From a news article in today’s Science, “One of the crowning achievements of modern environmental science is the Keeling curve, the detailed time series of the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) begun in 1958 that has enabled deep insights into the mechanisms of global climate change. These measurements were difficult to make for most of their 60-year history, involving the physical collection of air samples in flasks at a small number of sites scattered strategically around the globe and the subsequent analysis of their CO2 inventories in a handful of laboratories throughout the world.”

The purpose of the OCO-2 was to make these measurements much more accurate and efficient, and to provide more granularity in the details. The space craft was launched in July 2014, replacing an earlier OCO (OCO-1, if you like) which was launched in 2009.

Do not tell Donald Trump about this satellite. He’ll have it shot down.

Anyway, the current issue of Science is a collection of papers that provide the initial OCO-2 results, “covering the detection of CO2 emissions from specific point sources; measurements of CO2 variations associated with El Niño, on land and at sea; and solar-induced fluorescence measurements of photosynthesis for determining gross primary production by plants.”

There has been material published already, listed here.

Here I’m just going to give you the highlights of some of the results, cribbed from a selection of the various papers. You’ll want to get a copy of this issue of Science, at the library, to head into the weeds.

From Contrasting carbon cycle responses of the tropical continents to the 2015–2016 El Niño by Liu et al,

Our results indicate that the global El Niño effect is a superposition of regionally specific effects. The heterogeneous climate forcing and carbon response over the three tropical continents to the 2015–2016 El Niño challenges previous studies that suggested that a single dominant process determines carbon cycle interannual variability, which could also be due to previous disturbance and soil and vegetation structure. The similarity between the 2015 tropical climate anomaly and the projected climate changes imply that the role of the tropical land as a buffer for fossil fuel emissions may be reduced in the future.

From The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 early science investigations of regional carbon dioxide fluxes by Eldering et al:

Earth’s carbon cycle involves large fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between the atmosphere, land biosphere, and oceans. Over the past several decades, net loss of CO2 from the atmosphere to the land and oceans has varied considerably from year to year, equaling 20 to 80% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use change. On average, the uptake is about 50%. The imbalance between CO2 emissions and removal is seen in increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations….The measurements from OCO-2 provide a global view of the seasonal cycles and spatial patterns of atmospheric CO2, with the anticipated year-over-year growth rate. The buildup of CO2 in the Northern Hemisphere during winter and its rapid decrease in concentration as spring arrives (and the SIF increases) is seen in unprecedented detail. The enhanced CO2 in urban areas relative to nearby background areas is observed with a single overpass of OCO-2. Increases in CO2 due to the biomass burning in Africa are also clearly observed.

From OCO-2 advances photosynthesis observation from space via solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence by Sun et al:

Reliable estimation of gross primary production (GPP) from landscape to global scales is pivotal to a wide range of ecological research areas, such as carbon-climate feedbacks, and agricultural applications, such as crop yield and drought monitoring. However, measuring GPP at these scales remains a major challenge. Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is a signal emitted directly from the core of photosynthetic machinery. SIF integrates complex plant physiological functions in vivo to reflect photosynthetic dynamics in real time. The advent of satellite SIF observation promises a new era in global photosynthesis research. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) SIF product is a serendipitous but critically complementary by-product of OCO-2’s primary mission target—atmospheric column CO2 (Embedded Image). OCO-2 SIF removes some important roadblocks that prevent wide and in-depth applications of satellite SIF data sets and offers new opportunities for studying the SIF-GPP relationship and vegetation functional gradients at different spatiotemporal scales.

Our analyses suggest that SIF is a powerful proxy for GPP at multiple spatiotemporal scales and that high-quality satellite SIF is of central importance to studying terrestrial ecosystems and the carbon cycle. Although the possibility of a universal SIF-GPP relationship across different biome types cannot be dismissed, in-depth process-based studies are needed to unravel the true nature of covariations between SIF and GPP. Of critical importance in such efforts are the potential coordinated dynamics between the light-use efficiencies of CO2 assimilation and fluorescence emission in response to changes in climate and vegetation characteristics. Eventual synergistic uses of SIF with atmospheric CO2 enabled by OCO-2 will lead to more reliable estimates of terrestrial carbon sources and sinks—when, where, why, and how carbon is exchanged between land and atmosphere—as well as a deeper understanding of carbon-climate feedbacks.

