The residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is 4 years…Natural sources driving changes in CO2 concentrations – Watts Up With That?
Via Kenneth Richard on August 30, 2024
“Clearly, atmospheric CO2 observational data are not consistent with the climate story. Instead, they contradict it.” – Koutsoyiannis, 2024
Each one new researchThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses “inappropriate assumptions and speculations”, as well as “imaginary data” models that do not exist in the real world, to assert that CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion behave “strangely”, differently in the atmosphere than CO2 molecules from naturally occurring emissions (e.g., plant respiration, ocean transpiration).
“The ambiguity comes with inappropriate assumptions and speculations, the most bizarre of which is that the behavior of CO2 in the atmosphere depends on its source, and that CO2 emitted from human-caused fossil fuel combustion has a longer residence time than that emitted naturally.”
While the IPCC acknowledges that emissions from natural sources only remain in the atmosphere for four years, they simultaneously build output models that assert that CO2 molecules derived from fossil fuel emissions remain in the atmosphere for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years.
According to IPCC:
“15 to 40% of CO2 pulses emitted [from anthropogenic emissions] will remain in the atmosphere for more than 1,000 years, 10 to 25% will last about ten thousand years, and the rest will be eliminated within a few hundred thousand years.”
“Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an extreme example, its turnover time is only about 4 years due to rapid exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean.”
Again, a residence time of four years for naturally occurring CO2, but a residence time of hundreds of thousands of years for CO2 molecules produced by fossil fuel combustion. It seems that almost any result can be deduced from imaginary data.
Image source: Koutsoyiannis, 2024
Rather than relying on models built on assumptions and speculation, Dr. Koutsoyiannis uses a well-established hydrological-based theoretical framework (the refined reservoir pathway or RRR) combined with real-world CO2 observations to definitively conclude residence times for all CO2 molecules, regardless of source, have a lifespan of about 3.5 to 4 years.
The applied theoretical results match the experimental results so closely (e.g., the experimental mean is 3.91 years compared to the theoretical mean of 3.94 years at Barrow, and 3.68 years is identical for both the experimental and theoretical mean at Mauna Loa from 1958–2023) that it can be said that the theoretical framework is “nearly perfect.” In other words, the consistency of the applied calculations with real-world observations provides reliable evidence that CO2 residence times are likely to be close to this range.
In contrast, the calculated probability for the claim based on modeled imaginary data that the residence time of a CO2 molecule persists for more than 1000 years is 10⁻⁶⁸, which means the probability value is “nothing short of impossible.”
Image source: Koutsoyiannis, 2024
The residence time of just four years for all CO2 molecules, regardless of source, is consistent with the conclusion that nature plays a dominant role in driving changes in CO2 concentrations. Fossil fuel emissions play only a minor role.
Since 1750, the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere from natural sources related to biological processes has been about 4.5 times greater than the amount emitted from fossil fuels (e.g., 22.9 ppm per year from nature, 5.2 ppm per year from fossil fuel combustion).
In other words, the observed CO2 data contradict the view that human-caused fossil fuel burning is driving changes in CO2 concentrations.
Image source: Koutsoyiannis, 2024
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