UN agency: CO2 levels hit record high last year, causing more extreme weather

[riversedge]

Source: pbs


Science Oct 15, 2025 5:28 PM EDT

GENEVA (AP) — Heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere jumped by the highest amount on record last year, soaring to a level not seen in human civilization and “turbo-charging” the Earth’s climate and causing more extreme weather, the United Nations weather agency said Wednesday.

The World Meteorological Organization said in its latest bulletin on greenhouse gases, an annual study released ahead of the U.N.’s annual climate conference, that CO2 growth rates have now tripled since the 1960s, and reached levels that existed more than 800,000 years ago.



Emissions from burning coal, oil and gas, alongside more wildfires, have helped fan a “vicious climate cycle,” and people and industries continue to spew heat-trapping gases while the planet’s oceans and forests lose their ability to absorb them, the WMO report said.
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Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/un-agency-co2-levels-hit-record-high-last-year-causing-more-extreme-weather

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READ MORE: Trump called climate change a ‘con job’ at the United Nations. Here are the facts and context

[progree]

1. Growth rates of CO2 have accelerated from 2.4 ppm/year from 2011-2020 to 3.5 ppm/year in 2023-2024

Growth rates of CO2 have accelerated from an annual average increase of 2.4 parts per million per year in the decade from 2011 to 2020, to 3.5 ppm from 2023 to 2024, it said.

Bill Hare, the founder of research organization Climate Analytics, called the new data “alarming and worrying.”

Even though fossil fuel emissions were “relatively flat” last year, he said, the report appeared to show an accelerating increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, “signaling a positive feedback from burning forests and warming oceans driven by record global temperatures.”

[progree]

2. "The [CO2] sinks which we have, they started failing," ... "The Amazon indeed is emitting CO2"

Natural land sinks [for CO2], including the Amazon, remove about one-quarter of the carbon dioxide in the air and the world’s oceans suck up another quarter, she said.
...
“The sinks which we have, they started failing,” Tarasova said. “The Amazon indeed is emitting CO2, despite the general understanding that if you have a tree, it should absorb.”

“What also may happen is that at a certain point we may flip over the tipping point and then the whole Amazon forest just starts dying.”
...
WMO said. It noted that concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide — other greenhouse gases caused by human activity — have also hit record levels.

[maxsolomon]

3. That's nice.

America doesn't care anymore. China never did.