There are three different scenarios that i consider here. The do nothing approach, much akin to the Harper approach of 20% below 2006 levels by 2020 and convince California not to change the economic climate towards supporting Earths climate and its sustainability; the 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 being adopted possibly by bill c311 and possibly by copenhagen in October; thirdly i consider the case where we try to get back to 350 ppm levels of CO2 at ground level by 2050 or move in that direction, perhaps reaching it by 2070.
The four excel files that show these options are in the following downloadable zip files:
NB: the analysis here is not complete and am working with CO2sys to correct the problem to get real pH values. I am now convinced that the pH will drop and around 2030, shell and crustacean or phytoplankton calcite producers will be affected adversely and also before then. Their shells will melt and they will have trouble growing, surviving and adapting to the increasingly acidic environment of the oceans....
http://richardbelshaw.greenparty.ca/...
http://richardbelshaw.greenparty.ca/...
This file now contains charts and graphs that give one a gestalt-holistic interpretation of the important data.... note how much natural variation there is in the biosphere carbon sink and the net CO2 contained in the ocean and atmosphere per year.
http://richardbelshaw.greenparty.ca/...
http://richardbelshaw.greenparty.ca/...
The first two differ in assumptions. 1. The oceanconchproj file assumes a theta-logistic curve for atmospheric increases which i believe better takes into account peak oil and switching to alternatives. The 2nd file oceanconchdonothing2009.zip is kind of a worst case scenario with ppm increasing quadratically from 2009 to 2050. It follows the acceleration and velocity of past data, but may not take into account the changes that are happening societally, politically and in the environmental movement. These are still best guesses and speculations, so be forewarned. If fusion or fission comes along en masse and coal is shut down, everything will change and these numbers will be obsolete!!! Lets hope so. They are the do nothing scenarios.
If you want to run your own scenario with the model, edit the ppm CO2 data to what you think it might be, or want it to be, and then run 'calcppm' which will actually calculate the atmospheric concentrations and the shallow water option concentrations under option 1 for all the years from 1990 to 2050. If you want to calculate just one year options 2 and 3 are available, and the ocean data below willl be valid. I don't recommend using any of the other macros at this time for other users.
Past ppm data from Charles Keelings lab at Mauna Loa is as follows from 1958 to 2007
=
1.0e+03 *
year ppm
1.9580 0.3145
1.9590 0.3154
1.9600 0.3160
1.9610 0.3169
1.9620 0.3175
1.9630 0.3182
1.9640 0.3185
1.9650 0.3192
1.9660 0.3209
1.9670 0.3218
1.9680 0.3227
1.9690 0.3240
1.9700 0.3250
1.9710 0.3259
1.9720 0.3274
1.9730 0.3285
1.9740 0.3294
1.9750 0.3306
1.9760 0.3315
1.9770 0.3337
1.9780 0.3348
1.9790 0.3366
1.9800 0.3380
1.9810 0.3394
1.9820 0.3403
1.9830 0.3428
1.9840 0.3440
1.9850 0.3454
1.9860 0.3467
1.9870 0.3488
1.9880 0.3512
1.9890 0.3524
1.9900 0.3542
1.9910 0.3556
1.9920 0.3564
1.9930 0.3570
1.9940 0.3589
1.9950 0.3609
1.9960 0.3626
1.9970 0.3638
1.9980 0.3666
1.9990 0.3683
2.0000 0.3695
2.0010 0.3710
2.0020 0.3731
2.0030 0.3756
2.0040 0.3774
2.0050 0.3796
2.0060 0.3818
2.0070 0.3836
I'm also running a fourth scenario and fifth scenario, and high temperatures like in equatorial regions around corals and with low temperatures just above freezing for the arctic and antartic waters to test James Hansens assertion that at around 450 ppm atmospheric, the cold water pH drops ... see below....for results
If the pH drops, then we CAN SAY James Hansen is correct, AND we must avoid 450 ppm level as a hard limit to the very best of our global ability, otherwise the sea life and the entire web of life on the planet is at risk above these levels of atmospheric concentrations....!!!!
The summary sections in the top left are relatively self explanatory to anyone who is reasonably adept with spreadsheets or numbers and ratios and trends.
The summary sections are in the top left and you can freely compare all three scenarios.
I will make some highlight comparisons here.
