The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991 led to a significant cooling of the tropical ocean surface due to the cloud belt formed by the eruption. This cooling resulted in a temporary reduction in the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations.
Despite ongoing human CO2 emissions and natural sources of CO2, the cooling effect caused by the volcanic aerosols led to a rapid absorption of CO2 by the ocean. At least that is an important conclusion of a study by my friend and chemist, Bud Bromley.
Bud’s study demonstrates that the oceans have a tremendous capacity to absorb large amounts of CO2 – much more than is emitted by humans.
This absorption, after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, was followed by a rapid recovery and acceleration of CO2 levels once the cooling effect dissipated.
I’m going to be interviewing Bud Bromley next month, specifically at 6pm Hawai’i time on Thursday, 24th April (2pm Brisbane-time the next day, Friday April 25th). This will be the fourth zoom meeting in my series Towards a New Theory of Climate Change. If you would like to be a part of this Webinar please register at:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QrVa8XEzSPS_GvUWnXkX0Q
You will then be sent a confirmation email with a link that you will need to join the webinar, so please file the confirmation email carefully.
Bud lives in Hawai’i and is a chemist by training. He blogs at https://budbromley.blog/
Bud concluded from this Pinatubo study that human CO2 emissions are not causing the increase in atmospheric CO2. The amount of human CO2 emissions is negligible, less than a rounding error, considering the total carbon budget of the Earth.
To be sure, Bud is of the considered opinion that contrary to what you have probably read, heard or been taught, the addition of human produced CO2 to the atmosphere by burning natural gas, oil and coal does not increase the global CO2 concentration of the atmosphere. Nor will sequestration of CO2 reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
According to Bud, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere today is the same as it would be if humans never existed. Ouch.
Life goes on in the oceans, and at coral reefs the fish and the corals are more affected by the sea tides that are a consequence of the gravitational pull of the Sun and the Moon. As we develop a new theory of climate change it is important that we have words for describing important processes. Let me suggest that the sea tides be considered external drivers unaffected by occasional events such as volcanic eruptions; such is the nature of external drivers. Then there are internal state variables such as temperature that are affected by volcanic eruptions – and there are feedback mechanisms such that the rate of increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is hardly affected.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Apart from violent eruptions which can produce cooling clouds lasting years there are thousands of Volcanic Sea Mounts and Tectonic Plate Junctions constantly leaking heat. A complex and huge system that dwarfs mankinds efforts.
Thank you Jennifer. I look forward to speaking with you and your guests.
Urban heat islands are typically 2-3C warmer than rural areas at night time. Many temperature recording stations are close to urban areas and will automatically be 2-3C warmer at night time. When this artificial warming is applied to daily temperature averages the result is 1.5C increase in average temperatures irrespective of CO2 concentrations. In other words the so-called global warming is an urban heat island effect and nothing to do with CO2 in the atmosphere.
This is one of those many subjects that is fraught with a wide range of uncertainty, notably in exactly how much expulsion and absorption of CO2 is actually going on. Some mass balance estimates suggest that the claimed increase in atmospheric CO2 represents perhaps half the estimated amount produced from coal, oil and gas production. But that is just one viewpoint and Bud’s may have equally cogent arguments. However what cannot be known for certain is if the increase would have happened in the absence of such hydrocarbon production. Given that the Earth is at a CO2 low point in geological time and plant life is essentially starved of this essential nutrient it is entirely possible that CO2 levels would have continued to increase as they were doing after the end of the last glacial maximum and before any significant hydrocarbon production. I would say that is more likely than less likely but can only speculate and it remains one of the many “what if?” scenarios which no amount of computer antics or World Weather Attribution (the Imperial College London group set up to peddle fantasy) false claims will change. It is also absolutely correct that the volumes of CO2 about which there so much wailing and gnashing of teeth is a miniscule fraction of the total carbon on Earth and a fraction of what has been in the atmosphere before, during eras of massive coral reef building and lush tropical rainforest and mammalian development across the world when temperatures were also often much higher (and to pre-empt a clever push-back, were not correlated with CO2 levels) (i.e., 50 MYbp and earlier). The impact of the small increases in atmospheric CO2 are indeed small and inconsequential compared with the far more important features that determine how energy is distributed and climate changes – sun, clouds, oceans, wind systems, water evaporation, plate tectonics. We can only hope that the Earth reverses its 50 million year cooling trend.
The urban heat island effect is real and compounded by the siting of the majority of temperature gauges in built-up areas and may account for as much as half the so-called global temperature increase. When one considers that the UK Met Office which produces the HADCrut global series and the CETR (Central England Temperature Record) use gauges that in the CETR series are almost all (80%) in the error range of 1-5 deg C and moreover about 100 listed gauges do not even exist but are ‘estimated’ then one gest an idea of the scale of corruption by official and supposedly rigorously honest government organisations. Similar corruption exists in the BoM, NOAA, NASA and countless others with the UN at the top of the greasy pole. The evidence of the steady manipulation over decades is there for anyone who wants to see. Jennifer has done sterling work in exposing the BoM. FOI requests have exposed the Met Office skulduggery and so on.
That is more than enough to be going on with.
David Hounslow’ comment is prescient. Mount Pinatubo is not ‘Robinson Crusoe’.
Fluctuations in Volcanic Activity and resultant increases in atmospheric and marine CO2 levels, are also ‘cyclical’. (See pp 71-78 ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ Alex S. Gaddes, 1990). Rankama and Sahama described the ‘Carbon Sink’ effect, (Chicago Press, 1950.) whereby the oceans,(especially the colder southern oceans ‘take up’ CO2 from the atmosphere when a ‘saturation’ point is reached.
Peter,
“This is more than enough to be going on with.” By which I assume you mean rebuttals concerning the fake temperature reconstructions.
I certainly did a lot of work in this space, and attempted to come up with alternative reconstructions that are closer to reality.
At every turn the gate keepers on our side of politics promoted the turncoats* like Steven E. Koonin with the first chart in his book showing slow and steady increase through the twentieth century that we know to be nonsense.
It is the case that the first half of the twentieth century was a period of global cooling, and the second half a period of global warming and in each case by more than 1.5 degrees C.
Anyway, I shall continue with this temperature work, but it is also time this be placed within a new theory of climate change, within a new paradigm that provides a new way of thinking about the physical world, the natural world.
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The fellow’s main claim to fame is he used to work for President Obama. This repeated told to me as a reason I should be respectful of his book, and help promote it.