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NNadir

(34,593 posts)
Sun Nov 26, 2023, 09:05 AM Nov 2023

At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, the Week to Week 10 Year Comparator Is the 3rd Highest Ever.

As I've indicated repeatedly in my DU writings, somewhat obsessively I keep a spreadsheet of the weekly data at the Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide Observatory, which I use to do calculations to record the dying of our atmosphere, a triumph of fear, dogma and ignorance that did not have to be, but nonetheless is, a fact.

Facts matter.

When writing these depressing repeating posts about new records being set, reminiscent, over the years, to the ticking of a clock at a deathwatch, I often repeat some of the language from a previous post on this awful series, as I have been doing here with some modifications. It saves time.

As I note in this series of posts, the concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide which are killing the planet fluctuate sinusoidally over the year, with the rough sine wave superimposed on a quadratic axis:



Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2

About two months ago we hit the autumnal local minimum for 2023, 418.29 ppm; the concentrations will rise until May or June. We may reasonable expect readings well in excess of 426 ppm, since we are doing nothing at all to address climate change.

There is considerable noise in these readings, and a way of leveling them is to look at the data over a 10 year period, which the observatory reports along with week to week comparators in the previous year.

Here is the current report of weekly data at the observatory:

Week beginning on November 19, 2023: 421.21 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.38 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.26 ppm
Last updated: November 26, 2023


Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 11/26/2023)

The comparator with week 46 of 2022 is a relatively modest 2.83 ppm higher; the average for 2023 for week to week comparators to 2022 is 2.55 ppm, with four readings being in the top 50 out of 2495 weekly readings in my spreadsheet, the highest being 4.40 ppm recorded in the week beginning 7/23/2023 (the ninth highest of all).

For this week it is the comparator with week 46 of 2013 that is remarkable. It is 25.95 ppm higher in 2023, the third highest of all such comparators going back to 1984. All of the top 50 ten year week to comparators have taken place since 2019 (when there were two), with 11 of these in 2023, and 16 in 2022.

Things are getting worse faster than ever.

People can lie, to each other and to themselves, but numbers don't lie.

Have a pleasant Sunday.
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At the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory, the Week to Week 10 Year Comparator Is the 3rd Highest Ever. (Original Post) NNadir Nov 2023 OP
F¿{. cachukis Nov 2023 #1
422.23 Snackshack Nov 2023 #2

Snackshack

(2,541 posts)
2. 422.23
Sun Nov 26, 2023, 10:21 AM
Nov 2023

PPM of CO2 in atmosphere is what was shown 3 days ago. Today the site shows “unavailable”. But it was 280ppm at start of industrial age. 422ppm of CO2 is going to without doubt go right past the 2C agreed on at Paris because at 2C it was still thought that we could deal with it. We certainly did not want to stress out poor corporations and be meanies asking them to clean their processes up and their house because OMG it would have impacted us also and made some things a bit harder & well, shit can’t have that…no,no,no all those poor CEOs would have lost money for share holders and HFS…so we said we will give 2C but no more…well at 422.23ppm of CO2 we will blow right past 2C, it’s easily going to go to 5C which ends most life, likely it’s gonna to be 8-10C+ easily once temp catches and stabilize.

Heat is everything in this set up of sun / planet / solar system. Because the natural state of space is very very cold. A 5C uptick in temp changes everything and kills a lot of life. Weather patterns, ocean currents, migration, jet streams, sea level, the very cycle of night and day. There are many system that depend on the cooling night brings to survive. Many Ocean systems will simply collapsed and disappear except for the very deep systems that already live in ~800c water temps. Human population will shrink by billions. Right now we would need 2.3 more Earths to feed the population if food had to be made naturally. It’s only through high volume mfg food production that 8 billion can be sustained and big, huge part of this is weather. As patterns change rain will move and the “bread baskets” we depend on for life are gone. As rain changes snow pack also changes. Rivers we have depended on for 1000’s of years will dry up / change course. Everything expands when it gets hot the oceans do this too they are huge heat will expand the water which will cause sea level rises along with melting snow now.

…and I have not even gone into these “tipping points” where systems will reach a point that nothing we do will be able to reverse it. Look at Perma Frost huge swaths of perma frost are thawing. Perma Frost holds Methane which is 4x worse than CO2 for trapping heat. Look at the giant holes they are finding the “Cryovolcanoes” they are called. Greenland is another. The sea ice around Greenland does not have to melt it just has to get weak enough it no longer acts as a dam holding back to the glaciers inland in Greenland that gravitationally want to slide off the land into the Ocean once that starts there is no stopping it until it’s run its course.

By 2100 everything you see and know today will have begun to change in ways that we can’t predict because we do not have a comprehensive understanding of how all this goes together and works as well as it does to say how it falls apart from heat.

The Earth is like a Horse in a way. It is a huge powerful animal but it still has weak ankles and if one breaks that’s it, it’s over for the horse unless it’s won lots of $$$ already. Every bio/weather system on Earth has parts as delicate as that ankle even though it’s a huge planet these “achilles heels” exist all over. Crucial points that are not robust, tough enough to with stand just a couple degrees rise in temp it will end them.

From CO2 Daily:

“As of April 2023, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere was about 410 parts per million (ppm). This is a 50% increase from the 280 ppm recorded before the Industrial Revolution. The current concentration is the highest it's been in at least 3 million years”

3 million years.

“Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace Wells tells an unvarnished, massaged truth on climate change. Anyone whose timeline extends into the 2060-2070-2080s and on I would recommend reading. To get at least a partial view about what is already baked into the system that IS going to happen.

I don’t know that there is a way to prepare for a total planet wide disaster like what’s coming but we told ourselves “get under the desk when you see the mushroom cloud and you will be fine…” FFS, so maybe there is?

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