New Climate Change Products

January 2010

• CDIAC's Bob Andres, TJ Blasing, and Gregg Marland are co-authors on a paper, entitled, "The Temporal and Spatial Distribution of Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Use in North America" which was published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. The paper concludes that the spatial distribution of CO₂ emissions is far different than would be achieved with a uniform per capita distribution and that the temporal variation is large with respect to biospheric net fluxes from land use change. Recognition of the temporal and spatial variability in fossil-fuel CO₂ is an important component of a detailed, mechanistic understanding of the global carbon cycle.
   

December 2009

• Carbon-14 in CO₂ at Barrow Alaska from 1985 through 1991 has been posted. These data, provided by Dr. Harro Meijer of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, show a seasonal cycle superimposed on a downward trend of carbon-14 released to the atmosphere from detonation of nuclear weapons, mostly during the 1950s and early 1960s.
   

November 2009

• The Global Surface pCO₂ (LDEO) Database V2008 is now available. Approximately 4.5 million measurements of surface water partial pressure of CO₂ obtained over the global oceans during 1968-2008 are listed in the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) database, which includes open ocean and coastal water measurements. The data assembled include only those measured by equilibrator-CO₂ analyzer systems and have been quality-controlled based on the stability of the system performance, the reliability of calibrations for CO₂ analysis and the internal consistency of data. To allow re-examination of the data in the future, a number of measured parameters relevant to pCO₂ measurements are listed. The overall uncertainty for the pCO₂ values listed is estimated to be ± 2.5 μatm on the average.
   
  This version is referred to as Version 2008, and includes the data collected through 31 December 2008. In this update, 26 new cruise/ship files are added to the previous version 2007. Dr. Nicolas Metzl of Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, kindly called our attention to discrepancies between his original and our data file listed in Version 2007. The discrepancies were caused by applying temperature correction to his data which were already corrected to SST. Affected are a total of 13,981 records for the southern Indian Ocean in the file names OISO for years 1998 and 2000 (File Name OISO). The errors range from –29.6 μatm to + 1.3 μatm with an average of –9.27 ± 3.43 μatm. In Version 2008, these errors are corrected, and a total of 67,403 new OISO data spanning years 2000-2008 are added.
   
• The AGAGE network has been updated through March 2009. A new gas, HFC-125 (pentafluoroethane, CHF₂CF₃) has been added to the list of monitored substances. HFC-125 is considered as a replacement for Halon 1301, as it has no ozone-depleting potential. It has an atmospheric lifetime of 29 years and a global warming potential of 3500 on the standard 100-year integration frame; both of these numbers are about half the corresponding values for Halon 1301.
   
  A picture of the AGAGE monitoring station at Cape Matatula, American Samoa appears to the right. Pictures of the other AGAGE stations along with information about each of them can be found at the AGAGE Web site.
   
• Carbon dioxide release by humans in the United States has been estimated based on population block-group data from the US Census Bureau. The method by West et al. (2009) uses food consumption data per age and gender, along with data on human metabolic cycles, to estimate CO₂ emissions per age and gender cohort.
   

October 2009

• Bob Andres attended the 2009 GEIA-ACCENT Open Conference in Oslo, Norway from 26 - 28 October 2009 and presented a poster entitled "GEIA: Making data relevant". Tom Boden was a coauthor on the presentation.
   
• The NDP-091: CARINA Data Synthesis Project is now available through CDIAC. The CARINA database includes data from 188 cruises. The salinity, oxygen, nutrient, inorganic carbon system and CFC data have been subjected to extensive quality control (QC), and adjustments have been made when necessary. The internally consistent data are available as three data products, one each for the Arctic Mediterranean Seas, the Atlantic and the Southern Oceans. In addition, all of the individual cruise data files have been made available in WOCE exchange format in a single location (Cruise Summary Table) along with metadata and references. We strongly recommend users to employ the data products instead of the individual cruise files as the data in the latter have not been corrected for biases identified during the secondary QC. The CARINA effort is further described in the CARINA special issue of Earth System Science Data (ESSD) Journal.
   

