Red alert — the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing year-by-year due to human activity. It’s leading to a warming Earth, but just how quickly — and how badly it will change the environment around us — is hard to say.
NASA released a new video showing how carbon dioxide — a product mainly of fossil fuels — shifts during a typical year. Billed as the most accurate model to date, the emissions shown in 2006 (tracked by ground-based sources) show how wind currents across the globe spread the gas across the globe. The red you see up there indicates high concentrations. The full video is below the jump.
In spring and summer, plants absorb carbon dioxide and the amount in the atmosphere above that hemisphere decreases. In fall and winter, carbon dioxide is not absorbed as well since the plants are dead or dormant. Also seen in the video is carbon monoxide that spreads out from forest fires, particularly in the southern hemisphere.
“Despite carbon dioxide’s significance, much remains unknown about the pathways it takes from emission source to the atmosphere or carbon reservoirs such as oceans and forests,” NASA stated.
“Combined with satellite observations such as those from NASA’s recently launched OCO-2 [Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2], computer models will help scientists better understand the processes that drive carbon dioxide concentrations.”
The model is called GEOS-5 and was made by scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s global modeling and assimilation office.
Source: NASA
Nice polemic. A gas doesn’t “bleed” anywhere unless it’s from a container. Just because it’s colored red to scare people doesn’t mean it’s blood. You silly warmists!
Blah-blah, wah-wah. You’re in the misinformed minority, you mean spirited parrot.
It does NOT cause any warming. Last two decades no warming has occurred, inspite of exponentially increasing CO2 emissions. That’s an interesting thing for climate scientists to deal with. It saddens me to see that so many instead ignore and deny this natural fact and instead drive some kind of political crusade. Why do they do that? What is their motive for lying?
Money, lots of money …
Climate scientists and scientists in general, contrary to popular opinion make little money to actually live on. They are by no means rich. Their grant monies all go to their research and isn’t dictated by what they discover. That’s simply not how science works. You are ignorant. Talk with some actual scientists about it instead of listening to conservative mouth piece radio personalities.
technaut. As an ex meteorological scientist let me tell you I could have made more money working in a call centre. Or selling plots of land on the moon to idiots with more money than sense.
Look up the history of what it took to remove lead from gas in this country and who was funding the opposition movement stating the same disinformation types you minority of parroting ignoramuses are with this. It’s not like this same scenario hasn’t played out before and been found to be on the side of the “alarmists”. Same happened with alcohol, women and “blacks”… Same happening right now with hemp, marijuana and gay marriage. “Gateway Drug!!!” “Destroying the Family”! Shut up and kindly allow the future to occur and prove you wrong. Thank you kindly.
You don’t offer any evidence just bland opinion. Try looking at some of the IPCC reports where you’ll see evidence a plenty. What’s your motive for denying?
Actually, there has been considerable warming in the last two decades, and that’s in spite of the fact that solar forcing has diminished. What that means is, despite the Sun offering less energy to our planet – which in the past would mean global cooling – we’re still getting warmer. This was determined by extensive research by climate scientists, and was included in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report from 2012.
Perhaps you should consult this report, or NASA or the NAOO’s own research on the subject in order to make a more informed appraisal:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/
The last century’s CO2 increases are likely mostly due to human activity. Probably best to make rational moves to limit substantially increasing CO2 emissions. However, the Climate Change hysteria is unfounded. CO2 is up but temperatures are not rising anywhere near the levels predicted by climate models despite numerous revisions. In real science, data trumps models. Something else, political ideology and government funding, is driving the outcry.
As seems usual for this subject these days, the first to post comments on this subject come from the community seeking to dismiss the importance of the data revealed by this article. Would that our earth sciences were funded as well as these folk seem to think it is. A much underfunded NASA is still able to produce good science despite these protestations from the accolites of the extraction industries.
The original Orbiting Carbon Observatory quite possibly failed to reach orbit because NASA was using an unproven launch vehicle from the lowest bidder to save money. The OCO-2 is now in orbit thanks to a better, though obsolete launch vehicle. It has these folk all in a bother as it shows directly what previous satellites had to glean from other effects.
Those of us who built the previous satellites were hoping that the warming effects of CO2 would be shown not to be so wide spread as we are finding them to be. Yes data trumps models, it always does and revisions go in one direction or the other from time to time. The data here presented is hard to dispute. Industrialized humans are concentrated where the carbon emissions arise. Missing in this presentation is ocean temperatures worldwide. those are still rising even if they are not at the upper limits of previous models. CO2 may be the driving force today, a gas which takes several lifetimes to dissipate, but if it brings the shorter dissipating Methane Clathrates out of cold storage in the arctic and into the atmosphere as gasses in huge quantities, it will not matter if the CO2 driven global temperature doesn’t rise as high as according to the models. We as a species numbering 7 to 9 billion will not survive.
And should some of us manage to survive, say by holing up in caves in Antarctica, What then will we have left to keep us warm from the Ice age that will follow? Using those remaining fossil fuels conservatively at a much slower rate will be better for us all, and that’s not politics which is short term in nature, it is prudence.
Respect to the Koch-Brother puppets. They still try to dismiss SCIENCE, regardless the fact that nobody sane takes them serious for a second.
🙂
That is a mesmerising video. I love the daily pulsation of the emissions (seems most prominent in June). And that region of China seems to be constantly spewing.
Yeah I noticed that splodgy bit of china. Wonder whats underneath?
Not much crosses from the northern hemisphere to the southern one according to this model. We seem to have a control for this natural experiment.
Notice how higher levels of CO2 get the garish colors but in the spring and summer when levels drop the display becomes transparent, no dramatic brightly colored swirls of low carbon gas. Not an honest presentation in my view.