The cause of global warming is showing no signs of slowing as heat-trapping carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere increased to record highs in its annual Spring peak, jumping at one of the fastest rates on record, officials announced Monday.

Carbon dioxide levels in the air are now the highest they’ve been in more than 4 million years because of the burning of oil coal and gas. The last time the air had similar amounts was during a less hospitable hothouse Earth before human civilization took root, scientists said.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration announced that the carbon dioxide level measured in May in Hawaii averaged 424 parts per million. That’s 3 parts per million more than last year’s May average and 51% higher than pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm. It is one of the largest annual May-to-May increases in carbon dioxide levels on record, behind only 2016 and 2019, which had jumps of 3.7 and 3.4 parts per million.

“To me as an atmospheric scientist, that trend is very concerning,” said NOAA greenhouse gas monitoring group leader Arlyn Andrews. “Not only is CO2 continuing to increase despite efforts to start reducing emissions, but it’s increasing faster than it was 10 or 20 years ago.”

Emissions used to increase by maybe 1 part per million per year, but now they are increasing at twice and even three times that rate, depending on whether there is an El Nino, Andrews said.

“The relentless rise in atmospheric CO2 is incredibly worrying if not wholly predictable,” said Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb, who was not part of the research.

Carbon dioxide levels are rising so that each year is higher than the last. However, there’s a seasonal cycle with carbon dioxide so that it reaches its highest saturation point in May. That’s because two-thirds of the globe’s land is in the northern hemisphere and plants suck carbon dioxide out of the air, so during late spring and summer carbon dioxide levels fall until they start rising again in November, Andrews said.

Carbon dioxide levels rise more during El Nino climate cycles because it is hotter and drier in the Tropics. An El Nino is brewing. That 3.0 increase may be a sign of an El Nino bump, she said.

There are two main ways of tracking greenhouse gases. One is to monitor what’s coming out of smokestacks and exhaust pipes, but about half of that is absorbed by the oceans and lands, Andrews said.

The other way is to measure how much carbon dioxide is in the air. NOAA and partner agencies measure all around the world. Hawaii has the longest history of direct measurements and is the home of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Keeling Curve, which has kept track of carbon in the air since 1958 when the May reading peaked at 317.5. Emissions have gone up about 33% since then.

“Current emissions are going to remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years and they’re going to continue to trap heat energy near Earth’s surface for thousands of years,” Andrews said.

Because of that “we are still dealing with CO2 in the atmosphere that was emitted in the early-to-mid 20th century,” University of Oklahoma meteorology professor Jason Furtado, who wasn’t part of the monitoring teams, said in an email. “This is why we have to see emissions DROP in order to have a chance to reverse climate change. And even if/when we reverse the CO2 emissions rate, it will take some time before the climate system responds.”

This year NOAA had a complication in its reading.

NOAA and the Scripps Institution have two distinct monitors that have slightly different measurements. Scripps measured 423.8 parts per million and often runs a bit below NOAA. Both have been at the remote Mauna Loa volcano for decades but last November’s eruption cut off power to the NOAA monitor and it’s been unable to use it since. NOAA established another one at Mauna Kea Volcano, 21 miles away.

Scripps got their Mauna Loa site working and put one at Mauna Kea and their data shows that Mauna Kea is an accurate substation for Mauna Loa, Andrews said.

Many activists and scientists advocate for returning to 350 parts per million levels.

“CO2 now is higher than any time in the last 4 to 4.5 million years when the atmosphere was about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.9 degrees Celsius) warmer and sea levels were 5 to 25 meters (16 to 82 feet) higher,” Andrews said.

Temperatures were higher with similar amount of carbon dioxide in the air because carbon dioxide traps heat for so long and millions of years ago the build up of carbon dioxide was much more gradual, allowing heat to build and ice to melt to raise seas, scientists said.

“We are absolutely at levels unseen in human civilization,” Furtado said. “Humans are running a massive experiment on the Earth climate system via burning carbon, and the results are turning out not great for a lot of people on this planet.”

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The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began.

And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans.

Carbon dioxide levels peak every May just before plant life in the Northern Hemisphere blossoms, sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere and into flowers, leaves, seeds and stems. The reprieve is temporary, though, because emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation and electricity far exceed what plants can take in, pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year.

“Reaching 50% higher carbon dioxide than preindustrial is really setting a new benchmark and not in a good way,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the research. “If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.”

Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather — storms, wildfires, floods and droughts — worse and more frequent and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen. In 2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate change to below what’s considered dangerous levels.

The one-year jump in carbon dioxide was not a record, mainly because of a La Nina weather pattern, when parts of the Pacific temporarily cool, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist Ralph Keeling. Keeling’s father started the monitoring of carbon dioxide on top of the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Loa in 1958, and he has continued the work of charting the now famous Keeling Curve.

Scripps, which calculates the numbers slightly differently based on time and averaging, said the peak in May was 418.9.

Also, pandemic lockdowns slowed transportation, travel and other activity by about 7%, earlier studies show. But that was too small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register much.

The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.

“Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million and it took the Earth system, the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.”

By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that same amount.

“The world is approaching the point where exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research.

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