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Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Rose 0.82% in 2016; Methane Rose as Well

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 02 2017, @09:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the too-much-fizzy-cola dept.

The World Meteorological Organization issued a press release about its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin:

Globally averaged concentrations of CO2 reached 403.3 parts per million in 2016, up from 400.00 ppm in 2015 because of a combination of human activities and a strong El Niño event. [...]

[...] Since 1990, there has been a 40% increase in total radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate - by all long-lived greenhouse gases, and a 2.5% increase from 2015 to 2016 alone, according to figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration quoted in the bulletin.

[...] Atmospheric methane reached a new high of about 1 853 parts per billion (ppb) in 2016 and is now 257% of the pre-industrial level.

BBC News reported:

"The 3 ppm CO2 growth rate in 2015 and 2016 is extreme - double the growth rate in the 1990-2000 decade," Prof Euan Nisbet from Royal Holloway University of London told BBC News.

[...] Another concern in the report is the continuing, mysterious rise of methane levels in the atmosphere, which were also larger than the average over the past ten years.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak happened in 2016.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:01PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @12:01PM (#590967)
    The press release refers to bulletin. The bulletin refers to NOAA's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index [noaa.gov]. The Index refers to explanation page [noaa.gov]. And the explanation page, em, explains... :)

    Radiative Forcing Calculations

    To determine the total radiative forcing of the greenhouse gases, we have used IPCC [Ramaswamy et al., 2001] recommended expressions to convert greenhouse gas changes, relative to 1750, to instantaneous radiative forcing (see Table 1). These empirical expressions are derived from atmospheric radiative transfer models and generally have an uncertainty of about 10%. The uncertainties in the global average abundances of the long-lived greenhouse gases are much smaller (<1%).

    Table 1. Expressions for Calculating Radiative Forcing*
    Trace Gas     Simplified Expression
    Radiative Forcing, ΔF (Wm-2)     Constant
    CO2     ΔF = αln(C/Co)     α = 5.35
    CH4     ΔF = β(M½ - Mo½) - [f(M,No) - f(Mo,No)]     β = 0.036
    N2O     ΔF = ε(N½ - No½) - [f(Mo,N) - f(Mo,No)]     ε = 0.12
    CFC-11     ΔF = λ(X - Xo)     λ = 0.25
    CFC-12     ΔF = ω(X - Xo)     ω = 0.32

    f(M,N) = 0.47ln[1 + 2.01x10-5 (MN)0.75 + 5.31x10-15M(MN)1.52]

    Look at "these empirical expressions", specifically the superlogarithmic ones, and applaud the ingenuity. :)
    And be sure to never accept extraordinary numbers on faith. ;)

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:36PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:36PM (#591033)

    By superlogarithmic do you mean the inverse of tetration? I don't see that in those equations.

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:36PM (5 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:36PM (#591181) Journal

      By superlogarithmic do you mean the inverse of tetration? I don't see that in those equations.

      Nope, by "superlogarithmic" he's indicating he doesn't know WTF he's talking about.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @08:23PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @08:23PM (#591316)

        If you think you do know shit, do explain how approximating logarithms by square roots work and where it ceases to.
        Or do quit jawing.

        • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @09:51PM (3 children)

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday November 02 2017, @09:51PM (#591375) Journal

          I don't need to because those expressions do not contain super logarithms.

          • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:53PM (1 child)

            by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:53PM (#591397) Journal

            I'll also point out that radiative forcing factors have nothing to do with the topic at hand which is c02 concentrations.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:49PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @03:49PM (#591707)

              Submitter quoted "a 40% increase in total radiative forcing" from the WMO press release.

          • (Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Friday November 03 2017, @12:52AM

            by driverless (4770) on Friday November 03 2017, @12:52AM (#591444)

            Look, up there! Is it a sine? Is it a cosine? No, it's Superlogarithm!

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 03 2017, @01:30AM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 03 2017, @01:30AM (#591465) Journal

      superlogarithmic

      It means increases faster asymptotically than the logarithm function, such as those square roots.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @04:30PM (#591719)

        One might guess that that could be the intended meaning. Did you post the original critique?

        I don't have expertise in this topic, but I see that a December 2016 paper [wiley.com] in Geophysical Research Letters, which is peer-reviewed, also uses equations which have a square root dependence on the concentration when calculating the radiative forcing for N2O and CH4 (see Table 1); for CO2 they use an equation with a logarithmic dependence on the concentration, just as the IPCC did. The original critique ridicules the IPCC without explicitly stating why its methodology is invalid.
         

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:06PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 04 2017, @02:06PM (#592158) Journal
          No. And the critique is based on the approximation being based on a particular radiative model of the atmosphere. If the model is biased for global warming effect, one would expect to see this in the approximations as well. So a superlogarithmic effect in the approximation may well be due to bias in the model rather than a real world phenomenon which appears to be the thrust of the critique.