As part of an ongoing study I have computed monthly deviations between CO2 level at each of the seven southern stations lying from 40 deg S to the Pole obtained from the NOAA record of monthly averages for ALL Southern Hemisphere stations and the NOAA (monthly) average global CO2 levels for the period 1982 through 2006.
I then computed the average annual deviations for all southern stations from the global annual mean CO2 levels. Note I used strictly ONLY complete year records for each station and dumped any year if it had missed a single month or more.
The outcomes are in the plot below. Error bars are ± one sigma as usual.
Please note the 2nd inflection around 1998 when global temperatures were last maximal – slight cooling or plateau since then.
Northern Hemisphere CO2 levels undoubtedly continued to climb monotonically on an annual scale over the period 1982 – 2006 and we can reasonably presume was accompanied by no significant attendant global warming since about 2000.
However, it appears that after a hiatus in the 1990s, Southern Ocean and Antarctic CO2 levels have continued to deviate increasingly, in the negative sense, in relation to the global CO2 average (dominated by data from Northern Hemisphere and Tropical Zone monitoring stations).
In my view, this southern offset from the global average CO2 level should be getting smaller, not larger, worldwide due to increasing global circulation to be in accord with present GCM theory.
Zones of blooming cyanobacteria directly back-scatter solar radiation due to calcite-producing coccolithophores, which are found everywhere but especially in subpolar regions (Coccolithus pelagicus), thereby decreasing ocean heat retention and cool the overall water column (Hansen et al. 1997; Hansen and Nazarenko, 2004).
By shading the deeper waters and trapping energy near the surface where it can escape to the atmosphere, it is suggested this cyanobacterial ‘canopy’ decreases heat input to the deep ocean.
Cyanobacteria also produce the sulfur compound dimethylsulfoniopropionate, which decomposes in sea water into dimethylsulfide, diffuses into the atmosphere, and is oxidized, leading to acidic aerosols that function as efficient cloud condensation nuclei. In areas where cloud condensation nuclei are scarce, this could increase planetary albedo by creating more and brighter clouds of greater longevity.
It is speculated that cyanobacteria in the Great Southern Ocean entered a phase of higher blooming rates in the early part of the millennium, thereby consuming CO2, increasing oceanic albedo and cloud cover (via dimethylsulfide emissions) and likely significantly cooling the southern hemisphere.
This ‘effect’ (if such is what it is) is found directly by deconvolution of the official NOAA CO2 data record, and doesn’t appear to have anything to do (that I can think of) with solar cycles etcetera.
Please note this information is preliminary and currently subject to discussion, checking and related computation by myself and several colleagues during preparation of a paper to be submitted most likely to Geophysical Research Letters. In the mean time, may I request that this new finding be fairly attributed to myself in this blog AND to Short et al. (in preparation) ‘Evidence for Increasing Negative Deviation of Southern Ocean and Antarctic Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels from Global Average’ cited elsewhere.
References:
Hansen, J., Sato, M. & Ruedy, R. (1997) J. Geophys. Res. 102, 6831–6864.
Hansen, J. & Nazarenko, L. (2004) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 423–428.
Regards
Dr Steve Short
Director
Ecoengineers Pty Ltd
www.ecoengineers.com
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Steve,
I will “peer review” this under JORC standards, unless you object.
No objections, Louis.
FYI:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032583.shtml
Also a useful general background paper is:
http://www.pnas.org/cg/doi/10.1073/pnas.0400323101
I tried to put the dataset here but it wrapped
around too much. Email me if you want the Excel spreadsheet. Including 1982 the cubic spline fit R^2 rises to 0.7344. In discussions on the statistics and trend(s), including with Steve McIntyre.
FYI, the reason for the improved error bars from 1995 on is the improved NOAA station flask recalibration frequency and a consistently greater proportion of the 7 stations providing full 12 month datasets each year. Prior to that inter-station calibrations were poorer and whole years had to be dumped due to missing months.
