If you want to know what the Younger Dryas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas) is Wikipedia is always a good place to find out:

Younger Dryas

The Younger Dryas stadial, named after the alpine / tundra wildflower Dryas octopetala, and also referred to as the Big Freeze [1], was a brief approximately 1300 +/- 70year [1]) cold climate period following the Bölling/Allerød interstadial at the end of the Pleistocene, and preceding the Preboreal of the early Holocene. [...]

It is dated approximately 12,900-11,500 BP calibrated, or 11,000-10,000 BP uncalibrated. [...]

The Younger Dryas saw a rapid return to glacial conditions in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere between 12,900 – 11,500 years before present (BP)[2] in sharp contrast to the warming of the preceding interstadial deglaciation. The transitions each occurred over a period of a decade or so [Alley et al., 1993].Thermally fractionated nitrogen and argon isotope data from Greenland ice core GISP2 indicates that the summit of Greenland was ~15 °C colder than today during the Younger Dryas.[...]


If you want to know exactly how the Younger Dryas was discovered, check out Spencer Wearts excellent book The discovery of Global Warming (http://www.aip.org/history/climate/):

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm

This stable isotope graph from a Ice core of Greenland is supposed to represent temperatures and would indicate clearly the "cold" spike of the Younger Dryas:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/grootes.GIF

It was the discovery of these spikes that really triggered the global warming...eh.. idea (being mild), that climate could change drastically within a few years, and yes if that was to be true, I would probably be in the scaremongering camp.


But it isn't true. And the key to that is in this sentence:

It is dated approximately 12,900-11,500 BP calibrated, or 11,000-10,000 BP uncalibrated.

If you do a search of a few hundred scientific publications, as I did, specifically checking that dating problem, you're in for a big surprise. It's something completely different.

Non Calor Sed Umor.

Anybody interested in the rest of the story?

Another attempt. Let's see some geologic evidence. How about a pollen diagram, one of the most outstanding comes from the Meerfelder Maar, a small crater lake in Germany, from the study:

Brauer et al (1999) High resolution sediment and vegetation responses to Younger Dryas climate change in varved lake sediments from Meerfelder Maar, Germany, Quaternary Science Reviews 18 (1999) 321-329

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/meerfelder.GIF

What we see is an analysis of a lake sediment core that shows annual accumulation layers (varves). Each year the spring brings blooming diatoms that form a light layer. Those layers can be counted. Known volcanic ashs layers (tephra) are used to calibrate starting and ending years for counting (how educational isn't it). By identifying the pollen families and counting the number of pollen, we can do a fairly accurate climate reconstruction. We see indeed sharp changes at the Younger Dryas borders. But what kind of changes exactly? Is it really about warm - cold? What is the tell tale evidence? Anybody?

Notice that the authors use the term "Younger Dryas climate change" and also nowhere in the study the term "cooling" is used. And the reason is obvious, the herb pollen in centre are all present day common herbs in Germany and apparantly also flourishing during the Younger Dryas. An exception could be Helianthemum, which is more common in the mediteranian and locally in southern Germany, not as far north as the Meerfelder maar. There are no typical arctic species at all.

The explosion of aquatic Potamogeton (duckweed) and Pediastrum (algae) points to low water levels and perhaps more swampy conditions. Furthermore the low pollen count and the shift from trees to grass land fauna (Gramineae = grass) all point toward more arid conditions, by no means colder conditions as Helianthemum clearly indicates.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity.

Now we have seen that in Germany, during the Younger Dryas, at least the pollen season was as warm if not warmer than today, but that could have been a local phenomenon. So if the ice cores at Greenland tell us about extremely cold conditions during the Younger Dryas, could we also find a pollen core at Greenland covering the Younger Dryas to confirm that?

