New Climate Change Products

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.
   

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.
   

November 2008

• AGAGE files have been updated through March of 2008. The Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations page has also been updated to reflect the AGAGE update. Of some interest is a recent increase in atmospheric methane (CH₄) after a leveling off in the last few years.
   

October 2008

• CDIAC's NDP-040, Daily Temperature and Precipitation Data for 223 Former-USSR Stations, has been updated to include data through 2001. These data have been contributed by V. N. Razuvaev, E. B. Apasova, and R. A. Martuganov of the All-Russian Research Institute of Hydrometeorological Information-World Data Centre (RIHMI) in Obninsk, Russia.
   
  Data are available as early as 1881 for a few stations, and as late as 2001 for most stations. Data well beyond 2001 are expected to be made available by 2009, when CDIAC will prepare another update.
   
  This climate dataset is one of many that have been exchanged directly between RIHMI and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) over the last few decades. This data exchange has its roots in a bilateral initiative between the U.S. and the former-USSR known as the Agreement on Protection of the Environment. CDIAC has partnered with NCDC and RIHMI since the early 1990s to help make former-USSR climate datasets available to the public.
   
  The stations in this dataset are considered by RIHMI to comprise one of the best networks for monitoring temperature and precipitation over the former-USSR. The database contains four variables: daily mean, minimum, and maximum temperature, and daily total precipitation.
   
• CDIAC has added a New IPCC Tier-1 Global Biomass Carbon Map for the Year 2000 to its data holdings. This new global map of biomass carbon stored in above and belowground living vegetation was created using the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Good Practice Guidance for reporting national greenhouse gas inventories. This map provides important benchmarks for climate policy dialogues aiming to reduce carbon emissions from land-use change, and may also advance global terrestrial and climate modeling efforts by providing improved representation of global vegetation carbon stocks. These data were submitted by Aaron Ruesch and Holly Gibbs of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.
   

September 2008

• CDIAC has released the latest updates to their global, regional, and national time series of carbon releases from fossil-fuel use and cement production. The updates run through 2005 and contain sizeable revisions to previous estimates for some countries due to a change in the way CDIAC handles the United Nations natural gas liquids data, which CDIAC believes led to double-counting for some countries in past years. Preliminary global and national estimates through 2007 based on BP data and estimated by extrapolation of the 2005 CDIAC time series estimates are also now available.
  
   
  Based on the latest national time series and the preliminary national estimates, 2005 marked the first year fossil-fuel carbon emissions from non-participants in the Kyoto Protocol exceeded emissions from signatory countries.
   
• CDIAC's Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations page has been updated to include CO₂ concentrations through June 2008 and other greenhouse gas concentrations through 2005 as per the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2007). Radiative forcings and Global Warming Potentials have also been updated as per that report. The greenhouse gases included have been changed to be consistent with those included in the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) values posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory. Many of the explanatory notes have also been revised to make them better organized, more relevant, and more technically correct.
   
• Our CO₂ concentrations for Mauna Loa, generously provided by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, have been updated through 2007. The Mauna Loa atmospheric CO₂ measurements constitute the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations available in the world.
   
• The new Version 2007 of the Global Surface pCO₂ (LDEO) Database is now available from CDIAC. The new V2007 is consists of more than 4.1 million measurements (V1.0 consisted of 3.5 million points). For simplicity and for ease of reference, this version is referred to as "V2007", meaning that data collected through 31 December 2007 has been included. It is our intention to update this database annually, and there are 37 new cruise/ship files in this update. Revisions to the NDP-088 and existing files have been made and a column reporting the partial pressure of CO₂ in seawater in units of Pascals was added, so this should be considered the "V2007" file.
   
• The NDP-089: "Carbon Dioxide, Hydrographic, and Chemical Data Obtained During the R/V Knorr Repeat Hydrography Cruise in the Atlantic Ocean: CLIVAR CO₂ Sections A20_2003 (22 September–20 October 2003) and A22_2003 (23 October-13 November, 2003)" is now available from CDIAC. This report presents methods, and analytical and quality control procedures for salinity, oxygen, nutrient, inorganic carbon, organic carbon, chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), and bomb carbon-14 system parameters performed during the A20_2003 and A22_2003 cruises, which took place between September 22 and November 13, 2003, aboard research vessel (R/V) Knorr under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Science Foundation (NSF). The R/V Knorr departed Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on September 22 for the Repeat Section A20, and ended this line in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on October 20. The Repeat Section A22 started on October 23 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and finished on November 13, 2003, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The research conducted was one of a series of repeat hydrography sections jointly funded by NOAA and NSF as part of the Climate Variability Program (CLIVAR)/CO₂/repeat hydrography/tracer program. Samples were taken from 36 depths at 88 stations on section A20 and 82 stations on section A22.
   
  The data presented in this report include the analyses of water samples for total inorganic carbon (TCO₂), total alkalinity (TALK), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), CFC, carbon-14, hydrographic, and other chemical measurements.
   
  The R/V Knorr A20_2003 and A22_2003 data sets are available free of charge as a numeric data package (NDP) from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC). The NDP consists of the oceanographic data files and this printed documentation, which describes the procedures and methods used to obtain the data.
   

August 2008

• Two data sets for the U.S. EPA Particulate Matter (PM) Supersites Program have been updated and expanded. NARSTO EPA_SS_FRESNO PM2.5 Organic and Elemental Carbon Data contains measurements taken from a continuous carbon monitor (Model R&P5400C) that was operated at the Fresno, California supersite from January 2000 to March 2005. The PM2.5 Organic and Elemental Carbon data set was originally published in 2003, with data from January 2000 through April 2003. The update extends the data through March 2005 and completes data reporting for this data set.
   
  
  NARSTO EPA_SS_FRESNO Particle-bound Polycyclic Aromatic Compound Data contains measurements of particle-bound polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC) from a Photoelectric Aerosol Sensor (PAS) monitor that has been operated at the Fresno, California supersite from September 1999 to December 2006. This data set was originally published in 2003, with data from September 1999 through September 2003. The data set has been extended through December 2006 and completes data reporting for this data set.
   
• We are pleased to announce the public release of the new version of our CDIAC Mercury Advanced Search tool. Mercury is a harvest, search, distribution, and data discovery system. From Mercury, you can search the CDIAC's data holdings using free text, fielded, spatial, or temporal parameters.
   
  Mercury is now open source and service oriented architecture based. Many new features have been added, including:
   
  • combined search results,
  • filtering the search results by logical groupings (faceted browsing),
  • dynamic sorting of search results,
  • enhanced search summary page,
  • enhanced metadata reports page, and an
  • enhanced browse tree search.
     
  The Mercury search query can now be saved using a browser's book mark feature, and search results can also be emailed or attached as a feed into any RSS reader. You may access Mercury at: http://mercury.ornl.gov/cdiac. We welcome your comments on new release. Feedback for the Mercury Team can be facilitated by emailing mercury-support@ornl.gov directly, or via the 'Contact Us' link on the Mercury Interface.
   

July 2008

• AGAGE data have been updated through September of 2007. A new compound HFC-365mfc (1,1,1,3,3-pentafluorobutane), an industrial chemical used for polyurethane foam blowing, has been added. It has been commercially produced since early 2003 as a substitute for chlorine-containing HCFC-141b, which has been banned in Europe since January 2004.