CO2 content at record level
According to the annual report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Global Monitoring Lab, the average carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere in 2023 was 419.3 parts per million (or "ppm" for short), setting a new record. Over the past four months, the amount of carbon dioxide in the world's atmosphere has skyrocketed like never before, according to NOAA researchers.
The average global carbon dioxide concentration in March this year was 4.7 parts per million (ppm) higher than in March last year, representing a record-breaking increase inCO2 levels within 12 months. This trend continued in April 2024:
The development of atmosphericCO2 in the last three years
April 2024 426, 57 ppm ( + 4.2 ppm)
April 2023 423, 37 ppm ( + 3.16 ppm)
April 2022 420, 19 ppm
Source: Source: Global Monitoring Laboratory/NOAA
About the chart: The red lines and symbols represent the monthly averages, centered on the middle of each month. The black lines and symbols represent the same values after they have been corrected for the average seasonal cycle.
The increase between 2022 and 2023 amounted to 2.8 ppm. Overall, this was the 12th year in a row in which the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere rose by more than 2 ppm. At the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, where modern carbon dioxide records began in 1958, the annual average of carbon dioxide in 2023 was 421.08.
We break all records
"The rate of increase in the first four months of this year is really significant and is also a record," said Ralph Keeling, director of theCO2 program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. "We're not only breaking records forCO2 concentration, but also for the rate of increase."
TheCO2 values of the last 800,000 years are now known thanks to studies of the eternal ice. As you can see from the graph below, theCO2 values ranged between 150 ppm in the cold phases (ice ages) and 280 ppm to a maximum of 300 ppm in the hot phases of our globe. The development in the last 50 to 70 years, which we show in the graph below, therefore far exceeds the values of the hot phases of our planet and is therefore absolutely outstanding.
Before humans began blowing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels,CO2 levels were around 280 ppm for almost 6,000 years of human civilization.
Since records began at the Mauna Loa Observatory, annual emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased every decade, from just under 11 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year in the 1960s to an estimated 36.6 billion tons in 2023, according to the Global Carbon Budget 2023. The graph below shows this rapid increase in just a few decades.
Source: Global Monitoring Laboratory/NOAA
Catastrophic climate breakdown looms
The rapid rise in greenhouse gases is threatening the world with catastrophic climate breakdown in the form of severe heatwaves, floods, droughts and forest fires. Recent research from the Columbia Climate School suggests that the last timeCO2 levels were this high was around 14 million years ago, causing a climate far removed from our current understanding of our planet.
Their authors explain in a press release that current estimates assume that every doubling of atmosphericCO2 will cause global average temperatures to rise by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius, on a scale of decades to centuries.
However, at least one recent high-profile study argues that the current consensus underestimates the sensitivity of the planet and assumes a warming of 3.6 to 6 degrees per doubling. In any case, given current trends, all estimates put the planet dangerously close to or beyond the 2 degrees of warming that could be reached this century and which many scientists believe we must do our best to avoid.
The Columbia Climate School researchers then calculated a new 66-million-year curve of CO2 temperatures based on all previous findings and came to a consensus on the so-called "sensitivity of the Earth system". According to this, a doubling of CO2 would warm the planet by a whopping 5 to 8 degrees Celsius, even more than previously assumed. We already know that a warming of 3 degrees would make the planet virtually uninhabitable for us humans.
"3 degrees of global warming would be the end of human civilization"
"Regardless of how many degrees the temperature changes, it's clear that we've already brought the planet into a range of conditions that our species has never seen before," said study co-author Gabriel Bowen, a professor at the University of Utah. "This should cause us to pause and ask ourselves what the right path forward is."
"The rate of increase will almost certainly go down, but it is still increasing, and to stabilize the climate,CO2 levels need to go down," he said. "That is clearly not the case. Human activity has causedCO2 levels to skyrocket. That saddens me more than anything else. It's sad what we're doing."
Reasons for the increase
The concentration of carbon dioxide is rising primarily because of the fossil fuels that humans burn to generate energy. Fossil fuels such as coal and oil contain carbon that plants have extracted from the atmosphere through photosynthesis over many millions of years; we release this carbon back into the atmosphere in just a few hundred years. According to scientists, the increase is also due to the periodic climate event El Niño, which has since subsided, as well as greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation.
Carbon cycle experts estimate that natural "sinks" - processes that remove carbon from the atmosphere - on land and in the oceans have absorbed the equivalent of about half of the carbon dioxide we emitted each year in the decade 2011-2020. Since we are putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the natural sinks can absorb, the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing every year.
What happens if emissions are stopped immediately?
Mark Olefs, Head of the Climate Research Department at Geosphere Austria, has the answer to science.ORF.at: "If CO2 emissions were stopped immediately, it would take 50 years for the man-made proportion of CO2 concentrations to halve". However, it would take 100,000 years for average global temperatures to return to pre-industrial levels.
The phenomenon of ocean acidification
Another reason carbon dioxide is important to the Earth system is that it dissolves in the ocean like the carbonic acid in a can of soda pop. It reacts with water molecules, creating carbonic acid and lowering the pH of the ocean (increasing its acidity). Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the pH of the oceans' surface water has dropped from 8.21 to 8.10. This drop in pH is known as ocean acidification.
Our pro.earth.conclusion:
The outlook is bleak, and the admonishers who have been warning of this for so many years are receiving ever more precise data and statistics to back up their statements. We must act so urgently, all of us together, right, left, up, down, if we want to create a future for our grandchildren and their children. NOW.
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