At an outdoor test site in Italy CO2 concentrations vacillating between 1,000 and 750,000 ppm have no more or less an effect on local temperatures than a nearby site with stable, ambient (<400 ppm) CO2 concentrations.
Mofette fields are “natural carbon dioxide springs” that allow us to observe the effect that a 100% (1,000,000 ppm) CO2 concentration has on ecosystems, temperatures…even spiders (Balkenhol et al., 2016).
Temperature changes over the CO2-spewing Bossoleto spring in Tuscany, Italy, were measured over the course of a few days in the early 1990s by Van Gardingen et al., 1995.
The scientists observed the site’s CO2 rises daily from 1,000 ppm at 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon to 750,000 ppm by 7:00 a.m. the next morning. The temperature changes associated with these extreme CO2 variations are about 33°C at 3:30 p.m., falling to 23°C by 7 a.m.
More specifically, when the Sun rises above the horizon, temperatures abruptly warm by 10°C and then CO2 rapidly falls from its morning peak (750,000 ppm) to its afternoon nadir (1,000 ppm).
At a nearby site, where CO2 levels center around an ambient 360 ppm (1992 levels) throughout the day, Gardingen and colleagues observed temperature changes to be effectively identical to the Bossoleto site: 23°C at 7 a.m. and 33°C at 3:30 p.m.
In other words, the CO2 concentration – whether a stable 0.036% throughout the day or a wildly fluctuating 0.1% to 75% over the course of a 24-hour period – had no detectable effect on changes to the surface temperature.
This real-world temperature-CO2 experiment would appear to show CO2 varies in response to environmental factors, but it does not appear to causally affect temperature changes.
Good thing these spots are small.
Deadly to most things, but not some spiders, among others.
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Would not 10,000 ppm be 1% not 1000 ppm, other than that interesting article.
Yes, thank you for the correction. As the paper indicates, it’s 0.1%, not 1%. So the 1,000 ppm is correct, the percentage in the title was wrong. Now corrected.
That’s a gem, Kenneth. However did you find it? You’ve definitely got a knack for that.
Mofette fields offer a wealth of information and opportunities for real-world experiments.
Google Scholar is my friend.
“Google Scholar is my friend.”
You use it well. 🙂
I downloaded all three scientific papers mentioned in this article. None of them included the paragraphs highlighted in blue in your image here. That is, none of them had the statement, “At a nearby site, where CO2 levels center around an ambient 360 ppm (1992 levels) throughout the day, temperature changes are nearly identical to the Bossoleto site”. What gives? Where did those paragraphs come from? The text is formatted to look similar to the scientific papers, but it is not in the papers…
The text in blue was intended to offer an interpretive summary of the Van Gardingen paper all in one image. I’ve now removed that text as well as the photo images of the Bossoleto site found in another paper.
The information about the control site (which has the same temperature changes as the Bossoleto site according to the bottom right temperature graph shown in the paper) comes from this text from Van Gardingen:
Ambient CO2 concentrations were 358 ppm in 1992. I rounded up to 360 ppm.
I’ve removed both the photo images from the other paper (intended for context, or simply to show what the site looks like) and the text in blue so as not to confuse anyone. I added the colorized highlights, arrows, and annotations about CO2 values. Again, this was done so as to be interpretive and helpful.
[…] by Kenneth Richard […]
[…] Here is an article to explain the effect of such conditions on the local temperature. Surprisingly the effect is zero – no difference from a nearby area with levels which are at the normal value of around 400 ppm. […]