Atmosphere's GHG Concentration Continues to Climb, Despite Reductions from Some Nations - E&E Publishing

Despite some recent regional reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and other industrial nations, the total concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues its upward march at an unprecedented rate, the World Meteorological Organization announced today.

Compared to the preindustrial era of the 1750s, the Earth's atmosphere is now choked with 142 percent more carbon dioxide, 253 percent more methane and 121 percent more nitrous oxide, the WMO reported in the release of its annual bulletin on greenhouse gas.  Last year, the warming effect on the climate saw a 34 percent increase since 1990 levels.

Among the long-lived greenhouse gases produced by humans, carbon dioxide is by far leading the way, surging to new levels last year.  The Earth, it seems, is reaching its saturation point.

While methane contributes about 17 percent to radiative forcing and nitrous oxide about 6 percent, carbon dioxide accounts for 65 percent and is responsible for 84 percent of the increase in radiative forcing over the past decade.  "Carbon dioxide is the single most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas in the atmosphere," the bulletin authors reported.

Carbon dioxide levels increased more between 2012 and 2013 than during any other year since 1984, according to the WMO's Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) network.  "Preliminary data indicated that this was possibly related to reduced CO2 uptake by the Earth's biosphere in addition to the steadily increasing CO2 emissions," the WMO reported in a statement.

"Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years and in the ocean for even longer.  Past, present and future CO2 emissions will have a cumulative impact on both global warming and ocean acidification.  The laws of physics are nonnegotiable," Jarraud stressed.

For the first time, the WMO's annual "Greenhouse Gas Bulletin" also addressed the consequences of increased carbon dioxide on Earth's oceans, which "take up about 4 kilograms of CO2 per day per person."
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Today, the ocean is operating at 70 percent capacity in terms of its chemical conversion of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere compared to what it was at the beginning of the industrial era, "and it may well be reduced to only 20 percent by the end of the twenty-first century," the authors of the bulletin report.

Atmosphere's GHG Concentration Continues to Climb, Despite Reductions from Some Nations