Despite COVID Shutdowns, Atmospheric CO2 Concentration Rising @ About Same Rate As Past Decade

[hatrack]

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As graphs go, the Keeling Curve is simple, but it clearly illustrates the planet's vexing global warming challenge. In a decades-long upward zigzag it charts the unrelenting increase of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. An annual update of the curve done this week shows that CO2 once again spiked to a record high during the past year. The short-term throttling of emissions during the coronavirus pandemic didn't even show up as a blip, scientists said, adding that the readings are important because they help explain that fossil fuel pollution is changing the climate dangerously, and faster than expected.

The CO2 concentration during May averaged 417.2 parts per million, the highest monthly total ever recorded. It increased at about the same rate as throughout the 2010s, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego said after analyzing thousands of samples taken over the past 12 months.

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Within the steep rise of the Keeling Curve is a smaller zigzag pattern that shows seasonal cycles of plant growth and decay. The CO2 level is highest each year in the late spring of the Northern Hemisphere, where most of the land and plants are. So the annual measurements are finalized and announced in early June each year. This year's increase again shows that the clock is ticking faster in the race to limit global warming to less than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the target of the Paris climate agreement, said Pieter Tans, who leads a carbon cycle research group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

"In the 1990s, the CO2 concentration was increasing at 1.6 ppm each year. In the 2000s, it was 2 ppm per year, and the rate ticked up again in the current decade, to 2.4 ppm per year," Tans said. "CO2 is the main thing causing global warming. It's two-thirds of all climate forcing." Climate forcing describes the heating power of all greenhouse gases combined, not just CO2. Tans works on NOAA's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, which tracks the increase of that power over time, using measurements from the Mauna Loa lab and other sites in the worldwide monitoring network.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04062020/fossil-fuel-emissions-mauna-loa-keeling-curve-coronavirus-hawaii

[jpak]

1. All the feedbacks are positive

We are fucked

[SamKnause]

3. Indeed, but we will never hear our governments say this.

It is too late to stop climate change.

[Mickju]

4. Yes, we are.

[NickB79]

5. Yep.

We passed the point of no return years ago.

[SamKnause]

2. The Albedo Effect explains this.