say whatever I want it to say because there is no underlying methodology or construct for the data.

[Kulaf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_ ... asurements

There is the plotted data from both the RSS and UAH data sets. Still shows an upward trend.

[Ddrak]

For all you statiticians out there, what is the statistical chance of no rise in a predicited increase for over 10% of the measured data (200 years of industrial production).

The chance of finding an arbitrary period in a sequence of upward trending data with random peaks and troughs that are 3-4 times the trend? About 99.9%. Maybe a little higher. It's not statistically significant at all that T(2008) < T(1998) simply because 1998 is already well known to have been an exceptional El-Nino year.

Honestly, I took the numbers you posted, put then in Excel and there was a pretty consistent upward trend for the entire period.

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

What time frame did you look at?