Why is the USA with the highest concentration of greenhouse gases, experiencing less warming than the globe?

Question

I have understandably confused some with the red smoke analogy. The red smoke is not actual smoke. It was meant to help visualize the CO2. The red smoke represents CO2.

Answer 1

First 385 ppm sounds like a lot but put it into percent of atmosphere . That would be .000,385% which is near nothing.

Answer 2

Dust from the Sahara effects the Caribbean.

Pollution from China is measurable in the Northwest US.

Plastic from around the Pacific rim is accumulating in the central Pacific.

El Nino and La Nina effect weather around the world.

Atmospheric nuclear testing elevated background radiation levels all over the world.

All top of food chain animals in the world, from the deepest jungle to the most remote Arctic ice floe have scores of man made chemicals in their bodies.

And yes, no matter what the US does to curb emissions, our cuts will be overwhelmed by increases in Asia.

But we should lead by example and cut anyway.  The benefits outweigh the costs.

The effects of Global Warming will be non-linear and chaotic.  Very difficult concepts.

edit:

Here is my completely uneducated and uninformed guess about the red smoke. ;)

Particulate matter (smoke) would behave like the dust from the Sahara.  You would see the source and a plume streaming away in the direction of the wind.  But it would quickly fall out of the atmosphere.  If we put up enough and kept it up for long enough, it would be somewhat red over the US and pink all over the world.  Particulate matter from volcanoes, which can be injected into the stratosphere, circulates the globe and stays aloft for months to years.

Gasses, especially long lived ones, are different.  Carbon dioxide has a half life in the atmosphere of 100 years.  The point sources would get smeared into the background because the gas just keeps circulating.  If red smoke was a gas like carbon dioxide, the entire earth would be a deeper shade of pink and the point sources would be difficult to pick out.

It's an interesting question, thanks.  Maybe somebody can debunk my analysis.

Answer 3

Exactly!  The USA should be held in high esteem for our contribution to reducing global temperatures.

Not only should the rest of the World follow our example, we should hire our knowledge out to other countries for a profit to reduce their temperatures also!

Answer 4

Because the atmosphere is "well mixed" by the wind.  While stations near cities all around the world have (small) increases in CO2, rural stations everwhere show almost exactly the same level.

Answer 5

ok first off most co2 emissions in the us are colourless.. so you wont' see em..

second off we may be more effected by warming due to CO2.. then the rest of the world... HOWEVER, with the gulf stream as close to it as it is.. and being a HUGE driver in climate conditions the US weather is hard to track what causes everything...

as much as i disagree that man is responsible for global warming.. you cant use readings that are localized in location or time as an indicator for or against global warming.

Answer 6

visible smoke causes local short term cooling.

Answer 7

Gasses tend to move.

Answer 8

As others have pointed out, CO2 is well-mixed in each hemisphere (there is a small N-S gradient).  The real reason the US shows less warming than the global average is a lot of the global average is due warming at high northern latitudes.  

Your question is one way of restating the old skeptic canard question of why does the Hadley-CRU data show less warming than GISS.  Thank you for at least providing a refreshing new way to ask an old tired question.

Answer 9

Great Question - Simple and to the heart of the matter! The US emits more gases but the gases mix in the atmosphere and are distributed globally.  However, I agree with your premise that if the US is emitting a major proportion of the greenhouse gases, shouldn't our surface air temperature be rising more quickly because the gases aren't mixed immediately (takes hours to a day).  One of your graphics shows the US is a major emitter.  

The other graphics are not in the context of the world, so they do not support you assertion in your question and cannot be used to answer the question.  More important to your question, they don't attempt to estimate the temperature without excessive CO2 emitted by human activity.  You would really need this to make your comparison - the baseline temperature that considers the natural variation over time for the US.  

Baseline temperatures are absolutely required  This is what you actually need to show the US is experiencing less warming instead of comparing to other countries.  That just doesn't work.  No other country has our location on the globe This greatly influences the angle that incoming solar radiation is received.  No other country has our topography, landuse patterns, urban and sprawl patterns, offshore currents, etc.  It is just difficult to compare across countries to quantify warming (or cooling).  So we do time series analysis and rely on physics to determine baseline temperatures - what the temperature would be with only natural variation.

Determining what the temperature would be if the excessive anthropogenic gases were not in the atmosphere is EXACTLY what the IPCC has done to determine the human impact on the climate for the entire world.  Remember the baseline is only influenced by natural variation (solar cycles, Milankovic cycles, changes in solar radiation) and naturally emitted greenhouse gases .   We can't really do it for just a country because climate is not restricted by political boarders and global forces are involved that must be considered (ocean currents, weather circulation patterns, wind dispersion of gases and particle, landscape/topography/albedo, etc.).  Really a few climatological institutions around the world do it - like the Goddard Space Flight Center, Geophysical Fluid Dynamic Laboratory at Princeton,  there is one in the UK, I think Oregon State University, and maybe Colorado State University.  These where so of the big players with general circulation models 15-20 years ago when scientist didn't know if humans could influence global temperatures (this is far from a new issue for scientists).  There are probably more now.  It takes supercomputers to do the math.  PC's won't handle it.  The physics is well beyond my meager abilities and I kringe to even think about all the equations.

This is why most climate scientist (this is an accurate statement!) think AGW is a problem that needs attention!

Answer 10

Wind patterns, oceans, massive glaciers, etc.  It's a complex system with a lot of heat transfer and movement.  Models have been predicting the fastest warming would occur in the Arctic, and that's what we've seen.

Here's a nice video of a map showing the temperature anomalies over the past 100+ years.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/mpg/...

Answer 11

Because CO2 gets dispersed throughout the atmosphere.  The source location makes no difference.

Answer 12

Because it is a scam.

Answer 13

I will give my non expert opinion, I have no idea.