Durban – Conference of Parties – What Happened?
Durban – Conference of Parties – What Happened?
The Conference of the Parties in Durban, South Africa is over. The Conference of the Parties' (COP) are the annual meetings that are part of the governing body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. So what happened in Durban? (Rood Interviewed at livescience.com)
From the official point of view, the place to go is the UN Framework website. With a little bit of exploration, there are two official, short, perhaps preliminary documents. One is on the development of a Green Fund. This is something of a follow up from the 2010 COP in Cancun, Mexico. This is the development of a mechanism where the developed nations pay (certain) developing nations funds for both response to climate-change impacts and technological development. Tracing much further back, there were the seeds of this in the The Kyoto Protocol.
The other is being called the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. Here is the current official link and another link with a couple of readable introductory paragraphs. As I understand this agreement, in 2012 nations will start to develop a policy, a protocol, a treaty, some entity with legal implications, that will be completed in 2015 and will initiate reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020.
It is hard to look at these short documents from Durban and to state with any precision what will happen. It is the nature of high level diplomatic documents to be ambiguous or perhaps to support flexibility so that the parties can agree to work together but can leave the details of implementation and execution to the individual parties. The implementation will vary widely from country to country.
Given this ambiguity allows people to see success and failure in different ways. It is a measure of success that the countries keep talking, and one gets the impression from year to year that more and more major greenhouse gas emitters are agreeing that something has to be done to try to limit warming and its societal disruptions. On the other hand, there is no real evidence that these continued international machinations are leading to meaningful reductions or strategies for reductions. It remains true that an international “solution” to the greenhouse gas emission problem is an unrealistic expectation, and solutions will trickle up from below. As the solutions trickle up perhaps some will be disruptive enough to markets and economies to have major impacts. Then these will define the international response.
What seems to be important to me? Durban continues to show the realignment of global power represented by the emergence of China as a economic and political power. The role of India, South Africa, and Brazil continues to grow. The European Union is in an interesting position, because of their commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, and the Kyoto Protocol, practically, expiring in 2012. There is, still, a seeming European commitment to emissions reductions, and this is motivating alliances of small island states and the “Least Developed Countries” with the European Union – at least there is a commitment to trying to reduce. The United States remains in its curious position as something of loner – a position that, IMHO, grows as the world economies realign. What is interesting to me is seeing that the countries that are most heavily investing in alternative energies are starting to say they might consider the 2020 reductions … even China, from Wall Street Journal.
Here are some links to different takes on the meeting:
Guardian: Durban a breakthrough leading towards a possible global treaty
Asian Age: India-EU deal saves global climate meeting.
Irish TImes: Durban falls short.
BBC: Durban winners and losers.
Aljazeera: “Important Advance”
Washington Post: Last Minute Compromise.
And here is a nice analysis from Mother Jones.
I will end this potpourri of Durbanesque events with a couple of points from the International Energy Agency (IEA). What is the IEA? From their website:
“The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an autonomous organisation which works to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for its 28 member countries and beyond.
Founded in response to the 1973/4 oil crisis, the IEA’s initial role was to help countries co-ordinate a collective response to major disruptions in oil supply through the release of emergency oil stocks to the markets.” (about the IEA)
Prior to the Durban Conference the IEA did a press release associated with their annual World Energy Outlook. (Executive Summary ) The IEA documents state that the lock-in to current energy infrastructure and investments is making it increasingly difficult to imagine holding global-average warming to 2 degrees C. This year they do a thorough analysis of coal and the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And in an Durban-related interview IEA Chief Economist, Fatih Birol, says that we are currently on the track for six degrees C warming. This analysis of our energy reality places any optimism reflected in some of the articles above in stunning realism. Here is the start of the Executive Summary:
“There are few signs that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is underway. Although the recovery in the world economy since 2009 has been uneven, and future economic prospects remain uncertain, global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable 5% in 2010, pushing CO2 emissions to a new high. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400 billion.” Executive Summary
Without the availability and implementation of a low-carbon energy infrastructure that is cheap relative to fossil fuels, we have few choices and weak incentives to face the needed emissions reduction. So from Durban we are left with the same difficult choices, but with something of a new agreement and growing feeling of urgency for moving forward.
