The amount of carbon dioxide detected in the atmosphere reached a historic new high in May, scientists from NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced Monday.
What You Need To Know
- The monthly average of CO2 registered at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Hawaii was 419 parts per million, the highest level in the 63 years since the measurements began
- The amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is comparable to what it was between 4.1 million and 4.5 million years ago
- Last year’s pandemic-induced economic shutdowns had no discernible impact on the rises of CO2 pollution
- The scientists behind Monday’s findings said world leaders must act with far more urgency than they have to avoid disastrous consequences
The monthly average of CO2 registered at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Hawaii was 419 parts per million, the highest level in the 63 years since the measurements began.
But researchers say the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide is comparable to what it was between 4.1 million and 4.5 million years ago, when sea level was about 78 feet higher than today, the average temperature was 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in pre-industrial times and forests occupied large swaths of the Arctic.
Meanwhile, last year’s pandemic-induced economic shutdowns had no discernible impact on CO2 pollution. The researchers said the increase of 1.8 ppm from May 2020 to May 2021 was slightly less than previous years, but that over the first five months of the year, CO2 levels were up 2.3 ppm compared to the year before.
CO2 pollution is generated by emissions from fossil fuels used for transportation and electricity, cement manufacturing, deforestation and many other practices. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat at the earth’s surface, causing the planet to warm steadily.
CO2 is by far the most prevalent greenhouse gas and persists in the atmosphere and oceans for thousands of years after it is emitted, experts say. May is used as a measuring stick because it is the month when CO2 levels peak each year.
President Joe Biden in February re-entered the United States into the Paris Agreement on climate change, a treaty signed by 196 countries promising to limit greenhouse gases.
But the scientists behind Monday’s findings said world leaders must act with far more urgency than they have to avoid disastrous consequences.
“The ultimate control knob on atmospheric CO2 is fossil-fuel emissions,” said geochemist Ralph Keeling, who runs the Scripps program at Mauna Loa. “But we still have a long way to go to halt the rise, as each year more CO2 piles up in the atmosphere. We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than the COVID-related shutdowns of 2020.”
Pieter Tans, a senior scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, said “the solution is right before our eyes.”
“Solar energy and wind are already cheaper than fossil fuels and they work at the scales that are required,” he said. “If we take real action soon, we might still be able to avoid catastrophic climate change.”