James Hansen who provoked the beginning of http://www.350.org by Bill McKibbon, whose aims i generally support though i am sceptical of the ability of the world to adapt sufficiently with low tech to achieve the aim of 350 ppm of CO2 at sea level, though i dearly wish we will move towards that direction but feel we will need high tech, like Ted Sargents nanotechnology and Richard Nebels/Robert Bussards Polywell Fusion design using Boron or Lithium and no radioactivity from scattered excess neutrons like at ITER and the tokamuk design purporting to use Tritium/Deuterium to achieve Helium by products through a program that is underfunded and unrealistic and radioactive. I prefer to think about Pickens wind farm attempt or perhaps even temporarily traditional uranium fission (horror of horrors...) instead of coal, oil, gas (in that order) especially in the wake of peak oil.
Highlights....
d
- James Hansen has claimed that ... from supercomputer models at Goddard Climate Centre that no public person can be allowed to really look at or participate in or understand unless they are a member of the scientific elite, that ocean acidification will occur around 450 ppm of CO2 at sea level in the southern ocean unless we change course now, this is backed up by studies, see the files listed at the bottom of this blog. I have used the equations of Millero et al. espoused in Elsevier and Academic Press texts... 'CO2 in seawater; equilibrium, kinetics, isotopes' by Richard E. Zeebe and Dieter Wolf-Gladrow. published by Elsevier in 2001. These equations are reproducible and included here in each of these three excel files. I recommend instead CO2sys by Ernie Lewis and Doug Wallace. Their equations are more correct and can be scaled up for this application. I still have a number of errors to correct in my analysis, but remain convinced that at around 450 ppm, there will be and even before then due to calcite especially magnesian calcite dissolution rates, we will have a serious web of life and ecosystem problem. I have used the SeaWater Scale (SWS) often used by oceanographers which normalizes for fluorine and sulphur in ocean water and it along with the Total scale, measure about .1 pH lower than the free and fourth scale, and are about .01 pH units different from each other. In the theory at least, the minimum pH in the whole ocean is calculated over 60 years under a very CO2 stressed system, where in the do nothing approach the level approaches 512 ppm at sea level by 2050, higher indoors and approaching toxic to human levels of 1000 ppm indoors. In reality, there may be some local drops that are temporary, or more pronounced like in the saturated southern ocean.
www.realclimate.org
It is claimed that the calcite will completely disappear and that ocean buffering of pH would come to a halt and all the ocean sea life would die. true this century, but the situation is not static, and change is occuring, witness Obama and his administration, Europe and India and China.
It turns out that there is a limit, but it is closer in the future than that we had previously thought. we have an estimated reservoir of 2750 GT-Carbon of CaCO3 and it needs refining. What they forgot or couldn't calculate was the amount of precipitation of calcium carbonate which subsequently dissolves due to the carbonic acid and acts as an acid buffer, along with Borate, ... , before that we have to be careful. These equations are open to the public and reproducible in a format like mine, or a similar format by someone who knows chemistry, math and computers.... a tall order for most people. I have also used estimates of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) and Particulate Organic Carbon (POC) which both contribute towards precipitation levels via RFgamma and the gamma ratio or rain ratio which is a ratio of the amount of CaCO3 that precipates in Mol/kg of seawater to Mol/kg of DOC and POC that are present. I have used the estimates of DOC and POC elucidated in Marine Biogeochemistry by Susan Libe published in 2009 by Elsevier and Academic Press. There is more information there also about calcite and Calcium Carbonate reservoirs and chemistry. Phosphates and Silicates and sulfur and fluorine need to be included in the total alkalinity estimates.
You need to know pH at the surface and fugacity at the surface to iteratively solve for all the depths. These unknowns solved for include pH, total alkalinity, Total Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (TC) and other unknowns like bicarbonate concentration in mol/kg and carbonate ion in mol/kg of seawater at depth (pressure).
One of the real threats is methane release to the atmosphere, which by itself will cause a 0.583 degree temperature increase by 2050 over 1990, regardless of which of the three scenarios we use.
In scenario 1: Do nothing 2009: The minimum pH in shallow water, the top 279 metres of the ocean (the region most critical to fish and ocean life)
Really the top 1000 metres above the thermocline must be included, and future versions will include that.
We would dissolve about 2 GT-Carbon of Calcium Carbonate per year annually with a total reservoir of 2751 GT-C of calcite, which is more important to sea life than aragonite the other major form of calcium carbonate which is more soluble than calcite. In geological history we have had alternating predominantly calcite or aragonite seas.
