Climate Report for March 2024.

Today is Sunday 24th March 2024. The latest daily atmospheric CO2 level reading from CO2 Earth is 425.48 ppm, for the 22nd March, which compares with 420.64 ppm for the 22nd March 2023, an increase of 4.84 ppm = 1.15% p.a.

The latest daily atmospheric CO2 level reading from the Keeling Curve is also for the 22nd March, and is 425.28 ppm.

The monthly average for February 2024, according to the NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory, was 424.55 ppm, compared to 420.3 ppm a year earlier, an increase of 4.25 ppm = 1.01% p.a.

The NOAA has recorded nineteen daily CO2 readings so far this month at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, with an average of 425.486 ppm = 824.5 mg/m^3 = ~3,320.63 GtCO2.

The Bloomberg Carbon Clock, meanwhile, has reached 424.63 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Whatever its precise value, atmospheric CO2 is now much higher than at any time in the past 805,000 years (Yamamoto, M. et al, Nature Geoscience, 31st March 2022) and, indeed, in the last 3.3 million years (de la Vega, E. et al, Nature Scientific Reports, 9th July 2020). It is worth quoting de la Vega et al:

'The Piacenzian stage of the Pliocene... is the most recent past interval of sustained global warmth with mean global temperatures markedly higher (by ~2–3 °C) than today... Our findings corroborate the idea that changes in atmospheric CO2 levels played a distinct role in climate variability during the [mid-Piacenzian warm period]... and suggest that, at present rates of human emissions, there will be more CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere by 2025 than at any time in at least the last 3.3 million years.'

It would seem that we humans were determined to achieve the goal of putting more CO2 in the atmosphere than in the last 3.3 million years before 2025, and have succeeded - yet, according to the President and CEO of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, phasing out oil and gas is a 'fantasy' which should be 'abandoned' (see report by Maxine Joselow, The Washington Post, 20th March 2024).

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