From Influence of El Niño on atmospheric CO2 over the tropical Pacific Ocean: Findings from NASA’s OCO-2 mission, by Chatterjee et al:

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) is NASA’s first satellite designed to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) with the precision, resolution, and coverage necessary to quantify regional carbon sources and sinks. OCO-2 launched on 2 July 2014, and during the first 2 years of its operation, a major El Niño occurred: the 2015–2016 El Niño, which was one of the strongest events ever recorded.

El Niño and its cold counterpart La Niña (collectively known as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation or ENSO) are the dominant modes of tropical climate variability. ENSO originates in the tropical Pacific Ocean but spurs a variety of anomalous weather patterns around the globe. Not surprisingly, it also leaves an imprint on the global carbon cycle. Understanding the magnitude and phasing of the ENSO-CO2 relationship has important implications for improving the predictability of carbon-climate feedbacks.

The high-density observations from NASA’s OCO-2 mission, coupled with surface ocean CO2 measurements from NOAA buoys, have provided us with a unique data set to track the atmospheric CO2 concentrations and unravel the timing of the response of the ocean and the terrestrial carbon cycle during the 2015–2016 El Niño….

The strong El Niño event of 2015–2016 provided us with an opportunity to study how the global carbon cycle responds to a change in the physical climate system. Space-based observations of atmospheric CO2, such as from OCO-2, allow us to observe and monitor the temporal sequence of El Niño–induced changes in CO2 concentrations. Disentangling the timing of the ocean and terrestrial responses is the first step toward interpreting their relative contribution to the global atmospheric CO2 growth rate, and thereby understanding the sensitivity of the carbon cycle to climate forcing on interannual to decadal time scales.

From Spaceborne detection of localized carbon dioxide sources b Schwander et al:

Although the carbon budget is often presented in terms of global-scale fluxes, many of the contributing processes occur through localized point sources, which have been challenging to measure from space. Persistent anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have altered the natural balance of Earth’s carbon sources and sinks. These emissions are driven by a multitude of individual mobile and stationary point sources that combust fossil fuels, with urban areas accounting for more than 70% of anthropogenic emissions to the atmosphere. Natural point-source emissions are dominated by wildfires and persistent volcanic degassing.

Spaceborne measurements of atmospheric CO2 using kilometer-scale data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) reveal distinct structures caused by known anthropogenic and natural point sources, including megacities and volcanoes. Continuous along-track sampling across Los Angeles (USA) by OCO-2 at its ~2.25-km spatial resolution exposes intra-urban spatial variability in the atmospheric Embedded Image distribution that corresponds to the structure of the urban dome, which is detectable under favorable wind conditions. Los Angeles Embedded Image peaks over the urban core and decreases through suburban areas to rural background values more than ~100 km away. Enhancements of Embedded Image in the Los Angeles urban CO2 dome observed by OCO-2 vary seasonally from 4.4 to 6.1 parts per million (ppm). We also detected isolated CO2 plumes from the persistently degassing Yasur, Ambrym, and Aoba volcanoes (Vanuatu), corroborated by near-simultaneous sulfur dioxide plume detections by NASA’s Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite. An OCO-2 transect passing directly downwind of Yasur volcano yielded a narrow filament of enhanced Embedded Image (Embedded Image ? 3.4 ppm), consistent with plume modeling of a CO2 point source emitting 41.6 ± 19.7 kilotons per day (15.2 ± 7.2 megatons per year). These highest continuous volcanic CO2 emissions are collectively dwarfed by about 70 fossil fuel–burning power plants on Earth, which each emit more than 15 megatons per year of CO2.

