Climate Report for January 2024.

Today is Tuesday 9th January 2024. According to the Global Monitoring Laboratory of the US NOAA, Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, the monthly average atmospheric CO2 level in December 2023 was 421.86 ppm, compared to 418.99 ppm in December 2022. This is an increase of 2.87 ppm, or ~0.685% p.a.

The latest methane (CH4) figures, also from the NOAA, are for the month of September 2023, and show an average of 1,927.35 ppb (= 1.92735 ppm), compared to 1,915.44 ppb (= 1.91544 ppm) for September 2022, an increase of 11.91 ppb, or ~0.622% p.a.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) informs us that CO2 was 149% higher in 2021 than in pre-industrial times; that, from 2011 to 2020, 48% of emissions from human activities accumulated in the atmosphere, 26% in the oceans and seas, and 29% on land. From 1990 to 2021, heating impacts of long-lived greenhouse gases (LLGHGs) increased by 49%, with 80% of these impacts due to CO2.

The Keeling Curve informs us that the latest atmospheric CO2 reading - for the 8th January 2024 - is 422.85 ppm. The Scripps Institute provides a graph (available here) showing that CO2 levels have not been as high as they are now for the last 3 million years - not since the Mid-Piacenzian Warm Period of the Pliocene Epoch. There are numerous reasons why we don't want to reproduce the climate of that period in our own! 

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