September 2009

• Several CDIAC staff (Bob Andres, TJ Blasing, Lianhong Gu, Forrest Hoffman, Tony King, Gregg Marland, and Daniel Ricciuto) attended the 8th International Carbon Dioxide Conference in Jena, Germany from 13-19 September 2009. Several oral and poster presentations were made by ORNL staff.
   

August 2009

• 
  
  Two new data sets have been made available on the CDIAC Web site. The first data collection maps the mass of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in units of million metric tons of carbon per year from anthropogenic sources in one degree latitude by one degree longitude cells for years 1751 through 2006. Increases in fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions over time are apparent for most areas.
   
  The second data set maps the stable carbon isotopic signature of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in one degree latitude by one degree longitude cells for years 1751 through 2006. It also contains a listing of the global average of the stable carbon isotopic signature of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions. These estimates of the carbon isotopic signature account for the changing mix of coal, petroleum, and natural gas being consumed and for the changing mix of petroleum from various producing areas with characteristic isotopic signatures. These data products were contributed by Bob Andres, Tom Boden and Gregg Marland.
   

July 2009

• The AGAGE data base containing concentration data on ozone-depleting gases, and on several greenhouse gases including halocarbons and sulfur-containing compounds, has been updated through September 2008. A new gas, sulfuryl fluoride (SO₂F₂) has been added to the list. Sulfuryl fluoride is used as a pest-control agent and has a tropospheric lifetime of around 40 years. It qualifies as an ozone-depleting agent, and as a greenhouse gas with a (100-year) global warming potential of about 4800. Its concentration in the atmosphere is currently around 1.5 parts per trillion, so its greenhouse effects are very small compared to other greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, its concentration is increasing so it is being monitored.
   
• 
  
  CDIAC has redesigned the Web interface for distribution of NOAA's United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) Database and updated the data through 2008. The database contains monthly mean temperature and total precipitation data, along with daily measurements of temperature, precipitation, snowfall amount and snow depth from 1218 stations across the contiguous U.S.
   
  The data have been compiled by M.J. Menne, C.N. Williams, and R.S. Vose of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, and are the main data used by NOAA to monitor and analyze U.S. temperature and precipitation. The monthly data represent a major USHCN revision designated "Version 2" (see CDIAC Web pages for full details and reference to the associated scientific journal article by Menne et al.). The CDIAC Web site includes a Google Maps-driven graphical user interface, combined with convenient data download and plotting features.
   

June 2009

• A paper on North American Carbon Dioxide Emissions: "The Temporal and Spatial Distribution of Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Use in North America" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology. The lead author, Jay Gregg, has been a student at CDIAC and finished writing the paper last summer on an appointment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, facilitated by Oak Ridge Associated Universities. Other authors include London Losey, also a former CDIAC student. Authors on CDIAC staff include Bob Andres, T.J. Blasing, and Gregg Marland.
   
  The 2008 estimates of global average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are now on CDIAC's "Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations" page. Average concentrations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were almost 385 parts per million (ppm); the global average of surface marine observations was 384.8 ppm amd the average of the four baseline stations (Point Barrow, Alaska; Mauna Loa, Hawaii; American Samoa, and the South Pole) was 384.9 ppm. The Mauna Loa average was 0.6 - 0.7 higher (385.5 ppm).
   

May 2009

• The new NDP-090: "Carbon Dioxide, Hydrographic, and Chemical Data Obtained During the R/Vs Roger Revelle and Thomas G. Thompson Repeat Hydrography Cruises in the Pacific Ocean: CLIVAR CO₂ Sections P16S_2005 (6 January - 19 February 2005) and P16N_2006 (13 February - 30 March, 2006)." is now available. The report presents methods, and analytical and quality control procedures for salinity, oxygen, nutrients, total carbon dioxide (TCO₂), total alkalinity (TALK), pH, discrete CO₂ partial pressure (pCO₂), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), radiocarbon, δ¹³C, and underway carbon measurements performed during two cruises in the Pacific Ocean. The research vessel (R/V) Roger Revelle departed Papeete, Tahiti, on January 6, 2005, for the Repeat Section P16S, nominally along 150°W, ending in Wellington, New Zealand, on February 19. During this cruise, samples were taken from 36 depths at 111 CTD stations between 16°S and 71°S.
   
