CO2 levels are now 50 percent higher than in pre-industrial times — a level not seen for 4 million years.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached its peak level for 2022, topping out at 421 parts per million. As seen in this graph, that is far higher than any concentration in the past 800,000 years. Every year at this time, headlines proclaim that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has climbed to record high levels. But that really shouldn't be all that surprising, given that CO2 has risen to a new high every single year but one since direct measurements began in 1958.
NOAA's measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at its Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii averaged 420.99 parts per million during May. There hasn't been that much CO2 in the atmosphere since an episode in the geologic record known as the Pliocene Climate Optimum — which occurred more than 4 million years ago.that temperatures were about 4 degrees C warmer than in pre-industrial times.
Humans have never experienced CO2 levels this high before, according to Pieter Tans, senior scientist with NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory. But once again, given how relentless our outpouring of CO2 into the atmosphere has been, this really should come as no surprise. “We have known about this for half a century and have failed to do anything meaningful about it," he's quoted in NOAA's announcement as saying.
The seasonal ups and downs of atmospheric carbon dioxide, driven by growth and then decay of plants in the Northern Hemisphere, are small in comparison with the relentlessly rising long-term trend. Growing vegetation draws CO2 out of the atmosphere during the Northern Hemisphere's spring and summer. In fall and winter, vegetation dies and decays, causing atmospheric CO2 to climb. The greenhouse gas peaks every May, at the end of the Northern Hemisphere cool season.
Greenhouse gas pollution caused by humans trapped 49 percent more heat in the atmosphere in 2021 than it did in 1990,
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