OCO-2’s sampling strategy was designed to characterize CO2 sources and sinks on regional to continental and ocean-basin scales, but the unprecedented kilometer-scale resolution and high sensitivity enables detection of CO2 from natural and anthropogenic localized emission sources. OCO-2 captures seasonal, intra-urban, and isolated plume signals. Capitalizing on OCO-2’s sensitivity, a much higher temporal resolution would capture anthropogenic emission signal variations from diurnal, weekly, climatic, and economic effects, and, for volcanoes, precursory emission variability. Future sampling strategies will benefit from a continuous mapping approach with the sensitivity of OCO-2 to systematically and repeatedly capture these smaller, urban to individual plume scales of CO2 point sources.

Wow, that’s a lot of Science in one day. All from THIS issue.

First, there is the annual up and down cycle that happens because there is more land in the Northern Hemisphere. I won’t explain that to you now because I know you can figure out why that happens.

Second, there is natural variation up and down aside from that annual cycle that has to do with things like volcanoes and such. This includes the rate of forest fires, which increase greenhouse gases by turning some of the Carbon trapped in plant tissue into gas form as CO2. (That was a hint for the answer to the first reason!)

Third, humans.

There was a big spike in CO2 concentration this year, and it was caused by El Nino increasing forest fire output, which in turn, freed up some of that CO2. Also, regional drought in some places simply slowed down plant growth, leaving some Carbon stranded in the atmosphere.

So was that natural? Not at all. ENSO cycles, that cause El Nino and La Nina constitute and oscillation in rainfall patterns, and part of that results in extra forest fires or other effects as mentioned. But these effects are caused directly by weather disruption. Human caused global warming was already doing that. The severe El Nino of 2014-2016 was more severe (and probably longer) than any, or almost any, ever observed, precisely because it was a big dermatological monster sitting on top of a big hill made by anthropogenic global warming.

But there is also another,subtler but very important lesson in this event. At any given time we could have what would normally be a “natural” shift to bad conditions. But under global warming, such a shift can be transformed from a disaster to a much bigger disaster. In this way, think of climate change as the steepening of the drop off alongside the road from a 2 foot ditch to a 10 foot embankment. When we drive off the road due to natural forces (some ice, for example) without global warming,we get bounced around a bit. With global warming we get to rely on our airbags to save us, but the airbag deployment will probably break both our arms and mess up our face.

Anyway, the confirmation of the role of El Nino comes from new research discussed here.

A paper just published in Nature reports on the direct measurement of the effects of human greenhouse gas pollution on the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere. This is empirical verification of anthropogenic global warming.

Since the Industrial Revolution, when humans started polluting the Earth’s atmosphere with copious amounts of long lived greenhouse gases released from entombment as fossil fuels, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has skyrocketed from close to 250 parts per million (ppm) to about 400ppm. In fact, February was the first month since records have been kept to average over 400ppm, though that value has been reached several times over the last year or so. This is the highest concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in a very long time. Direct measurements of air trapped in glacial ice confirms that CO2 has been well below 300ppm for the last 800,000 years. We can’t measure CO2 as easily for periods before this, but it can be estimated, and the best estimates suggest that the last time our planet has had CO2 levels of 400ppm or more is during the very early Pleistocene or, more likely, the Late Pliocene, between roughly 2.5 and 3.5 million years ago.

The transition from higher CO2 levels, and a warmer Earth to a cooler Earth changed the planet’s ecology considerably, giving rise for the the first time to widespread grasslands (much of that now converted to vast farmlands), reduced forests, repeated glaciations and other changes. It is generally accepted that these changes directly or indirectly caused many of the key steps in human evolution. So, millions of years ago, the planet changed to one inhabited by our immediate ancestors and eventually our own species, and our physiology, culture, technology, psychology, and everything else evolved in this new context. Re-heating the Earth to Miocene levels in a very short period of time will have dramatic consequences and will possibly make it impossible for Humans to live as we do now on this planet.

