Thursday, 10 March 2016

Highest ever rise in carbon dioxide levels

This rise that we see here is an annual rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This extra rise over and above the normal seasonal cycle is what was expected and which I discussed previously here  and my previous post on Indonesian fires whereby I clarify that we have a trend in rising CO2 due to human-induced emissions, we have a seasonal cycles due to changes in photosynthesis and decay and we have these extra wiggles due to changes in rainfall and photosynthesis due to the El Nino (or changes in the ENSO cycle). These extra increases in CO2 would generally follow or lag the changes in sea surface temperature associated with the El Nino as explained in the link here.

I first became aware of these changes that would allow one to predict such changes as we see described in the New Scientist post above a few years ago ironically not from main stream scientists but from contrarians. This was my first real experience of climate contrarians. . I realized the reasoning from these contrarians was flawed and later found the explanations regarding the ENSO cycles from main stream science as indicated in the previous link.

So what where these contrarians (Spencer and Humlum) attempting to explain. Rather than explain the obvious and accepted facts that Humans are the main cause of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere and this trend in rising CO2 was causing rising trends in both sea level and temperatures, they played with the data to try and see if they could show that it was rising temperatures that was causing the trend in CO2 to rise. There is of course nothing wrong at looking at different ways to analyse data but what was clear is that the obvious was overlooked and the inferences or conclusions were flawed. Their manipulation of the data effectively removed the trend and the seasonal cycles and so their conclusions could have nothing to do with the trend. Without apparently realizing it they were looking at the variations in CO2 lagging the changes in sea surface temperatures, SST,  associated with the ENSO cycle and then trying to make connections between the rise in the trend of CO2 and the rise in the trend of temperatures.

The connection here regarding these variations is changes in SST and wind patterns to changes in ocean circulation and large scale wind patterns to changes affecting precipitation and photosynthesis and to these producing the extra changes in CO2 that we note today towards the end of the ENSO pattern.

Shaviv made the same mistakes in trying to associate changes in SST and sea level rise confusing cause and effect.