NOAA Surface Temperature Changes Show Little Correlation to CO2 Changes Since 1880

Prof. Karl Erdman provided this surface temperature record to me from his search of government data files.  The orange dots are the change in the annual global temperature anomaly from year to year. The blue line is the 10-year average of the change in the annual global temperature anomalies.  The gray vertical bars are the average annual CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.  Since CO2 concentrations increase almost every year, if the temperature is increased by increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, then the change of temperature each year should have a strong tendency to be positive since the CO2 concentration change is positive almost every year.  The only years the CO2 concentration did not increase were from 1941 to 1946.

The sub-heading says that annual CO2 levels have little impact on the annual temperature change.  Looking at this data objectively, it is very difficult to claim that there is any correlation between the changes of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the changes in the surface temperature!  This states the real lesson of the data better than the sub-heading of the graph does.

This is consistent with my understanding of the basic physics of the Earth's climate as I have discussed it numerous times.  The effect of atmospheric CO2 is very, very small.  It is probably actually a cooling effect, just as that of water vapor certainly is.

The data plotted is based on three data sources:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat

The changes in the temperature anomaly from one year to the next are the differences between a year's temperature anomaly and that of the next year from this data set.

ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt

Measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 1959 to 2012.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.smoothed.yr20

Historical CO2 record derived from a spline fit (20 year cutoff) of the Law Dome DE08 and DE08-2 ice cores June 1998 Source: D.M. Etheridge L.P. Steele R.L. Langenfelds R.J. Francey Division of Atmospheric Research, CSIRO, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia J.-M. Barnola Laboratoire of Glaciologie et Geophysique de l'Environnement, Saint Martin d'Heres-Cedex, France V.I. Morgan Antarctic CRC and Australian Antarctic Division, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Once again there is little reason to be concerned about the emissions of CO2 due to using fossil fuels.  So why is the Obama regime, and his EPA in particular, claiming that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.  Plants certainly do not think it is anything of the sort.  Increased crops and natural vegetation provide us many benefits:

• Increased food supplies for people and livestock
• A decrease in arid land areas
• Moderation of day to night temperature variations
• Increased oxygen production

I would like to thank Harry Dale Huffman for comments that lead to improvements in this post.