r
A new survey from Yale Project on Climate Change Communication: Majority in U.S. Support Emissions Reduction
Reader Comments
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One particularly nasty and obsessed user has created numerous handles, and has then used those handles to constantly hit the minus button on any reality-laden comments, while at the same time hitting the plus button on comments made by denialists and other anti-science types. In other words, your comments supporting the science behind climate change were hidden from view due to a concerted effort by those afraid of the truth. Unfortunately, so long as the "minus" button exists, we'll see such abuses of it.
by Sharon Hill on November 12, 2011 at 7:36 am
One of the main goals of the Doubtful News website is to demonstrate that critical thinking is necessary to navigate online news and make sense of what is happening in the world without being duped. This article is a fantastic report on exactly how the internet and our lack of rational thought has lead us into dangerously ridiculous beliefs about nefarious causes and deeds.
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Some valuable info.
Most Canadians will not wake up to a white Christmas on December 25 for the first time since Canada's weather office began recording snowfalls in 1955, the government agency said Wednesday.
With just days before the Christian holiday, Environment Canada senior climatologist Dave Phillips told AFP he has never seen so little snowpack in Canada's cities. And the forecast for the coming days is sunny and very mild.
"A white Christmas is usually a sure thing in Canada, but not this year," Phillips said. "We are usually the snowiest country in the world," he said. "But this year, like no other since we've been monitoring in 56 years, there will be many Canadians just dreaming of a white Christmas and not getting one."
For a city to qualify as having a white Christmas, Environment Canada must note at least two centimeters (0.79 inches) of snow on the ground at 7 am on December 25.
This month has been on average six to seven degrees (Celsius) warmer than normal and most snow that has fallen has melted soon after hitting the ground. Gander, Newfoundland -- usually "the snowiest place in Canada" -- only has a trace of snow on the ground today, Phillips noted. Winnipeg, Manitoba -- once ranked the coldest metropolis on Earth -- usually has a 98 percent chance of snow at Christmas. But temperatures in the west of the country are expected to hover just above freezing in the coming days.
Other cities in the east like Saint John's, Newfoundland have a few centimeters of snow on the ground but rain is forecast.
Phillips said Canadian winters are generally becoming milder, and starting later, and so the idea of a white Christmas may be something of the past. He pointed to a combination of climate change and an "urban heat island effect" created by Canada's growing cities. High energy use generates heat that is retained by materials in urban developments, resulting in areas that are consistently hotter than surrounding rural areas.
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I wouldn't worry; I'm sure it's just coincidence. ;-)
Is it any wonder that Fox viewers are the most misinformed of all cable TV viewers?
".... critical thinking is necessary ...."
I would say that this sums it all up. Shall we try some critical thinking and see what we come up with?
CO2 is a known greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. Greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun and less heat escapes back into space. Human activities pumps tons of CO2 into our atmosphere, on a daily basis. Using critical thinking, what would be the most logical and reasoned effect of this on our atmosphere?
To paraphrase, theshepherd, "tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ... tick ... tock ... "
Also worth a view is the english language service of NHK (Japanese National TV)
The best way to learn about issues and the news is to view sources you know are baised and triangulate. For example BBC, China Daily (Xinhua). Moscow Times, Al Jazerra, and Deusche Welle.or France 4
Sage advice,
Never trust one source as that would be illogical.
Logic is the cement of our civilization, with which we ascend from chaos, using reason as our guide.
Yep one troll using almost the same verbage as a banned poster is happenstance, two is a coincedence, three is enemy action.
Anyone that uses one primary news source is only getting limited news that is biased based.
FoxNews is not much different from the other news stations. The commentators at Fox, however, prefer not to use anything associated with the facts to convey their messages.
It's called keeping the viewers hoodwinked on climate change.
Multiple news sources are needed, as Rookie just noted. However, several university studies have shown that Fox viewers are the most misinformed of all cable news viewers. No such study says the same of MSNBC viewers, so equating the two is a bit disingenuous.
It's called keeping the viewers hoodwinked on climate change.
Since we are playing oldies :)
Let's see, climategate 1 and 2 and soon 3?
The very good read of the The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert
Let alone the numerous papers that just get swept under the carpet yet poke the legs out from under the settled science.
