Above you state: "The Southern Hemisphere and its oceans warmed first, starting about 18,000 years ago. As the Southern Ocean warms, the solubility of CO2 in water falls. This causes the oceans to give up more CO2, releasing it into the atmosphere."

How does this jibe with the ocean acidification narrative which postulates that in a warmer world with a higher CO2 atmosphere the ocean will absorb more CO2 and become acidic?


[DB] Your question on ocean acidification is dealt with in the 18-part 'OA is NOT OK' series, written by subject matter experts in that field, as summarized in Parts 1:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mackie_OA_not_OK_part_19.html

And Part 2:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mackie_OA_not_OK_part_20.html

If you have questions, place them on the appropriate thread and the subject matter experts will respond to them.

[PS] Its about equilibrium - outgassing from warm ocean is something for centuries in future. The above links give the details.

(Another response, this time from another contributor)
Patrick,

You ask about how during the ice ages the ocean could outgas CO2 while warming but now it is absorbing CO2 while the temperature increases.  You can calculate the solubility of CO2 using the formula here if you want more accuracy.   

The issue here is that on the "skeptical" blogs they do not consider the magnitude of processes.  They presume that any effect that seems to minimize the AGW problem is the dominate one.

According to figure 1 in the OP, the CO2 changes from about 190 ppm to about 280 ppm during an ice age.  This is a change of about 90 ppm.  The global temperature change is about 6C during the same time.  Thus the CO2 changes about 15 ppm for each 1C change in temperature.

For AGW we have changed the CO2 from about 270 to 400 or about 130 ppm of CO2.  The temperature has risen about .8C so far.   We might expect ocean outgasing to decrease CO2 concentration in the ocean by the equivalent of about 10 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. (the deep ocean has not come to equilibrium.  This explaination is a rough estimate) 

According to Henry's law, the solubility of CO2 is directly proportional to pressure of CO2.   The increase in pressure has increased the solubility of CO2 about 130 ppm which is over 10 times as much as the solubility of CO2 has decreased from the increase in temperature.

The ocean acidification narrative is correct because the increase in solubility from pressure increase is so much greater than the decrease in solubility from temperature.  The situation was different during the ice ages because the change was slow and the difference in CO2 concentration was smaller.

As the moderator points out, the increase of temperature may cause major problems in the future as the deep ocean heats up.  After enough temperature rise the ocean will not accept any more CO2 (the temperature affect increases as the temperature increases).  Then the CO2 in the atmosphere will rise more rapidly.  The surface few hundred meters will stay acidic in any case.  The rapid change in acidity is difficult for ecosystems to adapt to.

This calculation is old news to people who have researched the facts about AGW.  Your posts would come across better if you asked questions about what you want to learn instead of suggesting that scientists have made major errors.

source: comments, http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=10&t=470&&a=7

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/snow-ice/glaciers.html

gee I wonder why the planet has been warming so rapidly over the past 7 or 8 decades?

I hope the earth's ecological and climate systems are not detrimentally affected by this concerning trend.


I hope the children of future generations don't suffer and pay dearly for the consequences of our actions.

gee lucky there arent any children hatters on this chat forum.

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Mar 25^th, 2015 at 1:59pm:

i.e. (if you haven't guessed my mode of transmission by now!) "Is not Hollywood just the encouragement of Jevons Paradox  ?!!?"