The latest report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact research finds that small changes in carbon dioxide levels have major impacts on the Earth’s climate. Too little leads to ice ages. Too much leads to overheating. Polar regions are effected the most by changes in CO2 levels and what they are telling us right now is that drastic changes are taking place that will affect all living things.
High atop Mauna Loa on the island of Hawai’i, there is an observatory scientists use to study the cosmos. At 14,000 feet above sea level, it has a clearer view of the heavens than most places on Earth. (It is a neighbor of Kilauea, the volcano that erupted this week after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck the island.) The observatory is also an ideal place to monitor the Earth’s atmosphere in a place with no local pollution from large cities. One of the instruments installed there measures the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.
Scientists at Dartmouth have uncovered important new information about carbon dioxide levels in the Eocene period, 60 million years ago, when global temperatures were as much as 30 degrees F warmer than today.
Rapid jumps in the temperatures of the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere over just a few decades time have been a somewhat common event during the glacial periods of the last 100,000 years or so.
The largest increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels happened in 2015, when it jumped by 3.05 parts per million, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii reported the unprecedented spike in CO2 levels this week, … [continued]
