Current Carbon Dioxide Levels In The Atmosphere – Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane levels in the atmosphere continued to rise in 2020, with CO2 levels reaching their highest point in 3.6 million years, according to estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The ban was broken despite the expected reduction in emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

NOAA reported a global average atmospheric CO2 of 412.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2020, a rise of 2.6 ppm from 2019, the fifth-largest increase since they began measuring atmospheric CO2 levels in the 63 years. The rise occurred despite an estimated 7% reduction in global emissions due to the pandemic. Pieter Tans, senior scientist at NoAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, estimates that 2020 would have been a record-breaking year had it not been for the pandemic.

Current Carbon Dioxide Levels In The Atmosphere

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego released similar findings Wednesday, saying its measurements showed atmospheric CO2 levels were 417.4 ppm at its monitoring station in Hawaii. Scripps noted that atmospheric CO2 levels are 50% higher than they were before the industrial revolution.

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Scripps also noted that the amount of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere is accelerating. “It took over 200 years for grades to increase by 25%, but now more than 30 years later, grades have increased by 50%,” the institute said. If current trends continue, he predicts CO2 levels will be twice as high as pre-industrial levels in about 55 years.

CO2 is considered a greenhouse gas because of its ability to trap heat. According to a recent NASA study, greenhouse gases and particulate pollution suspended in the atmosphere, which is caused by the burning of fossil materials, is responsible for most of the warming documented over the last century.

According to NOAA, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now is similar to a time when the Earth was about 7 degrees warmer than in pre-industrial times, and sea levels are about 80 feet higher than they are today.

NOAA also found that levels of methane, another greenhouse gas, will increase dramatically in 2020. “NoAA’s preliminary analysis shows that the annual increase in atmospheric methane for 2020 will be 14.7 parts per billion (ppb), which is the largest annual increase since systematic measurements began in 1983.” ‘ the administration said.

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NOAA noted that, as is usually the case, this report is preliminary and that the final calculated greenhouse gas levels are slightly lower than the preliminary numbers. They said, even with the final calculations, “2020 will remain the largest increase in the entire record”. The Earth’s atmosphere is easily subject to many changes imposed by humans. But, atmospheric scientist David Crisp of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, says that our society doesn’t necessarily mean that.

“The resilience of the Earth’s atmosphere has been tested throughout our planet’s history,” said Crispus, team lead scientist for NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite and successor instrument OCO-3, which launched to the International Space Station on May 4. “Humans have increased the abundance of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Age by 45 percent. It is intended to make great changes in our environment, but at the same time it will not lead to the effect of a fugitive conservator or something like that. So our atmosphere will overcome, but, as the UCLA professor and Pulitzer-Prize-winner author Jared Diamond suggests, even earlier societies may be more fragile than the atmosphere.

NASA’s OCO-3 instrument sits on a large vibration table (called a “shaker”) in the Environmental Test Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Thermal blankets were later added to the equipment at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where the Space-X Dragon capsule carrying OCO-3 was launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket to the space station on May 4, 2019. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Changes in our atmosphere with reactive gases (gases that support chemical reactions) such as ozone and ozone-forming chemicals such as nitrous oxide are relatively short-lived. Carbon is a different animal. When the atmosphere is added, it hangs for a long time: between 300 to 1,000 years. Thus, when humans change the atmosphere by emitting carbon dioxide, these changes will last for many human lifetimes.

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The Earth’s atmosphere is associated with many types of cycles, such as the carbon cycle and the water cycle. Crisp says that while our atmosphere is very stable, those cycles are not.

“Humanity’s ability to survive depends on these other planetary cycles and processes operating as they do now,” he said. “Thanks to the detailed observations of our planet from space, we have seen some very alarming changes over the last 30 years: changes in precipitation patterns, in where and how plants grow, in sea and land ice, in whole ecosystems such as tropical rain forests. These changes inspire they must attract ours.

“He could say that because the air is so thin, the action of 7.7 billion people could make significant changes to the entire system,” he added. “The composition of the Earth’s atmosphere has certainly changed. Half of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has occurred in the last 300 years since 1980, and one-quarter since 2000. Methane concentrations have increased 2.5 times since the beginning of the Industrial Age, with almost all occurring since 1980. Thus changes come faster and become more significant.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is currently close to 412 parts per million (ppm) and rising. This is a 47 percent increase since the beginning of the Industrial Age, when the concentration was close to 280 ppm, and an 11 percent increase since 2000, when it was close to 370 ppm. Crisp tells scientists that the increase in carbon dioxide is primarily caused by human activities, because the carbon produced from burning fossils has a different ratio of heavy atoms to light carbon, so it leaves a distinct “fingerprint” for instruments to measure. The relative decline in the amount of heavy isotopes of carbon 13 in the atmosphere points to fossil fuel sources. Burning fossil fuels also depletes oxygen and lowers the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere.

Co2 Lags Temperature

Chart showing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (constantly increasing in parts per million) observed at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii over the course of 60 years. Greenhouse gas measurements began in 1959. Credit: NOAA

OCO-2, launched in July 2014, collects global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide with the resolution, accuracy and coverage necessary to understand how this important gas-conservator, the main driver of human-induced change, moves through the Earth system at regional scales; and how time passes. From its point in space, OCO-2 makes about 100,000 measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide every day.

A display of art from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2 in orbit over the U.S. in the upper Great Plains. Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech

Crisp says OCO-2 is already providing new insights into the processes that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and those who consume it.

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A map of persistent carbon dioxide “anomalies” was seen by OCO-2 (i.e. where carbon dioxide is always systematically higher or lower in surrounding areas). Positive anomalies are likely sources of carbon dioxide, while negative anomalies are most likely sinks, or sinks of carbon dioxide. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“For as long as we can remember, we have talked about the Earth’s tropical rains as the ‘lungs of our planet,'” he said. But that’s not what our data is about. We have seen the tropical regions of the Earth as a net source of atmospheric carbon dioxide, at least since 2009. This changes our understanding of the situation.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the tropics are consistently higher than anywhere else, and scientists don’t know why, Crisp said. OCO-2 and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Observing Satellite (GOSAT) are tracking plants in the tropics by observing solar fluorescence (SIF) from chlorophyll in plants. SIF is an index of the rate at which plants convert light from the Sun and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into chemical energy.

“We found that respiration outpaces the plant’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide,” he said. “This is happening throughout the tropics, and almost all the time. When we first launched OCO-2, the first two years of operations in orbit occurred during a strong El Niño event, which had a strong impact on global carbon dioxide emissions. We now have more than five years of data, and we see that the tropics are always a source (of carbon dioxide), all the time. In fact, the only time that the absorption of carbon dioxide in the tropics is significant is in Africa in June, July and August. That’s half the story.

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The last El Niño in 2015-16 affected the amount of carbon dioxide in the tropical regions of the Earth

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