In the world of carbon worries these days, you can’t ask for a good news/bad news breakdown.
You can only get a bad news/less-bad news option.
The bad news: The world’s levels of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases continue to rise, rather than the leveling off and reversal Earth needs if we want to avoid the most calamitous impacts of climate change, according to the latest measure from NOAA’s Global Monitoring Lab in Boulder.
The slightly less-bad followup? They’re not rising at the record-setting jumps recorded in some recent years by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But don’t let the full breath of relief out just yet. NOAA admonished the nonrecord increases “were in line with the steep increases observed during the past decade.”
NOAA’s 2023 measurements, recently released, put the global surface concentration of carbon dioxide at 419.3 parts per million, up 2.8 ppm from 2022’s measurement. NOAA said 2023 was the 12th straight year global CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, the longest stretch in 65 years of monitoring.
“Atmospheric CO2 is now more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels,” NOAA’s update said.
To put the 419.3 total in perspective, the climate change-fighting organization founded by Bill McKibben and others was named 350.org in 2007, for the estimate of where carbon dioxide buildup needed to stop in order to prevent overheating, ruinous storm events and other impacts from warming. But planetary measurements breached that target the same year, and have only soared since.
Many scientists believe the world’s economies must reach net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide, avoiding adding more CO2 into the atmosphere as a whole, by 2050, to keep rising temperatures within bounds that are survivable in most areas of the globe. Despite years of carbon reductions through switching from coal power to renewables, and other efforts, Colorado and other states have not fully met their carbon reduction goals.
World needs to fight with more urgency
NOAA’s latest update puts the spotlight on those misses and the urgency of doing more, said Global Monitoring Laboratory Director Vanda Grubisic, in an email.
“It will take more of a concerted worldwide effort over a longer period of time to stop the rise of greenhouse gas concentrations, and even more, and perhaps different types of efforts, to get the global concentrations of major GHGs to start declining,” she said.
“The 2023 increase is the third largest in the past decade, likely a result of an ongoing increase of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, coupled with increased fire emissions possibly as a result of the transition from La Nina to El Nino,” said Xin Lan, a scientist for CIRES.
Levels of two other greenhouse gases that Colorado and other states are striving hard to limit, methane and nitrous oxide, also continued their relentless rise in the 2023 measurements.
Methane or natural gas, not as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide but even more effective at trapping heat, rose to 1922.6 parts per billion, 11.1 ppb higher than the year before. It was the fifth highest increase since methane levels began going up again in 2007, NOAA said. Methane levels are now 160% higher than pre-industrial times.
Nitrous oxide, different from the nitrogen dioxide created by power plant and other combustion, reached 336.7 ppb, up 1 point, now 25% higher than pre-industrial levels of 270 ppb.
Human-caused global warming has raised Colorado’s annual average temperature by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit between 1980 and 2022, according to an annual climate report in Colorado. Colorado climate change, exacerbated in the fall months and in the southwestern and south central parts of the state, will add another 1 to 4 degrees of average temperature by 2050.
The goal of many climate change scientists and activists is to limit the average temperature rise from global warming to no more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
To conduct NOAA’s annual greenhouse gas study, the Global Monitoring Lab used data from more than 15,000 worldwide monitoring stations, analyzed in Boulder. The air samples are taken at a variety of locations, including 53 cooperative sampling sites around the world, 20 tall tower sites, and North American aircraft.
The failure to limit growth in fossil fuel use worldwide continues to push human-caused CO2 production, which reached a record 36.6 billion tons a year in 2023, NOAA said. That compares to about 10.9 billion tons of emissions a year in the 1960s, when comprehensive measurements began.
NOAA’s release said CO2 in the atmosphere is now equivalent to a hot period 4.3 million years ago, when average temperatures were 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than pre-1900s industrial countries and seas were 75 feet higher.