Global Mean Atmospheric Methane Breaks Above Highest 2014 Reading

METOP IASI 2-A: An all time high global mean methane.

During July 8, 2015, 12-24 hrs, global mean atmospheric methane measured 1830 ppb at 469 mb. This is higher than the 1829 ppb reached on September 4-5, 2014 at the same atmospheric level as measured by the METOP 2-A satellite. (OSPO has changed the color scheme - the numbers tell the story).

What is very troubling is that the July 8, 2015 reading is 23 ppbv above July 8, 2014  and 30 ppbv above July 8, 2013 

METOP IASI 1-B: Not available for comparison.

Unfortunately, the METOP 1-B IASI instrument has not been available since April, 24, 2015, so we have no comparative readings at this time. 

During 2014, the METOP 1-B satellite measured mean atmospheric methane as high as 1839 ppb on August, 25 and 28 and September 5 and 7 in 2014. (OSPO changed the color scheme in the last year).

Major factors contributing to the accelerating increase in atmospheric methane so early this year seem to be extraordinary burning of tundra, increased heating in the Arctic contributing to methane release, and also ocean heating which may also be contributing to methane production globally.

This latest high is one indicator that methane readings in 2014 and 2015 have begun a major abrupt spike from the trend of the last decade.

More on that in another post.

Global CO2 Punches Through 400 ppm With Record Setting, Accelerating Increases

On May 6, 2015, NOAA ESRL and Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network announced that the March, 2015 monthly global average carbon dioxide level had surpassed 400 ppm at its 40 sampling stations. Source: NOAA Research News, Climate Central

This is the highest CO2 concentration in the atmosphere in the last 800,000 years as documented by CDIAC ice core data. Source: CDIAC

Image: http://climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/monthly-carbon-dioxide-levels-hit-new-milestone

However, more recent "blue ice" sampling in the Allan Hills of Antarctica, reveals that CO2 did not exceed 300 ppm in the last 1 million years. Source: Live Science.

CO2 Rate of Increase Unprecedented in 66 Million Years

Even more troubling, the rate of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere is increasing - propelling us towards even more extreme climate impacts. According to a May 6, 2015 presentation at the Montreal AGU, we are experiencing Anthropogenic carbon release rates of increase unprecedented in the last 66 million years - throughout the Cenozoic era. Source: AGU

CO2 Annual Increase by Month from Prior Year

The NOAA/ESRL monthly global CO2 captures the trend in the variability due to ENSO change and human emissions increases. The following chart depicts the change in CO2 by month compared to prior year from January, 1981 to March, 2015. The increasing CO2 trend from 1981-2015 is apparent. 

Source: NOAA ESRL A4R

March, 2015's increase of 2.73 ppm over March, 2014 is one of the 21 months of readings that are equal to or higher than that rate of change. All of these months are clustered into El Nino related changes, a loose correlation to significant jumps over the prior year's reading. 

The problem is that annual increases by month from prior year only reflect a short term change, with considerable variance.

CO2 Decadal Increase by Month (10 year change rate)

Another measure from the same data, which is a better reflection of the trend, is the 
decadal change between two months 10 years apart. The following charts the change of any month compared to the same month 10 years prior to that date.

Source: NOAA ESRL A4R

The change from January, 1980 to January, 1990,  was only 15.95 ppm. Given the fall of the Soviet Union, and ENSO neutral and La Nina months, by July 1993, the change from the same month ten years before was only 13.56 ppm. 

This decadal rate then began a rapid climb. In July, 2002, it finally increased to 16 ppm for the first time, compared to July, 1992. By January, 2006 compared to 1996, it had increased 19 ppm, and further accelerated in September, 2007 to above a 20 ppm change over September, 1997. This month - March, 2015 - was the first that a global CO2 decadal change by month compared to a decade earlier rose by more than  21 ppm. 

From its low decadal change of 13.56 ppm to the highest of 21.17 ppm, the global CO2 change rate increased by 7.61 ppm or 56%.

CO2 Cumulative Decadal Increase by Month (10 year cumulative change rate)

One problem with the previous chart is that we are only really comparing the change in two data points 10 years apart. While it still reflects the increasing trend, it does not capture that change for each month through any given period. 

To remedy this, I decided to create a cumulative CO2 ppm change table that smooths the data and reduces ENSO variability impacts on the rate of change. The methodology is to calculate the change between any month and that same month in the prior year (as in the first chart above), then total those differences for a ten year period. Thus the 169.17 ppm below is the cumulative decadal change for January, 1981 minus January 1980, through January, 1990 minus January 1989 (120 months).

The following chart depicts the cumulative rate of change of any month compared to prior year in any decadal period from January, 1990 to March, 2015.

Source: NOAA ESRL A4R

While January, 1990's cumulative rate was 169.17 ppm, the cumulative decadal change rate dropped to 142.42 ppm in April, 1998. After this month, the cumulative rate index experienced rapid increase, hitting 180 ppm change in June, 2002, 190 ppm in January, 2003, and above 200 ppm in September, 2003. 

With longer periods of ENSO neutral and La Nina SST's, the index slowed the cumulative change rate, not exceeding 210 ppm until April, 2006. Impacts of another El Nino led to the cumulative change rate exceeding 220 ppm in January, 2011. Since that time, the highest cumulative decadal rate has been 225.31 ppm in May, 2014. If the current El Nino continues to develop into a strong or "super" event, then it is quite possible that the cumulative decadal monthly change will exceed 230 ppm in the next year.

