How much can El Niño be blamed for the jump in CO2?

Something unusual happened in April this year. Between March and April there was a record month to month jump in atmospheric CO2 recorded at Mauna Loa. It went up by 2.71 ppmv. That's 0.6 ppmv higher than the previous highest month to month jump (2.11 ppmv) back in April 2004. However it's not wise to focus on month to month variations. For example, March could have been lower than expected, which would make the jump seem larger than it should be. (It wasn't.) This article explores some of what causes atmospheric CO2 to go up and down. It's not the answer to everything, however I learnt a lot doing the research and I have some unanswered questions too (like a quantitative answer to the title of this article). (Let me know if you see any mistakes I may have made.)

The chart below shows the month by month increase in atmospheric CO2 since the late 1950s. Hover over the chart for the values. The most recent is April at 407.57 ppmv.

Figure 1 | Monthly CO2 at Mauna Loa. Data source: SCRIPPS CO2 Program

Seeps and SCAMS Part III: Richard Betts misunderstands (and misrepresents) a paper

Richard Betts, a UK climate scientist, has written an article about the recent paper by Stephan Lewandowsky and co, which I wrote about in Part I of this series, and referred to in Part II. Well it's not actually about the paper. It's Richard's interpretation of the paper based on his reading of a blog article Stephan wrote about the paper. It could be argued that it is evidence supporting the findings of the paper.

Correction: In the comments, Richard says that he did read the paper before he wrote his article. (I don't know how missed all the things he missed or why he got so much so wrong or why he appeared to write about the blog article and not the paper.) - Sou 6:48 pm Thursday 14 May 2015

I first saw Richard's article at WUWT and was very surprised to see it there. It turns out though, that Richard wrote his article for ATTP's blog. It was only when that rabid anti-Lewandowsky-ite, Barry Woods, asked him that he acquiesced and agreed to it being reposted on Anthony Watts' blog. That's despite the dreadful treatment dished out from WUWT when Richard's last article was published there. Here's the WUWT version - archived. Or better still, you can read it at ATTP's blog.

Disgusting Deniers: Anthony Watts exploits the publicity he got from Tim Ball

Added an addendum. Sou 28 Nov 14

Update again - The article I've written about now has more than 500 comments (archived here) and Anthony has chosen to not dilute it's impact (he's not posted any other article today), unusually but not unexpectedly. Thus adding considerable weight to my contention that Anthony Watts saw the opportunity presented by Tim Ball's article as too good to pass up. He couldn't believe his luck when he got the huge bonus that scientists themselves even offered to lodge a complaint at WUWT. This is being mis-sold as if it means Tim Ball's nasty weird impossible ideas has legs (smoke and fire). Meanwhile Anthony Watts is sitting back with a big smirk on his face, rubbing his hands gleefully.
Sou - 28 November 2014


Tim Ball wrote an absolutely disgusting article from his first words to his last and everything in between, and Anthony Watts went and put it up on his blog - see here. Lots of people were appalled and shocked. So you can guess how bad it must have been. For anyone to be shocked at something that appears at WUWT it has to be really, really bad.

Anthony's reaction was shameful and continues to be so. He tweeted at one point (h/t rubiginosa):

@BarryJWoods I've offered Betts a guest post to refute it and I've put a disclaimer on it. See PM to you
— Watts Up With That (@wattsupwiththat) November 26, 2014

Can you imagine? WUWT claimed that all climate scientists, including Richard Betts, are fooling the world and engaged in some giant deception, and Anthony has the gall to invite a scientist to "refute" it. He sees a chance to get more people to read his blog.