Stations are:
TDF – Tiera Del Fuego
CGO – Cape Grim
HBA – Hadley Base
PSA – Palmer Station
SYO – Syowa Station
CRZ – Crozet Island
SPO – South Pole
Steve – fascinating proposition.
– how would observed changes in the antarctic circumpolar current and southern annular mode affect CO2?
Also Corinne Le Quéré et al have reported Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO2 Sink Due to Recent Climate Change in Science (2007).
And
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L03712, doi:10.1029/2005GL024911, 2006
Antarctic ozone depletion causes an intensification of the Southern Ocean super-gyre circulation
W. Cai
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
Recent climate trends over the Southern Hemisphere (SH) summer feature a strengthening of the circumpolar westerly and a weakening of the midlatitude westerly extending from the stratosphere to Earth’s surface. Much of the change is attributable to Antarctic ozone depletion. However, the consequential ocean circulation changes are unknown. Here I demonstrate that the observed surface wind changes have forced a southward shift and spin-up of the super gyre, which links the subtropical South Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Ocean circulation, advecting more warm water southward. The circulation change includes a strengthening of the East Australian Current (EAC) flow passing through the Tasman Sea. The southward shift may be responsible for the observed unusually large warming in the SH midlatitude ocean and may contribute to the reported range extension to the south of many marine species in the South West Pacific.
So I’m speculating there may be some effects in these changes that affect CO2 sinks in the ocean?
Ok it is speculation but it may be yet another case where biology has large effects.
Anyone know of any GCMs that take biology into account?
Roger Pielke Sr has made the point that in the short term use of GCMs for weather forecasting you can ignore biology (basically periods of days) as it won’t change that much on a planetary scale. When trying to predict effects over decades you need to take account of biology which is why current GCMs are unlikely to have any success at decadal predictions of climate(average weather).
Hmmm, I wonder what a graph of a possible OHC deviation would look like for the SO versus global average?
What this continues to highlight is the fact that the Europeans and other northern hemisphere nations are attempting to apply the GHG equivalent of a regressive flat tax on all nations without regard for the actual impact of each nation’s emissions. They have made concessions for less developed nations but continue to discriminate against countries, like Australia and New Zealand and all the Pacific Island nations, for whom a large part of their CO2 emissions are absorbed by their own landscape and territorial waters.
They (the Euro-dominated IPCC) are attempting the ultimate market distortion to remove a major, natural, competitive advantage of litoral states and compensate land locked nations for their natural competitive disadvantage.
It is fundamental to the science of managing pollutants that the polluting sources be located in such places that enable the local ecosystems to adequately deal with those pollutants. There is no credible argument in environmental science for the concentration of pollutant sources at such levels that local ecosystems cannot cope.
On a global scale there is clearly such an excess of emission sources in the northern hemisphere that CO2 emissions must be exported to the southern hemisphere. A proper functioning market would recognise that the emissions of southern hemisphere nations are nowhere near a level that is beyond the capacity of SH ecosystems to deal with. It is only in the northern hemisphere where CO2 emissions may have become a serious ecological cost.
The lesson is simply one of, “if you do not have the ecological capital to make emissions then you should refrain from making them”.
So why is our government accepting a situation where our rights to produce CO2 are being restricted because a bunch of oceanically and vegetationally challenged nations dumped their excess emissions in our ecosystem?
Why is our government accepting a regime that will not address the fundamental issue of misallocation of both resources and ecological costs?
Why is our government accepting an international tax system that does not distinguish between problem anthropogenic emissions and benign anthropogenic emissions?
This would seem to be a classic “improper exercise of power” in that it involves “the application of a rule without regard for the merits of the particular case”.
Apologies for the link to the PNAS article (which provides some useful background to all this) not working. Here is the paper in full:
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU04/06257/EGU04-J-06257.pdf
The following blog post in 2003 is also extremely useful – it has been stuck in the back of my mind for some years.