Average Cumulative Decadal Monthly CO2 Change Rate

By taking the global cumulative decadal change and dividing by 120, one is able to determine the average cumulative decadal change rate for any month in the NOAA ESRL data since January, 1990.

In January, 1990 that average cumulative rate was 1.4098 ppm, which slowed to 1.1868 ppm in  April, 1998. After that the rate, began a steady increase, reaching 1.50 ppm for the first time in June, 2002, then accelerating to 1.60 ppm in February, 2003. The cumulative change rate rose above 1.70 ppm in March, 2004 and broke through 1.80 ppm in September, 2006. The highest average cumulative decadal change rate has been 1.8776 ppm, reached during May, 2014. 

The impacts of the intensifying El Nino, ocean warming, global fires and human emissions, will most likely drive this average decadal cumulative rate above 2.00 ppm in the next year. It is an indicator, that despite rhetoric and hard negotiation on climate, much needs to be done. It is not clear if enough will be done soon enough to avoid increasing natural emissions. 

James Butler, director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, has stated it will be difficult to reverse increases of greenhouse gases driving increased atmospheric temperatures. 

“Elimination of about 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions would essentially stop the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but concentrations of carbon dioxide would not start decreasing until even further reductions are made and then it would only do so slowly.” Source: NOAA Research News

Sources:

AGU, Ridgewell, Zachos, Zeebe, "Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic": https://agu.confex.com/agu/ja2015/meetingapp.cgi#Paper/34485  

CDIAC Ice Core Data: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/ice_core_co2.html

Climate Central: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-400-ppm-global-record-18965

Live Science: http://www.livescience.com/50795-antartica-old-ice-climate-change.html

NOAA Research News: http://research.noaa.gov/News/NewsArchive/LatestNews/TabId/684/ArtMID/1768/ArticleID/11153/Greenhouse-gas-benchmark-reached-.aspx

California Drought - Over Rides El Nino La Nina

On April 7, and over the weekend, Michael E. Mann and Peter Gleick twittered about 2014 being the driest and hottest year on record for California. They provided a graphic from their recent PNAS article, "Climate change and California Drought in the 21st century."

The twitters included a graphic which depicted the heat and precipitation anomalies from 1895 to 2014, with last year marked as a glaring outlier compared to the entire record. 

Curious, I decided to highlight all years since 1996 by El Nino (red), La Nina (blue), and ENSO neutral (grey) to see if there was any heat/precip pattern that might emerge. The ENSO determination was from the Climate Prediction Center "Cold/Warm Episodes by Season" table. The result is:

The graphic above does not include 1999, which I could not locate. 

What is troubling is that the temperature anomaly for all years is above the 1901-2000 mean. The other observation is that even though the last 18 years are all warmer, only two of the last four (with this baseline) are drought years, and there is an equal balance of drought and excess precipitation in the 18 years since 1996. 

However, since 2000, only 6 years have been wetter than average, and eight have been drier. 

Time will tell on what 2015's final result will be, but the drought does not seem anywhere close to ending.

Climate Prediction Center: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

PNAS: Mann and Gleick, "Climate change and California drought in the 21st century" http://www.pnas.org/content/112/13/3858.extract

Twitter: MichaelEMann

Mauna Loa CO2 spikes to new highs 404.65 ppm

On April 7, 2015, the Scripps Observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii recorded a daily average reading of 404.65 ppm, a new all time high in their records for carbon dioxide at the site.

The weekly trend is part of the natural movement for March-April, which saw carbon dioxide move up from the March 7, 2015 average of 401.71 ppm - an increase of 2.94 ppm in the last month.

However, the yearly jump from April 7, 2014 is about 2.45 ppm, well above the expected annual increase of about 2 ppm. Some of this increase can be attributed to extra GHG emissions, however some may be due to increasing ocean temperatures, as depicted later.

The two year trend is intact, with only one week averaging above 400 ppm in May, 2013, we can anticipate 4-5 months of average CO2 above 400 ppm at Mauna Loa this year.

Will the MLO daily averages go higher this year - and by how much? Very likely!

The highest daily average readings for MLO CO2 in 2014 were 403.10 ppm for NOAA on May 1, 2014, and 402.84 ppm for Scripps on May 31, 2014.

If one were to presume a 2-3 ppm increase over last year, the highest daily averages will likely be over 405 or 406 ppm. A weekly average in May or perhaps early June will likely be over 404 ppm.

However, higher anomalies are possible. The CO2 average daily concentrations around Hawaii on April 7, 2015 reveal regional readings above 410 ppm. The deep reds reflect grids above 406 ppb and the purple above 410 ppb.

The detail above is from the METOP IASI 1-B layer below.

As can be seen, the northern hemisphere CO2 is above 400 ppb in many regions.

Ocean temperatures in the Hawaiian waters are well above the long term (1961-1990) climatological mean and may be enhancing the CO2 increase, along with the higher concentrations being transported from the Northern Pacific. Sea surface temp anomalies around Hawaii currently appear to range from .25 to 1.25 C.

This sea surface temperature anomaly is not a regional concern alone, but global. The NOAA EMC sea surface temp anomaly depicts global oceans into very troubled waters, and the impacts on CO2 increase are still to be seen.

Sources:

Scripps MLO Observatory: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/

OSPO METOP IASI: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/atmosphere/soundings/iasi/index.html

NOAA EMC Sea Surface Temperatures: http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/rtg_high_res/