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Mauna Loa CO2 and Temperature

Notes:

The Mauna Loa CO2 data is made available by the NOAA and ERSL.

It's clear from this plot that decreasing CO2 levels are associated with increasing global temperatures. While this suggests a causal relationship, it's certainly not greenhouse related. The seasonal correspondence would seem to indicate that biology is responsible for the fine structure in the Mauna Loa CO2 record.

The CO2 plot does show a small, but consistent, bump around January of every year as CO2 levels are rising. This is more apparent when zoomed in, but is even visible at this scale. This bump is highly correlated to the peak incident radiation at perihelion and indicates a rapidly responding effect of CO2 levels to changes in the incident energy which is most likely related to ocean outgassing. This is a small effect relative to the other influence on CO2 which is the seasonal variability of the active biomass.