Well how about this:

http://www.geol.lu.se/personal/seb/Geology.pdf.pdf

Björck et al (2002) Anomalously mild Younger Dryas summer conditions in southern Greenland GEOLOGY, May 2002 pp 427-430

ABSTRACT

The first late-glacial lake sediments found in Greenland were analyzed with respect to a variety of environmental variables. The analyzed sequence covers the time span between 14 400 and 10 500 calendar yr B.P., and the data imply that the conditions in southernmost Greenland during the Younger Dryas stadial, 12 800–11 550 calendar yr B.P., were characterized by an arid climate with cold winters and mild summers, preceded by humid conditions with cooler summers. Climate models imply that such an anomaly may be explained by local climatic phenomenon caused by high insolation and Fohn effects. It shows that regional and local variations of Younger Dryas summer conditions in the North Atlantic region may have been larger than previously found from proxy data and modeling experiments.


Now Björck et al don't seem to want to rock the boat too much, so they hurry to explain it with Fohn effect, but given the position of the lake in southernmost Greenland, you need near constant northerly winds for that. And Northerly winds are not really renowned to be warm, despite the fohn effect. Moreover there is also the preceeding cool summers that you have to compensate for. Notice the arid-moist change, fits exactly with the meerfelder maar!

It's now two pollen to one (ice core area) that says that the Younger Dryas was not that cold at all. Anybody want me to increase that score?

But how is this possible if all those studies unanimously seem to point at a very cold Younger Dryas with massive glacial advances. Well of one, those glacier advances did not occur in South Greenland otherwise that pollen core would not have been available.

No, again, the problem lies here:

It (The Younger Dryas) is dated approximately 12,900-11,500 BP calibrated, or 11,000-10,000 BP uncalibrated.

Let's have a closer look at some glacier readvances in North America:

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/inqu/finalprogram/abstract_55882.htm

COMPLEX TIMING AND PATTERNS OF GLACIATION IN THE AMERICAN CORDILLERA DURING TERMINATION 1
CLARK, Douglas H., Geology Dept, Western Washington Univ, 516 High St, Bellingham, WA 98225-9080, dhclark@cc.wwu.edu. 2003

Evidence from alpine glacial deposits in the American Cordillera suggest that glacier fluctuations, and therefore the climatic conditions that caused them, during the late-glacial were spatially and temporally complex.

In the Sierra Nevada, LGM glaciers retreated gradually between 17,000 and ~15,000 14C yr BP (~20,000-18,000 cal yr B.P.) and subsequently stagnated between ~14,000 and 15,000 14C yr B.P. (~16,800-18,000 cal yr BP). By ~13,100 14C yr BP (~15,500 cal yr. BP), ice had largely or entirely disappeared from even the highest cirques. Cirques remained essentially ice-free between 13,100 and 12,200 14C yr BP (15,500-14,200 cal yr. BP), after which glaciers reformed and readvanced a short distance during the Recess Peak event. The Recess Peak glaciers lasted about 1000 yrs, disappearing by ll,200 14C yr BP (~13,100 cal yr. BP). The Sierra Nevada remained largely or entirely free of glacier ice for the next ~9000 cal yr, including during the Younger Dryas (YD) chronozone.

Glacier deposits indicate a mixed record in the North Cascades; alpine deglaciation began by ~17,000 36Cl yr BP, with two late-glacial readvances (~14,000 and 13,000 36Cl yr BP; Swanson and Porter, 1997) in the eastern Cascades, but only one (ending by ~13,200 cal yr BP) in the western Cascades near Mt. Rainier (Heine, 1998). During the YD, glaciers appear to have retreated at Mt. Rainier while simultaneously advancing further north in the Enchantment Lakes Basin. Proposed YD alpine glacier advances to near sea-level in the northernmost Cascades (Kovanen and Easterbrook, 2002) remain controversial, and may instead have been substantially smaller (Burrows, 2000).

In southern Idaho, glaciers retreated to the cirques by 13,000 14C yr BP (~15,400 cal yr BP), but experienced a minor readvance between ~12,800 – 11,000 14C yr BP (~15,100-13,000 cal yr BP); no YD advance is apparent. In the Rockies, small alpine moraines record one or two late-glacial advances, an earlier one that predates YD and a later that is synchronous with it (e.g., Menounos and Reasoner, 1997). These inconsistent results suggest either that current age constraints are in error, or more likely, that the American Cordillera experienced rapid yet localized variations in temperature and moisture delivery, possibly related to an unstable Pacific storm track.