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/dimethyl/overview.php
It is also worth noting that when marine cyanobacteria bloom another effect produced is that due to predation by zooplankton and lysis by cyanobacteriophages (i.e. viruses) the sea surface is also covered with a thin layer of lipids etc including sterols. This tends to dampen near surface micro-turbulence and also increase albedo.
If anyone has ever looked at aerial or satellite photographs of oceanic blooms or flown over the slicks from major city sewage outfalls you will know what I mean.
Steve
Gee, dumping data due to missing months is a bit scary – but it’s going interesting so see if JORC reviewing it is possible. I’ll see if the data download ok first.
In geoscience we have worked out mathematical techniques to fill in missing data (geostatistics) and it might be fun seeing if it applies to this example. (The only area where geostatistics doesn’t work is in wave cut platform diamond marine deposits, as well as alluvial diamond deposits – bit frightening in a statistal sense – one either ends up very rich or totally broke).
I can’t promise quick results as I have just been told this monring that the diamond drilling rig is coming in earlier than anticipated, so its homework after hours.
Eyrie; here’s one on the biosphere;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007JD008431.shtml
On a personal note, if any more of these climate self-correcting mechanisms manifest I’m going to have to start worshipping gaia!
Steve,
Following Cohenite’s remark, have you run this past Jim Lovelock? Despite some of his more extreme pronouncements on climate, wasn’t he the first to suggest a role for dimethylsulphide in climate regulation?
Also, is there not a constant rain of zooplankton exoskeletons into the ocean depths, so sequestering rather a lot of carbon?
Thirdly, if we could restore Aboriginal mild, frequent burning throughout the dry forests and woodlands of southern Australia, that would also sequester carbon as charcoal, or carbon black in the soil, and at the same time inject more cloud condensation nuclei into the atmosphere. Not to mention avoiding large, destructive bushfires; saving billions foolishly spent on fire suppression; and restoring the health of our sick eucalypt forests.
Wow! What a consilience… a coupling of land and ocean systems.
Louis
I don’t think I made myself clear about the motive (ie. the necessity) for dumping years if data from one or more month(s) was/were missing.
As is well known, atmospheric CO2 levels vary throughout an annual cycle for seasonal reasons – I thought you might have known this?
Hence it is simply impossible to compute an overall annual mean CO2 level (or by definition deviation from the global mean) for any site if any of the full 12 months of data are missing at that site.
Steve
Oh I iunderstood you, just that in the mining game we don’t throw the data away, but either take extra samples, or use geostats to fill in the gaps. There is an innate aversion to throwing data away simply because some of it is missing.
It’s like doing a mineral resource computation and not using a data set because some or other measurement was missing.
But I rather like you ideas – seems we might be dealing with an enormous living organism which includes perhaps Tommy Gold’s deep hot biosphere.
I’ve always accepted that humanity as an epiphenomeon of the earth, and while bacteria and microbes use methane as a food stuff, so might humans but on a more developed or evolved stage.
Makes our consumption of petroleum a little more sensible.
But I do miss our fundamentalist sociopath’s comments. In fact none of them are commenting here at all which is surprising. Thank God for small mercies.
I’ll download the files this weekend as my workload doubled today (colleague going on annual leave for 6 weeks).
I suspect our little band of Bimbolopithicus climatensis are under the table, sucking their thumbs in the foetal position.
Steve
Your first reference http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032583.shtml
Abstracts: “The Southern Ocean exerts a strong impact on marine biogeochemical cycles and global air-sea CO2 fluxes. Over the coming century, large increases in surface ocean CO2 levels, combined with increased upper water column temperatures and stratification, are expected to diminish Southern Ocean CO2 uptake. These effects could be significantly modulated by concomitant CO2-dependent changes in the region’s biological carbon pump. Here we show that CO2 concentrations affect the physiology, growth and species composition of phytoplankton assemblages in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Field results from in situ sampling and ship-board incubation experiments demonstrate that inorganic carbon uptake, steady-state productivity and diatom species composition are sensitive to CO2 concentrations ranging from 100 to 800 ppm. Elevated CO2 led to a measurable increase in phytoplankton productivity, promoting the growth of larger chain-forming diatoms. Our results suggest that CO2 concentrations can influence biological carbon cycling in the Southern Ocean, thereby creating potential climate feedbacks”.
