Earth’s carbon dioxide levels hit record high despite global slowdown from Covid

The amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has reached the highest level in modern history, despite a global slowdown in the economy and reduction in commuting during the Covid pandemic.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That is 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50 per cent higher than when the industrial age began.

The figure is the highest since measurements started at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Hawaii more than 63 years ago.

Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said: “Reaching 50% higher carbon dioxide than pre industrial is really setting a new benchmark and not in a good way.

“If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.”

Because carbon dioxide is a key driver of climate change, the findings show that reducing the use of fossil fuels, deforestation and other practices that lead to carbon emissions must be a top priority, Pieter Tans, a scientist with NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, said in a report on the emissions.

“We are adding roughly 40 billion metric tons of CO2 pollution to the atmosphere per year. That is a mountain of carbon that we dig up out of the Earth, burn, and release into the atmosphere as CO2 - year after year,” he said.

Despite the pandemic, scientists were not able to see a drop in the overall amount of carbon in the atmosphere partly because of wildfires, which also release carbon, as well as the natural behaviour of carbon in the atmosphere, the report said.

And although coronavirus slowed transportation and travel by about 7 per cent, it was too small to make a significant difference.

Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register significantly.

In 2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate change to below what’s considered dangerous levels by limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Additional reporting by agencies