global environmental change

Pyrogeography at the AAG Conference

April 17, 2015 by Brian Magi

Another major conference is on the horizon – the Association of American Geographers (AAG) meeting which is in Chicago this year. Check #AAG15. Conferences are absolutely critical for multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary research, and I think for just about all research. Science, like many (most?) other professional enterprises, requires discussion. My first AAG was last year in Tampa, and that was a great experience. The atmosphere at the Tampa conference was informal, yet had the intensity associated with presenting a range of results from preliminary to pretty polished to peer-reviewed and published results. I also liked the thematic message from AAG 2014: Research about climate change past, present, and future will benefit from geographical thinking.

Annual firecounts from the NASA MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite. Nearly 2 million fires happen every year!

Geographical thinking, to me, implies a consideration of human-environmental interactions across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Atmospheric sciences, which is my “home” discipline, tends to focus on atmospheric interactions across time and space scales. Fire research has to consider human-climate-fire interactions, and while I tend toward the climate-fire side since it’s closer to my home discipline, I keep hoping to see some new patterns that capture some regularity in human behavior in the world of large-scale global fire activity. Fire is important in understanding past and future carbon cycle dynamics, but also seems to be symbolic of the human impact on our planet. Are humans driving fire? Are they agents that change fire regimes and then in turn respond to the changing regime? Or is climate exerting a longer time scale control on fire activity that is above and beyond human control? Many interesting questions emerge from questions about fire drivers at seemingly every spatiotemporal scale, and throughout disciplines that could be aligned with geography.

AAG 2015 will include a full day talks about fire on our planet, or pyrogeography. I think pyrogeography is a great term that encapsulates my research. So Earth Day 2015 for me will be at the AAG Pyrogeography Session. I worked with several different types of researchers studying pyrogeography to bring data, modeling, and cultural expertise together for what is now 25 talks on Wednesday April 22. 8am to 7pm.

Pyrogeography Sessions at AAG
8:00 AM – 9:40 AM 2101 Pyrogeography I: Fire Histories 1
10:00 AM – 11:40 AM 2201 Pyrogeography II: Fire Histories 2
11:40 AM – 1:20 PM Lunch
1:20 PM – 3:00 PM 2401 Pyrogeography III: Fire Drivers
3:20 PM – 5:00 PM 2501 Pyrogeography IV: Fire Case Studies
5:20 PM – 7:00 PM 2601 Pyrogeography V: West African Fires

My talk will focus on how global fire modeling – a framework to simulate the biogeophysical processes driving fire activity – contributes to the discussion, and how it can advance the discussion so that we can better test hypotheses about human-climate-fire interactions. I’ve been closely reviewing some recent (peer-reviewed, published) work by scientists working on fire modeling to prepare for my talk. One of my current favorite visualizations of how human activities introduce big challenges in fire modeling is from a paper by Pfeiffer, Spessa, and Kaplan that shows that the biggest discrepancies between complex fire modeling and satellite data (like above) are in parts of the world most impacted by humans.

Lighter colors indicate that regions with larger discrepancies from observations are in areas impacted most by humans.

My colleague, Sam Rabin, will present work we’ve been finalizing over the last 3 months to better understand how satellite data can be used to unpack fire signals into component parts such as cropland and pasture fires. Our research has a lot of interesting implications about how widespread/important pasture fires might be. Not coincidentally, pasture and cropland maps like the one below from our 2012 paper, show that human impact and cultivated land are similar. There is 148 million square kilometers of land on Earth, 100 million square kilometers is vegetated, and 50 million square kilometers is cultivated! HALF of all arable land is cultivated! By inference, we need to know more about pasture and cropland fire practices.

Distribution of agriculture, cropland, and pasture.

