• By Henry's Law, 49/50th of our CO2 emissions would be absorbed by the oceans in time, if other things were equal. Henry's Law says that CO2 at a given temp and pressure will find its equilibrium with approx. 49 parts dissolved in the oceans to 1 part in the atmosphere.
• In this case, even after 50 years of emissions, the overall increase would only be what we actually see annually, aroung 8Gt, which is still only a tiny fraction of the 700 Gt CO2 in the atmosphere. Doubling the CO2 concentration would then take 50 x 700 / 8 years, or approx 4500 years.
• Many excellent studies show (see Segalstad) that CO2 only stays in the air around 5 years. No study shows a longer "life span" than 12 years.
• The fact that the annual increase is 50 times what we might expect from our emissions by Henry's Law, warns us that another factor may be at work.
• BUT, although the oceans are far more surface than depth, when we take a vertical cross-section, we only see a small "surface effect". So it may take time for Henry's Law to work. But how long?

CO2 theoretically expelled - for 1 deg C sea surface temperature rise - How many gigatons CO2 will the ocean outgas for 1ºC rise in satellite-measured Sea Surface Temp? From Endersbee (below) we know the actual rise in CO2 ppm (divide the weight in gigatons by 2 to get the approx. concentration ppm). In what proportions is the difference between the total theoretical outgassing as per Henry's Law (if the whole ocean temp rose 1ºC), and the ppm "pressure" level actually measured, due to

• (a) only the sea surface exchanging CO2 quickly as per Henry's Law, the rest being much slower (inertia of water - vertical effect - is there an "equivalent depth" describing full rapid mixing?)
• (b) sea surface only (or rather, an "equivalent depth") warming 1ºC?
• (c) sequestration by plants and marine animals (calcifying processes) before extra CO2 can effectively get included in the ppm figure (is the ppm a proxy for "pressure due to SST" rather than an absolute amount?)
• (d) rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions?

The oceans are predominantly area - but remember the cross-section to determine what happens at each level

• IPCC neglect Henry's Law and the biosphere. They have tried to fudge the data, starting with Bolin's "buffer", going on to multiply the well-known CO2 atmospheric lifetime by a factor of 10 or so, then to partition off our emissions from the natural CO2 when needed to get the right isotope figures, and to mix it all up when otherwise needed.
• Floor Anthoni has brought to light a very important concept: that, in the biosphere, CO2 levels represent not QUANTITY but PRESSURE... "pressure" encourages the plants to grow more (which they like and we want)... a rising CO2 level must also take account of a higher rate of biosequestration which lessens the rise of the atmospheric CO2 level.
• The biosphere flux is essential to factor in, as a homeostatic regulator - as happens with volcanic CO2, natural CO2 vents, and CO2 dissolved from minerals - otherwise the earth would lose the carbon needed to support life in marine CaCO3 deposition.

The total release of CO2 for 1 deg C SST rise would be calculable from the solubility change, if we can "guesstimate" what depth of ocean effectively partakes in this SST change, and therefore what global volume of water we have to start from, to calculate the CO2 actually released by overall SST rise of 1ºC.

CO2 solubility by proportion of mass at atmospheric pressure, is approx. 0.28% @ 5ºC; 0.23% @ 10ºC; 0.20% @ 15ºC.

CO2 solubility change per degC (sink/outgassing power) - Here we have the solubility of CO2 in pure water. If you measure the slope of these graphs, this yields a solubility change per degree Centigrade of approx. 3.9% @ 5ºC; 3.45% @ 10ºC; 3.0% @ 15ºC. Salinity only makes a small difference - not an essential issue for now.

Glassman has a brilliant page The Acquittal of CO2

Ocean area is 360,000,000 sq km = 360 x 10^12 sq metres
Ocean Mass: 1 gigatonne (Gt) = 10^9 tonnes = 10^12 kg = 10^12 m^3 water

Volume of oceans to 3m depth = 360 x 3 x 10^12 m^3 ie approx. 10^15 m^3
Mass of oceans to 3m depth = 10^15 / 10^9 Gt = 10^6 Gt
CO2 dissolved to 3m at 15ºC = 10^6 x 0.2/100 Gt = 2,000 Gt
CO2 outgassed for 0.1ºC temp rise = 2,000 x 0.3/100 Gt
= 6 Gt ie one year's emissions

CO2 outgassed from 30m depth for 1ºC global temp rise = 600 Gt ie near-total atmospheric content
IMO, this scale explains the "jagged" CO2 rise (Engelbeen's graph, below) compared with the smooth emissions curve - the jagged line is hardly jagged at all in the context of the total flux.

Referring mainly to Segalstad, I believe that the CO2 rise is ALMOST ALL due to the sun on the oceans.

Josh Hall shows CO2 follows SST with hardly any correlation in reverse. Since the Greenhouse Gas effect supposedly reached near-maximum at concentrations even lower than we started with, the lack of correlation with CO2 "driving" temp is to be expected.

Check out the core science in my primer.

Look at Endersbee's original piece. Together with the work of Josh Hall and Segalstad, Endersbee seems crucial in pinpointing sea surface temp as a likely originator of CO2 levels. This very high level of correlation seems highly unlikely unless it is because of causation. But the amount of smoothing is very high, the overall period being only a few years more than the 21-year moving average - this lowers the confidence we can put in this result.

It seems there's another spanner in the works... Mauna Loa CO2 levels seem to fit our rising emissions closely as well. However... there is a problem. The cumulative emissions curve's slopes do not agree with the CDIAC/BP annual emissions graph. See below.

Black Curve: Seasonally adjusted monthly average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration 1959-2009 at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (20°N, 156°W) where CO2 concentration is in parts per million in the mole fraction (p.p.m.). Red Curve: Fossil fuel trend of a fixed fraction (57%) of the cumulative industrial emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and cement production. This fraction was calculated from a least squares fit of the fossil fuel trend to the observation record ranging from 1958 through 2006. (from Scripps CO2 Program. Last updated March 2009.)

Engelbeen's graph of annual increases show a very rugged air CO2 increase alongside a very smooth human CO2 increase - does this indicate (a) nothing more than a coincidence of scale; (b) natural causation? Which (if ANY) graph proves the true cause of CO2 rise???

If you measure Endersbee's SST slope, it shows 150ppm (300 Gt) apparent actual CO2 rise per degC SST rise (at 15ºC). But Climate Audit forum told me that the time span is too short for the figures to be trustworthy. Still, if true, they are significant, and it's worth keeping an eye open.

Even so, our emissions are still only a fraction of the huge outgassing one would expect from Henry's Law, if the upper oceans' temp. rose by 1ºC.

CO2's low & diminishing GHG effects @ actual CO2 levels