The science behind this is somewhat complicated but the basics can be easily understood. The sun provides heat to the Earth, but if our atmosphere consisted only of non-greenhouse gases, much of that heat would immediately escape and our planet would be very cold. Adding greenhouse gasses to such a hypothetical Earth would cause a heat imbalance that would eventually increase the average temperature of the oceans, the air near the surface (where we live), the upper several meters of the Earth itself. This heat imbalance would also eventually melt persistent ice such as found today in the world’s glaciers, which in turn would cause a dramatic rise in sea level. Around the edges of the Earth’s continents are preserved ancient beaches or shorelines where the Miocene (or earlier) ocean once ended. Between these ancient shorelines and the modern shoreline, in most places, exist a very large percentage of the Earth’s human population and, in some areas, vast regions that are farmed to produce the world’s supply of food.

We know how this works mainly from two different sources of information. First, there is the basic physics, backed up by laboratory experiments, showing that added greenhouse gasses provide the heat imbalance that causes what we call global warming. Second, we have been measuring the surface temperature of the Earth for many decades, and we can see the heating. One of the most important things to know about this is that the current level of heating is not that expected for the current level of CO2. The current concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases should produce much more heating but it takes time, in the order of decades, for the imbalance to even out. In other words, the increase in greenhouse gases caused by human pollution so far is expected to produce continued warming for decades to come. The primary driver, CO2, is not expected to leave the atmosphere for centuries. So, we are currently locked in to a significant rise in heat, and as we continue to add more CO2 to the atmosphere, the total effect will increase.

In between these two basic facts — the physics of greenhouse pollution and the observation of the effects of greenhouse pollution — is the direct observation of what scientists call “radiative forcing.” Radiative forcing is the degree of perturbation of the planet’s heat energy balance caused by these changes in the atmosphere. To measure radiative forcing, one would observe the energy provided to a given location by the sun, and observe the heat leaving the planet, at two different time periods with different concentrations of greenhouse pollution.

This has been done only a few times, using a range of different technologies. In 2001 scientists reported satellite-observed changes in greenhouse pollution forcing between 1970 and 1997, providing “… direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.” This study was replicated and extended in 2013. In 2004 researchers published a paper that reported measurements at eight meteorological stations in Europe, at various elevations and locations. They measured energy flux that they could attribute to a combination of increased vapor (a greenhouse gas naturally present but enhanced by added CO2) and CO2 over eight years. “… after subtracting for two thirds of temperature and humidity rises, the increase of cloud-free longwave downward radiation (+1.8(0.8) Wm?2) remains statistically significant and demonstrates radiative forcing due to an enhanced greenhouse effect.” The science of directly measuring the “smoking gun” of greenhouse gas pollution is further discussed here: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming

The current study, Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010 by D. R. Feldman, W. D. Collins, P. J. Gero, M. S. Torn, E. J. Mlawer and T. R. Shippert, takes a different approach than the earlier studies and in some ways is a more direct measurement. They used very precise spectroscopic instrumentation located at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one in Alaska, to measure what was happening with the Sun’s energy. They also measured variables that influence the behavior of the energy, such as ambient temperature, water vapor, and clouds. After factoring out everything but the CO2, they were able to accurately measure the effects of radiative forcing. The study was carried out from 2000 to 2010, during which time the atmospheric concentration of CO2 rose 22ppm. From the paper, these “…results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.”

So, what’s new? In a way, nothing. This is one of those scientific findings that could easily result in a “well, duh” response. We already knew the basic physics, and we already observed the global warming that results from human greenhouse gas pollution. However, it is important and appropriate to directly measure and describe processes that underly such an important phenomenon. Daniel Feldman, lead author, told me, “CO2 concentrations have been measured at several surface stations for decades, including the prominent Keeling curve. The actual radiative forcing (like in IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 8), which is distinct from surface temperature, is based, for the most part, on calculations which are informed by laboratory measurements and quantum mechanics. In 2001, John Harries et al published a paper in Nature in which they inferred the greenhouse effect at the TOA based on differencing two satellite instrument data records, but our study is the first to see the effect at the surface from observations.”

