ENDY 6013 - ENVIRONMENTAL DYNAMICS
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT #5a - "JOE" VERSUS THE VOLCANO
DUE FRIDAY, 01 October 2004
In honor of the suggestion offered by one of your classmates, this week we will examine the potential impact of volcanic emissions on global atmospheric CO2 concentrations and compare the CO2 flux from volcanoes to that of human activities. As a starting point, we will need to know if there are estimates of the annual CO2 flux from volcanoes around the world. Indeed, there are, and I will leave you to discover from some active scholarly research what that estimate might be. You should endeavor to locate as many estimates as you can to provide a range of values that we might use to compare to the annual flux of CO2 to the atmosphere resulting from human acitivities.
Locate at least 5 sources of information providing an estimate of the global annual flux of CO2 from volcanoes. Provide full citations for these sources, and provide the reported values of the global volcanic CO2 flux.
Next, go to the Trends website of the Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC). From the Trends website, access Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Consumption database. Follow the links to each region listed on this page and access the digital data for each region. Copy and Paste these data into a spreadsheet, then compile the "Total Fossil FuelCO2 Emissions" from every region for each year to arrive at Global CO2 Emissions for each year of the database. Compare the results from year 2000 (the most recent year represented) to the estimates of global volcanic CO2 emissions. Presently, which is the larger contributor to atmospheric CO2 - volcanoes or humans? Using observed trends, in what year did/will human CO2 emissions exceed volcanic CO2 emissions?
Plot the Total Fossil Fuel CO2 emissions versus time and derive a best fit curve for the data using the curve-fitting functions of Excel. Using the derived function, predict the year that atmospheric CO2 emissions will double from its year 2000 value (assuming the trend observed during the past 100 years does not change).
While you're visiting the Trends website, access the Methane Emissions database. Download the methane emissions data and plot all data on a graph. Derive a best fit curve for total methane emissions using the curve-fitting functions of Excel. Using your derived function, predict the year that atmospheric methane emissions will double from its 1994 value (the most recent year in the database).
From your predictions, estimate the annual methane emissions for 2004 (10 years beyond the database). Locate recent data on global methane emissions and compare to your predicted value. How well do these agree? Please provide full citations for your sources of methane emissions data.