Steve
Your first reference http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032583.shtml
Abstracts: “The Southern Ocean exerts a strong impact on marine biogeochemical cycles and global air-sea CO2 fluxes. Over the coming century, large increases in surface ocean CO2 levels, combined with increased upper water column temperatures and stratification, are expected to diminish Southern Ocean CO2 uptake. These effects could be significantly modulated by concomitant CO2-dependent changes in the region’s biological carbon pump. Here we show that CO2 concentrations affect the physiology, growth and species composition of phytoplankton assemblages in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Field results from in situ sampling and ship-board incubation experiments demonstrate that inorganic carbon uptake, steady-state productivity and diatom species composition are sensitive to CO2 concentrations ranging from 100 to 800 ppm. Elevated CO2 led to a measurable increase in phytoplankton productivity, promoting the growth of larger chain-forming diatoms. Our results suggest that CO2 concentrations can influence biological carbon cycling in the Southern Ocean, thereby creating potential climate feedbacks”.
Specifically “Over the coming century, large increases in surface ocean CO2 levels, combined with increased upper water column temperatures and stratification, are expected to diminish Southern Ocean CO2 uptake. These effects could be significantly modulated by concomitant CO2-dependent changes in the region’s biological carbon pump”.
This seems a non sequitur, since over the coming century, some things are proposed to happen, cannot therefore be effects of something which is not yet happened.
Are you assuming the authors of this paper understand what they have written?
Clearly the statement “Over the coming century” explicity means computer modelling, not measurement.
In fact the first statement “The Southern Ocean exerts a strong impact on marine biogeochemical cycles and global air-sea CO2 fluxes” leaves me nonplussed (in the standard Oxford sense).
What the hell do they mean? It’s much like saying that the Pacific Ocean has a strong impact on Sperm Whale breeding habits.
What has the size of an ocean to do with biogeochemical cycles?
Hi Steve, I’m curious about this:
“This ‘effect’ (if such is what it is) is found directly by deconvolution of the official NOAA CO2 data record, and doesn’t appear to have anything to do (that I can think of) with solar cycles etcetera.”
Does that include seasonal cycles? Being photosynthetic types I would have thought there wold at least be seasonal variation.
Louis:
The 1st sentence in Tirtell et al. refers to predictions (not actual field studies) in some other literature. Their finding (for the Ross Sea) is diametrically opposite. You need to read their full paper and be familiar with the other cyanobacteria literature to understand where they are coming from in that abstract.
Old story: need to read the paper/need to know the field. It is often easy to misconstrue an abstract under such circumstances.
Jan:
Yes, CO2 levels vary through the annual cycle for seasonal reasons. This is standard knowledge to anyone who has read the Keeling literature and/or ever examined the famous Mauna Loa record. As clearly stated in my previous post responding to Louis:
“I don’t think I made myself clear about the motive (i.e. the necessity) for dumping years if data from one or more month(s) was/were missing.
As is well known, atmospheric CO2 levels vary throughout an annual cycle for seasonal reasons – I thought you might have known this?
Hence it is simply impossible to compute an overall annual mean CO2 level (or by definition deviation from the global mean) for any site if any of the full 12 months of data are missing at that site.”
http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/lequere/publi/Le_Quere_et_al_Science_reprint_2007.pdf
http://www.cccma.ec.gc.ca/papers/jfyfe/PDF/ZickfeldFyfeEbyWeaver2008.pdf
Good to see you’re on the ball.
