The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), under the U.S. Department of Commerce, is an agency that attempts to better understand the natural world and help protect its precious resources. The organisation functions globally to monitor global weather and climate.
Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide (N2O), the three greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are the most significant contributors to climate change. Every spring, NOAA calculates and releases the preliminary global average levels of the three primary long-lived greenhouse gases – CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.
According to NOAA scientists’ finding, these three gases continued their historically high rates of growth in the atmosphere during 2022. NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory collected more than 14,000 air samples from monitoring stations around the world in 2022 – and analysed them.
They found that the global surface average for CO2 rose by 2.13 parts per million (ppm) to 417.06 ppm, roughly the same rate observed during the last decade. Atmospheric CO2 is now 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. 2022 was the 11th consecutive year CO2 increased by more than 2 ppm, the highest sustained rate of CO2 increases in the 65 years since monitoring began. Prior to 2013, three consecutive years of CO2 growth of 2 ppm or more had never been recorded.
Additionally, the atmospheric methane, which is far less abundant but much more potent than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere, increased to an average of 1,911.9 parts per billion (ppb). The 2022 methane increase was 14.0 ppb, the fourth-largest annual increase recorded since NOAA’s systematic measurements began in 1983. Methane levels in the atmosphere are now more than two and a half times their pre-industrial level.
In 2022, levels of the third-most significant anthropogenic greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, rose by 1.24 ppb to 335.7 ppb, which is tied with 2014 as the third-largest jump since 2000 and a 24% increase over its pre-industrial level of 270 ppb.
These GHG emissions are continuing to rise at an alarming pace – and will persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Are we really in the right track?
Pravita Iyer
Publisher & Director
