NEW YORK: Levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere have soared to levels that are now more than 50% higher than in preindustrial times, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Friday.
Carbon dioxide, or CO2, measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa AtmosphericBaseline Observatory in Hawaii peaked for 2022 at 421 parts per million (ppm) in May, “pushing the atmosphere further into territory not seen for millions of years,” experts said.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution - and for almost 6,000 years of human civilization - CO2 levels were consistently around 280 ppm.
Since that period of profound technological transformations, whichbegan in the 18th century, scientists estimate that humans have generated around 1.5 trillion tons of CO2 pollution, much of whichwill continue to warm the planet for thousands of years to come.
The announcement was made by scientists from NOAA - a federal agencythat provides science and service to protect the Earth’s naturalresources - and from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at theUniversity of California San Diego.
“The science is irrefutable: humans are altering our climate in waysthat our economy and our infrastructure must adapt to,” NOAAAdministrator Rick Spinrad said in a statement.
“We have known about this for half a century, and have failed to doanything meaningful about it,” he said. “What’s it going to take forus to wake up?”
“We can see the impacts of climate change around us every day. Therelentless increase of carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa is astark reminder that we need to take urgent, serious steps to become amore Climate Ready Nation,” he added.
According to NOAA, carbon dioxide pollution is generated by theburning of fossil fuels for transportation and electrical generation,as well as cement manufacturing, deforestation, agriculture and otherpractices.
“Along with other greenhouse gases, CO2 traps heat radiating from theplanet’s surface that would otherwise escape into space, causing theplanet’s atmosphere to warm steadily, which unleashes a cascade ofweather impacts, including episodes of extreme heat, drought andwildfire activity, as well as heavier precipitation, flooding andtropical storm activity,” the agency said.
“It’s depressing that we’ve lacked the collective willpower to slowthe relentless rise in CO2,” said Ralph Keeling, a renownedgeochemistry professor who runs the Scripps program at Mauna Loa.“Fossil-fuel use may no longer be accelerating, but we are stillracing at top speed towards a global catastrophe,” he added.
Pieter Tans, senior scientist with the Global Monitoring Laboratory,shared Keeling’s frustration, saying that the high levels of CO2 inthe atmosphere are nothing new - but still, the world has so farrefused to act accordingly.
“We have known about this for half a century, and have failed to doanything meaningful about it,” he said. “What’s it going to take forus to wake up?”