The two very far apart sites were chosen to allow comparison of two very different areas of the Earth. I wondered if the CO2 concentrations were different in the two areas (they should be the same, but worth asking just in case!) and if the basic nature of the forcing was similar. Feldman told me that the CO2 levels were not different, and that “we were not able to see a significant difference in the forcing per unit CO2 at the two sites.”

The researchers produced a video showing their results:

Caption from the press release: How carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have changed (blue line) and their warming effect (‘forcing’) on the climate over the same time period (orange line), for the southern Great Plains site (first graph shown) and the northern Alaska site (second). The seasonal fluctuations are caused by the rise and fall in plant photosynthesis in summer and winter, respectively. Source: Feldman et al. ( 2015)

Why Is Greenhouse Gas Pollution Important?

Global warming means more extreme weather. Many meteorologist who watch the weather every day see this even if not all admit it. In some cases, greenhouse gas pollution changes the weather in a way that causes even more change in the weather. Changing weather systems means more lightning, increased high precipitation events in certain regions like the US Northeast, including more frequent large snow storms. Even though concern about this differs with how close one lives to the sea, sea levels are rising and will continue to do so.

Many kinds of storms are more frequent or will become more frequent. We are seeing an increased number of spectacular global warming worsened disasters like Typhoon Haiyan and Frankenstorm Sandy. Some recent tropical cyclones have been so bad that we are talking about adding a new category to the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Heatwaves, obviously, and drought, are expected to be more common and more severe.

There are reasons to think that the effects of human caused climate change are coming on faster than previously expected.

Human caused global warming is real and the amount that humans have heated up the surface of the Earth is dramatic and getting worse, even though corporations, ideological think tanks, and individuals deny the science. Denial of climate science takes many forms and is carried out for many reasons. There are those who appear to be paid by “Big Fossil” to lie to congress, or to publish highly questionable science without disclosing their sources. Another strategy is to mischaracterize the importance of climate change presumably to divert interest and concern away from it. This and other forms of denialism have the effect of slowing down how quickly we address potentially catastrophic carbon pollution.

But the tide is turning on the public and political understanding of scientifically proven greenhouse gas pollution. In 2014 and early 2015, major media outlets openly discussed the use of terms like ‘skeptic’ and ‘denier’ and increasingly made climate change stories front page news. Anti science activists can no longer attack and libel scientists without there being consequences. ‘Skeptics’ who had questioned the reality of global warming from within science carried out research to disprove it and found that they were unable to do so. For the first time ever, the President of the United States is actively calling out anti science denialism. Even Big Fossil or its representatives increasingly admit that human caused global warming is a critically important issue that must be dealt with.

IT is actually kind of hard to find a graph just for US CO2 that goes back in historic time, but this graphic for the global energy industry clearly shows that the big picture is an upward trend:

The dip we see in recent years is simply an effect of the economy going bad, and things people do that emit CO2 being done somewhat less. Kevin Schultz wrote this up on his blog:

After a five-year decrease in the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise again. The culprit: a rebounding economy.

CO2 emissions from fossil fuels rose 2.39 percent in 2013 compared with 2012 and grew 7.45 percent for the first two months of 2014 compared with the same period in 2013, according to new data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The jump puts an end to the annual decrease that had occurred from 2008 through 2012.

So be careful of that misleading graph, and keep working on reducing emission. This problem will not solve itself.

Also, you might want to ask the question: What has global warming done since 1998?

That question is addressed HERE, where this handy graphic is available showing the importance of ocean warming:

So, has global warming stopped? No, I’m afraid not.

Other posts of interest:

• How to get rid of spiders in your house
• Why is your poop green?
• How many cells are there in the human body?
• Is there really a plot hole in Harry Potter Goblet of Fire?
• How long is a human generation?
• Is blog ever really blue?
• How to not get caught plagiarizing
• The origin of the domestic chicken
• What are the three necessary and sufficient conditions of Natural Selection?
• How do I get rid of foot fungus?
• Which is better, Tap Water or Bottled Water?
• Has Global Warming stopped?

Also of interest: In Search of Sungudogo: A novel of adventure and mystery, which is also an alternative history of the Skeptics Movement.