![]() ![]() “For as long as we can remember, we’ve talked about Earth’s tropical rainforests as the ‘lungs’ of our planet,” he said. Positive anomalies are most likely sources of carbon dioxide, while negative anomalies are most likely to be sinks, or reservoirs, of carbon dioxide. where the carbon dioxide is always systematically higher or lower than in the surrounding areas). Map of the most persistent carbon dioxide “anomalies” seen by OCO-2 (i.e. Burning fossil fuels also depletes oxygen and lowers the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere. A relative decline in the amount of heavy carbon-13 isotopes in the atmosphere points to fossil fuel sources. Crisp points out that scientists know the increases in carbon dioxide are caused primarily by human activities because carbon produced by burning fossil fuels has a different ratio of heavy-to-light carbon atoms, so it leaves a distinct “fingerprint” that instruments can measure. This represents a 47 percent increase since the beginning of the Industrial Age, when the concentration was near 280 ppm, and an 11 percent increase since 2000, when it was near 370 ppm. The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is currently at nearly 412 parts per million (ppm) and rising. So changes are coming faster, and they’re becoming more significant.” Methane concentrations have increased 2.5 times since the start of the Industrial Age, with almost all of that occurring since 1980. Half of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the last 300 years has occurred since 1980, and one quarter of it since 2000. “The composition of Earth’s atmosphere has most certainly been altered. “One could say that because the atmosphere is so thin, the activity of 7.7 billion humans can actually make significant changes to the entire system,” he added. ![]() These changes should attract our attention. “Thanks to detailed observations of our planet from space, we’ve seen some changes over the last 30 years that are quite alarming: changes in precipitation patterns, in where and how plants grow, in sea and land ice, in entire ecosystems like tropical rain forests. “Humanity’s ability to thrive depends on these other planetary cycles and processes working the way they now do,” he said. Crisp says that while our atmosphere is very stable, those cycles aren’t. Thus, as humans change the atmosphere by emitting carbon dioxide, those changes will endure on the timescale of many human lives.Įarth’s atmosphere is associated with many types of cycles, such as the carbon cycle and the water cycle. Once it’s added to the atmosphere, it hangs around, for a long time: between 300 to 1,000 years. Carbon dioxide is a different animal, however. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechĬhanges to our atmosphere associated with reactive gases (gases that undergo chemical reactions) like ozone and ozone-forming chemicals like nitrous oxides, are relatively short-lived. Thermal blankets were later added to the instrument at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, where a Space-X Dragon capsule carrying OCO-3 launched on a Falcon 9 rocket to the space station on May 4, 2019. NASA’s OCO-3 instrument sits on the large vibration table (known as the "shaker") in the Environmental Test Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ![]()
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