Look at that, not a lot of glacier readvances in the Younger Dryas at all, when the carbon dating is calibrated to calender dating. Instead then those readvances seem to have happened in that preceeding -alleged warm- "Bolling Allerod interstadial". More inconsistencies.

Are we about to discover a major flaw in the chronology of the last "termination" of the ice age? :eek:


You bet. :p

Chronology is about dating, carbon dating being one of the earlier developments and the most popular. Carbon dating is very precise but highly inaccurate. That is, we can determine the ratio of radioactive 14Carbon to normal carbon to several digits, but that doesn't say much about the real age. Carbon dating depended on the assumption that the ratio of radiocarbon 14C in the atmospheric CO2 was to be constant and that it would remain that way during photosynthesis and biologic processed. However, both are highly variable.

Check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating
http://www.allaboutarchaeology.org/is-carbon-dating-accurate-faq.htm

The calibration of radiodating to counting methods like tree rings from fossil trees and those lake varves, mentioned earlier, took a long while to devellop. Useful calibration tables appeared only in the mid nineties. The latest one (for NH land) is INTCAL04 Reimer et al (2004); Radiocarbon 46:1029-1058 I made a excel sheet for automatic date calibration. Very convenient. If anybody wants a copy PM me.

Anyway in the early ninetees, the carbon dating problem was not really identified to it's fullest extend and geologists were happy to use only carbon dating. However, the difference with calender dates is highly variable and increases sharply around and after the Younger Dryas:

10,000 BP is 11,400 Cal BP
11,000 BP is 12,910 Cal BP
12,000 BP is 13,800 Cal BP
13,000 BP is 15,320 Cal BP

Notice that the YD could easily fit within the difference!!

Anyway, when in the 1980's and early 1990's the ice cores were analyzed (and dated rather accurately by annual layer counting), it was well known that isotope ratios can have several meanings. Since there was the notion of ice ages, it appeared highly logical that the spikes stood for temperature changes in and out of glacial periods. Nevertheless, science requires independent proof to gain trustworthiness for such an idea and therefore it was essential to check if those isotope spikes were indeed temperature changes:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/grootes.GIF

and sure enough, unaware of the full extend of the dating problem, the researchers compared the geologic studies, (all in carbon dating) to the calendar dating of the ice cores. Now check Clark again in the former post:

In southern Idaho, glaciers retreated to the cirques by 13,000 14C yr BP

Ah, That must be the warm Bolling Allerod (NOT)

but experienced a minor readvance between ~12,800 – 11,000 14C yr BP

Ah, That must be the cold Younger Dryas (NOT)

There you are: Many of those retreats appeared to be in the warm Bolling Allerod and many of those (minor) re-advances appeared to be in the Younger Dryas when the carbon dated glacial behavior "apples" were compared to the calendar dated ice core "oranges". But those "Younger Dryas glacier re-advances" were actually in the preceding Bolling Allerod “interstadial” whereas the glacial retreats were well before the Bolling Allerod. So what is warm and what is cold? This, however, was the very root to several essential mistakes:

-calling the Bolling Allerod warm and the Younger Dryas cold, which wasn't
-identifying the isotope spikes of the ice cores directly with global temperatures, which isn't.
-linking those spurious temperature changes with the atmospheric CO2 levels
-concluding that those changing CO2 levels had any causal effect for temperature changes and thus..
-the global warming idea
-Billions of research $$ wasted on a wrong base for climatology

But now we have the Younger Dryas busted and we can replace it with the real story of the ice core spikes

Non Calor Sed Umor.

Quick poll, what do you think sofar?

- Hmm, carry on
- Uninteresting BS, what was that was, who cares
- Whatever you say, it's wrong, because global warming must be right.

Andre- I find this interesting- please continue

Sure, I will, just checking if anybody was looking for a good debate as this is all toe curling -Kuhnian- (http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html) counter intuitive for anybody who had to memorize the Pleistocene textbooks by heart. And sure enough there are publications that seem to tell a different story. But after some (re)calibration things may look different.

Anyway for the moment we have (attempted) to tear down the spurious "Calor" -heat- part, let's rebuild it now with the "Umor" -humidity- part.