So, have some more propaganda that is scientifically indisputable if you will >~
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Ya'll with me yet?
(CNN) -- The Environmental Protection Agency finalized new federal standards on toxic pollutants and mercury emissions from coal power plants Wednesday, a move being praised by environmentalists but criticized by others, who predict lost jobs and a strain on the nation's power grid.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, at an event at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, announced that for the first time U.S. coal and oil-fired power plant operators must limit their emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.
"I am glad to be here to mark the finalization of a clean air rule that has been 20 years in the making, and is now ready to start improving our health, protecting our children, and cleaning up our air," Jackson said. "Under the Clean Air Act these standards will require American power plants to put in place proven and widely available pollution control technologies to cut harmful emissions of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases. In and of itself, this is a great victory for public health, especially for the health of our children."
EPA rules in place since the 1990s target acid rain and smog-forming chemicals emitting from power plants, but not mercury, a neurotoxin known to damage developing fetuses and children.
Senate panel examining how chemicals in daily life affect kids' health
Despite federal limits on emissions of mercury from other sources, such as waste incinerators, there have been no limits on coal-fired power plants, which the EPA says constitute the single largest source of mercury emissions.
"These standards rank among the three or four most significant environmental achievements in the EPA's history," said John Walke, clean air director of the National Resources Defense Council. "This rule making represents a generational achievement."
The new regulations are among the most wide-reaching to come from the EPA during Barack Obama's administration. They include separate limits for mercury emissions, acid gasses, and other pollutants from several metals.
Opinion: We must stop allowing mercury pollution
Specifically, the EPA will impose numerical emission limits for all existing and future coal plants and propose a range of "widely available, technical and economically reasonable practices, technologies, and compliance strategies," to meet the new demands.
According to an EPA analysis, the larger economic benefits of the reduced pollution will more than pay for the short-term clean-up costs. The EPA also predicts more jobs will be created than lost as power plants invest million of dollars in upgrades.
It also estimates the new regulations, by reducing people's exposure to these toxins, will prevent 11,000 premature deaths each year and trim health costs.
"EPA estimates that for every dollar spent to reduce pollution from power plants, the American public will see up to $9 in health benefits. The total health and economic benefits of this standard are estimated to be as much as $90 billion annually," the agency said in a news release.
But the EPA also acknowledges the regulations will result in increased power grid strain: by its estimate, 14.7 gigawatts of power supply will be eliminated from the U.S. power grid when the rules take effect by 2015. That figure -- enough to power well over 10 million U.S. households -- is overly optimistic, according to other industry analyses.
Several industry groups and some Republicans also disagree about the economic impact the new regulations will have.
Reps. Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan, chairmen of the House Oversight Committee and subcommittee on Regulatory affairs, respectively, sent a letter to the White House earlier this week claiming the "EPA has failed to perform a proper analysis of the rule's impact on job creation" and "consider the rule's impact on grid reliability."
The new rules have also made their way to the Republican presidential campaign trail, with Jon Huntsman recently predicting increased brownouts during the summer and Rick Perry declaring the EPA is a "job-killing" agency.
And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group traditionally sympathetic to Republicans, has aired ads urging listeners not to "let the EPA turn out the lights on the American economy."
But the Obama administration has found an ally in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who argued in a recent op-ed for the Huffington Post that the new standards are gravely needed.
"We can stop this," Bloomberg wrote of mercury poisoning. "We can spare children this tragic injustice and the pain it brings their families. We can spare adults from losing years off their lives. And we can spare taxpayers the enormous health care costs that come with mercury-related-illnesses."
Environmentalists, who earlier his fall were outraged with Obama over his refusal to push for ozone emission standards the EPA supported, are also strongly on board.
"This bold new announcement means less contaminated fish -- and more protections for kids who are at risk of developing learning disabilities and other problems that have been linked to mercury poisoning," the Sierra Club said in an e-mail to CNN. "This is a big public health victory, 20 years in the making. It's one of the most important anti-pollution measures in recent memory."
Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Beyond Coal Campaign, said, "As a mom, I'm especially excited to know that millions of mothers and babies will now be protected from mercury poisoning. We all teach our kids the simple rule that if you make a mess you should clean it up -- and now polluters will have to follow that same rule."
