Global Climate Change Graphics

Graphics For Climate Change

Fig. 10 of the paper . Recent warming correlates with increases in sulfur from fossil fuels. Red bars show sulfate in each layer of ice in Greenland, the blue line shows average global temperature and the black line shows sulfur emitted by burning fossil fuels. All layers since 1925 contain residual sulfate that increases yearly in proportion to the increase in anthropogenic sulfur emissions.

Figure 1 of the press release: Volcanic sulfate measured in the ice layers of Greenland has its highest concentrations during times when global warming was greatest (W) at the end of the last ice age and is lowest when re-glaciation occurred (C).

Centigrade Version

Farenheit Version

Figure 2 of the press release: Human emissions of sulfur began to decrease around 1980 through efforts to reduce acid rain. The rate of increase of the concentration of methane began to decrease by 1990. Methane and temperature became relatively constant soon after 2000. It took 20 years to increase the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere enough to reverse the increase in temperature. CO2 continues to increase due to emissions by man and a time lag to respond to temperature change.

Biographical Information for Peter L. Ward

Peter L. Ward was educated at Noble & Greenough School (1961), Dartmouth College (BA in Geophysics, 1965) and Columbia University (Ph.D. in Seismology, 1970). He began working on active volcanoes in 1963 in Alaska. His Ph. D. thesis was on a new interpretation of the geology of Iceland based on studies of small earthquakes and on the relationship of these earthquakes to volcanoes and geothermal power sources. He worked 27 years with the United States Geological Survey on volcanoes, earthquakes, and plate tectonics. In the early 1970s he developed a prototype global volcano surveillance system using the ERTS satellite to collect data from ground instruments on volcanoes through-out the western U.S., Central America, and Iceland. In 1975, he became chief of the Branch of Seismology, a group of 140 scientists and staff. He helped sell to Congress, develop and guide the new U. S. National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program in 1977-1978. In 1990, he wrote and produced a 24-page magazine about living safely with earthquakes. Editions in English, Spanish, Chinese and Braille were distributed primarily in 41 Sunday-morning newspapers throughout Northern California to 3.3 million people, winning him two national awards. His major publications in the 1990s explored the relationship between volcanoes and other geologic features of western North America with the motion of plates in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. This led to significant new ideas about the origins and nature of volcanoes, granites, silicic volcanic provinces, flood basalts, and volcanic hot spots. He currently lives in Jackson, Wyoming, continuing his research on the effects of volcanoes on man. See www.tetontectonics.org for more detail.

During the summer of 2007, I discovered an enigma, a mystery: Moderate increases in the rate of volcanism caused the beginning of ice ages and major increases in the rate of volcanism caused the end of ice ages. How? The diagram on the left shows the last 50 million years. The green line is a proxy for temperature getting colder down. The red line is a proxy for volcanism increasing down. The blue arrow marks the beginning of the most recent ice age epoch around 34 million years ago when glaciers became widespread. The diagram on the right shows the last 25,000 years. The green line is a proxy for temperature getting colder down. The red lines are a proxy for volcanic activity, the amount of sulfate deposited per century in Greenland. Note how the times of greatest volcanism are the same as the times of greatest warming. By 9,000 years ago, the ocean had warmed out of the ice age to current temperastures.