Carbon Dioxide Now at 410 ppm in Earth’s Atmosphere

Duane Nichols — Sat, 05 May 2018 14:50:37 +0000

Monthly Average CO2 for April Above 410 ppm

Earth’s Average CO2 Levels Cross 410 ppm for the First Month Ever

From an Article by Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch.com, May 4, 2018

April was the first month in recorded history with an average concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide topping 410 parts per million (ppm).

This dubious new milestone was recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii by the Keeling Curve, a program of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.

To put this latest reading into perspective, at the beginning of the industrial revolution around 1880, the CO2 level stood at 280 ppm. It climbed to 315 ppm in 1958, the year Mauna Loa started record-keeping. It surpassed 400 ppm in 2013, before becoming a dangerous new norm for several years. Then around mid-April, the planet breached 410 ppm for the first time.

These CO2 levels, according to NOAA’s climate department, haven’t been seen on Earth in 3 million years, when temperatures were 3.6° to 5.4°F warmer, and sea level was 50 to 80 feet higher than today

Carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas and the leading driver of man-made climate change.

“We keep burning fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide keeps building up in the air,” said Scripps CO2 Program director Ralph Keeling, the son of the late Keeling Curve creator Charles David Keeling, in a statement.

“It’s essentially as simple as that,” he added.

Keeling told the Washington Post that Earth’s breaching of 1.5 or 2°C—the two temperature limits included in the Paris climate agreement—is not committed yet, but could get closer with time.

“We don’t have a lot of headroom,” he said.

“It’s not going to be a sudden breakthrough, either,” Keeling added. “We’re just moving further and further into dangerous territory.”

Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe tweeted, “As a scientist, what concerns me the most is what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have.”

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The Earth’s Atmosphere to Reach 400 ppm CO2 this Month, May 2013

Duane Nichols — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:22:48 +0000

: The Keeling Curve

The Keeling Curve To Reach 400 PPM This Month Of May 2013

Article by Jessica Leber, MIT Technology Review, May 1, 2013

This May, the folks behind a Twitter account started four months ago are preparing to tweet an event that the planet has not seen in an estimated four million years.

That’s when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere could hit or exceed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time. Yesterday’s daily average stands at 399.50, and May is the peak time of CO2 levels every year in the Northern Hemisphere. And of course, with climate change, the peak has been rising every year.

These measurements are being made at the famous Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, where in 1958, a scientist named Charles Keeling began documenting the fluctuating patterns of atmospheric CO2. With data collected far from major land masses, the “Keeling curve” is the longest unbroken record of globally rising CO2 concentrations. Alongside the U.S. government, researchers with the Scripps Institution of Oceanagraphy now run the Mauna Loa observatory and @Keeling_curve.

While Twitter is great and all, the most important inventions of our time will come from the those people who commercialize technologies capable of slowing the march to 500 ppm, or, less probably, bringing levels back down to 320 ppm, as it was when Keeling first began his studies

As MIT Technology Review’s publisher Jason Pontin wrote in October in his essay, “Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems,” there are still large economic and political hurdles that block progress towards renewable energy technologies that can compete on price with fossil fuels. At the moment, these technologies don’t exist. What’s needed to get there is both research funding and some kind of price on carbon. So while talking about 400 ppm is a symbolic milestone, here’s hoping the negotiators at the U.N. climate talks being held in Bonn, Germany are paying attention.

Frack Check WV » Keeling Curve

Carbon Dioxide Now at 410 ppm in Earth’s Atmosphere

The Earth’s Atmosphere to Reach 400 ppm CO2 this Month, May 2013