“Not only is CO2 now at the highest level in millions of years, it is also rising faster than ever. Each year achieves a higher maximum due to fossil-fuel burning, which releases pollution in the form of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” said Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 program that manages the institution’s 56-year-old measurement series. “Fossil fuel pollution just keeps building up, much like trash in a landfill.”
The record two-year growth rate observed from 2022 to 2024 is likely a result of sustained high fossil fuel emissions combined with El Niño conditions limiting the ability of global land ecosystems to absorb atmospheric CO2, said John Miller, a carbon cycle scientist with the Global Monitoring Laboratory.
The Mauna Loa data, together with measurements from sampling stations around the world, are incorporated into the Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, a foundational research dataset for international climate scientists and a benchmark for policymakers attempting to address the causes and impacts of climate change.
Global directly-anthropogenic CO2 emissions - things we measure and attribute to countries - have been flat in the period 2019-23 (except for covid dip), and maybe falling this year (due to changes in China). However there are also climate -> carbon feedbacks. The most obvious are forest fires which tend to peak during El Niño years (it’s a repeating pattern - I even remember 1998 seeming bad). Heating also enhances respiration by bugs in soils, and reduces the solubility of CO2 in seawater - the ocean is the largest and most long-term CO2 sink. El Niño also changes ocean circulation temporarily, but I forget which way this impacts CO2 (it’s not trivial - you have to think about the history and future of large patches of water).
So, if known emissions are flat, but there is a record increase in the atmosphere, that means those feedbacks are worse. It takes a while to disentangle the factors, but this is not a surprise to me.
Could you provide a link (or more) that support this claim?
The article posted here tells a very different story and has many links to support what they say.