Monday, May 14, 2012
That Sharp Dip in Arctic Sea Ice Extent....
I asked DMI about that downward spike in Arctic sea ice extent, which I mentioned here the other day. (Since it was hotlinked, it no longer shows up on my blog post.) It was due to data fallout over the Hudson Bay, which you can see that here is you step back to 5/8/12. They've fixed it now, as well as two others from February.
I've been watching weekly CO2 soar at Mauna Loa, the latest value puts it more than 4pmm higher than this time last year.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
It does say the data is preliminary though so that may be the reason and the jump will be reduced.
If not though I checked the full weekly record and since May 1974 there are only 5 weekly readings on record that were more than 4ppm higher than the preceding year:
August 16th 1998: 4.16ppm higher
September 6th 1998: 4.67ppm higher
September 27th 1998: 4.49ppm higher
April 18th 2010: 4.14ppm higher
May 6th 2012: 4.12ppm higher
If the May 6th 2012 figure holds the remarkable thing will be that the other >4ppm jumps were largely helped that high by El Ninos but this one in 2012 will have happened in spite of one.
Perhaps we are seeing the jump in global emissions start to have an effect.
I expect when global temperature takes it's next jump upwards, the rate of annual CO2 rise will also jump upwards. Very strong relationship. Something to "look forward" too. One day 3ppm/year will become the norm.