Trends in CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, SF₆

Weekly average CO₂ at Mauna Loa

Preliminary weekly (red line), monthly (blue line) and daily (green points) averages at Mauna Loa for the last year.

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The graph, updated daily, shows as individual points daily mean CO₂, and weekly means up to and including the week previous to today.

The weekly mean (red bar) is simply the average of all days in the week (Sunday to Saturday) for which a background value could be defined. Note that the “Weekly value from 1 year ago” shown in the box above the graph is for an average of 7 days starting exactly 365 days before the current week, so it may not be a Sunday-Saturday week. The 1 year ago weekly value is not plotted on the graph.

The daily means are based on hours during which CO₂ was likely representative of “background” conditions, defined as times when the measurement is representative of air at mid-altitudes over the Pacific Ocean. That air has had several days time or more to mix, smoothing out most of the CO₂ variability encountered elsewhere, making the measurements representative of CO₂ over hundreds of km or more.

The selection process is designed to filter out any influence of nearby emissions, or removals, of CO₂ such as caused by the vegetation on the island of Hawaii, and likewise emissions from the volcanic crater of Mauna Loa. We require low variability within each hour and between successive hourly averages, as well as a degree of persistence of the likely valid "background" hours between successive days. Thus, some of the hours that are initially designated as background, may still be flagged as unlikely to represent background conditions as information about the following days becomes available.

For details, see ”How we measure background CO2 levels at Mauna Loa”.

The average standard deviation of day to day variability, calculated as the difference from the appropriate weekly mean, equals 0.38 ppm for the entire record.

These data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks.

Atmospheric increase of CO₂ over 280 ppm in weekly averages of CO₂ observed at Mauna Loa.

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This figure shows the atmospheric increase of CO₂ over 280 ppm in weekly averages of CO₂ observed at Mauna Loa. The value of 280 ppm is chosen as representative of pre-industrial air because it is close to the average of CO₂ measured and dated with high time resolution between the years 1000 and 1800 in an ice core from Law Dome, Antarctica. [Etheridge et al., 1996]. Although the time resolution of old air locked in ice cores is not enough to preserve seasonal cycles, there is no doubt that the seasonal cycle, which is mostly caused by photosynthesis and respiration of ecosystems on land, was similar to what we observe today. Therefore, for the comparison with pre-industrial times the Mauna Loa weekly data have been first deseasonalized by subtracting the observed average seasonal cycle, and then subtracting 280 ppm. The enhancement of the CO₂ mole fraction in the atmosphere over pre-industrial is expressed both as ppm and as a percentage change since the year 1800.

Data are reported as a dry air mole fraction defined as the number of molecules of carbon dioxide divided by the number of all molecules in air, including CO₂ itself, after water vapor has been removed. The mole fraction is expressed as parts per million (ppm). Example: 0.000400 is expressed as 400 ppm.