But also see reply http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5863/570c
Anyway that was a bit of a sideline. The main issue was ocean overturning, temperatures, gyres and changes in circumpolar currents and SAM. I’m sure you can Google Scholar through the field. Reckon you need to eliminate that before you can go biogeochemical. And you need some corroborating additional evidence on the biological. Someone at http://www.acecrc.org.au/ perhaps?
hi Steve,
Thanks. I did not see the answer to Louis there was a ten hour crossover involved. (I went to work between typing and submitting then went to bed)
Thanks ‘El Creepo’ – I’ll follow that up.
FYI my 1st co-author (there may be more) is an acknowledged, well published Australian marine cyanobacteria expert. We will not be soft pedalling on the biological aspect.
BTW, I forgot to mention in my original post that global mean surface CO2 level has been rising at the ‘tight’ rate of 0.45%/year over the bracketing 1980 – 2007 period (R^2 = 0.9955).
I don’t think anyone would argue with the proposition that Southern Hemisphere CO2 levels from 40S to the Pole were rising synchronously but lagging over the same period.
We also have some fairly good evidence that this negative % deviation or offset has itself been rising significantly.
The 4 key questions as I see them are:
1)Why is there a negative offset in the first place? and
2) Why should it be increasing in magnitude?
3) What does this tell us about the immediate future?
4) Is this phenomenon the key to where global ecosystem conservation or even perhaps where an anti-AGW bioengineering effort (!) should be concentrated?
Clearly the 2007 southern stations CO2 record will tell us whether this interesting apparent effect is a ‘lay down misere’ or not.
FYI, here is the text of an email sent to NOAA recently:
“Can you please advise me of the estimated date at which validated CO2 levels for the seven stations from 40S to the Pole i.e. CGO, CRZ, TDF, HBA, PSA, SYO, SPO for the 12 months of 2007 will be included in the NOAA downloadable CO2 data files for these stations?”
Clearly the 2007 southern stations CO2 record
FYI reply just received from NOAA as follows:
“Dear Steve:
We are currently doing quality control on the 2007 surface CO2 data. I expect these data to be made available from our FTP server sometime this month.
Kind regards,
Ken Masarie”
So…….watch this space!
Steve – I’m not expressing myself clearly perhaps (as I haven’t thought it through either) but there have been lots of changes in Antarctic circulation, ocean current and overturning (SAM, ACC, meridional).
This could be affecting the CO2 sink capacity of the Southern Ocean on decadal scales and changing patterns.
http://www.clivar.org/organization/southern/SO4talks/SSG14_SO_Panel.ppt
http://ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/meetings/oopc-9/presentations/monPM/Sparrow_SO_OOPC.pdf
http://www.clivar.org/organization/southern/SO4talks/transport.ppt
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/staff-profiles/webspace/mmm/2006GL026499_eke_sam.pdf
And appears to be some considerable international biogeochemistry efforts in train.
ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/meetings/oopc-9/OOPC9_report_FINAL.doc
ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/meetings/oopc-10/docs/OOPC-10_Report.doc
Many thanks for the references/data mining. They are all getting checked and where possible downloaded.
Just now coping with a torn Achilles tendon + a leg vein thrombosis so am in a lot of pain and not thinking too straight.
You may email me privately me if you want my Excel spreadsheet so you can update the plot to 2007 as soon as NOAA posts the southern stations data.
Steve; sorry to hear; did you injure yourself being chased by AGW supporters?
creep; I read your links. The ocean cooling previously attributed to ARGO data appears to have been corrected;
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_bias_itech_v2.pdf
The gist of it is there was a cold bias in a small number of ARGO apparatus and, just to be balanced I suppose, there was a smaller, but more prevalent, warming bias in the concurrent XBT equipment.
Johnson has something to say about the inability of historical ocean data to support AGW;
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_integrals_v3.pdf
The gist of this is that, based on the now sufficient data, current conclusions about that data, WI, can be extrapolated backwards to fill in the gaps and establish an AGW confirmatory trend from an otherwise incompetent historical base. Sounds OK to me.
