Greenhouse Gases

Atmospheric Concentration of Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other gases (e.g., methane-CH4, nitrous oxide-N2O, halogenated compounds-mainly fluorinated gases) in the atmosphere trap some of the heat from the Sun that radiates from Earth’s surface. This process, known as the “greenhouse effect,” makes Earth habitable. Human activities since the late 1800s have raised the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, strengthening the greenhouse effect, warming the climate, and driving changes that cascade throughout the environment (IPCC 2021, 2023).

CO₂ contributes the largest share of long‑term warming due to its large emissions and long atmospheric lifetime (IPCC, 2021). This makes the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million (ppm), a benchmark indicator of environmental conditions. The longest, most widely cited direct CO₂ record is from measurements taken at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory.

Occurring along with these long-term global scale human-induced changes in climate are natural patterns of variability that affect weather at regional and local scales over the short term. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), with its El Niño and La Niña phases, is a prominent pattern of natural climate variability in the Pacific. The presence of such significant year-to-year and decade-to-decade variability can make it difficult to discern long-term changes in climate due to increasing greenhouse gases.

In this section we will download the data from the Mauna Loa Station and we will create a time series plot and a table summarizing the evolution of CO2 since 1958