{"id":27583,"date":"2017-11-03T10:48:43","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T15:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27583"},"modified":"2017-11-03T10:48:43","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T15:48:43","slug":"record-surge-in-atmospheric-co2-seen-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27583","title":{"rendered":"Record surge in atmospheric CO2 seen in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/euanmearns.com\/record-surge-in-atmospheric-co2-seen-in-2016\/\">Record surge in atmospheric CO2 seen in 2016<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.euanmearns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/smog.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" align=\"left\" hspace=\"10\" \/>Last week the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/science-environment-41778089\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BBC carried another scare story<\/a> on climate change, this time citing a report on CO2 from the World Meteorological Organisation:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cConcentrations of CO2 in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere surged to a record high in 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Last year\u2019s increase was 50% higher than the average of the past 10 years.<\/em><br \/>\n<span id=\"more-20029\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Researchers say a combination of human activities and the El Ni\u00f1o weather phenomenon drove CO2 to a level not seen in 800,000 years.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists say this risks making global temperature targets largely unattainable.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Since this reporting is from the BBC, my default reaction is to treat it with a good deal of scepticism. So I decided to check out the numbers.<\/p>\n<p>To my surprise the \u201c50% higher than the average of the past 10 years\u201d appears to be correct (Figure 1). The mean dCO2 2006-2015 was 2.1 ppm. The 2016 figure of 3.4 ppm is indeed 62% higher than the prior 10 year mean. We need to ask the serious question if this is a cause for concern?<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.euanmearns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/annualdCO2.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.euanmearns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/annualdCO2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"80%\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Figure 1<\/strong> Annual dCO2 from Mauna Loa based on monthly data downloaded from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.woodfortrees.org\/plot\/esrl-co2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WoodForTrees<\/a>. Annual means were calculated and annual dCO2 equals arithmetic difference from year to year.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The arrows on Figure 1 point to strong to <a href=\"http:\/\/ggweather.com\/enso\/oni.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">very strong\u00a0El Ni<em><span class=\"auto-style1\"><span class=\"style15\">\u00f1<\/span><\/span><\/em>o events<\/a>. The very strong\u00a0El Ni<em><span class=\"auto-style1\"><span class=\"style15\">\u00f1<\/span><\/span><\/em>o of 1982 \/ 83 does not register a CO2 spike, but the CO2 spike of 1988 does coincide with a strong\u00a0El Ni<em><span class=\"auto-style1\"><span class=\"style15\">\u00f1<\/span><\/span><\/em>o. We are on fairly safe ground saying that the three marked and one unmarked CO2 spikes are linked to\u00a0El Ni<em><span class=\"auto-style1\"><span class=\"style15\">\u00f1<\/span><\/span><\/em>o. We know that ocean surface warming will lead to reduced capacity to absorb CO2.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>d surge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Record surge in atmospheric CO2 seen in 2016 Last week the BBC carried another scare story on climate change, this time citing a report on CO2 from the World Meteorological Organisation: \u201cConcentrations of CO2 in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere surged to a record high in 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Last year\u2019s increase [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16848,64,1004,11260,11842,13036,16849],"class_list":["post-27583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-atmospheric-co2","tag-bbc","tag-co2","tag-energy-matters","tag-euan-mearns","tag-global-temperature","tag-world-meteorological-organisation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27584,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27583\/revisions\/27584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}