There is a lot of ocean temp revision currently taking place in the Johnson, Doney and Lyman camp;
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/publications.html
Steve Rintoul says water mass distributions and baroclinic flow are about the only thing we measure well; that’s lucky. Noone has explained the huge partial cessation of cold-water upwelling in the 70’s, as noted by Guilderson and Schrag (1998), and McPhaden and Zhang (2002). Quirk, McLean and D’Aleo have commented, but natural secular trends are not popular it seems.
Survostral has found deep subsurface warming; but then this;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080421111622.htm
Who to believe?
Survostral also notes the sinking rate determines how much heat the ocean can store and how much CO2 and O2 reach the deep sea. True enough, but in the scheme of things, the SR is not in the same league as ocean mantle recycling as described by Craig O’Neill. Nobody seems to take that into account when talking about the CO2 ‘problem’. It would seem relevant since it would make the ocean an infinite sink.
If that ist link doesn’t work the paper is listed at the 3rd link.
Steve
Just back from other things-
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU04/06257/EGU04-J-06257.pdf
“Evidence has been accumulating for decades that volcanic eruptions can perturb climate
and possibly affect it on long timescales, and that volcanism may respond to climate
change.”
Er just how does that happen? I don’t have any problem with it, but changes in weather affecting volcanism under current understanding is, problematical.
From an electrical system not, but if weather is the cause, then what causes the weather.
Ie. how does weather affect volcanic activity, as it is one of your references, which, I must admit, yet to read.
Not to gainsay the useful web references posted by cohenite regarding the (global) ARGUS program, this final web reference also posted by cohenite:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080421111622.htm
is very interesting not only because the referred-to February to April 2008 study showed the deep Antarctic Ocean getting colder (by contrast with some other regions) but also because it found the lowest iron concentrations ever measured in (this) ocean.
This observation would be consistent with my postulated (speculated) increased cyanobacterial blooming phase from 1998 – 2006 , with the equivalent CO2 data for 2007 eagerly awaited.
It may well be that overall the Southern Ocean iron supply, fluctuating from excess to exhaustion is one of the keys to this CO2 offset issue (as well as the strength of the circum polar current, circum polar downwelling etc., gyres etc etc etc).
FYI, one other bit of evidence that I’ve also had my eye for quite some time is the Easter Island CO2 record which also offsets strongly below the global CO2 average. Easter Island sits smack in the middle of the South East Pacific gyre – a zone of high primary productivity hyper-oligotrophic water.
Cohenite,
And NO ONE links any of this to the thermal behaviour of the solid earth underneath the oceans, as if the earth’s geothermal behaviour were irrelevant.
This raises the issue of uniformitarianism where geological processes are stretched over such unimaginably long periods of time that are, rhetorically at least, incapable of affecting short term geophysical processes such as weather.
Maybe it is for this reason geology is ignored in climate science.
But what if the mainstream understanding of geoogy is wrong?
“and that volcanism may respond to climate
change.”
No one has problems with this statement?
Louis
Not as weird as it seems. I have already given the reference to the Bay et al. PNAS review which contained the following:
Kyle et al.(17) pointed out that abundant visible tephra layers found by Gow and Williamson (18) at Byrd Station (also near volcanic sources in West Antarctica), which were clustered during the late part of the last glacial period, might have been due to a thickening of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that initiated the eruptions in nearby
Marie Byrd Land. Zielinski et al. (15) noted that in the sulfate record at GISP2 the periods of greatest volcanic activity seemed
to occur during changing climatic conditions, especially during the early Holocene. Maclennan et al. (19) found a link between deglaciation and volcanism in Iceland that they attributed to
increased melt generation rates in the shallow mantle caused by unloading of the ice sheet. Numerical studies have shown that mantle stress accumulation associated with glaciation or deglaciation and meltwater change may have triggered or accelerated active Quaternary volcanism of the circum-Pacific
(20). Eruptions might be induced by climatically driven atmospheric jolts to the solid Earth’s rotational angular momentum (21) or by crustal stresses resulting from ice-sheet loading
unloading effects on the planet’s distribution of mass.
