Weather News

Historic year for carbon dioxide concentration

Ben Domensino, Tuesday October 25, 2016 - 14:56 AEDT

The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has reached an unprecedented peak and is on track to set a new record in 2016.

Carbon dioxide reached a concentration of 400 ppm last year for the first time in recorded history. The value appeared at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii early in 2015 and has since been registered in other parts of the world, including the Cape Grim Air Pollution Station in Tasmania.

Now, 2016 is shaping up to be the first time in which this threshold is exceeded for an entire calendar year, according to a report released by the World Meteorological Organization this week.

To put 400 ppm into perspective, our global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was 278 ppm before 1750. This means that today's value is 140 percent higher than it was before the industrial revolution.

So why is 400 ppm an important figure?

Aside from pointing out a sizeable increase in carbon dioxide concentrations during recent times, this nicely rounded number highlights a milestone in our climate's history. It's not a maximum threshold or terminal tipping point, rather a previously distant marker we have now reached.

With 2016 on its way to becoming our first 400 ppm calendar year, we are navigating through uncharted waters. We simply haven't seen this much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere before and are living in a live experiment.

Scientists are constantly trying to find out what types of weather our changing atmosphere will produce in the future.

Meteorologists often stick to the old adage 'climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.' Time will tell what weather our unfamiliar climate has in store for us in the future.

- Weatherzone

© Weatherzone 2016

Enter a postcode or town name for local weather, or text to search the site. » advanced search

Weather News

» all stories

A very wet weekend ahead for NSW

14:35 AEST Rainfall is set to intensify over the weekend and early next week, with hundreds of millimetres in just three days possible across parts of the central NSW coastline. The heavy rainfall forecast at the end of this week will follow a prolonged period of rainfall which began on Tuesday, generated by a coastal trough lingering off the NSW coast for days. Nord’s Wharf Oval in the Hunter Valley recorded 93mm in the 24 hours leading up to 9am Wednesday, May 5.