It's already some time ago that I plotted the Vostok ice core stable (Deuterium) isotopes against the annual layer height (both relative to the average trend or detrended). This resulted in what must be the strongest correlation ever: R2>99%:

A part of the graph, the enlargment 75-70Ky was originally intended to see if we could find the Mt Toba eruption back in climate (Not really) but it shows the stunning isotope - precipitation correlation, not a single spike is missed.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/Vostokcor.GIF

Actually it's probably too good to be true. Perhaps that Petit has used the isotope values to wriggle-match the individual dating on the lenght of the core in between different dating points. Never found anybody explaining that. In that case it would be circular reasoning of course, but nevertheless it suggests that Petit had good reasons to assume that isotopes and precipitation were strongly related as can be seen for the independently measured layer heights at the Greenland ice cores around the Younger Dryas:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/GISP3.GIF

Of course you can say, the warmer the more precipitation but the people in the Sahara are going to doubt that simplification.

We see that methane is also behaving in the same way. Interesting

So, what's going on here?

Andre, you are making a vey strong case (until now) for debunking the Younger Dryas. Excellent work. You have me almost convinced, but I need some time for studying your arguments and analyze the data provided.

I wonder what our friend Hans Erren will think, he is so much for CO2 and shunns methane...

Thanks Edufer, I promise that it even gets better.

Now, let's do some analysing of ice cores. This one is very young and very fresh with several samples per year:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/GISP-2-site-15.GIF

See how the isotope value is cyclic with the seasons? Low in the winter, high in the summer?

Let's see exactly what happens in the water cycle.

First water evaporates on the ocean surface. Light isotopes (16O and 1H) evoporate more easily than the heavies: 18O and 2H or D (deuterium). The isotope ratio of the water vapour is dependent on three factors: water temperature, local weather influencing evaporation (humidity - wind), and source isotope ratio, which can also change considerably:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/~gavin/

Picture doesn't downlink so please scroll down half way.

(Yes Gavin it was helpful, thanks)

How about condensation? again several factors are working to change the ratio again, the heavy isotopes condensate first, depending again on mainly local temperature since RH=100. Because of that, the remaining water vapour gets "lighter" so the older the air is, the lighter the rainwater or snow water. This is called the rayleigh effect. This is especially noticable with the last water coming out like on high elevations, an far inland as well is the summit ice sheets in Central Greenland and Antarctica. Hence very low d18O signals around 36 mil.

Now the winter isotopes are much lower not only because of the temperature but also due to that rayleigh effect. The main source (open ocean) is further away due to oceanic winter ice, and the absolute humidity is much lower due to the temperature, both are causing a strongly increased rayleigh effect.

I probably need to elaborate more on that next time?

it seems on first sight that those isotopes values are not really representing the average Arctic temperatures very accurately:

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/arctic_temps2.JPG

But let's get back to this one again:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/GISP-2-site-15.GIF

Notice that the range of the annual isotope ratio change is the highest at the right, the youngest part of the ice core, some 10 mil range(promille). From a large database of the Global Network for Isotopes in Precipitation, http://isohis.iaea.org/ we see even larger annual variation for high Arctic stations like Eureka NWT for instance up to ~20 mil between summer and winter.

The reason that it's progressive less in the ice core with depth, is the slow merging of the snow during compression under the weight of the overlaying snow. So the differences get less and less and after several thousand years (some ten) the typical annual wave form is no longer visible. The isotope values have regressed to the average value by then.

Now we are getting to the most essential part of the thread. So I wait for everybody to catch up. The question to answer is: what average?

Andre- this is fascinating. Does the O isotope from forams also correlate with your data?

Most certainly they do. But in due time. Perhaps peek in advance to check ODP hole 893A (Kennett et al 2000 Science). But there is so much more. back later

Back to the ice core and the isotopes. Let's try and make a simplified model of an ice core with the annual cycle in isotope ratio but also an annual precipitation cycle.

As common knowledge wants, the rate of possible precipitation is dependent on temperature. In winter time with polar temps way below -40 the snowfall is minimum whereas most snow is falling in summertime with temperatures above -20C.

Now remember Bjorck et al a few posts ago, the Younger Dryas was about warm dry summers and the other periods about cool moist summers.

