CO2 Levels Reach 400ppm at Mauna Loa For First Time On Record

Titus Andronicus writes "Today, NOAA reported, 'On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time since measurements began in 1958.' For comparison, over the last 800,000 years, CO2 has ranged from roughly 180 ppm to 280 ppm. 'For the entire period of human civilization, roughly 8,000 years, the carbon dioxide level was relatively stable near that upper bound. But the burning of fossil fuels has caused a 41 percent increase in the heat-trapping gas since the Industrial Revolution, a mere geological instant, and scientists say the climate is beginning to react, though they expect far larger changes in the future.' The last time Earth had 400 ppm was probably more than 3 megayears ago."

Dupe

[Hentes]

Dupe [slashdot.org].

Re:CO2 at an active volcano? Who wudda thot?

[noh8rz10]

hawaii gets all the air blowing across the pacific, so it can be considered a better baseline than doing it in a city where local emissions may influence. I don't see how the size of the cone or islands makes any difference. it's just a weather station on top of the mountain. And no, all the other islands were formed by their own volcanoes so stfu or are you a plate tectonic denier as well?

Re:CO2 at an active volcano? Who wudda thot?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

> So this seems like a silly place to consider as a steady-state CO standard.

If you lived on the volcano, you'd know better. Wind direction is very consistent and it is precisely because the volcano is so large that contamination is rare - it only comes out of the vents and those are few and far between.

How do scientists know that Mauna Loa's volcanic emissions don't affect the carbon dioxide data collected there? [nasa.gov]

Re:LOL

[pipatron]

Megayear is actually very common in science circles when talking about time spans where using millions of years makes sense. It's usually written "Ma" or "mya".

Re:CO2 at an active volcano? Who wudda thot?

[jcupitt65]

Fortunately for science the Mauna Loa readings are in good agreement with those taken at hundreds of other sites around the globe.

Here's a great animation from NOAA showing global CO2 distribution and putting recent changes in the context of the last million years or so. It takes a few minutes to watch, but it's worth seeing to the end, in my opinion.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html [noaa.gov]

Re:CO2 at an active volcano? Who wudda thot?

[Nos.]

hawaii gets all the air blowing across the pacific, so it can be considered a better baseline than doing it in a city where local emissions may influence. I don't see how the size of the cone or islands makes any difference. it's just a weather station on top of the mountain. And no, all the other islands were formed by their own volcanoes so stfu or are you a plate tectonic denier as well?

mbeckman never said that Mauna Loa formed any of the other islands. He/she said "amounts to about 85 percent of all the other Hawaiian Islands combined". There's a big difference.

Or it our fondness for beef...

[kenh]

No less an authority than the United Nations pins a full 9% of all human-related CO2 production on cows, but it's worse than that:

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Source: Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns [un.org]

Re:Excuse me

[kenh]

Or cows... Or deforestation... or maybe it's just a peak in a cycle that has a period somewhat longer than our history of direct measurements shows us...

I find it interesting that we only have direct measurements for about 60 years, but these folks are supremely confident that they know the CO2 level over the past 800,000+ years...

Re:LOL

[noh8rz10]

actually, for 95% of the population 32 kilodays is sufficient :(

Re:Excuse me

[kenaaker]

They have the actual atmosphere from 800,000 years ago in ice cores. It's been pointed out several times already. Read a little bit will ya!?

It must interfere with your invincible ignorance field. But do try to keep up Ok?

NOT Dupe

[alexhs]

Actually this is a follow-up :

2013-05-05 : "individual observations [...] have exceeded 400 parts per million" "The daily average observation has crept above 399 ppm" "the daily observation will break the 400 ppm milestone within a few days"
2013-05-09 : "the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide [...] surpassed 400 parts per million"

Of course, Soulskill should have referenced timothy, they were obviously aiming for the dupe, but new data arrived in the meantime.

Re:Why not? This proves Warmists are wrong.

[Dahamma]

A very high CO2 measurement is found after a decade of reduction in overall temperature.

Where did you get that "fact"? The last decade had the highest average global temperatures on record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly_1880-2012.svg [wikipedia.org]

If you can't even get a simple quantitative *fact* like that right, why would anyone listen to any of your *opinions*?

And if you actually RTFA it's not about just the last decade, they have over 50 years of data showing a rise in both CO2 and ave global temperature.

Re:queue the denialists!

[hawkfish]

Do you breathe? Do you drive a car? Do you make s'mores? If so, get in line because you are no more part of the solution than a "denier".

Of these three activities, only the second is not carbon neutral. And yes, I bike to work every day.

Re:I'VE BEEN DUPED!

[jbengt]

Daily peak is not the same as daily average.

Re:The CO2 change IS NOT 40%!

[close_wait]

The relationship between CO2 content in the atmosphere, and how much heat the Earth absorbs from / radiates into space, is basic physics, and has been well understood for a hundred years or so. Increasing CO2 from 280ppm to 400ppm will cause a significant heating of the atmosphere and oceans. Dismissing it because it's only 0.00012 is vacuous handwaving.