Tags: AAG climate-fire interactions fire global environmental change human-fire interactions interdisciplinary research pyrogeography

Climate change and debate

January 15, 2015 by Brian Magi

An interesting article about the amazing climate change humans are causing was published by the UNC Charlotte campus newspaper back in Spring 2014, but it’s worth re-visiting as our atmosphere once again reached 400 ppm CO2 concentration. The piece was published as a point-counterpoint discussion, but as many scientists (include myself) point out, science is not about considering all sides – it’s about considering what the evidence suggests. I wrote a letter in response to the viewpoint that climate change is no big deal. If the evidence from multiple experiments/studies suggests a single point is true, then that’s where the scientific community will tend towards when explaining that science. As the evidence builds and builds with no one finding counter-evidence, the conclusions become more and more robust*. If the evidence suggests mixed or nuanced results, then scientists will talk about that science as inconclusive and continue to try to design better experiments or get more data or both. Most importantly, perhaps, if counter-evidence arises repeatedly, scientific conclusions will change in response. Science is a beautiful, self-correcting process.

In Spring 2014, I sat down with a Niner Times reporter and Twitter friend Ed Averette and talked with him about how I see climate science, and how I talk about the science of climate change in my classroom (most prominently in ESCI 3101, Global Environmental Change). I had a lot to say, mostly because I had just returned from a wonderful conference called the Carolinas Climate Resilience Conference in April 2014, where I talked about Climate Change in the University Classroom (presentation here!), and I met some amazing outreach-oriented people (Kirstin Dow, Greg Carbone, Jim Gandy), and learned a climate change song that could be played on a dulcimer sung by this NPS Ranger. The article Averette wrote is available online and includes a figure I made for my class lectures.

The amazing correlation between Earth’s temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, as derived from multiple ice core datasets shown in the graph itself.

Another Niner Times reporter, Louis Aiello, provided the (journalistic) opposing viewpoint that there is no need to panic when it comes to the present-day climate change and his article is available online as well. Both articles are worth reading since they echo the innate concern we have for our planet, but that at the same time, the problem can feel overwhelmingly large**. Aiello never spoke with me, or as far as I could tell, any expert in the field of climate science, so of course I agree more with the approach Averette used, and found myself strongly disagreeing with Aiello’s article. I wrote a letter to the Niner Times in response to Aiello’s article, and I wrote a shorter version of that letter as well for the print newspaper. I did this because I often think about this artificial public debate that exists in the face of a broad scientific consensus about many points regarding the present-day climate change, and I also think that scientists need to speak up when they know about a topic.

Screenshot of the print version of my letter that had a limited number of words I could include. Hence the online letter is longer.

*Gravity is a good example. Go measure the acceleration if you want, but you’re likely to find the same thing any scientist will find. Acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 meters per second every second that an object falls. Thus, this is essentially a fact in our world, but it arose from evidence, not our gut feeling.

**This philosophy of how a single person drawing from a common resource scales up to major problems is known as the Tragedy of the Commons, which has been spoken about eloquently by many many people, including wikipedia.

Tags: climate global environmental change global warming teaching

Voting for action on global environmental change

December 10, 2013 by Brian Magi

global-201101-201112 As real as global warming (figure above from NOAA NCDC) is, and as much as we expect that the science has done enough, one US lawmaker recently said

I am for global action on climate change. I am a proud supporter and very anxious for the U.S. to participate globally. But I think if you look at the current makeup of the U.S. Senate, it’s very difficult.

This is a quote from Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) that I drew from a recent article that I’ll get to below. As I close off discussions with 28 undergraduate students of Earth Sciences, Geology, Meteorology, and Economics this semester in my Global Environmental Change course, the questions that permeate their responses to readings* we went over in class are

1. WHAT CAN WE DO?
2. WHY AREN’T WE DOING ANYTHING?

I bring a lot of current discussion into the classroom – more than the previous iteration of my course and I await my course reviews and student comments to better understand which materials resonated and which did not. In the meantime, my answer to the driving questions for the future of our state and country is simple: VOTE. Vote for the legislators that work on issues that you think benefit the global community.