Now for our ice core model construction let's forget about temperatures by having the cyclic amplitudes constant. But lets focus on the change - increase in summer precipitation during the rapid transition from the Younger Dryas to the Preboreal around 11,650 Cal BP. You would expect tight cycles in the YD with little snow accumulation and wider cycles with a wider top spike after the transition due to the increased summer snowfall. This would look like this:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/precipitation-in-isotopes-explain.jpg

Now, look what happens when we compress that ice core like this in ten steps, with mixing of the different isotope ratios to regress to the average value.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/ice-core-model.GIF

And thus we have recreated the isotope jump at the transition from the Younger Dryas to the Preboreal only with the change of the precipitation without changing temperatures.

Apart from some other effects, this is what really has happened.

Now what was that with averages?

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/averages.gif

it should be clear that in a assymmetric function the average value is not equal to the median value. The real weighted average value is there where the surface below and above are equal. It's not only the isotope ratio in the ice but also the volume of ice that counts. So less of more summer snow with a higher heavy isotope ratio directly affects the average ratio.

The other factors that have not discussed here are changing Rayleigh effect in summertime that could or could not happen or changing isotope ratios in the source, the ocean, due to other processes.

The conclusion for now can be that the observed precipitation changes at the boundary of the Younger Dryas are most likely directly related to the isotope spikes in the ice cores. There is no clear relationship of those spikes with temperature.

And that would constitute quite a paradigm shift, so it's probably going to take a few decades.

The thread is now about halfway. There is plenty more where this is coming from.

Because answers usually generate more questions.

Shall we bring in the mammoths now or somebody wants to battle 15N and 40Ar and borehole temperatures in ice cores first?

Or perhaps introduce the oceans first when looking at the last few 100,000 years:

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/LR05-Epica-dome-c.gif

This is a comparison of oceanic isotopes against the longest ice core on Record, EPICA Dome C. The "Benthic Stack" is a mammoth job of those two ladies, compyling the data of some 50-60 different oceanic sediment cores with the oxygen isotope of bottom dwelling (benthic) foraminifera.

The usual explanation for that is polar ice sheet volume. When the ice sheets grow they accumulate water with very little heavy 18O isotopes since those stay behind in the oceans. Consequently the ocean gets enriched with 18O this is what the benthic stack appears to represent (NOT!)

One simply refutation would be that the ocean signals lead the ice core signals but the ocean is a very slow -inert- system. When the isotope ratios change at the surface it takes decenniums to mileniums before the benthic water can react. We know thus from radio-active 14C behavior.

Moreover, from the ice core we know now that we are looking at spikes about precipitation changes more than temperature changes.

Yet the ocean goes first!! Why?

I'm going to venture a guess-
Increased evaporation leads to higher 18O concentrations, and also higher salinity (density), and to greater precipitation over land/ice.
Looking forward to the next installment.

Okay, but again the problem is the rate at which things happen. With processing system like the ocean something is input and something is output and something determines the rate of processing: But which is which here?

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/LR05-Epica-dome-c.gif

Lisiecky and Raymo may have used the ice core dating to fine tune their Benthic stack dating, so a little leading or lagging is of little meaning. The benthic spikes however are equally quick but shorter of duration and I consider this as tell tale evidence that this happen in the ocean first. But what.

Foraminifera d18O may react on local temperature (but that's pretty constant either in the Ice sea or around the equator), on local isotope ratio, on free oxygen, salinity, acidity, pCO2, etc. but no matter what it is, it needs to be quick and first.

Now let's make a side jump and talk mammoths for a while, but we are back in the oceans pretty quickly. For Pleistocene paleo climate science, woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) are lice in the fur because they could not have existed on places where the ice age dictated large ice sheets. So, we have the impression of giant lonely behemots dragging through hauling blizzards, with packs of vicious hungry wolves in their wake.

In reality we have plenty of evidence that Mammoths were animals of the cold steppe like the North American prairies or the Mongolian steppes. Cold and dry but not cold enough to prevent the growing of ample fodder for large herds of horses, antilopes (Saiga), aurochs and Mammoths as high north as the coast of the Taimyr peninsula in Siberia less than 1000 miles form the North Pole. For climate science the destruction of that habitat and the extinction of many of those species is another, not understood, enigma.

