Are the ice core CO2 measurements accurate?

Question

Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski reports that we have "False Low Pre-industrial CO2 in the Atmosphere". He spent 40 years studying glaciers for a reconstruction of the history of man-made pollution in the global atmosphere. He says that snow on top of the glaciers has air circulating through it for thousands of years before it compacts and freezes to the point that air is trapped in tiny bubbles. He also says that chemical changes occur under pressure and due to the salinity of the water. When the cores are drilled they form cracks and get contaminated with drilling fluid. All these factors produce a very low resolution CO2 reconstruction. Does anyone know of another method of reconstruction that yields a higher resolution data set or another method that can confirm the present data?

http://www.john-daly.com/zjiceco2.htm

I have seen other reconstructions based on Stomatal frequency of different types of plants, but I don't know how accurate they are.

http://aob.oxfordjournals.or

Trevor, I mean you no disrespect, but this guy was studying glaciers before you were born. As Tomcat's first link indicates, a lot can be learned about the dynamics of the ice sheets in 40 years time.

Bob, the CO2 could vary considerably in a few thousand years. My point is that the ice cores are very low resolution.

Answer 1

The first time I saw the ice core drilling I thought - what about leaching? Unlike other branches of science, it is not possible to test the theory to make sure it works. We can't get in a time machine and go back in time 650000 years to see just how accurate the measurements are.

Answer 2

I'm not quite sure where the professor is coming from on this or why but he's way off the mark. It wouldn't be the first time. He also claims lead in petrol is harmless and until recently even claimed the planet was cooling.

Air does not circulate through snow. Snow is an excellent insulator quite simply because it traps air in it. Have you ever noticed how quiet it is when the ground is covered with snow - that's because the trapped air in the first inch or two of snow absorbs the sound waves. It's the same reason that 90% of avalanche victims die within an hour, they asphixiate because there is no air circulating within the snow. Next time it snows build an igloo, inside you'll find that there's no wind at all and you'll also find you can warm it up considerably - again, due to the insulative properties of snow. I've spend many a night in igloos and they're remarkably cosy.

Snow compacts very quickly. You'll have seen this yourself. Several feet of snow can fall and the very next day it's been consolidated under it's own weight and the forces of gravity.

Carbon dioxide is a very stable gas, it doesn't react with the other gases that are trapped in the snow (if it did then it would also react in the atmosphere).

He talks about the salinity of the water - even a school kid knows that snow comes from evapouration and doesn't contain salt.

I've drilled ice cores myself, there are no drilling fluids used, there is no contamination of the ice.

I know about snow, I know about ice cores. I have never come across so many errors in such a short article, no part of it is even remotley correct. I can't even figure out why an educated person should come out with something so fundementally flawed.

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Just to add. There are numerous ice core samples taken from around the world, not just the polar regions but the mountainous regions as well. The most extensive extend back nearly a million years.

These samples are compared to each other, if there was an error (for whatever reason) it would very soon become apparent and when this happens the sample is rejected. The ice core record can also be compared to the data derived from other reconstruction techniques and again, checked for consistency and accuracy.

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EDIT: TO TOMCAT

The drilling process uses a hollow drill enclosed within the drilling barrel. There is no drilling fluid used such as would be used in other drilling processes as a lubricant or coolant. The only fluid is behind the drill assembly and this is a densified hydrocarbon used to stop distortion of deep bores.

The cutting of the ice is acheived by use of a hollow drill encased in a cylindrical drill barrel, the only ice to be exposed to the hydrocarbon as that at each end of the bore sample. As soon as the drill assembly is extracted from the bore any contaminants are immediately removed and the core is wrapped and stored for later analysis in an uncontaminated environment.

In any event, hydrocarbons are used to create back pressure and even if the ice had become contaminated with this fluid it wouldn't matter as one is oil and the other is water - the two things don't mix and the presence of any hydrocarbon at analysis would be immediately apparent.

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EDIT 2: TO TOMCAT

No need to re-edit the Wikipedia article as it's correct apart from the use of the term 'drilling fluid'. This is nothing more than a technical term for liquid mud and is used in oil and gas wells. It's not used in the extraction of ice cores. As I mentioned before, a hydrocarbon is used for ice-cores and when this gets onto the ice-core it's removed.

The rest of the details you added relate to lead and organic matter, the entire ice-core sample could be covered with a thick layer of these and it wouldn't make any difference to the gases trapped within the ice.

In reality of course, contaminants are removed at the point of extraction. On the rare occasions that leaching occurs this will be restricted to the outer surface of the core and not affect the inner core (this is the part which is analysed after the core is sawn open).

Answer 3

"He says that snow on top of the glaciers has air circulating through it for thousands of years before it compacts and freezes to the point that air is trapped in tiny bubbles."

True, which is why the dating of the sample is approximate. But how would this change the percent CO2?

"He also says that chemical changes occur under pressure and due to the salinity of the water."

This is totally nuts. The salinity of an ice core is approximately zero, since salt is excluded from snow. This statement alone is enough to raise serious doubts about his competence.

"When the cores are drilled they form cracks and get contaminated with drilling fluid."

Could be true at the very surface (no way in the interior), but they wash the surface of the core. Once again how would this change the percentage of the CO2, downward? Uniformly, no less, in all samples, since data from various ice cores all around the world match nicely. Makes absolutely no sense.

