Atmospheric Science, the weather, and global warming

[Frogberto]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

Any chance we could see that graph with Margins of Error included?

Sure - the margin of errors aren't a secret, and the NOAA data charts and NASA data charts always have them:



This is a UN chart, but the grey areas represent margin of error. Note the smaller (although stil existent) margin of error in the later data, which is direct measurement from Mauna Kea of Carbon Dioxide. In this graph, the yellow represents the margin of error:



I think you're implying uncertainty here, and there's always a level of uncertainty. But you can show CO2 levels with a simple calculation. If you begin with the year 1750, generally accepted as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when the standard measure for CO2 levels was 278ppmv, add the known level of human-generated CO2 for that year, then subtract 2.84% of the excess CO2 – because that's how fast nature tries to restore the balance. If we do this for 255 years, up to 2005, we get the pink line in the graph below. It fits the black line – the actual CO2 level – like a glove.



How accurate is this fit? Considering the difficulties of gathering data from centuries past, amazingly close. We know, for example, that up until 1950, deforestation was putting about as much CO2 into the atmosphere as were burning fossils, but it's not easy to know how many trees were chopped down in, say, 1850, and how much CO2 this put into the air. In spite of imperfect data, the fact that a simple calculation predicts the extraordinary shape of actual CO2 so well is clear evidence this can not be a coincidental convergence. Human CO2 emissions must have caused the upsurge is atmospheric CO2.

So what? The link between human activity and rising CO2 levels is the first step. The next one is between CO2 and global warming. That was predicted over 100 years ago, but the evidence has become convincing only very recently.

CO2 Level information, by the way, comes from two sources. From 1958 forward, they are from a weather station high atop the Mona Loa volcano in Hawaii. They are so accurate, they show levels going up every autumn, when the leaves fall, and coming down every spring. Earlier data are from ice cores in Antarctica. The two sources agree remarkably well.

[jdramj]

Originally Posted by Frogberto

If you begin with the year 1750, generally accepted as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when the standard measure for CO2 levels was 278ppmv, add the known level of human-generated CO2 for that year.....

Ok not to be one of those "naysayers", but I'll be one. Exactly how does one measure the amount of CO2 in 1750?

[Alex]

Because atmospheric gasses get trapped in ice at the poles (well anywhere really, but at the poles the ice doesn't melt so much). So if you know how old the ice is, there are complicated tests you can do to get a sense of atmospheric composition at the time.

This is how we can get gas compositions for hundreds of thousands of years. There is some really old ice laying about. For recent centuries there are some other methods as well.

[Frogberto]

Originally Posted by jdramj

Ok not to be one of those "naysayers", but I'll be one. Exactly how does one measure the amount of CO2 in 1750?

Nothing wrong with being a nay-sayer. But as Alex Stroup pointed out, ice core samples are one way to get a direct measurement, although not the only way.

This encyclopedia article has a good review of how direct atmopheric testing of atmosphere from centuries past is done.

There is a major ice core measurement center in Greenland, that has been used to reconstruct a history of climate from ice cores. When snow falls it carries with it the compounds that are in the air at the time, compounds ranging from sulfate, nitrate and other ions, to dust, radioactive fallout, and trace metals. When snow falls in a place where temperatures above freezing are rare (there is only a hint of any melting at the GISP2 site in the 750 year record recovered to date), such as in polar regions or at high altitude, the snow from one year falls on top of the previous year without melting.

As each yearÕs snowfall is buried by successive years' snowfall, the constituents contained in the snow are buried along with it. By drilling down from the surface of an ice sheet and analyzing snow from greater and greater depths, a history of the compounds in the air can be obtained. Further, snow that is deeper than 80 meters at the GISP2 site turns into ice from the weight of the snow above it, and trapped in the ice are small bubbles of air. Thus, in addition to trapping compounds from the air, an ice sheet traps a small sample of the air itself. This trapped air is also analyzed and provides information about the composition of the atmosphere at the time the ice formed.

Like ice cores, deep sea cores also provide information about climate, but from accumulated sediments on the ocean floor. Unlike ice cores, which provide direct climate information, sediment cores provide indirect information. An example of this indirect evidence is the method for determining temperature. When sediment cores are analyzed researchers painstakingly sort out plankton shells which twist in different directions depending on the temperature of the water they grew in. By counting the number of shells that twist each way the temperature of the surface water at the time that they grew can be determined. Understanding the behavior of these plankton in the modern world is necessary to produce a historical record of temperature for the ocean.

Sediments also accumulate very slowly relative to snow on an ice sheet. This results in much longer records from sediment cores, but a much reduced ability to resolve short term changes. While periods of hundreds to thousands of years might be resolved in a sediment core, annual and even seasonal resolutions are possible with ice cores. On the other hand, sediment cores can provide records which are as long as several million years compared with the several hundred thousand years of ice cores. Because of these differences, sediment cores and ice cores provide complimentary climate information; ices cores provide high resolution, direct information and sediment cores lower resolution, less direct records, but from much longer time periods.