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400 ppm World, Part 1: Large Changes Still to Come

By Jesse Farmer (first of two parts)

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration announced on May 10 that atmospheric carbon dioxide, or CO2, concentrations surpassed 400 parts per million, or ppm, in the clean air above Mauna Loa, Hawaii, where researchers have been testing the air for CO2 for more than 50 years.

Ordinarily, a gas in the atmosphere passing a certain level would garner little attention, even from scientists. CO2 is a different story, but why? Why should society care that CO2 is now as high as 400 ppm? The reasons are multiple, but all trace back to the relationship between CO2 and temperature. In this first of two parts, I will discuss why scientists place so much emphasis on the amount of CO2, and how today’s CO2 levels compared to the past. Next, I will explore the impacts of a 400 ppm CO2 world, particularly how it might affect sea-level rise.

Ice core records of CO2 and climate over the past million years, NOAA
Ice core records of CO2 and climate over the past million years: The concentration of CO2 in air bubbles within Antarctic ice cores (orange, scale at left) and change in Antarctic temperature relative to today (blue, scale at right). Present-day CO2 concentration is indicated by the orange dashed line. The chart shows that temperature and CO2 are tightly coupled over time, with higher CO2 corresponding to warmer temperatures. Data from NOAA Paleoclimatology Program

Why is CO2 Important for Temperature?

First and foremost, CO2 is no ordinary gas. Though a minor constituent of Earth’s atmosphere, CO2 plays an outsized role in influencing climate because of its “greenhouse” properties. The structure of a carbon dioxide atom allows it to reflect radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface that would otherwise return to space, trapping heat just like a greenhouse does. This can get very complicated very quickly. The web site Skeptical Science has an in-depth examination of the subject for those wanting more detail. But here’s the bottom line: When atmospheric CO2 concentrations increase, more outgoing radiation is absorbed, leading to warming of the Earth surface.

The relationship between CO2 and climate is especially evident when looking back through Earth’s history. A particular field of environmental science, paleoclimatology, studies past climates using clues from archives of Earth’s history, including rocks, sediments and ice. With information gathered from these archives, scientists seek to understand how and why Earth’s climate has changed in the past and what these mechanisms mean for current and future climate change.

Bärbel Hönisch
Bärbel Hönisch

“Paleoclimate studies provide very strong evidence that there is a tight connection between CO2 and climate,” notes Bärbel Hönisch, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Gas bubbles found in ice cores from Antarctica over the last 800,000 years demonstrate the close linkage between past atmospheric CO2 levels and past temperatures, estimated from the ice’s composition. Taken in the context of that long-term record, atmospheric CO2 today is nearly 50 percent higher than the highest level measured in the ice cores.

400 in Context: The Pliocene

For paleoclimatologists, the 400 ppm CO2 level is significant not so much for the absolute number, but rather because it suggests a return to a type of climate not seen on Earth for millions of years. “We’re passing through a number easily divisible by 100, but a year from now it will be 402 [ppm]… it’s an inexorable climb to higher values,” says Peter deMenocal, professor and chair of Columbia’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

As a consequence of this climb, “We are starting to head back into deep geologic time,” notes Rob DeConto, professor of climatology at University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

When was the last time CO2 levels were 400 ppm? Scientists know from ice cores that this cannot be any point in the past million years or so. To look at time periods before the ice cores, CO2 cannot be measured directly; rather, it has to be inferred from the geologic record. By measuring “proxies” of atmospheric CO2, such as physical or chemical variables that relate to atmospheric CO2, one can reconstruct CO2 levels in the past with a reasonable degree of precision.

But such measurements are not smooth sailing. An expert in CO2 proxies, Hönisch is candid about the difficulties. “There are only a handful of studies to reconstruct past CO2. It’s difficult—a lot of these proxies are in their infancy, and they are challenging and expensive measurements to make,” she says.

Maureen Raymo (Photo: Dan Grossman)
Maureen Raymo (Photo: Dan Grossman)

Nonetheless, the records produced by Hönisch and other laboratory groups converge on showing that the last time CO2 levels were around 400 ppm was some 3 to 5 million years ago during what is known by geologists as the Pliocene Epoch. “We’re definitely in the Pliocene now,” agrees Maureen Raymo, research professor at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

That the Pliocene is an analog for today’s CO2 levels is little comfort to paleoclimatologists. “If you go back to the Earth 3 million years ago, it was a very, very different world than today,” says deMenocal.

