How to Understand Why Atmospheric CO₂ Keeps Increasing Despite Stable Emissions
The complete guide to carbon sinks, residence time, and climate lag effects
Jenny Climate Journalist Nov 20
So here’s what’s messing with everyone’s heads right now. We keep hearing that worldwide carbon emissions have pretty much plateaued, yeah? Like, the growth rate is sitting at 0.6% per year now, down from a whopping 2% back in the day. Sounds positive, right? Well, buckle up because atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are absolutely soaring at record breaking levels. Between 2023 and 2024, we watched atmospheric CO₂ jump by 3.5 ppm, which is literally the biggest single year jump since scientists started keeping score back in 1957.
You’re probably wondering: “Hold on, how does that even work?”
The answer’s actually simple once you get it: we’ve been conflating two completely separate phenomena, and that confusion is basically why we’re careening toward environmental collapse.
The Water Analogy: Why Your Understanding Has Been Backwards This Whole Time
Picture yourself running a bath. The faucet? That’s carbon emissions, the stuff we’re constantly releasing from fossil fuels and our general recklessness. The drain represents natural carbon sinks, which includes forests, oceans, and soil that pull in CO₂ and lock it away.
Here’s what most people miss: just slowing down the flow from the faucet doesn’t stop the water level from rising. Not a chance.
Consider this: if water keeps pouring out of the faucet at high speed and you’ve only cracked the drain open a bit, the water keeps getting higher. You’re not adding more per unit of time, yet the drain can’t handle what’s already coming through. Welcome to 2024. We’re dumping around 10 gigatons of carbon into our skies annually. Meanwhile, the planet’s natural cleanup systems, which used to absorb roughly a third of what we throw at them, are running on empty.
The Heartbreaking Truth: Our Planet’s Carbon Absorbers Are Failing
This is where things get genuinely bleak.We’ve spent decades leaning on forests and oceans as our planetary custodians. Sure, we knew they were stressed, but we figured they’d just keep soaking up our CO₂ regardless. Turns out that’s not how this works.
During 2023 and 2024, both turned out to be scorching hot years, forests worldwide sucked up only around a third of the carbon dioxide they’d normally absorb in a typical year. Think about that for a second. The planet’s forest carbon sink hit its lowest level in twenty plus years. The culprit? Massive wildfires, specifically Canada’s northern forests torching, Bolivia burning through nearly 1.5 million hectares in a single year (their worst on record), plus enormous fires throughout the southern regions. Forests basically switched from being carbon storage to carbon release machines.
Genuinely apocalyptic energy, honestly.
But there’s additional bad news waiting.
The seas’ capacity to hold carbon? Also crashing. When water temperatures increase, the ocean loses its knack for storing carbon. We’re getting marine heatwaves that are absolutely trashing ecosystems that once served as our strongest protection against warming. And that tundra, you know, that frozen ground that’s been holding carbon for thousands of years? It’s switched roles, now releasing carbon instead of storing it because of fires and thawing permafrost.
Basically… our backup systems are shutting down. One after another.
El Niño: When Everything Goes Wrong Simultaneously
So you recall 2024, yeah? The year that broke temperature records. A major El Niño occurrence bears responsibility for some of that, which is the warm stage of an ocean circulation pattern that cycles every few years or so.
And this is where it gets genuinely crazy: during El Niño periods, the whole carbon system gets completely disrupted.
El Niño brings intense droughts and excessive heat to equatorial regions. Vegetation experiences stress and drying, becoming essentially useless at absorbing CO₂. Plants actually emit carbon back out when they’re parched and struggling. That 2015 to 2016 El Niño? It added around 8.8 billion tonnes of CO₂ into the air as a side effect, comparable to a third of what humans discharge annually. All because of one peculiar weather event.
The El Niño of 2024, combined with extraordinary drought and massive fires hitting the Amazon and southern Africa, resulted in land and water carbon absorption systems performing at diminished levels exactly at the moment we desperately required them operating at peak efficiency. Think of it like your emergency backup generator deciding to malfunction during a critical power outage.
Emissions Output versus Atmospheric CO₂ Presence: Quit Mixing These Up
Alright, straight shooting here. The reason folks are bewildered these days is the media keeps blending these separate ideas together, and frankly, it’s aggravating.
Emissions output = how much CO₂ we’re actively sending skyward at this instant.
Atmospheric CO₂ presence = the amount of CO₂ floating around in our air right now. It encompasses all the stuff we’ve ever released, collecting up like an unpaid bill.
Holding emissions flat doesn’t mean atmospheric CO₂ stops accumulating. It just indicates we’ve decreased the rate of worsening things. Yet we persist in worsening things. Perpetually. And nature’s capacity to eliminate it? Deteriorating annually.
Atmospheric CO₂ averaged 422.8 ppm in 2024, setting a new benchmark. And here’s the sobering bit: Between a fifth and three fifths of CO₂ from burning fuel hangs around for ten centuries minimum, with complete restoration spanning hundreds of millennia. We’re managing not just current releases. We’re managing accumulated carbon from centuries that our environment literally cannot process at sufficient velocity.
The Reason Individual CO₂ Bits Persist for Ages (Despite Brief 5 Year Cycles)
This element genuinely melted my brain the instant I comprehended it, so get ready.
Particular CO₂ particles spend roughly 4 to 5 years drifting through our sky. Seas, living things, and ground capture them relatively fast. However, and I’m talking about a significant however, when they vanish from the sky, they’re essentially swapping positions with CO₂ already submerged in the ocean.