The CO2 ppm rises to 512 ppm by 2050 and the total estimated temperature rise is : 1.92 degrees Celcius and the total amount of calcite that would be dissolved since 1990 would be about 153.5 GT-Carbon of CaCO3 of the total available of 2751 GT - C of CaCO3. The amount dissolved is not absolutely determined yet, and needs more work. This is a work in progress and this is a progress report.
A word about temperature change, i have assumed that 3 degrees per doubling of CO2 ppm will occur, which is the most likely scenario with about 1/3 probability, there is a 2/3 probability that a temperature change of between 2 degrees Celcius and 6 degrees celcius will occur. And because the distribution of probable outcomes from many scenarios depending on chaos theory and precipation and nonlinear fluid flow in weather prediction, there is a 1/3 probabllity approximately that the temperature increase will be greater than 6 degrees, the distribution is fat tailed. Also there is a total limit to the total amount of CO2 that we can emit forever, before temperature increases greater than 2 degree limit we need to avoid, and if we exceed that we will be looking at over 1000ppm CO2 in the next century likely between 1200 and 1400 ppm based on the total historical impulse of fossil fuel emissions of CO2 that we have emitted. Similarly based on the most likely 3 degree rise, i have assumed methane has 23 times more atmospheric heating potential per GT-Carbon of methane compared to a GT-C of CO2.
See:http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/4581117a.html
http://www.nature.com/...
See Nature issue
Nature 458, (30 April 2009)
http://www.nature.com/...
In Scenario 2: Bill C-311, the temperature total temperature increase will be: 1.24 degrees celcius. Still significant, but the CO2 level will be 431 ppm at sea level, below James Hansen's critical 450 ppm. He may know something i don't, i am waiting to hear back from him on that! I understand he is busy. Joe Romm's book Hell or Highwater is recommended to see the politics we are up against or Elizabeth May's new book, 'Lack of Confidence' which should at this juncture be recommended. Under scenario 2, the total calcite consumed since 1990 is about 145.75 GT- Carbon of CaCO3 (estimated).
In Scenario 3: 350 ppm by 2050, the total calcite consumed by 2050 would be about 136 GT-Carbon, thus conserving a crucial resource and essential for the conservation in the future of ocean life and the web of life of the entire planet. The total temperature change due to CO2 would decrease, but there is still methane increases to consider. They will be lowest under this scenario, but conservatively we still forecast an increase of .547 degrees, mostly due to the ongoing momentum of the melting permafrost in the arctic and siberia and all anthropogenic and natural off gasing of methane from wetland marshes and bogs around the world.
See http://ecen.com/...
also:
http://cat.inist.fr/...
Wilson et al, in their paper about fish excrement, are also a source of 1.4 Petagrams of calcite per annum in shallow waters, which is included in the calculations.....
In this last scenario, we start REMOVING CO2 from the atmosphere to the tune of 12.13 GT-C of CO2 average between 2017 and 2050 , which will accomplish the task of bringing us back to 350 ppm by 2050, if we remove less than this, but enough, it could be by 2070.
I hope we move in this direction, solutions are availble, and the situation is changing inspite of the negative politics. People know we MUST move in this 350 direction, it has become song, metaphor and translated into many other languages, just like Avaaz is really influencing things...
We should act now on Bill c-311, but expect to revise it , at the latest by 2017,
I believe the equations used in CO2sys by Ernie Lewis and Doug Wallace at Brookhaven National Labs, and at OakRidge Centre for CO2 analysis are correct to the best of human ability. I am skeptical of Zeebe et al. as they are not able with their equations to calculate correctly the pH change with depth.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/...
I think the equations of Zeebe et al, are incomplete and incorrect in some places, especially with their treatment of total alkalinity and the rain ratio, which similar equations should allow calculation of the pH at depth, but which are incorrect if one attempts it. CO2 equilibrates from the atmosphere to the ocean in about 292 days according to the sources i have been researching, so that within a year, all the emissions and respirations will equilibrate with ocean levels. The total capacity of the respiring ocean, discounting the abyss, where liquid CO2 can be stored for long periods of time, has a total capacity of about 200,000 GT-Carbon of CO2 dissolved as a gas and interacting with calcium carbonate and borate and acting as carbonic acid.
So these equations need to be examined for their consequences by the rest of the scientific community if they are being espoused by Brookhaven, OakRidge and German company AWI and Elsevier and Academic Press; at this time i believe them to be true, and if there is any magic in this world, i hope they contain it.
