The WMO — the United Nations system's leading agency on weather, climate and water — said the globally averaged
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached «the symbolic and significant milestone of 400 parts per million» for the first time in 2015 and surged again to new records in 2016 on the back of the very powerful El Niño event.
(05/13/2013) Even as
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history last week, a new study in Nature Climate Change warns that thousands of the world's common species will suffer grave habitat loss under climate change.
Year - round ice - free conditions across the surface of the Arctic Ocean could explain why Earth was substantially warmer during the Pliocene Epoch than it is today, despite
similar concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.
During the Eocene,
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was more than 560 parts per million, at least twice preindustrial levels, and the epoch kicked off with a global average temperature more than 8 degrees Celsius — about 14 degrees Fahrenheit — warmer than today, gradually cooling over the next 22 million years.
The factors they compared were temperature, sea - level rise and
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
As trees die and decompose,
the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will increase, potentially speeding up climate change during tropical droughts.»
My interest in carbon dioxide concentration as a variable evolved from the recognition that the rapidly changing
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was likely to disrupt the relationships between plant physiological processes and adaptations to the environment that I had been studying.
The concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could still be out of whack from the emissions resulting from the burning of all those fossil fuels in just the last few decades.
In 2005
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 380 parts per million, is a third higher than in preindustrial times.
In 1959 physicist Gilbert Plass warned in Scientific American that increasing
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was causing climate change.
But talking about 2020 is crucial to climate scientists, who see quick emission cuts as important as
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in four decades.
Although
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is much higher, at around 385 parts per million, methane is a worry as it is much better than carbon dioxide at locking in heat from solar radiation.
One possible explanation is that there was a slow decline in
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, starting around 3 million years ago.
Computer models predict that the incidence of potentially lethal climatic conditions will increase when
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaches double the preindustrial level.
These are, respectively, the upper «safe»
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the upper «safe» limit of average global temperature increase.
Earth's oceans play a major role in limiting
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Without alternatives to fossil fuel, we are committed to steadily increasing
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans, with the attendant deleterious effects on greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere and ocean acidification.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has permanently passed 400 ppm for the first time in human history.
At the same time,
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been rising.
Even if the Princeton wedges of avoided emissions were achievable, that would only stabilize annual emissions, meaning the real heavy lifting — stabilizing
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — still lay far ahead.
Below you can read some of the input I received on Australia's booming exports of coal (and carbon dioxide emissions) and how they relate to the challenge of stabilizing
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere some time this century.
This pattern of warmer below, colder above is just what we've observed over the last century as
the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased.