To abcnews.com I’d ask if it’s just me or do none of the links in the story go to the report? And why doesn’t the article tell us what the CO2 level is that they’re basing this on? Because I thought Mauna Loa was seeing numbers above 410, which IIRC would put us mid-Pliocene, or roughly 3-10 million years ago. Maybe Mauna Loa is higher than global average, which is why I want to see the report …
The report says the following, which I interpret as being a comment only on the last 800,000 years, saying nothing about how far back we’d have to go to find an equivalent CO2 level.
Greenhouse gases were highest on record. The major greenhouse gas concentrations, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide, rose to new record high values during 2018. The global annual average atmospheric CO2 concentration was 407.4 parts per million (ppm). This was 2.4 ppm greater than 2017 amounts and was the highest in the modern 60-year measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years.
Here’s why I said (roughly) 3-10MYA. Low-res graph, I need a better version.
I’ve not seen that graph previously. Let me revise my opinion. Yup, we are fucked. Press never reports sciency stuff with great accuracy or detail (with the exception of Ars Technica, one of my daily reads) mostly because, let’s face it, science is hard. You can’t fit real science on a t-shirt or bumper stickers. And most folks just are not sufficiently familiar with the subjects to know shit from shinola. And why? Our education system sucks, and or press is lazy. Nonetheless, you are correct. Last time the world looked like this, there were no hominids to experience it. Brave New World, eh?
on a day-to-day-basis, but there is also some noise in the data and the levels are fluid, depeding on night/day/winter/spring/summer/fall. so the average of 407 over the whole year 2018 seems about right.
and apart from this; the data is for 2018, not this year. comparison this time of year 2018 and now from Mauna Loa Observatory:
Aug. 1, 2019: 410.51 ppm Aug. 1, 2018: 407.53 ppm
maximum daily average this year was from may 15th with 415.7 ppm.
Yeah, down here in the NoVaDCMd area we no longer get “Summer Rain”, it’s all rage and fury with violent down bursts and torrential rain with drought in between.
“The worst section includes the lower Potomac and Patuxent rivers and much of the Bay, from Baltimore to the mouth of the York River.”
This is why there haven’t been in jellyfish in much of the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the U.S., for two years now. Everything from plankton to jellies to crabs to fish are being affected by this dead zone.
As predicted the East Coast is getting more heavy tropical rains due to climate change and it’s all draining into the bay with sediment.
If you take the actual area (just the ice, not the extent over the whole area) its even worse with just 2.47 mio km² (not as bad as 2012 yet, but there are still 3 weeks to go). that is the real figure.
That’s why it took scientists by surprise when dozens of lightning strikes were detected within 300 nautical miles of the North Pole this past weekend. In fact, it was so unusual that it was highlighted on Twitter by the National Weather Service’s office in Fairbanks, Alaska. A bulletin of theirs said this was “one of the furthest north lightning strikes in Alaska forecaster memory.”
At the same time, the intense wildfires raging throughout Siberia may have given the warm air mass an injection of smoke. Those particles help clouds form, so it’s possible, said Swain, they may also have played a role in producing lightning-capable clouds.
