At a federal research laboratory at an altitude of 11,135 feet (3,397 meters), American scientists measured an important record.
Due to its location in the Pacific Ocean, NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, high in Hawaii, is tasked with making pollution-free daily atmospheric measurements. On June 6, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released evidence that the heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide is “accumulating in the atmosphere faster than ever before—rising sharply to levels well above what humans have experienced during our lifetime.” past level”.
In May this year, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 427 ppm, an increase of nearly 3 ppm from May last year (carbon dioxide concentration peaks in May every year due to natural global fluctuations). What’s more, when combined with the increments from 2022, it would be the largest two-year jump in CO2 emissions ever recorded.
The laboratory’s continuous records paint a clear picture of changes in the atmosphere since the late 1950s. However, when older air samples collected from air preserved in ice cores from ancient Antarctica and Greenland are combined with other environmental observations, the changes over the past 150 years or so are dramatic. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are now soaring.
“Not only is carbon dioxide now at its highest levels in millions of years, it’s rising faster than ever before,” Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps Carbon Dioxide Project, which manages the atmospheric observing program, said in a statement. “Due to the burning of fossil fuels, which releases pollution into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, it reaches higher maximums every year. Fossil fuel pollution continues to increase, just like waste in landfills.”
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As you can imagine, this huge change will have a huge impact. Yes, carbon dioxide is considered a “trace gas” in our atmosphere – primarily composed of nitrogen and oxygen. But in our physical reality it is common for low concentrations of substances to have large effects.
“In the past year, we experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record, and a seemingly endless stream of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement. . This is part of a clear climate change trend. NASA noted: “2023 will be the hottest year on Earth since modern records began around 1880, and the past 10 consecutive years have been the hottest on record.” “
The first graph below shows the continued rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels since 1958.
NOAA chart showing monthly average carbon dioxide levels measured by the Mauna Loa Observatory since 1958.
Image source: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
Carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere over the past 800,000 years.
Image source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography
But the bottom line, climate scientists stress, is that civilizations are not inherently doomed. We are not unlucky; we have energy options that can limit the worst consequences of climate change, particularly by significantly limiting the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere.
For now, this and other monitoring stations will continue to record atmospheric facts.