For our Non-Calor-Sed-Umor hypothesis however, it is a sheer pleasure to have solved that crime in the same process.

I proudly present the presentation that my friend held at the Conference of the World of Elephants in Hot Springs South Dakota in Sept last year:

Advise to download both, print the notes and then run the powerpoint at the prompts in the notes.

The speaking notes (doc) (http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/Hot%20Springs.doc)

And the (1.8 Mb) powerpoint presentation. (http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/BB.ppt)

Enjoy!

There must be plenty of questions now, why not pitch in a number:

1. But what about the ice core borehole temperatures?

2. What is this with that 15N/40Ar thinghie in the ice cores that the opening post mentions?

3. What has the CO2 spikes got to do with it and the other 'proxies'?

4. So you think that this is wrong? http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=227

5. What's that with that 100,000 years cycle of those spikes, you did not explain that?

6. I have a study here that proves that the Younger Dryas was cold after all, so why do you think you are right?

7. Now where there ice ages or not? I have a lot of geologic evidence here that says so.

8. How about the Younger Dryas in the Southern hemisphere?

Which shall it be first?

So I lost everybody?

For whatever it's worth, for instance for nr5:

5. What's that with that 100,000 years cycle of those spikes, you did not explain that?

Here it is: yet another explanation for the 100,000 years cycle, a cycling clathrate gun:

Bryn P et al 2005 Explaining the Storegga Slide, Marine and Petroleum Geology Volume 22, Issues 1-2 , January-February 2005, Pages 11-19

Abstract
The Storegga Slide occurred 8200 years ago and was the last megaslide in this region where similar slides have occurred with intervals of approximately 100 ky since the onset of continental shelf glaciations at 0.5 Ma. A geological model for the Plio-Pleistocene of the area explains the large scale sliding as a response to climatic variability, and the seismic stratigraphy indicates that sliding occurs at the end of a glaciation or soon after the deglaciation. The slides are in general translational with the failure planes related to strain softening behaviour of marine clay layers. The destabilisation prior to the slide is related to rapid loading from glacial deposits with generation of excess pore pressure and reduction of the effective shear strength in the underlying clays. Basin modelling has shown that excess pore pressure generated in the North Sea Fan area is transferred to the Storegga area with reduction of the slope stability in the old escarpments in distal parts of the Storegga Slide. The slide was most likely triggered by a strong earthquake in an area 150 km downslope from the Ormen Lange gas field and developed as a retrogressive slide. The unstable sediments in the area disappeared with the slide 8200 years ago. A new ice age with infilling of glacial sediments on top of marine clays in the slide scar would be needed to create a new unstable situation at Ormen Lange.

However I would change:

for the Plio-Pleistocene of the area explains the large scale sliding as a response to climatic variability, and the seismic stratigraphy indicates that sliding occurs at the end of a glaciation or soon after the deglaciation.

The last slide (Mienert et al 2005) also suggest a reaction on some millenium timescale clathrate destabilisation that caused the changes in precipitation patterns every 100,000 years.

Also interesting is:

The slide was most likely triggered by a strong earthquake in an area 150 km downslope from the Ormen Lange gas field and developed as a retrogressive slide. The unstable sediments in the area disappeared with the slide 8200 years ago.

Multiple geologic studies and ice core trace evidence suggests that 15-8,000 years ago, the complete Earth was tectonically hyperactive. In West Europe we had multiple eruptions in the "Volcan Eiffel" area in Germany as well in the "Massif Central" in France. Both area's are completely dormant ever since. So possily the story gets even a lot more complicated.

As the number of hits is well above SF average on this thread, the discussion is a bit single sided. Well if it has to be.

Anyway, let's get to the real point of all of this, that would be nr3,

3. What has the CO2 spikes got to do with it and the other 'proxies'

This is about the refutation and subsequent re-explanation of the correlation between the alleged but wrong paleo-climatal temperature and CO2 as casn be seen in the Ice cores like Vostok:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c2/Vostok-ice-core-petit.png

Disclaimer: the alleged temp graph is processed Deuterium isotope; hardly temperature and mostly precipitation related.

