Old Rocks
Diamond Member
Looks like part of our CO2 addition to the atmosphere may outlast us as a species.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2008.tail_implications.pdf
The millennial atmospheric lifetime
of anthropogenic CO2
David Archer & Victor Brovkin
Received: 19 December 2006 / Published online: 4 June 2008
# The Author(s) 2008
Abstract The notion is pervasive in the climate science community and in the public at
large that the climate impacts of fossil fuel CO2 release will only persist for a few centuries.
This conclusion has no basis in theory or models of the atmosphere/ocean carbon cycle,
which we review here. The largest fraction of the CO2 recovery will take place on time
scales of centuries, as CO2 invades the ocean, but a significant fraction of the fossil fuel
CO2, ranging in published models in the literature from 2060%, remains airborne for a
thousand years or longer. Ultimate recovery takes place on time scales of hundreds of
thousands of years, a geologic longevity typically associated in public perceptions with
nuclear waste. The glacial/interglacial climate cycles demonstrate that ice sheets and sea
level respond dramatically to millennial-timescale changes in climate forcing. There are
also potential positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle, including methane hydrates in the
ocean, and peat frozen in permafrost, that are most sensitive to the long tail of the fossil fuel
CO2 in the atmosphere.
David Archer of the University of Chicago and Victor Brovkin of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2008.tail_implications.pdf
The millennial atmospheric lifetime
of anthropogenic CO2
David Archer & Victor Brovkin
Received: 19 December 2006 / Published online: 4 June 2008
# The Author(s) 2008
Abstract The notion is pervasive in the climate science community and in the public at
large that the climate impacts of fossil fuel CO2 release will only persist for a few centuries.
This conclusion has no basis in theory or models of the atmosphere/ocean carbon cycle,
which we review here. The largest fraction of the CO2 recovery will take place on time
scales of centuries, as CO2 invades the ocean, but a significant fraction of the fossil fuel
CO2, ranging in published models in the literature from 2060%, remains airborne for a
thousand years or longer. Ultimate recovery takes place on time scales of hundreds of
thousands of years, a geologic longevity typically associated in public perceptions with
nuclear waste. The glacial/interglacial climate cycles demonstrate that ice sheets and sea
level respond dramatically to millennial-timescale changes in climate forcing. There are
also potential positive feedbacks in the carbon cycle, including methane hydrates in the
ocean, and peat frozen in permafrost, that are most sensitive to the long tail of the fossil fuel
CO2 in the atmosphere.
David Archer of the University of Chicago and Victor Brovkin of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology