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Average
Carbon Dioxide Levels Increasing Faster Than Ever, NOAA Says
Zoe Strozewski
The average
rate of carbon dioxide increase is faster than ever and in-air levels
are 50 percent higher from when the industrial age commenced, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.
© Susan Cobb/NOAA
Global Monitoring Laboratory/AP Photo
This 2019 photo provided by NOAA shows the Mauna Loa Atmospheric
Baseline Observatory, high atop Hawaii's largest mountain in order to
sample well-mixed background air free of local pollution.
Heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels in the air peaked in May 2021, in
amounts nearly 50% higher than when the industrial age began and they
are growing at a record fast rate, scientists reported Monday, June 7,
2021.
The NOAA reported the average carbon dioxide level in May clocked in
at 419.13 parts per million. NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans said
this was a 1.82 parts per million increase from May 2020 and 50
percent higher than the 280 parts per million level from before the
industrial age.
Carbon dioxide levels are at their highest during the month of May
when Northern Hemisphere greenery hasn't yet bloomed and absorbed some
of the gas, the Associated Press reported. However, the volume of
carbon dioxide consumed by plants is always eclipsed by increasing
carbon dioxide emissions year after year from burning fossil fuels,
transportation and electricity.
Natalie Mahowald, a Cornell University climate scientist, said the 50
percent increase of in-air carbon levels is "setting a new benchmark
and not in a good way."
"If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need
to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away,"
she said.
Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme
weather—storms, wildfires, floods and droughts—worse and more frequent
and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are
also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen. In
2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate
change to below what's considered dangerous levels.
The one-year jump in carbon dioxide was not a record, mainly because
of a La Nina weather pattern, when parts of the Pacific temporarily
cool, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist Ralph
Keeling. Keeling's father started the monitoring of carbon dioxide on
top of the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Loa in 1958, and he has continued
the work of charting the now famous Keeling Curve.
Scripps, which calculates the numbers slightly differently based on
time and averaging, said the peak in May was 418.9.
Also, pandemic lockdowns slowed transportation, travel and other
activity by about 7 percent, earlier studies show. But that was too
small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the
air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions
don't register much.
The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4
parts per million per year.
"Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely
unusual," Tans said. "For example, when the Earth climbed out of the
last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million
and it took the Earth system, the natural system, 6,000 years. We have
a much larger increase in the last few decades."
By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to
increase carbon dioxide by that same amount.
"The world is approaching the point where exceeding the Paris targets
and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost inevitable," said
Princeton University
climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn't part of the
research.
© Annegret Hilse/AFP
via Getty Images
German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze gives a press conference
about the climate protection act in Berlin, on May 12, 2021. - The
German government approved a new law setting more ambitious targets to
reduce CO2 emissions, after the country's top court declared a
flagship climate law "insufficient". Annegret Hilse/AFP via Getty
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