The simplicity in my answer is partly because I don’t have a better answer, but partly because this is where the science stands. Namely, science has arrived at robust conclusions based on decades of intense research by communities of experts, most recently evidenced by the full report of the IPCC. Earth scientists keep working on issues because we are interested in what makes the physical world tick, and just like any community of professionals, the majority of us work on science that is relevant. The most relevant Earth science is climate science. I think it is safe to say that most Earth scientists want to see some actual climate action rather than the empty words that most that most of the action statements by politicians have amounted to so far. A widely-cited scientific paper about a way to visualize and break down carbon mitigation strategies into manageable parts said that the choice is simple: Act or delay.

If we want action, we cannot rely solely on science and engineering – we need policy makers. Policy makers are elected by people. So if my students want to help, vote. If citizens in general want to help, then vote. An interesting report by Lisa Friedman at Energy and Environment News included quotes from US lawmakers about the upcoming 2015 Paris climate meeting that many were hoping would be much farther along after this year’s Poland climate meeting. I’ll include several below:

It will be difficult to get a treaty passed in 2015 in the U.S. Senate as it is presently constituted

———————————–> Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)

Keep our eyes on the prize of creating an ambitious, effective and durable agreement. Insisting that only one way can work, such as an agreement that is internationally binding in all respects, could put that prize out of reach.

———————————–> U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern

[A binding agreement is] not going to go anywhere. It’s dead on arrival… [EPA limits on CO2 emissions from future power plants are] hurting our economy on a daily basis.

———————————–> Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)

There is a lot of difference of opinion among very educated people on the science [of global warming]. [On whether a binding agreement would pass the Senate: ] I kind of doubt it. There is still a legitimate question of science, and you can’t brush that away.

———————————–> Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)

I think this [a global climate treaty] is an issue that can flip very quickly. [An EPA regulation, for example, would] put a lot of costs on polluters and cause them to rethink the wisdom of an economywide carbon fee. If we can organize the armies on our side, it’s a rout. We just haven’t bothered to organize them. [The fact that climate is back in the political discussion and may be in 2014 means] that adds up to 2015 being a pretty good year.

———————————–> Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.)

This problem is global, not just related to any one country or only one region. We need an international effort, and I think there’s growing support for that in the United States.

———————————–> Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)

We need to set a good example to the rest of the world. That way, when we call on China and India and other big emitters, we can say not only ‘Do as I say,’ but ‘Do as I do.’

———————————–> Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.)

Increasingly, the U.S. is being viewed as a leader. Especially if the administration takes action on coal-fired power plants, I think it will be very hard, then, for China and India to say the U.S. is not acting.

———————————–> Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)

[Action might require] some kind of catastrophe… I think [global warming and subsequent impacts are] real, and I think that we should continue to explore our options to reduce the effects of it. [He has not liked] anything I’ve seen lately [about how the UN climate process has influenced US lawmakers.] [Still, he conceded,] I don’t think talking hurts. It probably helps.

———————————–> Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Are pathways opening up? Has Obama been able to set up his position strongly enough to promote policies that are in line with the science? Well, it comes back to the simple solution: Vote for what you believe. I would argue that your political party – socially or economically – is not the relevant part of a vote that supports climate change policy.

As Professor Andrew Dessler argues in his book, and as many other climate and climate policy scientists argue, the decision to move away from energy sources with high carbon emissions is completely reversible – if the climate science summarized in the IPCC reports is entirely wrong or even partly wrong about carbon cycle science,

$Figure 2 from Chapter 6 (Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles) FAQ 6.1 of IPCC AR5 Working Group 1. Shows that some fraction of a 5000 GtC pulse of carbon emissions - on scale with a pulse from burning all fossil fuel reserves - would affect the atmosphere for 1,000s to 100,000s of years. Roughly 40% of the pulse would remain in the atmosphere even after 2000 years.$

Figure 2 from Chapter 6 (Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles) FAQ 6.1 of IPCC AR5 Working Group 1. Shows that some fraction of a 5000 GtC pulse of carbon emissions – on scale with a pulse from burning all fossil fuel reserves – would affect the atmosphere for 1,000s to 100,000s of years. Roughly 40% of the pulse would remain in the atmosphere even after 2000 years.

we can always go back to burning the least expensive energy sources without regard to the environment. But if climate science is even close to right, then we are facing irreversible changes (see the figure above) to the carbon cycle that will affect the Earth for centuries, millenia, and even further.

