The Earth's monthly average for parts per million for atmospheric greenhouse gases has risen to an all-time high of 400, a milestone one official called "a matter of time."
According to BBC News, global carbon dioxide levels increased by more than 120 parts per million since before the Industrial Age, with most of it coming since 1980. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the new data Wednesday.
"It was only a matter of time that we would average 400 parts per million globally," Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, said in a press release. "We first reported 400 ppm when all of our Arctic sites reached that value in the spring of 2012. In 2013 the record at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory first crossed the 400ppm threshold. Reaching 400 parts per million as a global average is a significant milestone.
"This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global carbon dioxide concentrations to rise more than 120 parts per million since pre-industrial times... Half of that rise has occurred since 1980."
Previous data has only supported such growth, pegging the average annual rise of CO2 at 2.25ppm from 2012 to 2014.
"Elimination of about 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions would essentially stop the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," James Butler, director of NOAA's Global Monitoring Division, said in the release, "but concentrations of carbon dioxide would not start decreasing until even further reductions are made and then it would only do so slowly."