The new rule requires that the vast majority of mercury contained in coal be captured and prevented from releasing into the air when burned for energy, and would require operators to shut down or upgrade the least efficient power plants.
Power plant operators have three years to comply with the new standards, but plant operators may be granted additional time to install the necessary emissions improvement technologies if they are able to demonstrated a valid need.
Once airborne, mercury enters bodies of water through precipitation, becomes methylmercury, and accumulates in the food chain.
The EPA and the Food and Drug Administration jointly recommend that pregnant women and young children limit their consumption of fish and shellfish to two meals a week because of the methylmercury contamination.
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This proves Lindzen wrong!
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My, but some people have their heads in the clouds. Between Lindzen's discredited insistence that clouds will prevent warming (they haven't and won't), his continuing belief that there's no strong link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer (he was a an oft-quoted pro-tobacco expert back in the day), his affinity for ExxonMobil, and his magical belief that the planet's climate sensitivity is less than one degree Celsius (already exceeded), does anyone really listen to him anymore?
CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS IN THE
SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPE
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prevents this by producing electrical power which will prevent fossil fuel consumption thus lowering carbonic acid levels in the oceans. Ya'll with me yet?
Ocean Acidification: Some Organisms Already Experiencing Ocean Acidification Levels Not Predicted to Be Reached Until 2100
ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2011) — A group of 19 scientists from five research organizations have conducted the broadest field study of ocean acidification to date using sensors developed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.The study was recently reported the journal PLoS One. It is an important step toward understanding how specific ecosystems are responding to the change in seawater chemistry that is being caused as the oceans take up extra carbon dioxide produced by human greenhouse gas emissions, said its authors. "These data represent a critical step in understanding the consequences of ocean change: the linkage of present-day pH exposures to organismal tolerance and how this translates into ecological change in marine ecosystems," the authors wrote.
"These pH time series create a compelling argument for the collection of more continuous data of this kind." Ocean acidification research is a relatively new study topic as scientists have only appreciated the potential extent of acidification within the last decade. As greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated in the past century, the oceans have taken up about a third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities. That excess beyond natural levels increases amounts of carbonic acid in seawater. Acidification also limits the amount of carbonate forms that are needed by marine invertebrates such as coral and shelled organisms to form their skeletons. Though many lab simulations of this effect have been performed recently, including at a new acidification laboratory in development at Scripps, there have been few comparable field studies. Using sensors recently developed at Scripps, the researchers surveyed marine ecosystems ranging from coral reefs in the South Pacific Ocean to volcanic CO2 vent communities in the Mediterranean Sea.
They found that in some places, such as Antarctica and the Line Islands of the south Pacific, the range of pH variance is much more limited than in areas of the California coast subject to large vertical movements of water known as upwellings. In some of their study areas, they found that the decrease in seawater pH being caused by greenhouse gas emissions is still within the bounds of natural pH fluctuation. Some areas already experience daily acidity levels that scientists had expected would only be reached at the end of the 21st Century.
"This study is important for identifying the complexity of the ocean acidification problem around the globe," said Scripps marine biologist Jennifer Smith. "Our data show such huge variability in seawater pH both within and across marine ecosystems making global predictions of the impacts of ocean acidification a big challenge. Some ecosystems such as coral reefs experience a daily range in pH that exceeds the predicted decrease in pH over the next century. While these data suggest that marine organisms may be more adapted to fluctuations in pH than previously thought much more research is needed to determine how individual species will respond over time. Importantly, these new sensors allow us continuously and autonomously monitor pH from remote parts of the world and thus provide us with important baselines from which we can monitor future changes caused by ocean acidification."
Because many in the marine chemistry community have expressed concerns that ocean acidification could happen too rapidly for some organisms to adapt, the researchers said that this finding is an important step toward identifying the mechanisms some marine organisms have developed in order to cope. They also said that knowledge of actual pH ranges in various ecosystems should improve assumptions about future pH levels that can only rely on broad generalizations about seawater chemistry. Furthermore it could guide future lab and field studies that investigate the limits of resistance and resilience in various marine communities.
The researchers used "SeaFET" and "SeapHOx" sensors developed at Scripps by marine chemistry researcher Todd Martz. The sensors can measure pH and temperature in the top 70 meters (230 feet) of the ocean. Since 2009, Martz's team has constructed 52 sensors, which have been used by 13 different research groups to study individual ecosystems.