As I told my students, the questions that we face are civilization scale (echoing Rep. Waxman’s quote above). Human civilization emerged as a presence on Earth somewhere between 20,000 and 200,000 years ago. I’m no archaeologist, so that number isn’t particularly important. The point is that dinosaurs managed to survive for 165 million years on Earth and evolve into the Cretaceous Period species that we know and love (tyrannosaurus rex, triceratops, etc.). It sure would be nice to think that our advanced technology means we can learn to live in harmony with the planet longer than the dinosaurs! Considering that the dinosaurs were finally offed by a meteorite, I’d say we have a lot to prove still.

*readings from Elizabeth Kolbert, Andrew Dessler, IPCC AR4 and AR5, news posts from New York Times and Washington Post, and multimedia presentations such as Thin Ice, Earth The Operators Manual, and data visualizations and tools focusing on climate-relevant data like carbon emissions, temperature records, and climate model projections

Tags: carbon climate coal global environmental change global warming teaching

Undergraduate students scouring internet for global warming articles

September 08, 2013 by Brian Magi

I’m teaching my Global Environmental Change this semester and the students have been busy reading and putting together response papers to the readings. This past week, I asked the students to find a news article published in 2013 about climate change. Not a hard search really, but I also asked them to evaluate or talk about how they evaluated the expertise of the author of the article. Many of the articles below give a glimpse into what students are thinking about with climate change. Here is the list:

Hurricanes striking coast could decrease with global warming
Cooling Pacific dampened global warming
Summary of IPCC AR5 panel findings
Pacific allies in fight against climate change
Climate change policies in Europe and adverse impacts on African agriculture
Is global warming slowing down?
An advocacy piece centered on Hardball interview with Professor Michael Mann and a Republican strategist
Climate sticker shock related to Arctic melt
Record temperature in Greenland
Germany’s energy outlook
Gulf Stream slowdown linked to faster rate of sea level rise on USA East Coast
Climate change impacts on the energy infrastructure
Global warming primer
MTV rocks the POTUS SOTU 2013 party
Carbon farms reversing global warming
Pause in global warming should not translate to pause in action

Tags: global environmental change teaching undergraduate research

The Climate Change Speech transcript and video

June 26, 2013 by Brian Magi

Here’s an update from my post yesterday about the Climate Change Speech. Link to the video on Youtube via whitehouse.gov. The video is downloadable (mp4) so you can show students how a speech embodies leadership on an issue that will, in my opinion, define this and the next generation. Link to the transcript of the speech at Georgetown University.

When I review the transcript, I think about the speech Margaret Thatcher gave to the UN in 1989. Thatcher opened her speech about global warming with the voyages of Charles Darwin. Obama opened his speech with the voyages to space by US astronauts.

President Obama said on a hot summer day (92 F air, 67 F dewpoint means about 96 F heat index) in Washington DC in June 2013

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the astronauts of Apollo 8 did a live broadcast from lunar orbit. So Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders — the first humans to orbit the moon -– described what they saw, and they read Scripture from the Book of Genesis to the rest of us back here. And later that night, they took a photo that would change the way we see and think about our world. It was an image of Earth -– beautiful; breathtaking; a glowing marble of blue oceans, and green forests, and brown mountains brushed with white clouds, rising over the surface of the moon. And while the sight of our planet from space might seem routine today, imagine what it looked like to those of us seeing our home, our planet, for the first time. Imagine what it looked like to children like me. Even the astronauts were amazed. “It makes you realize,” Lovell would say, “just what you have back there on Earth.”

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in November 1989

During his historic voyage through the south seas on the Beagle, Charles Darwin landed one November morning in 1835 on the shore of Western Tahiti. After breakfast he climbed a nearby hill to find advantage point to survey the surrounding Pacific. The sight seemed to him like “a framed engraving”, with blue sky, blue lagoon, and white breakers crashing against the encircling Coral Reef. As he looked out from that hillside, he began to form his theory of the evolution of coral; 154 years after Darwin’s visit to Tahiti we have added little to what he discovered then.

