Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere Surged In 2024

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No wonder the failed president wants to eliminate NOAA. It insists on telling the truth about climate change — that it is accelerating rather than slowing, despite all the world’s good intentions after the Paris Climate Accords were agreed to in December of 2018. The latest update from NOAA shows an alarming increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and no on is quite sure how to explain it. If the Maniac of Mar-A-Loco has his way, NOAA will never have enough staff or funding to find the answer.

A Big Jump In Carbon Dioxide

The latest annual report from the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory is causing concerns in the scientific community. The report puts into words what the chart that accompanies the report makes clear — the annual global increase in carbon dioxide took a big leap upwards in 2024 and no one is sure why. NOAA offers this explanation of its methodology:

The annual mean rate of growth of CO2 in a given year is the difference in concentration between the end of December and the start of January of that year. It represents the sum of all CO2 added to, and removed from, the atmosphere during the year by human activities and by natural processes. The annual mean growth during the previous year is determined by taking the average of the most recent December and January months, corrected for the average seasonal cycle, as the trend value for January 1, and then subtracting the same December-January average measured one year earlier.

Our estimate for the annual growth rate of the previous year is produced in April of the following year, using data through January. We finalize our estimate for the growth rate of the previous year in the fall of the following year because a few of the air samples on which the global estimate is based are received late in the following year.

Writing for Inside Climate News, Bob Berwin says that in recent decades, the annual increase has usually been in the range of 1 to 2 parts per million (ppm). Last year it was 3.75 ppm, bringing the total carbon dioxide concentration to 430 ppm — 40 percent higher than in pre-industrial times. That was before humans learned to burn fossil fuels to keep themselves warm and power industrial activities. That is also the level at which average global temperatures are expected to reach 1.5º C (2.7º F) above pre-industrial levels.

“It’s definitely worrying to see such a large jump in 2024,” Berkeley Earth climate researcher Zeke Hausfather, told Inside Climate News. “While it’s not surprising to set new records given global emissions have yet to peak, and there are generally higher ppm increases in El Niño years, 2024 was still anomalous for just how large it was.” El Niño refers to the warm phase of a tropical Pacific Ocean cycle that’s formally called the El Niño Southern Oscillation. During other recent El Niño phases, like in 1998 and 2016, the annual CO2 increase was about 3 ppm, Hausfather said.

“Because we know the magnitude of emissions and the ocean sink does not vary that much year to year, this has to reflect a weakening of the land sink,” he said, referring to the amount of carbon absorbed by terrestrial ecosystems like forests and wetlands. Those ecosystems did still take up some carbon last year, he noted, but the land sink was the weakest since 1998, when it touched zero, and 1987, when it was a net emitter of CO2. Even if the growth rate slows again in 2025, Hausfather said, “the worry is that this year’s jump might include [non-El Niño] factors like temperature responses from soils and vegetation that might persist or intensify as the Earth warms.”

The unprecedented increase of atmospheric CO2 is just one of several climate warnings detected by climate scientists. In 2023–2024, they noted a significant increase in average global surface temperatures, which has yet to be fully explained. In addition, the average temperature of the Earth has remained at 1.5º C above pre-industrial levels for 20 of the last 21 months. Also, sea ice in both polar regions has dropped to record or near-record lows the last few years, which means Earth is losing some of its biggest heat shields.

Muzzling Climate Scientists

In years past, NOAA publicized the annual updates to the global greenhouse gas index with press releases and explanatory articles on its website. The agency was getting ready to do so again this year, but April came and went with no update. Tom Di Liberto, a former NOAA public affairs specialist who was fired by the current administration in late February (along with hundreds of other NOAA staffers), told ICN, “That article was written, and then it was taken down by the current political communications leader of NOAA because it would not make the administration happy. NOAA is likely to still be doing the work internally, but it’s very unlikely you will see stuff coming out of NOAA like you had in the past.”

This is typical of authoritarian governments, which manipulate the flow of information to solidify their power. It was not typical of the US government until the biggest climate change denier of them all moved into the Offal Office. Since then, thanks in large measure to the activities of Elon Musk and his chainsaw, the government has cancelled the lease for the Global Monitoring Laboratory in Hilo, Hawaii, according to the Washington Post. That lab is connected to the Mauna Loa Observatory, where scientists gather data from atop a volcano to produce the famed Keeling Curve — a chart on the daily status of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. The observatory itself is not on the list of potential closures, and staff in the Hilo lab work to maintain it, according to the lab’s website. The data collection may continue, but there will be no one to monitor the process or share the results with the public. No data, no scientific reports, no problems. Score another point for tyranny.

Climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, told ICN the significant increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide may reflect the post-COVID emissions bounce as economies restarted after global lockdowns, but the general expectation is that emissions will start to plateau this year, largely driven by decarbonization by China and other countries. “I’ve seen the claim made that decreased uptake by natural sinks and wildfire emissions might have played a role, but my view is that this may be a misinterpretation of the fleeting impacts of extended, major El Niño events like 2023-2024,” he said.

James Hansen, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, said the 2024 CO2 increase is not surprising, given continued record high emissions from fossil fuels, as well as the oceans temperatures that are higher than ever before recorded. “Similar increases have occurred with lesser emissions, but stronger El Niños. It’s not all gloom and doom. The airborne fraction of emissions has actually trended downward over the past several decades, so once we begin to reduce emissions, we should be able to get the growth rate of CO2 to decline,” he said.

Methane Levels Were Up Last Year As Well

That is a very optimistic view by Dr. Hansen. Taking a look at another part of the NOAA report — the one that focuses on global levels of methane — shows a similarly disturbing trend, with the concentration of methane also rising considerably last year. We  now have a government that is rushing to extract and burn as much fossil fuel as possible, which is like adding more water to a bathtub when someone is drowning. This is what we get when we vote for buffoons, grifters, and idiots. We should stop doing that.