"This collaboration was not planned; it just naturally formed as several of my colleagues requested replicates of a pH sensor that I built while working as a postdoc in Ken Johnson's group at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)," said Martz. "When I arrived at Scripps, we re-engineered my prototype design and since then I have not been able to keep up with all of the requests for sensors. Because every sensor used in this study was built at Scripps, I was in a unique position to assimilate a number of datasets, collected independently by researchers that otherwise would not have been in communication with each other. Each time someone deployed a sensor, they would send me the data and eventually it became clear that a synthesis should be done to cross-compare this diverse collection of measurements."
Deployed in the ocean over the course of months or years, the sensors are also able to record important data about how pH fluctuates over time. As data accumulates, the researchers suggested that the field data could identify ocean regions especially vulnerable to the effects of ocean acidification or areas that provide natural protections to organisms at risk.
"Such knowledge could enable protection, management, and remediation of critical marine habitats and populations in the future," wrote the authors.
Despite surveying 15 different ocean regions, the authors noted that they only made observations on coastal surface oceans and that more study is needed in deeper ocean regions farther away from land. Martz noted that large-scale programs such as Argo, a network of more than 3,000 floats distributed throughout the oceans that measures fundamental data.
"The Honeywell DuraFET pH sensor used in the SeaFET has been a great tool for characterizing shallow sites from moorings and for use in shipboard underway systems," Martz said. "The next challenge will be observing the pH of the entire ocean from top to bottom without using ships. I am really excited about the prospect of adding these sensors to mobile autonomous platforms like profiling floats, gliders, and drifters. In fact we continue to work with Ken Johnson and MBARI to make this a reality. I think you can expect to see a pH sensor sending back data from an Argo-type profiling float at some point in 2012."
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Hmmm, I can think of a few easily..
But dats a rather tender subject..
: )
Hitting the minus on *anyone's* comment does not change the plus count. It has been that way since the plus count was implemented.
See for yourself.
Most knew dat.
Seems some were of a different mind.
The System is a Logic based algorithm so go fig'ya, eh?
Your Cameo's are visible to more than you think... \\
That dog is gonna bite you!
Blogger Loses Defamation Case, Judge Weighs in on Who is "Really" a Journalist
I really wanted to post the Korn version :)
My question would be simple ,,,, Why?
Is it just me that can see the enigma being scribbled over?
Even if he's right about that, who are we in the 1st world with all the modern conveniences and high life expectancy and all the positive things that modern industry gives us to live relatively easy lives - who are we to tell the 3rd world that they aren't allowed to have all those things that better humanity as well, it's inhumane to suggest that any sovereign be kept from further industrializing? Look at N. Korea's meager carbon footprint compared to South Korea's, and the quality of life indicators and see where you'd rather reside:
Political speech is protected. Slander still applies to conversations about others. ... Have you sent this link to Watts at WUWT? He may need to take a long look at this.
It's more like we do not practice what we preach. If we don't practice what we preach then why should other countries respect us? Truth being said mankind uses so much energy we will always need fossil fuel even it means we use it for just voltage control and Power Factor ( var ) regulation. Sadly, no one listens to my idea which can get us out of this mess altogether.
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I know that this is just my opinion but, I believe that any post that lacks profanity, or threats against others, should be visible. This is true even for when you are not logged into your account. The "Hide" button should remain but, it should only apply for the one that chose to "hide" a comment and for that comment only. Any rating system should be left in the mind of the one that is doing the reading of the posts. Admin would still determine any posts that would warrant removal.
North Korea's form of government, a repressive regime, is why they have a low carbon footprint. I understand what your point is. You just used a poor example to illustrate it.
Either we act, on a global level, to reduce the global carbon footprint, or no nation will have a booming economy by 2100. No citizens, of any nation, will enjoy the benefits we have seen already. Truth of the matter is, there will not be enough resources available to us in the future. With or without AGW, this will be true. Clean water, clean air and lands for growing crops will be at a premium by 2100.
This gets us out of that MESS!
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I would like to hear your pros and cons of my idea.
Perhaps,I can change your mind on the cons?
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Check your mail. We can discuss this through mail.