What if Charles Darwin had been able, not just to climb a foothill, but to soar through the heavens in one of the orbiting space shuttles? What would he have learned as he surveyed our planet from that altitude? From a moon’s eye view of that strange and beautiful anomaly in our solar system that is the earth? Of course, we have learned much detail about our environment as we have looked back at it from space, but nothing has made a more profound impact on us than these two facts.

First, as the British scientist Fred Hoyle wrote long before space travel was a reality, he said “once a photograph of the earth, taken from the outside is available … a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose”. That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than ever before that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action.

And second, as we travel through space, as we pass one dead planet after another, we look back on our earth, a speck of life in an infinite void. It is life itself, incomparably precious, that distinguishes us from the other planets. It is life itself—human life, the innumerable species of our planet—that we wantonly destroy. It is life itself that we must battle to preserve.

I could read those words over and over again and never feel any less attached to the idea of a global community and the potential role that science can play in achieving this goal. After yesterday, the goal seems attainable.

Tags: climate global environmental change global warming quotes USA

President Obama takes the offensive on climate change

June 25, 2013 by Brian Magi

Wow. What a speech this afternoon by President Obama on the Georgetown University campus – and a beautiful follow up to his Inaugural Address in January and his State of the Union speech shortly thereafter – noting one satire piece that is worthy of watching. He stepped onto the stage at about 2pm Eastern time and delivered. The backbone was the announcement of the President’s Climate Action Plan (click for PDF). The papers were buzzing – Washington Post for example but there were many many more “responses” to the unveiling of the Climate Action Plan. Twitter was super active from about 2-5 pm Eastern time with #ActOnClimate trending high. I haven’t been around Twitter long enough to see the electricity flowing like this, but watching the speech and the tweets at the same time was pretty inspiring. Entertaining too. Twitter was like a race to see who could point out a quote by @BarackObama the fastest. Obama said a lot of great things, but I like this one.

We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth society

He pointed out that the Clean Air Act only promoted American innovation and did NOT destroy the economy, and noted that the Clean Air Act passed nearly unanimously with only ONE DISSENTING VOTE. Times have changed! He metaphorically referred to the economic potential of moving to clean energy as the building of a new engine, referring (I presume) to the innovation of the automobile industry in America throughout the 20th century. Clean energy is here in this country now. He said that 75% of wind energy is in Republican districts (!). The community organizer in our President emerged as he gave credit to past Republican efforts to help our environment – the EPA was created under the Nixon administration, for example.

I haven’t found the transcript or the high quality video yet, but June 25, 2013 was a very memorable moment for the USA. I hope it marks the turning point and that the USA leads – like it should, says this US Citizen – the development of a global community around the issue of global warming. I’ll leave you with an amazingly long graphic from the White House page. climate_change_report_62513_final_0

Tags: climate global environmental change global warming impacts USA

Interactive USA wildfire map from Climate Central

June 25, 2013 by Brian Magi

Amazing what a team of scientists, techs, and a pile of data will bring you. I tried to embed a great map interface by the group at Climate Central here, but it didn’t work so here’s a screenshot of the information the interactive map provides when you zoom into one of the large fires affecting the USA right now (this one near Los Alamos, New Mexico). climatecentral-firemap Go to their widget here or to the more detailed posting about the widget here. Essentially, Climate Central is posting updated USA (or maybe North America) fire locations with really useful (and frightening) details as they roll in from daily reports by fire and land managers. Respect and praise for this great product of the intersection between science, technology, and public outreach. I wish the fire crews the best as they battle against an unforgiving enemy.

Tags: fire global environmental change human-fire interactions lightning USA

May 2013 climate in North Carolina and the world

June 24, 2013 by Brian Magi

With global warming and all of the impacts, it’s very important to constantly consider the question of time and space scales. May 2013 is a good example for those of us living in the Southeastern USA or North Carolina. Namely, North Carolina’s normal-to-cool spring is not at all indicative of how the global temperature is evolving. Let’s see how we can quickly use NOAA NCDC graphs to figure this out.

