The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Check on Soaring Planetary CO2 Levels
Dear Diary. Every few months on this site we will check to see what is happening with ever increasing carbon dioxide level trends in the atmosphere from the most reliable measuring site at Mauna Loa Hawaii. Usually when I look at the rate of change from one year to the next, I see about an increase of 2.5 parts per million, which varies between 1 and 5 PPM. I have never been pleasantly surprised that levels have leveled off since starting to look at this data during the 1990s.
This time around the rate of change as of Halloween is very high:
| Oct. 31, 2024 | 423.70 ppm |
| Oct. 31, 2023 | 418.94 ppm |
| 1 Year Change | 4.76 ppm (1.14%) |
The above statistic is much more frightening than any bad, cheesy Halloween movie. The fact that levels are rising and not falling is monstrous, especially since we are moving towards a La Niña Enso regime. An El Nino Pacific pattern usually spikes CO2 levels. The main driver for our upward trend of CO2 levels is from the burning of fossil fuel, which the world stubbornly keeps on doing. What’s scary is that we are beginning to see indications of forests and our oceans not taking up as much carbon as during the past. If our carbon syncs fail, we are doomed to see a hothouse Earth.
We are told from more optimistic sources that there has been progress, which is true, but until I see a downward trend, I will remain skeptical about humanity’s future.
Here are more details from the Guardian:
Planet-heating pollutants in atmosphere hit record levels in 2023 | Climate crisis | The Guardian
Planet-heating pollutants in atmosphere hit record levels in 2023
Carbon dioxide concentration has increased by more than 10% in just two decades, reports World Meteorological Organization
Mon 28 Oct 2024 05.00 EDT
The concentration of planet-heating pollutants clogging the atmosphere hit record levels in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said.
It found carbon dioxide is accumulating faster than at any time in human history, with concentrations having risen by more than 10% in just two decades.
“Another year, another record,” said Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the WMO. “This should set alarm bells ringing among decision makers.”
The increase was driven by humanity’s “stubbornly high” burning of fossil fuels, the WMO found, and made worse by big wildfires and a possible drop in the ability of trees to absorb carbon.
The concentration of CO2 reached 420 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, the scientists observed. The level of pollution is 51% greater than before the Industrial Revolution, when people began to burn large amounts of coal, oil and fossil gas.
Concentrations of strong but short-lived pollutants also surged. Methane concentrations hit 1,934 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 165% from preindustrial levels, and nitrous oxide hit 336.9 parts per billion (ppb), a rise of 25%, it said.
Saulo said: “We are clearly off track to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C and aiming for 1.5C above preindustrial levels. These are more than just statistics. Every part per million and every fraction of a degree temperature increase has a real impact on our lives and our planet.”
Burning fossil fuels – such as the petrol to power a car or the coal to feed a thermal power plant – releases gases that trap sunlight and heat the planet.
The WMO warned that this heating can lead to climate feedbacks that are “critical concerns” to society, such as stronger wildfires that pump out more carbon and hotter oceans that suck up less CO2.
There has been a slight slowdown in the growth of global emissions over the last decade but continued strong growth in atmospheric concentrations, said Glen Peters, a climate scientist at the Cicero in Norway, who was not involved in the study. “[That] should give us cause for thought on how strong carbon sinks will remain in a changing climate.”
The Earth last experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 a few million years ago, when the planet was 2-3C hotter and the sea level 10-20 metres higher.
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Peters said the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are humanity’s “most accurate measure” of progress. “The data shows, again, we are not making much progress on reducing emissions.”
The WMO announcement comes ahead of the Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan next month. It follows a report from the UN Environment Programme on Thursday that found the world is on track to heat 3C by the end of the century. World leaders had promised to stop it from heating 1.5C.
Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and co-author of the report, said: “The record levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere are the logical outcome of the record amounts of greenhouse gases that our economies continue to dump into our ambient air.”
Scientists have estimated investments of $1tn to $2tn (£800bn to £1.6tn) are needed each year to cut emissions to net zero by the middle of the century.
“Current trends will see global warming cross all warming limits that global leaders agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement,” said Rogelj. “[The report] also shows that this doesn’t need to be the end of the story.”
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Related:
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is some brand-new October 2024 climatology:
Here is More Climate News from Friday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)