Likewise.
I don't know why you'd knock N. Korea. They are a fine example of how Marxism can and does reduce carbon footprints. My guess is that Cuba does okay also. They could do better, but Castro has gone a little easy on the comrades in my opinion.
That's a great way to live. Imagine 7 billion people each digging a hole to use the restroom then burying it or you know what might be better? We could share the holes we dug. More power to you!
Is it possible to be sarcastic and realistic at the same time?
Swooping pole-to-pole plane flights uncover unexpected trends in pollutant releases and spread
By Janet Rayloff
A major pollution-mapping program that ends September 9 has turned up startling trends in climate-warming gases and soot. The data it collected over the past five years from a National Science Foundation aircraft show the tropics periodically belch huge plumes of nitrous oxide — a potent greenhouse gas — into the upper atmosphere. Arctic measurements show that the recent record summer retreats of ice cover have allowed seas there to exhale unexpected amounts of methane, another potent greenhouse gas.
Then there’s soot. Parts of the supposedly pristine Arctic skies host dense clouds of these black carbon particles. During some flights, “We were immersed in essentially clouds of black carbon that were dense enough that you could barely see the ground,” recalls Stephen Wofsy of Harvard University, a principal investigator in the program. “It was like landing in Los Angeles — except that you were 8 kilometers above the surface of the Arctic Ocean.”
Until a few years ago, scientists interested in mapping global emissions of climate-altering pollutants had to rely on Earth-based sensors or satellites’ eyes on the skies. Neither could identify at what altitude the pollutants tended to congregate. They also missed many highly localized or seasonal plumes of natural pollutants.
That all changed when a federal-university research partnership got access to NSF’s research plane: HIAPER (for High Performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research). Throughout a number of periodic runs, this aircraft repeatedly swooped up and down — from 150 meters above Earth’s surface to heights sometimes exceeding 13.7 kilometers (45,000 feet). All along the way, its instruments measured more than 50 greenhouse gases and black carbon.
The unparalleled altitude- and latitude- specific data collected as part of this program — named HIPPO (for HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations) — will soon be made available to researchers generally, notes Wofsy. He expects scientists will mine its data for many years, looking for additional climate trends.
Sky-truthing carbon dioxide levels
A primary goal of HIPPO was to investigate how well airborne pollutant concentrations match what computer models had predicted should exist. In some cases, as for soot, HIPPO data pointed to serious problems — oversimplifications — in those models. In other instances, such as for oxygen movement in and out of oceans, the new data generally validated computer predictions.
Currently, land plants and the oceans absorb roughly half of all carbon dioxide emitted, notes Britton Stephens, a scientist with the National Center on Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. But details on which parts of which ecosystems do it, under what circumstances and how efficiently remains somewhat of an open book. Simply put: “We don’t understand their behavior at the current time well enough to predict their behavior into the future,” he says.
So airborne observations have been repeatedly compared to what computer models predict. And one example of where the models need fine tuning involves carbon dioxide, HIPPO indicates.
It revealed “large plumes of carbon dioxide over the Arctic,” Stephens reported Sept. 7 at a news briefing. These plumes didn’t come from the Arctic, he says, but bled into Arctic skies from industrial centers throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
“This was a bit of a surprise,” he says, because models had suggested that much of the carbon dioxide should have been sucked up by plants and seas close to where the gas was being emitted.
Another instance of where the models appear to fall short is on how well the mixing of near-surface parcels of air homogenize carbon dioxide concentrations.
Stephens pointed to data collected earlier this week by the HIAPER aircraft during a run from Kona, Hawaii, to Anchorage, Alaska. “This is the time of year when we see peak uptake [of the gas]” as a result of photosynthesis in land plants, he explains. And HIPPO indeed observed a large depletion of carbon dioxide near the surface, he notes — except “we were measuring it over the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
Computer analyses had predicted a greater degree of mixing of clean and polluted air parcels, he says. Instead, there were sharp gradients in the gas among closely sampled regions.
Elsewhere, HIPPO offered welcome confirmation of a different model prediction: large plumes of oxygen coming out of the southern oceans during the austral summer. Stephens attributes these massive releases to the uptake of carbon dioxide by photosynthetic bacteria in the warming seas. Currently, it’s winter in the South. And HIPPO has just measured the opposite trend, Stephens says: a seasonal absorption of oxygen by oceans there.
