Dear Colleagues! After rising steadily for decades, global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4%, or 2.3 billion tonnes, in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic squelched economic and social activities worldwide, according to new data on daily fossil fuel emissions. However, in May 2021, the Mauna Loa atmospheric observatory recorded a record carbon dioxide concentration, which averaged 419 ppm (parts per million). At the same time, over the past five months of this year, the concentration of CO2 has become 2.3 ppm higher than in the same period last year. What are the reasons for such an intensive increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere against the background of a decrease in anthropogenic CO2 emissions ???
This is a great question. But I believe there should be more variables that have to be addressed while studying the CO2 concentration in a region. During the pandemic and lockdown, a drop in transportation was obvious and it can be reviewed through the literature.
However, the COVID restriction is being lifted in some countries due to vast vaccination and proper control. People are interested and intensively are willing to travel around the globe and that consequently might significantly increase the concentration of GHG emissions in the atmosphere. I believe it would be better to divide it into different phases such as pre and post effects and consider different countries' feedback to lifted lockdowns.
best of luck
But the question is not about the pandemic, but what are the reasons for intensive increase of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2021 against the background of a decrease in anthropogeniс CO2 emissions ???
As you may see in this graph, it shows that temperature and CO2 rises also mostly very abruptly quick 10 times by unknown reasons in earth history without human influence and drops mostly far more slowier as it rose. May be nobody knows it why or what happend.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/Temperature-change-and-carbon-dioxide-change-measured-from-the-EPICA-Dome-C-ice-core-in-Antarctica-v2.jpg
more in
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06949
You seem to be forgetting other factors: Permafrost is melting in northern latitudes, both in North America and Northern Eurasia on an immense scale. That involves the release of vast amounts of methane into the air. Methane does not stay in the air long, but it is attacked by oxygen and breaks down to form CO2. Second source of methane is the ocean. Have you seen bubbles in the ocean? That used to be methane hydrate at the bottom of the sea. Due to higher sea temperatures, that hydrate is released from the bottom sediment and rises into the air.
Another source is the vast forest fires in the Amazon that provide some of the oxygen YOU breath in. Brazil's president is set to burn as much forest as possible to give it for "development": mining and farming. The poor indigenous Amazonians are trying to protect the forest, while the police/army/government officials are trying to destroy it. No one has intervened to help the forest.
Dear Michael. And then there's soil, the third largest reservoir of organic carbon. And in the soil there are temperature-sensitive saprotrophic microorganisms that decompose organic matter, and CO2 is released into the atmosphere. This amount is about ten times more than anthropogenic emissions. And the soil is warming up more and more ... This must also be taken into account.
Most likely, the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is due to the melting of the permafrost. A team of 25 researchers, explored this topic, supported the Permafrost Carbon Network, an international network of scientists with more than 400 members from over 130 research institutes spread across 21 different countries.
The results obtained by this team say that the amount potentially to be emitted by the permafrost are 60 billion tons of CH4 and 560 billion tons of CO2.
With the latest global warming, melting is increasing and therefore the emission of CO2 from permafrost and methane. Methane has a much shorter half-life than CO2 and therefore its quantity in the atmosphere increases. The synchrony with the Covid pandemic could be a coincidence.
Dear Roberto,
I mentioned the pandemic in connection with its impact on a global decrease in the intensity of air travel, a decrease in the rate of industrial production, that is, anthropogenic CO2 emissions. If anthropogenic emissions have decreased, then natural emissions are likely to have a greater impact. This could be CO2 emissions from the soil due to increased degradation of soil organic matter with increasing temperatures. and also, as you point out, the melting of glaciers.
The increase of CO2 concentration can occur not only with increase in its emissions, but also with a decrease in its processing by the forests of the planet.