Climate Change - Rising CO2 Levels

It’s frequently in the news, Climate change. Droughts are happening in different parts of the world. Hurricanes, Typhoons, Cyclones, Floods and Wildfires are becoming more frequent and more dangerous. Is this due to the rising CO2 levels?

Did you know that the CO2 levels naturally rise and fall throughout the year?

During spring and summer time there is a low CO2 level as the leaves on trees are able to change the Carbon dioxide into oxygen but in autumn and winter when the leaves fall and die they release the Carbon in to the atmosphere which builds up the CO2 level resulting in a high CO2 level.
Everyone knows how the seasons work, the spring and summer are warmer as the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun and autumn and winter are colder due to the northern hemisphere being further away from the sun.

Rising and falling CO2 levels coincide with the way the earth is facing. The northern hemisphere has more land mass than the southern hemisphere resulting in more trees. More trees means less CO2 in the warmer months but more CO2 in the colder months. Although the southern hemisphere has some land mass, the majority of it is near to the equator which means there is less trees to convert the CO2 in the spring/summer resulting in a rise in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is a drop in CO2 when the northern hemisphere is closer to the sun as there are more trees to convert the gas and fewer trees to produce it (fallen leaves).

There have been at least five ice ages throughout the earth’s history and scientists have identified that before each one there was a low level of CO2 but after there was a high level as all the CO2 that was trapped in the ice was being released due to the ice melting. Scientist can record this by doing coring in the ice. They know about the correlation between the ice ages and CO2 levels as they can find out the concentration of carbon in the ice.

Due to our over-use of fossil fuel there has been a sharp increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The high level of CO2 is three times the amount of previous highs and is predicted that it will be three times the size again by 2050 if we keep using the fossil fuels as we do.

When the sun’s rays come in contact with our atmosphere some of them bounce back in to space, some go through hit the earth and then bounce back into space and others hit the earth then the CO2 in the atmosphere then the earth again and so on. But as there CO2 levels are rising, the sun’s rays can’t escape so they bounce around the world resulting in an increase in temperature. This rise in temperature causes catastrophic disasters across the world and they will continue to get worse.

To slow this rising level of CO2 we could stop cutting down trees in rain forests, slow our use of fossil fuels down or get better alternatives.