Rob DeConto
Rob DeConto

For instance, DeConto, Hönisch and Raymo all note that Greenland, covered in nearly a two mile-thick ice sheet today, was largely ice-free in the Pliocene. Scientists estimate that global sea level during the Pliocene was anywhere between 30 and 90 feet higher than it is today, according to a 2012 study. Temperatures along the East Coast of the United States were likely 5 degrees warmer on average than today. That may not sound like much, but imagine every 95-degree summer day being 100 degrees instead.

At higher latitudes, the temperature changes were even greater. Ellesmere Island, high within the Arctic Circle, is a striking example of the difference between the Pliocene and the present. Today, Ellesmere Island is covered with snow and glaciers, only reaching temperatures above freezing during the height of summer. But back in the Pliocene, Ellesmere Island was covered with forests, and was even home to an ancestor to modern camels. Evidence from these flora and fauna suggest Ellesmere Island was, on average, a whopping 32 degrees warmer than today during the Pliocene.

Pliocene, Ellesmere Island
Ellesmere Island, then and now: Left: Artist’s rendition of High Arctic camels on Ellesmere Island during the Pliocene (Julius Csotonyi/Canadian Museum of Nature). Right: The Osborn Range on Ellesmere Island at present day (Ansgar Walk/Wikimedia Commons).

Out of Equilibrium

Now that CO2 has hit 400 ppm, why haven’t camels returned to Ellesmere Island? And why didn’t the temperature on Ellesmere increase by 32 degrees on May 11?

The reason is that climatic response to CO2 is not instantaneous. “Our climate is vastly out of equilibrium with CO2 levels today, largely because of the oceans,” says deMenocal. Water has a large capacity to accumulate excess heat.Add up all the water in the ocean and you get a massive heat sink that takes a long time to adjust to the impact from CO2 changes.

Because paleoclimate records encompass broader time intervals, they give an image of what conditions look like at equilibrium. “The Pliocene is a good analog for how future conditions will be when they come to equilibrium with the current concentration of CO2, but that equilibrium can take two to three thousand years,” says Raymo. In short, we haven’t reached the point yet where the world’s climate behaves as would be expected in a 400 ppm world.

Peter deMenocal
Peter deMenocal

But we are well on our way. Even though it takes millennia to achieve equilibrium between CO2 and temperature, some effects of higher CO2 are already being realized. Parts of the climate system that are highly sensitive to changing CO2, such as Arctic sea ice and polar temperatures, are already responding. And the world is warming. “If you were born in the 1990s, almost every year of your life has been a record warm year. It’s remarkable,” says deMenocal.

“We are living in a world where the rate of change is accelerating,” adds deMenocal. “It’s like steering a supertanker through a narrow channel, but we have no idea how to steer the ship. And the ship is gaining speed.”

Jesse Farmer is studying for his PhD in paleoceanography at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. His research has been published in the journals Paleoceanography and Geophysical Research Letters. This article first appeared in the North Caroline Coastal Federation’s Coastal Review Online. For Part 2 of this series, look here.

Science for the Planet: In these short video explainers, discover how scientists and scholars across the Columbia Climate School are working to understand the effects of climate change and help solve the crisis.
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Billy
Billy
5 years ago

You are actually citing John cook’s “skeptical science” as an authoritative reference? He’s a cartoonist with a degree in psychology not a climate scientist!

CO2 is less than 10% of the overall GHE as confirmed by sensitive radiation equipment (ARM) differentiating the seasonal variability of CO2 against the big dog in the room – water vapor. If you can prove CO2’s ECS is anything above 1 degree C per doubling – I’ll eat it! Straight radiative physics puts ECS at about 1/3 degree C.

https://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon-dioxide-greenhouse-effect.html = CO2 is NOT controlling earth’s temperature and never did in the past.

Lisa B
Lisa B
Reply to  Billy
2 years ago

If you think that CO2 has never controlled the global temperature, then you need to explain how the climate escaped from the condition known as “Snowball Earth” (650 million years ago, during the Cryogenian period) – when glaciers and sea ice covered almost the entire planet.

Brad
Brad
3 months ago

The data actually shows CO2 levels rise after the temperature rises. That’s the real “inconvenient truth”. Or put another way, CO2 appears to be a result of temperature increases rather than a cause. Historically, the temperature of the earth has been warmer. Therefore, all the “doomsday” claims are baseless. Also, CO2 levels are 0.04% of the atmosphere. Of that 0.04%, 3 – 11% is attributed to man. We have no control of the 89-97% of the CO2 going into the atmosphere. So how exactly do we have an impact? There is way to much fearmongering, manipulating and bad science going on.