  The Repeat Section P16N, nominally along 152°W, consisted of two legs. Leg 1 started on February 13, 2006, in Papeete, Tahiti, and finished on March 3 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The R/V Thomas G. Thompson departed Honolulu for Leg 2 on March 10, 2006, and arrived in Kodiak, Alaska, on March 30. During the P16N cruises, samples were taken from 34 or 36 depths at 84 stations between 17°S and 56.28°N. The research conducted on these cruises was part of a series of repeat hydrography sections jointly funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the Climate Variability Program (CLIVAR)/CO₂ Repeat Hydrography Program.
   
  The P16S and P16N data sets are available free of charge from the CDIAC. The data package consists of the oceanographic data files and this printed documentation, which describes the procedures and methods used to obtain the data.
   
• The MATLAB-version of the original Program Developed for CO₂ System Calculations (CO2SYS for DOS) is now available from CDIAC. CO2SYS calculates and returns a detailed state of the carbonate system of oceanographic water samples, if supplied with enough input. It is also used to convert between different pH scales (please refer to the enclosed help by typing "help CO2SYS" in Matlab). Note that this version of CO2SYS allows for the input of vectors, and one can calculate many samples (or conditions) at once. Each of these samples can be processed with individual salinities, temperatures, pH scales, dissociation constants, etc.
   
  The original version for DOS was written by Lewis and Wallace and converted to MATLAB by Denis Pierrot at CIMAS, University of Miami, Miami, Florida. Vectorization, internal refinements and speed improvements were added by Steven van Heuven, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Although functionality has been added, the output of the function has not changed. All versions of CO2SYS available at CDIAC (DOS, ExcelWIN, ExcelMAC, MATLAB) should yield identical results when supplied with identical input.
   

April 2009

• The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center has updated and posted the global fossil-fuel CO₂ emission time series through 2006. The 2006 global fossil-fuel emission estimate (8230 million metric tons of carbon), including emissions from cement production and gas flaring, represents an all-time high and a 3.2% increase from 2005. Globally, consumption of crude oil and coal accounted for 76.6% of the global total emissions in 2006. Combustion of gas fuels (e.g., natural gas) accounted for 18.5% (1521 million metric tons of carbon) of fossil-fuel emissions in 2006 and reflects a gradually increasing global utilization of natural gas. Emissions from cement production (348 million metric tons of carbon in 2006) have more than doubled since the mid 1970s and now represent 4.2% of the global total. Gas flaring, which accounted for roughly 2% of global emissions during the 1970s, now accounts for less than 1% of global fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions.
   
• Eleven years (1998-2008) of cloud and weather observations made from ships have been added to the database "Extended Edited Synoptic Cloud Reports from Ships and Land Stations Over the Globe" (CDIAC-026C). This database contains surface synoptic weather reports for the entire globe, gathered from various available data sets. The reports were processed, edited, and rewritten to provide a single dataset of individual observations of clouds, spanning the 57 years 1952-2008 for ship data and the 26 years 1971-1996 for land station data. In addition to the cloud portion of the synoptic report, each edited report also includes the associated air pressure, present weather, wind, air temperature, and dew point (and sea surface temperature over oceans). This dataset is called the "Extended Edited Cloud Report Archive" (EECRA).
   
• The global, hemispheric, and zonal atmospheric temperature time series of J.K. Angell (Air Resources Laboratory, NOAA) have been updated through 2008. The series begin in 1958 and consist of near-surface temperatures and thickness-derived temperatures for 5 atmospheric layers, derived from a 63-station, globally distributed radiosonde network. These data represent an important historical upper-air temperature record that was the first of its kind in the early days of global climate change research. Additional global and regional temperature databases are available at the CDIAC Temperature Data page.
   