They don’t vanish into oblivion. They simply relocate. The carbon circulation doesn’t annihilate carbon; it just redistributes it. Therefore, while individual atoms are constantly cycling between atmosphere and surroundings, the cumulative quantity of CO₂ everywhere keeps expanding because we’re introducing faster than nature processes.
Visualize it this way: you’ve got a tub (the atmosphere), and it connects to an enormous reservoir (the hydrosphere and biosphere). Individual liquid molecules swap back and forth perpetually. Yet if you continuously pour from an inexhaustible source quicker than it empties, water level ascends, regardless of molecular exchanges.
The atmospheric persistence of CO₂, referring to duration for skies to normalize post elevated CO₂, spans millennia. So yeah. We damaged it. Centuries worth? Nope. Millennia worth.
The Delay: The Environmental Disaster That’s Unavoidable
And man, here’s something else genuinely unsettling that disturbs my sleep.
Suppose we extinguished all emissions instantaneously, completely shut every petroleum operation, shuttered every facility, halted every aircraft, atmospheric CO₂ would persist rising for quite some time anyway. It’s basic physics.
There’s a postponement in the connection between dropping emissions and decreasing atmospheric concentrations. Investigation discovered that despite decreasing output, CO₂ levels show “momentary expansion,” signifying it continues climbing briefly via deferred processes. The research demonstrated that absent rapid emission cuts within approximately ten years, this momentary expansion could itself initiate irreversible climatic change.
No worries though, right?
It indicates the atmospheric warming we’re currently experiencing was fundamentally established ages past. And warming approaching in the next couple of decades? Pretty much baked in, regardless of alterations we implement today. The direction is established. The system has momentum.
Today’s Worldwide CO₂ Saturation Is Exceeding Every Forecast
Allow me to present the sobering statistics:
In 2024, skies averaged 422.8 ppm of CO₂, the maximum documented.
Between 2023 and 2024, levels rose 3.75 ppm, the steepest yearly leap ever documented.
This enormous jump transpired despite worldwide emission expansion being nearly nonexistent (approximately 0.1% growth in 2023).
CO₂ expansion annually has multiplied by three since the nineteen sixties.
The inconsistency is glaring: output is approximately steady, yet atmospheric CO₂ is rapidly climbing. The reason? We’ve passed the threshold where absorption systems cannot match our discharge.
The Escalating Trap: How Warming Intensifies Warming
Plus, because existence apparently savors maximum paradox, this situation feeds itself. Heating deteriorates carbon sinks, prompting extra CO₂ buildup, generating additional heating, which erodes sinks further.
It resembles an endless cycle of catastrophe.
Hotter conditions spark additional combustion → burning releases sequestered carbon → additional CO₂ reaches atmosphere → additional heating → additional combustion. Thermal ocean effects lessen CO₂ retention → extra CO₂ lingers → waterways get hotter → repeating cycle.
The statement from the Marine Biological Association put it directly: “The seas have served as our greatest protector against climate destabilization; proof now confirms that warming and intensifying maritime heat patterns are diminishing the seas’ capacity for carbon retention.
”We’re witnessing planetary defenses crumble moment by moment. And truthfully? It’s terrifying.
What’s the Bottom Line?
So essentially, the true, uncensored summary: keeping emissions at present record highs won’t aid us. Nowhere near.To genuinely shrink atmospheric CO₂, we’d require emissions decreases of around 60 to 80% from today’s levels. Maintaining? Nope. Decelerating expansion? Nope. Slashing significantly. And we require acting quickly enough for organic absorption systems to bounce back and restore themselves rather than deteriorate.
The “postponement” between slashing outputs and atmospheric CO₂ going down? We’re looking at roughly 10 to 15 years until unstoppable warming activates. Beyond that window, regardless of radical emission reductions, anticipate ages of elevated CO₂ and temperature increases.
And the finishing touch? Our absorption systems, those organic procedures we’ve depended on, are eroding when we’re most dependent on them. Vegetation that should sequester carbon ignites. Waters that should minimize warming intensify. The Amazon risks transitioning from storing carbon to generating it.
We’ve essentially weaponized the environment. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.The Uncomfortable Reality: Where We Actually Stand
Truthfully, I cannot supply an uplifting conclusion here. Not because I’m seeking drama, but because genuine conditions don’t warrant hopefulness, they necessitate action.
Atmospheric CO₂ accumulation persists upward despite static emissions because:
We maintain discharging carbon quicker than nature eliminates it.
Carbon dioxide endures in skies for ages or longer.
Organic absorption systems are collapsing from environmental stress.
A temporal separation persists between emission reductions and atmospheric CO₂ descent.
Warming erodes carbon absorbing systems, generating self reinforcing cycles.
Maintaining output steady? Resembles decreasing pace on a vehicle already plummeting down a ravine. Might offer seconds longer, yet trajectory stays identical.
We require emission cuts. Dramatic, urgent, constant cuts. Additionally, we must incorporate substantial carbon extraction methods and land restoration as organic sinks require backing. Vegetation requires opportunity to regenerate. Amazon protection is essential before transformation happens. We need severe output reductions to diminish water thermal anomalies.
Is development occurring with adequate velocity? Truthfully? Absolutely not. Nowhere near sufficient.
Yet grasping how atmospheric CO₂ persists climbing despite stable outputs represents progression toward realizing incremental enhancements fall short. Fundamental transformation is needed. Presently.
And when that registers as alarming? Absolutely. It definitely should. |
Santa Cruz Climate Action Network 