17. Kyle, P. R., Jezek, P. A., Mosley-Thompson, E. & Mosley-Thompson, L. S.
(1981) J. Volcanol. Geotherm. Res. 11, 29–39.
18. Gow, A. J. & Williamson, T. (1971) Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 13, 210–218.
19. Maclennan, J., Jull, M., McKenzie, D., Slater, L. & Gro¨nvold, K. (2002)
Geochem. Geophys. Geosys. 3, 1062–1086.
20. Nakada, M. & Yokose, H. (1992) Tectonophysics 212, 321–329.
21. Stothers, R. B. (1989) J. Geophys. Res. 94, 17371–17381.
One of my earliest mentors back in the early 1970s when I was busy carving out early career as a exploration geochemist using AAS-based stream sediment analyses was the wonderful Nelson (NZ) ecologist Roger Bray, an early pioneer of these notions:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/197/4300/251
And back on topic:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7176/pdf/nature06441.pdf
Steve – perhaps tangentially relevant http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080214144547.htm
Enjoyed your story on climate affecting volcanism above. Interesting hypothesis.
Thanks Luke – I was aware of the ‘dead seas’ phenomenon of recent years off the Pacific North West Coast as I spend time in California every year on business and often take a break to drive around a bit.
IMHO it is quite possible that an increased flow of melt water out through the Bering Strait commenced in the early part of the decade leading to an increased upwelling off this coast via the North Pacific subtropical gyre. This is a coast which traditionally has picked up lots of thongs from Japanese and Korean fisherman, Nike shoes etc etc!
However, ‘it’s a jungle out there’ where the balance between photosynthetic production of O2 by cyanobacteria (‘blue-green algae’) and ‘dark decay’ by aerobes consuming dead cyanobacteria and O2 has often been a fine one.
For every bloom that does not get dispersed by adequate mixing there will also be a ‘bloom’ of bacterial dark decay of the dead cells of cyanobacteria. This is a common occurrence in lagoons, lakes, even farm dams etc.
It is also very probable that there were, in counter balance, massive increases in the number of fish etc elsewhere in the gyre where better mixing of the blooming cyanobacteria was occurring.
We shouldn’t lose sight of just how much we owe to the evolution of cyanobacteria AND the whole biogeochemical system they partially created and are inextricably embedded-in.
Everyone interested in this stuff should read Red Earth, White Earth:
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/articles/LXVII4/Kirschvink%20Feature.pdf
I just wanted to say that while it is fascinating that a lot of climate scientists can give a lot of attention to the effects on albedo of:
1) regional soots and other particulates falling on snow and ice; and/or
2) regional expansion of creosote bush (for Aussies read ‘woody weeds’) across open rangelands,
refer:http://climatesci.org/2008/06/
they seem strangely reluctant to consider the effects on ocean surface albedo and marine cloud albedo induced by regional variations in cyanobacterial primary production across the oceans’ surface!
Perhaps I have to wait until the Arctic ice is completely melted!
It is even more pertinent to note that all current GCMs tend to:
. overestimate the positive feedback from water vapour over the Pacific in El Nino warming; and
. underestimate the negative feedback from cloud albedo in El Nino warming – particularly with respect to low altitude cloud.
These deficiencies are now well recognised. See for example:
http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/pielke/classes/atoc7500/sun.pdf
I note that both of these effects are precisely the effects one would expect from a warm sea surface with a significant near surface population of cyanobacteria producing:
. increased low level cloudiness (due to enhanced nucleation by dimethyl sulfide emissions); and
. increased ocean surface reflectivity (= less surface warming) and reduced evaporation (i.e. effect on the wet adiabatic lapse rate) as a consequence of the increased generation of monolayers of lipids, sterols etc at the surface resulting from zooplankton predation and lysis due to cyanobacteriophages. A good analogy is the use by CSIRO etc to reduce evaporation off reservoirs and dams using octanol etc.