By AccuWeather staff writer
Despite an economic shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic that left planes on the runways and factories closed across the globe, carbon dioxide reached record-high levels this year.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
"The worst offenders are transportation (autos, jets) and coal-powered electric generating plants," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson said. "Wildfires, which are getting larger in size, also contribute a large amount of CO2 to the atmosphere."
FILE - In this Nov. 28, 2019 file photo, smoke and steam rise from a coal processing plant in Hejin in central China's Shanxi Province. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil, File)
The decline of rainforests is also contributing to the rise in CO2, as they absorb the greenhouse gas from the air.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, carbon emissions across the globe dropped by around 7%, however according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), CO2 emissions continue to rise.
"Atmospheric CO2 gas acts almost like a blanket, reducing the amount of heat that escapes from the Earth's surface on a daily basis," Anderson said. "As more heat ends up being trapped closer to the surface, the result is higher temperatures."
Atmospheric CO2 levels are what regulate the Earth's temperature. Data spanning hundreds of thousands of years reveals that when carbon dioxide levels are high, so are the Earth's temperatures. In addition, when CO2 levels are down, the Earth's temperature is cooler.
The global CO2 average gas increased by 12% since 2000, or 43.5 parts per million (PPM). PPM is how many particles out of every million air particles are CO2. This year, the daily PPM peaked at 421, compared to last year's 417.
The CO2 levels that are now being experienced are comparable to the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period, nearly 3.6 million years ago, when CO2 concentration was around 380 to 450 PPM.
FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2018, file photo, a cleaner wearing a mask against pollution sweeps a street in Beijing. The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. But with life and heat-trapping gas levels inching back toward normal, the brief pollution break will likely be “a drop in the ocean" when it comes to climate change, scientists said.(AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory, said without the pandemic shut down, 2020 would have held the highest carbon emissions increase on record.
"Even though the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 is very small, it is just enough to create an imbalance of heat coming into and back out from the Earth's surface," Anderson said.
According to Climate Central, CO2 does not have as strong of a warming potential as other emissions such as methane do. However, CO2 remains in the atmosphere much longer than other greenhouse gasses. CO2 emissions lasts in the atmosphere anywhere between 300 and 1,000 years.
FILE - In this April 26, 2020, file photo, empty lanes of the 110 Arroyo Seco Parkway that leads to downtown Los Angeles is seen during the coronavirus outbreak in Los Angeles, Calif. The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. But with life and heat-trapping gas levels inching back toward normal, the brief pollution break will likely be “a drop in the ocean" when it comes to climate change, scientists said.(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
According to Anderson, some impacts of global warming are rising sea levels that will continue to chip away at low-lying coastal areas, more extreme weather events, floods, heat waves, droughts, more intense hurricanes. Significant loss of sea ice in the Arctic.
It can also result in warming oceans, which will negatively impact different species and coral.
Droughts, heat waves and more wildfires are more impacts -- in some cases even resulting in famine.
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“If we want to mitigate the worst impacts, it’s going to take a deliberate focus on reducing fossil fuels emissions to near zero - and even then we’ll need to look for ways to further remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere," said Colm Sweeney, assistant deputy director of the Global Monitoring Lab.
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