Similar trends for these gases have been observed before throughout the Northern Hemisphere. But HIPPO shows that this normal pattern of winter absorption of oxygen and summer absorption of carbon dioxide “is somewhat decoupled” in the southern oceans. Indeed, Stephens concludes, at times “it was almost more significant that we measured an anti-correlation between oxygen and carbon dioxide than the actual numbers [of how much of either was present].”
Other revelations
More unexpected, Wofsy says, was the March 2010 finding of “a significant excess over the tropics of greenhouse gases — especially nitrous oxide — very high up in the atmosphere. That hadn’t been predicted by any models.”
So radical were the data that his team rushed them into print. Those data show a “bulge” in nitrous oxide emissions between the equator and 20° North latitude.
“It is clear that the enhanced nitrous oxide seen at altitude is a product of tropical emissions lofted to the middle and upper troposphere by convection,” the authors conclude in the Aug. 6, 2011, Geophysical Research Letters. HIPPO data alone cannot confirm whether the release of this gas represents a “winking on and off” of emissions on time scales of days to weeks, the researchers said, or whether the releases occur more chronically but only occasionally shoot up to altitudes of between 2 kilometers and 14 kilometers.
The best explanation for these data, Wofsy and his coauthors write, is that rainfall or regional flooding spurs production of the gas (probably by soil microbes) — and when this coincides with sharp atmospheric updrafts, the pollutant is propelled high into the skies.
Something too new to fully understand (although a report on it is being prepared for publication), Wofsy says, is a finding of notable concentrations of methane in the Arctic’s atmosphere that trace back to the sea.
“Oceanographers have known for some time that there is production of methane in surface waters of the Arctic,” he says, but “it’s never been observed in the atmosphere.” Those oceanographic data, he says, suggest a source for this methane other than sediments or the melting of icy gas hydrates.
The phenomenon also appears very widespread. “We observed that the ocean surface releases methane to the atmosphere all over the whole of the Arctic Ocean,” Wofsy says.
Climate scientists have been concerned about whether the Arctic Ocean's loss of summer ice cover might lead, through some feedback mechanisms, to boosting the release of methane. Concludes Wofsy: Thanks to HIPPO, “This hypothesized feedback has been observed for the first time.” And there are hints, he adds, that methane’s source may be something other than melting of gas hydrates.
One notable take-home message from HIPPO: Climate-altering pollution from the Northern Hemisphere — home to 95 percent of humanity — has been migrating everywhere, even into southern skies, says James Elkins of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Boulder. The data are “just very persuasive.”
Indeed, Wofsy adds, after reviewing HIPPO data, you’re left with an impression that pollution associated with human activities has exerted “an overwhelming influence” on Earth’s atmosphere. And that’s not, he adds, reassuring.
And this makes the story less relevant, how?
Say, way to really add to the narrative! Keep it up!
Uploaded by ncarucar on Jul 14, 2009
Steven Wofsy explains the significance of the HIPPO missions (see http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/hippo.jsp ),
which allow scientists to look at the whole globe at once in great detail. When the project is complete, scientists will have a new picture of how greenhouse gases are entering and exiting the atmosphere as a result of natural processes and human activities. Steven Wofsy is a Harvard University scientist and HIPPO principal investigator.
Uploaded by ChangingClimates on Apr 16, 2010
Scott Denning of the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University gives a stripped-down explanation of the structure of greenhouse gas molecules like CO2 and how they trap heat in our atmosphere.
I Googled this sentence.
"Parts of the supposedly pristine Arctic skies host dense clouds of these black carbon particles."
and found this article.
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It is on the net. What is your malfunction?
LSU Earth Scan Laboratory
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The only person "caught" in this is (the likely nonexistent) "Steven Goddard". Caught, that is, proving yet again that doesn't understand the basics of climate, or how to read charts and graphs. Maybe he should stick with the coloring books they hand out in the institution in which he resides...
Yeah he should have copied someone elses avitar of a volcano with lightning around it like a good classy Minnesota Vikqueen on this forum! Oooff dah! Also Cat5 also had a problem with New Orleanians. Just sayin'.
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