Could the clathrate decompostion to CH4 and then the oxidation to CO2 account for those large CO2 spikes in the atmosphere?

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=227 thinks not and I agree definitely. The mass of clathrate in the storegga area could have amounted only to some 1-2 ppmv maximum, not 100 ppmv and yet it did, but how?

Why don't you guys try and think about that, perhaps open a bottle of beer/coke (fill in your favorite) and observe!!! while thinking.

Andre, I am still here,studying and analyzing your theory. Iknow this will add some confussion to the matter, but: "have you considered the effect of pH in the CO2 balance as acid rains (by volcanic suplhurs, for instance).

According to an input in Climatechange forum by "bchem" he states:

"One thing I am a bit concerned about in the environment is pH. Small changes in atmospheric pH and oceanic pH may have some unintended consequences. An enormous amount of the surface of the planet is covered by carbonate minerals and I would expect that changes in pH would tend to dissolve those minerals and release carbon dioxide. I am not sayin that this is a problem but do believe it a consideration.

Acidic emissions would logically reduce the pH of precipitation. It follows that carbonate minerals such as limestone, would be dissolved and release carbon dioxide. Following up on this line of thought, the enormously acidic emissions of volcanoes offer potential to upset carbon dioxide balances. Aside from the direct emissions of CO2, the sulphur oxides will tend to increase acidity and release even more CO2 that has been sequestered in minerals. It would seem reasonable to be concerned about the pH of the oceans as well as rivers and streams.

Taking this line farther, let us consider that biological systems tend to control their own pH within extremely narrow limits. The earth itself has buffering mechanisms for pH in the form of mineral deposits which are released if a pH swing is above a certain size.

I would be very interested in plotting pH of ice core samples versus presumed temperatures. I do believe that pH may be as important as CO2 in the global balance as it affects so many chemical and biological systems. This is simply a matter of curiosity. I have no agenda and no foregone conclusions. Let us see what the facts show and learn.

Hi Edufer

No doubt that pH has to do with it but perhaps only marginal since the precence of both lime and weak acidity of dissolved CO2 provide a buffer that stabilizes the pH over a wide range. That's Catastrophes terrain. Where is he?

No what I was thinking about is the opening of the coke bottle and the CO2 bubbles start to form as the pressure is released. Now picture a fishtank with an air bubble streamer. See how the water is forced up in the bubbles, creating a strong upward current. Now picture that effect on the ocean floor as a result of the clathrate destabilisation in the massive CH4 bubble stream.

Thus deep sea water under high pressure is forced to the surface, and during the uplift, de pressure decreases and the CO2 comes out of solution as in the coke bottle. Now as David Archer argues in his article on realclimate that the CH4 bubbles dissapear during the ascent, that may be so (if no saturation) but they are quickly replaced by CO2 bubbles from the oversaturated water during the depressurisation.

This is how -on a millenium scale- the ocean discharges a big mass of CO2 in the air (it contains already some 60-80 times the amount in the atmosphere anyway), not from the clathrate destabilisation but from the coke bottle type of depressurisation. I call this the coke botle hypothesis.

Dazzling isn't it?

Are there more clues for such a scenario?

Well, that the clathrate coke bottle hypothesis may have left some traces in the ocean. This may be clear from this one. It’s not my speciality to call this proof. But if that was what had happened, the CO2 pumping out of the ocean due to the vertical streaming, then this is the place to explain all that carbonate behavior:

Hodell D.A et al (2001) Late Pleistocene evolution of the ocean's carbonate system, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 192 (2001) 109-124

