News release
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach New High
Carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory peaked in May 2022 at an average of more than 420 parts per million, pushing the atmosphere further into territory not seen for millions of years, scientists from NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the Univer
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
State of Play
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.