March 2009

• Data from the 2006 Mexico City Metropolitan Area Experiment (MCMA-2006) have been posted to QSSC FTP Site. These air quality and atmospheric measurements data were collected in March 2006. The air quality measurements reported here include a wide range of instruments at several ground sites. Three supersites were set up at the Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo ("T0"), Universidad Tecnológica de Tecámac in the State of Mexico ("T1") and Rancho La Bisnaga, north of Tizayuca in the State of Hidalgo ("T2). Additional platforms in or near Mexico City included compliance monitoring sites, flux towers, and mobile vans containing scientific laboratories. These data files will also be available on-line from the MILAGRO Project data repository on the NCAR Community Data Portal.
   
  The NARSTO Quality Systems Science Center (QSSC) at ORNL reviewed and processed these data files as a service to MCMA-2006. Processing ranged from a minimum of compiling and organizing available documentation to accompany the original data files to combining data files and making metadata and data record updates with data provider input and concurrence based on visual inspections and results of Data Exchange Standard (DES) format Read and Verify QA code. Posted data sets include:
   
  • MCMA-2006 CENICA Particulate Matter, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Meteorology Data
  • MCMA-2006 SIMAT Flux Tower Data
  • MCMA-2006 Aerodyne Mobile Laboratory Measurements
  • MCMA-2006 T0 Gaseous Hydrocarbons and Aerosol Metal Composition
  • MCMA-2006 T0 Hydroxyl and Hydroperoxy radicals, O₃, NO, and NO₂ Data
  • MCMA-2006 T0 ID-CIMS HNO₃ and PTRMS VOC Data
  • MCMA-2006 T0 UAH Mobile Integrated Profiling System and
  • MCMA2006 T0 Aerosol Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer Data
  
   
• The global and hemispheric temperature anomaly time series of Jones et al. have been updated through 2008. These series begin in 1850, and are produced jointly by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (United Kingdom) and the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office. The year 2008 was the tenth warmest in the global record (0.33°C above the 1961-1990 reference period mean), exceeded by 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2001, 2007, and 1997, in descending order. The 1990s were the warmest complete decade in the series. The warmest year of the entire series is 1998, with a temperature 0.546°C above the 1961-90 mean. Thirteen of the fourteen warmest years in the series have now occurred in the past fourteen years (1995-2008). The only year in the last fourteen not among the warmest fourteen is 1996 (replaced in the warm list by 1990). The period 2001-2008 (0.43°C above 1961-90 mean) is 0.19°C warmer than the 1991-2000 decade (0.24°C above the 1961-90 mean).
   

January-February 2009

• Carbon dioxide data from 11 sites in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography monitoring network are now available through 2007. A new site has been added at Baja California Sur (South); monitoring there began in 1997.
   
  Data through 2008 are now available from the Jubany site on the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica. The 2008 average atmospheric CO₂ concentration there was almost 383 parts per million (figure on right). Stations at high southern latitudes have lagged global average values by a year or so because of their distance from the main source regions of fossil CO₂, which are mainly in mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.
   
• The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies global surface air temperature time series, produced by Dr. James Hansen and colleagues, has been updated through 2008. The year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, and the ninth warmest year in the period of record (back to 1880). The 2008 temperature anomaly was 0.54°C above the 1951-1980 reference mean for land and 0.44°C above for land plus ocean areas. The ten warmest years have all occurred within the last 12-year period 1997-2008.
   
• Bob Andres, Tom Boden, Gregg Marland, and Tris West attended the 2009 2^nd NACP All-Investigators Meeting in San Diego, CA, 17-20 February 2009. There they made many presentations and joined other Oak Ridge colleagues and many other researchers from Canada, the U.S., and Mexico in discussing the carbon cycle of North America.
   

December 2008

• Robert Andres attended the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco in December 2008. There, he presented a poster entitled "A Description of the Global, Monthly, Fossil-Fuel Carbon Dioxide Time Series Based on National Estimates". Co-authors on the poster were Tom Boden, Jay Gregg, London Losey, and Gregg Marland.