Abstract
We demonstrate that the carbonate record from a single site (Ocean Drilling Program Site 1089) in the deep South Atlantic represents a qualitative, high-resolution record of the temporal evolution of the carbonate saturation state of the deep sea. The record is especially notable because it is free from many of the complications that limit other records (low sedimentation rates, blurring by chemical erosion, bioturbation, etc.). The pattern of carbonate variability is characteristic of Indo-Pacific cores with high-carbonate glacials and low-carbonate interglacials. Wt% carbonate lags changes in benthic N 18O by an average ofV7.6 kyr, and carbonate variations are in-phase with the rate of change (first derivative) of benthic N d18O. Intense dissolution occurs at the transition from interglacial to glacial periods and increased preservation occurs during deglaciations. These observations represent two fundamentally different responses of the marine carbonate system. The lagged response of carbonate to N 18O reflects a steady-state mass balance process whereby the lysocline adjusts to maintain alkalinity balance between riverine input and marine burial. The Site 1089 carbonate signal is remarkably similar to inferred changes in the Sr/Ca of seawater for the past 250 kyr, which implies that both carbonate dissolution and seawater Sr/Ca may be controlled by sea level-induced changes in the location of carbonate deposition (shelf-basin fractionation) during glacial to interglacial cycles. The transient change in preservation during the transitions into and out of glacial stages reflects a response of the carbonate system to a redistribution of alkalinity and DIC in the ocean (i.e. carbonate compensation). Comparison of the Site 1089 carbonate and Vostok pCO2 records suggests a role of deep-sea [CO23 3 ] variations for governing at least some second-order features of the atmospheric pCO2 signal. In order to quantify this role, however, measurement of indices of dissolution along a true depth transect will be required to estimate the magnitudes of changes in deep-sea [CO23 3 ].

Note the copy paste trips over the carbonate ion notation: CO3 electron -2 charged.

Hi, Andre,

I guess you’ve already seen Benny Peiser’s comment at climate Sceptic forum about the new paper questioning the severity of the Younger Dryas, but it could be of some interest for the rest of people at Sciforum. Here it is:

"Here comes yet another paper that questions whether the Younger Dryas was really that 'catastrophic.' Given recent re-assessments, it would appear that the YD wasn't that extreme, wasn't global and was perhaps not even an 'abrupt' event.

Benny"

--------------------------------------------

How extreme was northern hemisphere seasonality during the Younger Dryas?

Quaternary Science Reviews. Article in Press, Corrected Proof
http://tinyurl.com/d9ol8 <http://tinyurl.com/d9ol8>

Øyvind Lie, and Øyvind Paasche Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Allégaten 55, N-5007 Bergen, Norway

Abstract

In explaining the rapid transitions associated with the Younger Dryas cooling, a reduced meridional overturning circulation has traditionally been invoked, but such a scenario has been difficult to reproduce in model studies without adding excessive amounts of freshwater to the North Atlantic. More recent studies challenge this view and indicate that the role of an extensive sea ice cover may have been as important in promoting abrupt climate change as reorganisations of the North Atlantic Ocean [Gildor, H., Tziperman, E., 2003. Sea-ice switches and abrupt climate change. Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society Of London Series A-Mathematical Physical And Engineering Sciences 361, 1935-1942].

Based on glacier evidence from eastern Greenland [Denton, G.H., Alley, R.B., Comer, G.C., Broecker, W.S., 2005. The role of seasonality in abrupt climate change. Quaternary Science Reviews 24, 1159-1182] suggest that the seasonal temperature amplitude increased by about 20 °C during the Younger Dryas. Such a 'switching of seasonality' lends support to the idea of a fast-expanding sea ice cover, because it allows for extremely cold winters that are balanced by relatively mild summers.

However, climatic interpretations based on the geometry and length of glaciers under such conditions as in Scoresby Sund is not well understood, and equilibrium-line-altitude (ELA) estimates should, therefore, be regarded as tentative. Here, we discuss the absolute seasonal amplitude during the Younger Dryas by taking winter precipitation into account and show that the changes in seasonality may have been limited to 10 °C.

We propose that by reducing the seasonal response in Greenland compared with western Europe we better understand the hinged-door modus operandi [COHMAP, 1988. Climatic changes of the last 18,000 years: observations and model simulations. Science 241, 1043-1052] of the polar front and sea-ice cover, where the absolute southward migration of sea-ice is highest in the East Atlantic region.

Thanks Edufer, I noticed it indeed.

Now finally what is the extra force of the Non Calor Sed Umor hypothesis:

It also explains the extinction of the Woolly mammoth and contemporanies, whereas common climatology ignores this completely.

Have a look at the links in the second publication here:

http://personal.inet.fi/koti/hameranta/studies2005.htm