Don't forget alefnot's diaries, and the book, 'Earth System Science', also by academic press and author Jacobson et al. recommended to me by alefnot. Contains important information about the carbon cycle, which seems to blur the distinctions between methane, calcium carbonate, CO2 and other sources and sinks of carbon. Also the book.... 'Greenhouse Gas Sinks' edited by Reay,Hewitt,Smith and Grace by www.cabi.org, which includes a treatment of nitrous oxides. It turns out that if we mix argon which can be separated from exhaust gases with polytetrafluoroethylene membranes with the correct pore sizes, it can be recycled back and used to burn biofuel or gasoline or biodiesel or diesel, with the nitrogen removed from the incoming air flow also by ptfe membranes and pressure difference and different pore sizes, it can burn fuel optimally without producing nitrous oxides NOx, and hence help reduce smog in cities and heavily built up and densely populated areas.
For a slightly different story, we shoud still listen to Al Gore, as the devastation to the arctic and antarctic is apparent.
http://www.repoweramerica.org/...
In the fourth and fifth sceanrios, i use .5 degrees in the arctic and antarctic shallow waters and 27 degrees Celcius in the equatorial shallow waters. The results LOOK like they are global, but they are not, they just show the rates of calcium carbonate dissolution in those two regions of the world. And those rates can be compared to the median or centroid rate that is listed in the global average model oceanconchdonothing2009.zip available above.....Here are the files:
http://richardbelshaw.greenparty.ca/...
http://richardbelshaw.greenparty.ca/...
availabble for dowload.
The pH will drop due to H2CO3 conversion and CO3(2-) decreases due to buffering with carbonic acid, will drop below the critial threshold causing the ocean to become undersaturated with respect to aragonite which will cause aragonite dissolution around 2030. Also a high conversion rate to bicarbonate ion (HCO3)- which actually increases the alkalinity. There is some conversion to H2CO3, carbonic acid, but this is offset by the calcium carbonate buffer and the borate buffer, predominantly, also you might naively think that becuase cold water can absorb more gas, it will be more acidic. this is not the case. It does absorb more gas, but because of the kinetics of equilibrium, it tends to stay as inert gas, or when converted, happening much more slowly, it gets converted way more to bicarbonate ion, which actully greatly offsets the conversion to carbonic acid H2CO3, in fact it brings no H+ ions from the atmosphere with it at all. It turns out that the rate of calcium carbonate dissolution is less than half that of the median model with average global sea temperatures, and the high temp model has a rate of dissolution over double that of the median model. The median model gives the actual estimate of total global dissolution, but the limiting case will be in warm or hot equatorial shallow waters, where by 2026 over 10% of the reserve calcite will have been dissolved, greatly affecting the corals. This is already happening and been happening since the mid 60's just at lower rates due to lower CO2 concentrations. Our corals are at risk! And more seriously, the whole ocean web of life, particularly off atlantic canada due to overfishing and the collapse of the cod fishery, they can learn alot about sustainable practices from the European Union, especially Norway, Britain, France and Germany, and also from British Columbia and Northwest California, See David Suzuki's web site for more info on biological tips to avoid damaging the oceans further by consumption. Find out which ocean species are ok to consume, and which are red listed. This changes from week to week and month to month, depending on season, catches and biological life cycles...
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
but right at this moment the public is concerned about H1N1 viruses .....lets hope the 36,000 deaths due to influenza in the US per year by 'normal' flus and influenzas, which get hardly any media attention, aren't approached by this one.
best regards,
Richard Belshaw
AGU,JASA,AAAS,IEEE
PS other approaches to examining the oceanic sink:
http://www.sciencemag.org/...
http://www.sciencemag.org/...
The capacity of the deep ocean to absorb Carbon Dioxide
www.terrapub.co.jp/e-library/dod/pdf/0143.pdf
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/...
http://www.sciencemag.org/...
www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/13304/EAE03-J-13304.pdf
http://www.john-daly.com/...
and the following article in PNAS that is recent outlines a tipping point at 450 ppm CO2 in the southern ocean....
http://www.pnas.org/...
This last article highlights the pH change and is crucial to James Hansens argument and is highly important.
Southern Ocean acidification: A tipping point
at 450-ppm atmospheric CO2
Ben I. McNeila,1 and Richard J. Matearb
a
Climate Change Research Centre, Faculty of Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia; and bCentre for Australian Weather and
Climate Research and Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, Hobart TAS 7000, Australia
Edited by David M. Karl, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, and approved October 6, 2008 (received for review July 1, 2008)