Earth exploded to a new landmark for climate change

The rapid increase continues, relentlessly.

The Scripps Oceanographic and Atmospheric Institute and NOAA reported Tuesday that the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in May was 414.8 parts per million, or ppm, the highest monthly figure ever recorded and the peak of 2019. While the Earth's CO2 trend is skyrocketing, compared to geological and historical levels, the potent greenhouse gas decreases each year during the hot growing season, when trees and plants thriving northern hemisphere temporarily absorb CO2 from the air -rising, although the saw line is called the Keeling Curve).

414.8 ppm, although the highest monthly CO2 level ever recorded, is not the only figure that is essential to appreciate. The other is. This, noted Scripps, is the jump in ppm of CO2 since last May. This is the second highest jump of one year on the other in terms of record, and on average reduces the increase of CO2 compared to previous decades. Following the commissioning of the Scripps monitoring station at the top of the imposing Mauna Loa in Hawaii in 1959, CO2 increased by approximately 0.7 ppm per year during the first few decades of operation. Then, in the 90s, the rate increased to 1.5 ppm per year. The last decade has averaged 2.2 ppm.

Yet in the past year, the gain was 3.5 ppm. The most influential greenhouse gas concentrations on the planet are accelerating.

"It is extremely alarming to see that atmospheric CO2 continues to steadily increase, year after year, when all scenarios that lead to a stable climate require that it be reduced," said Sarah Green, Chemist. Environmental Specialist at Michigan Technological University.

"The further we go in the unexplored climate territory of unprecedented CO2 levels, the more likely we are to encounter surprises," Green said, citing the extreme climate and weather disturbances caused by such warming. "We are heading to the part of the climate map called" here there are dragons "and rather than turning around, or even slowing down, we run faster."

On Earth, climate scientists around the world are well aware that the climate has naturally changed before, with CO2 levels fluctuating for hundreds of thousands of years. But the current rate of change is unprecedented, at least some 800,000 to one million years ago.

"When I think of the Keeling Curve, I see it as the most important confirmation that the rate of the rise in CO2 (or the pace the increase in CO2 emissions) is unlike anything we've ever seen before and probably to nothing the planet has ever seen before, certainly for a million years and perhaps never, "said Kris Karnauskas, Associate Professor in the Department of Oceanic and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Current CO2 measurements, such as those made by Scripps at the Mauna Loa Summit and other stations around the world, are direct and irrefutable proof that the planet is undergoing profound atmospheric changes.

"These are measurements of the real atmosphere," said Pieter Tans, a senior scientist in NOAA's global monitoring division, in a statement. "They do not depend on any model, but they help us to check projections of climate models, which at least underestimated the rapid pace of observed climate change."

"We run faster"

Although these CO2 emissions are striking, they are even more striking when put in context with observable changes in the rest of the world. In real-time, scientists are witnessing unprecedented disappearances of Arctic ice, the disappearance of mountain glaciers, a resurgence of major destructive forest fires and a continuous warming of the seas.

"We must always remember that history is not based on a single number," said Green. "The full story of the climate crisis, which is even more alarming, relies on very much data on global emissions, ocean heat, Arctic warming, deforestation and many other parameters. . "

To halt an unprecedented increase in CO2 emissions, unprecedented transformation efforts by society will be needed, including to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Already, it is almost certain that the world will heat up above 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) during this century.

As Green noted, regional efforts are underway to "reverse the course of emissions", as the growing number of US states that have enacted or enacted laws to completely remove CO2 emissions by mid-century.

But in the United States, the current presidential administration vigorously and proudly supports the continued emission of carbon dioxide.

The Trump administration rejects the valuable climate science by its own scientists, actively promotes scientific misinformation about the climate, removes government web pages on climate change and, more recently, natural gas – also a powerful gas-effect gas. greenhouse that traps heat like CO2 – as "molecules of the freedom of the United States."

This will not help society limit global warming to temperatures that would limit the worst consequences of climate change, Karnauskas noted.

"Every molecule of CO2 is not a molecule of freedom," he said. "This ties us even more in terms of options available to solve this crisis in the future."