Experts issue warning after finding global average concentration in March was 4.7ppm higher than same period last year

The largest ever recorded leap in the amount of carbon dioxide laden in the world’s atmosphere has just occurred, according to researchers who monitor the relentless accumulation of the primary gas that is heating the planet.

The global average concentration of carbon dioxide in March this year was 4.7 parts per million (or ppm) higher than it it was in March last year, which is a record-breaking increase in CO2 levels over a 12-month period.

“It’s really significant to see the pace of the increase over the first four months of this year, which is also a record,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the CO2 Program at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “We aren’t just breaking records in CO2 concentrations, but also the record in how fast it is rising.”

Look we may not have solved all of climate change but we're heading in the right direction, okay?

"We must be as radical as reality itself." -Lenin

    • ReadFanon [any, any]11•1 month ago

      I'm not going to pretend to know what's going on - I'm out of the loop as a conscious choice on this.

      My first hunch is that this is either a major global carbon sink being depleted/saturated, or a tipping point where carbon is being released from a source that it was previously sequestered or a carbon sink has undergone an inversion and has become a source of emissions.

      For an example of a carbon sink being saturated, the ocean is a good example of dissolving a significant amount of carbon dioxide but, as it becomes more saturated, at some point it ceases to function as a sink.

      An example of tipping point of carbon being released is the classic permafrost melting and the methane held under the permafrost, some of it clathrate, being emitted.

      An example of a carbon sink undergoing an inversion is rainforest drying out and experiencing catastrophic forest fires, thus turning what was a sink into a source (tbh peat bogs burning are probably a more accurate example but it's less easy to grapple with as a thought experiment).

      It's very dismal to spend time looking into this stuff.

      • Ideology [she/her]5•1 month ago

        https://hexbear.net/post/2618447?scrollToComments=false

        Might be related.

  • asg101 [none/use name, comrade/them]24•1 month ago

    30 years ago I asked a Scripps Institution of Oceanography lecturer on computer climate models why they were not including permafrost/methane feedback in the models and got told "we decided to focus on other things". Maybe they wouldn't be so shocked now if they had looked at all of the inputs.

  • AstroStelar [he/him]3•1 month ago

    The increase has been spurred, scientists say, by the periodic El Niño climate event, which has now waned, as well as the ongoing and increasing amounts of greenhouse gases expelled into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

    (I added some rough trendlines for context)

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