Global warming refers to the increase in average temperature of the entire Earth. The last part – the entire Earth – is the spatial scale. And that’s a huge spatial scale! When a scientist talks about global warming or that global warming has been detected, you have to step back and say WOW. What on Earth could warm an entire planet? coal_fired_power_plant Over long time scales, of course there are a number of possible reasons (changes in the Sun, Earth’s orbital shape/proximity around the Sun, plate techtonics), but these take so long, they aren’t relevant to the concept of global warming. Even my statement that What on Earth could warm an entire planet? should be more precise and say something like What on Earth could warm an entire planet over a relatively short time period? The simplest, if somewhat incomplete, answer is the combination of greenhouse gases and aerosols emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. Period.

May 2013 analysis of global temperatures are trickling out. NOAA NCDC as always has a wonderfully complete report of climate news for May and for all previous months. My favorite part is the plethora of hyperlinks. NOAA NCDC should really be commended for their public outreach! Here is one of the figures from that webpagewhere you can see how different the Southeast USA is from the world in May 2013 – the world is shades of red, while the Southeast USA is shades of blue (cooler than normal). We’ve had a very pleasant spring in North Carolina. Pull back on the temporal (time) scale to see the March-April-May seasonal average and you can see that the cool spring extends well beyond May in terms of the anomaly. By this, I mean that the blues become deeper when you consider a three month period (March-April-May) and that implies without any quantitative work that March-April were more cooler-than-average. Pull back slightly further to the year-to-date rankingsand here you see that the Southeastern USA and in fact most of the USA and even Alaska have been right at the climatological normal (which for NCDC is the average temperature from 1981-2010). The short story is that North Carolina below average temperatures for the period from January to May, March to May or just plain old May are not indicative of global temperatures. The real question is why?

Tags: climate data analysis data visualization global environmental change global warming NCDC NOAA north carolina USA

Global carbon emissions increased in 2012

June 12, 2013 by Brian Magi

Unlike the somewhat misleadingly rosy picture painted by President Obama about (USA) carbon emissions in his Inaugural Address and his State of the Union speech in 2013, the global carbon emissions are what matter. So if the USA continues to mine coal and ship it elsewhere, it is not an improvement except for the USA emissions portfolio. It’s like a gambler who doesn’t count losses at casinos other than the one he or she is sitting at. The International Energy Agency released a report stating that global carbon emissions are up 1.4%. bluemarble.east I haven’t read the IEA report, but I came across the press release via the excellent energy/economy reporting they are doing. Then I heard the same WA Post reporter on the Diane Rehm show this morning (available for mp3 download via ITunes, for example). Then I read about the IEA article on Climate Central. Whew!

The Diane Rehm show had a good panel, with a requisite global warming “skeptic” (whatever that means!). That skeptic role was played by an analyst from The Heritage Foundation*. The other roles on the panel were the Post journalist, an analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund**, and a research scientist from Rutger’s University***. I would say that Diane Rehm handled the panel well, and I think that the Heritage Foundation representative overplayed his hand to the point where his comments were generally made irrelevant. In other words, he spoke too much and too glibly (is that a word) and made points that undermined his real argument that adaptation may be the most likely pathway (which is actually kind of interesting). The other panelist laid into the sillier points that the skeptic made and shut him down. Rehm left it that way.

Shutting down those punchline-style quips (memes) is really how the discussion should be every time. The Earth is warming. CO2 and other greenhouse gas concentrations continues to rise. The conversation should be about how it is our civilization needs to adapt and change. This is what the IEA discusses. Mitigation of carbon emissions is a huge discussion in the science journals. The IEA report is highlighting that we as a civilization are heading towards a major point in our hunger for fossil fuel based energy. This hunger has been targetted by scientist since the 1980s and arguably since the late 1800s! Think about solutions and strategies when you are thinking of how you want to make an impact on your community or your country or even the world. Think about our Earth and our future. The world needs you.