Another argument from an old retired guy with little expertise that assumes thousands of the best climatologists in the world are ignorant about possible errors in the data.

"It should come as no surprise that Jaworowski’s theories were not published in a scientific journal, but in 21st Century, a magazine published by Lyndon LaRouche, renowned for his belief in various conspiracy theories."

Here are more absurdities from Jaworski:

http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles/Chap4-Lead.html

Yawn.

EDIT - I'll agree the cores are low resolution on the time scale. But that doesn't change the clear story they tell.

Answer 4

maybe this will help. There is a reference Iooked up in the source website below.

Falsehoods in Al Gore's Book
"In Antarctica, measurements of CO2 concentrations and temperature go back 650,000 years... It's a complicated relationship, but the most important part of it is this: When there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature increases because more heat from the Sun is trapped inside... There is not a single part of this graph--no fact, date, or number--that is controversial in any way or in dispute by anybody." (pp. 66-67)

These measurements are directly of CO2 and deuterium (or oxygen-18 in other cases) in air bubbles in ice cores; the relationship of deuterium to temperature is indirect and requires assumptions regarding past isotopic abundances. The reconstructed temperature series is local, not global; similar ice core temperature reconstructions from other locations, while correlated with CO2 abundances, are not as strongly correlated as these series selected by Gore, possibly suggesting local influences. The claim that this correlation shows that more CO2 leads to higher temperatures is false: higher resolution studies of the ice cores show that the temperature increases came first, followed by CO2 increases. For the composite series shown in this graph, Siegenthaler et al., 2005, find the best match shows CO2 concentrations lagging 1,900 years behind the deuterium-derived temperature values. It is believed that the temperature changes led to changes in the balance between greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and greenhouse gases in locations such as the oceans. Apart from this, atmospheric CO2 does not trap heat (such a statement is linked to misunderstanding of the greenhouse effect); rather, CO2 and other greenhouse gases selectively absorb outgoing longwave infrared resulting in a radiative balance at a different global temperature than without the gases. The fact that the data within the graph is basically accepted in the scientific community is a separate issue from the fact that Gore is misinterpreting it.

Siegenthaler, U., T. F. Stocker, E. Monnin, D. Luthi, J. Schwander, B. Stauffer, D. Raynaud, J.-M. Barnola, H. Fischer, V. Masson-Delmotte, and J. Jouzel, 2005, "Stable carbon cycle-climate relationship during the late Pleistocene," Science, 310:1313-1317.

Answer 5

Here are a couple of good articles with some of Dr. Jaworowski work. There are very some interesting things that are brought, not the least of which is that it has never been proved that bubbles trapped in water ice, will maintain their original atmospheric compensation.


<<<<
Until 1985, the published CO2 readings from air bubbles in
pre-industrial ice ranged from 160 to about 700 ppmv, and occasionally even up to 2,450 ppmv. After 1985, high readings disappeared from the publications! To fit such a wide range of results to the anthropogenic climatic warming theory.
>>>>

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_articles/IceCoreSprg97.pdf

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/20_1-2_CO2_Scandal.pdf

EDIT Trevor:

Deep cores require back pressure, the ice is under tremendous pressure so a hydrostatic pressure must be maintained to keep the hole from collapsing, so yes to drill ice cores deeper than 150 meters, generally require some type of drilling fluid.

EDIT Trevor:

Perhaps you should correct Wikipedia, the author seems to have a different point of view on the subject of the Vostok ice cores.

<<<
The core is carefully extruded from the barrel; often facilities are designed to accommodate the entire length of the core on a horizontal surface. Drilling fluid will be cleaned off before the core is cut into 1-2 meter sections. Various measurements may be taken during preliminary core processing.
>>>>



"Core contamination

Some contamination has been detected in ice cores. The levels of lead on the outside of ice cores is much higher than on the inside.[13] In ice from the Vostok core (Antarctica), the outer portion of the cores have up to 3 and 2 orders of magnitude higher bacterial density and dissolved organic carbon than the inner portion of the cores, respectively, as a result of drilling and handling.[14]
"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

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Answer 6

I agree with Trevor, and there is ample evidence out there in the peer-reviewed literature and from reputable sources that there simply isn't any reason to distrust ice core gas concentrations.

Here's a reference saying Trevor does know what he is talking about (not that I didn't trust him, but you don't):

http://nicl-smo.unh.edu/icwg/1988/drillTechnology_main.html

Here's a Nature paper talking about ice cores and the stability of them and errors in their chronology:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v315/n6021/abs/315654a0.html

More from the ICWG on the technical aspects, Page 14, I think, has a nice treatment of CO2 in cores:

http://www.nicl-smo.sr.unh.edu/icwg/ICWG1988.pdf


Very nice review article from PNAS discussing what is known about stability of gas concentrations in ice:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/4/1331


In short, the situation is not one where there are large uncertainties. The ice core data is very solid. No pun intended.

Answer 7

the only way i could figure the samples to be currupted is by having MORE CO2 than was previously present...Maybe some paleobotony research could be a good alternative...looking at the photosynthesis processees compared to today's plants.

Answer 8

More obfuscatory gobbledygook.

Jaworowski debunked here.

http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7