The Heritage Foundation webpage states: Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

The Environmental Defense Fund webpage states: We are passionate, pragmatic environmental advocates who believe in prosperity and stewardship. Grounded in science, we forge partnerships and harness the power of market incentives.

Dr. Jennifer Francis is deeply involved in improving our understanding of how the Arctic affects the USA – see google scholar or video of her talking about her work

Tags: carbon climate global environmental change USA

CO2 time line for May 2013

June 02, 2013 by Brian Magi

The month of May is officially over, and perhaps the Earth is about to take a big breath in and begin to draw down CO2 from its year 2013 peak. The last tweets by @Keeling_curve showed a relatively (emphasis on relatively!) sharp decrease from May 29 to May 30 with CO2 falling from 400.33 ppm to 398.41 ppm, and then May 31 had variability that was too high as tweeted here. Funny side note was that for whatever reason, this “data too variable” drew the attention of one well-known (but not well-respected) blog, to which @Keeling_curve replied “see here“. Geez, you’d think seasoned bloggers would click a couple of web links before tweeting a question like that. The values of CO2 should start their annual decrease from the peak value in the Northern Hemisphere as the plant life in temperate and polar zones comes to life, but in the mean time, we’re living in the age of a 400 ppm CO2 world, which is very unusual in recent geological history, as discussed here and shown here. Here’s the time line of CO2 concentrations for this historic May 2013 co2-2013-05 which shows the weekly-averaged CO2 from the daily-averaged values posted on Twitter (ok, tweeted). The straight horizontal purple line is the monthly-averaged CO2 of 399.82 ppm (wow!), and the straight red line is the mystical 400 ppm CO2. I calculated the weekly-average as the value of the previous 7 days up. For example, May 15 weekly-average is the average of values from May 9 through May 15. The weekly-average ideally is 7 data points, but occasionally a daily-averaged value is not tweeted due to high variability in the data. From the figure you can see that we reached our first weekly-averaged CO2 concentration greater than 400 ppm on May 19. I actually thought that would be it for the year, but from May 24 to May 29, daily values were again well over 400 ppm. This brought the number of weekly-averaged values greater than 400 ppm up to 5. Roughly, about 33% of the days in May 2013 had CO2 greater than 400 ppm. The decline should begin soon with the annual minimum in September-October reaching values of about 394-395 ppm, noting that the annual minimum for 2013 will probably be very close to the maximum from only 2 years ago. Below is the data shown in the graph above. An impressive May, and one that will be recorded in the history books.

                       carbon dioxide (ppm)
year    month   day     daily   weekly
2013	5	1	*	399.61
2013	5	2	399.29	399.40
2013	5	3	*	399.40
2013	5	4	399.68	399.49
2013	5	5	399.54	399.50
2013	5	6	399.52	399.51
2013	5	7	399.71	399.55
2013	5	8	*	399.55
2013	5	9	399.73	399.64
2013	5	10	399.4	399.60
2013	5	11	399.46	399.56
2013	5	12	399.41	399.54
2013	5	13	400.16	399.65
2013	5	14	399.91	399.68
2013	5	15	399.74	399.69
2013	5	16	400.25	399.76
2013	5	17	400.04	399.85
2013	5	18	399.8	399.90
2013	5	19	400.15	400.01
2013	5	20	399.73	399.95
2013	5	21	399.91	399.95
2013	5	22	399.85	399.96
2013	5	23	399.88	399.91
2013	5	24	400.09	399.92
2013	5	25	400.2	399.97
2013	5	26	400.53	400.03
2013	5	27	400.27	400.10
2013	5	28	400.06	400.13
2013	5	29	400.33	400.19
2013	5	30	398.41	399.98
2013	5	31	*	399.97

*data was too variable over the course of the day. no value was reported on twitter.

Tags: carbon CO2 data visualization global environmental change global warming NOAA

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**This philosophy of how a single person drawing from a common resource scales up to major problems is known as the Tragedy of the Commons, which has been spoken about eloquently by many many people, including wikipedia.

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