The global community has made remarkable progress in driving down the costs and increasing the use of key clean energy options. However, these impressive gains are still insufficient to meet our long-term climate goals while providing affordable, reliable, and secure energy supplies. source: mission innovationContinue Reading

This gure shows concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from hundreds of thousands of years ago through 2015, measured in parts per million (ppm). The data come from a variety of historical ice core studies and recent air monitoring sites around the world. Each line represents a di erent data source. Data source: Compilation...Continue Reading

This gure shows worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and several uorinated gases from 1990 to 2010. For consistency, emissions are expressed in million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. These totals include emissions and sinks due to land-use change and forestry.   Data sources: WRI, 2014; FAO, 2014 * HFCs are hydrofluorocarbons,...Continue Reading

This gure shows greenhouse gas emissions (positive values) and sinks (negative values), by source, in the United States from 1990 to 2014. For consistency, emissions are expressed in million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. All electric power emissions are grouped together in the “Electricity generation” sector, so other sectors such as “Residential” and “Commercial”...Continue Reading

WHY DOES IT MATTER? As greenhouse gas emissions from human activities increase, they build up in the atmosphere and warm the climate, leading to many other changes around the world—in the atmosphere, on land, and in the oceans. The indicators in other chapters of this report illustrate many of these changes. Such changes have both...Continue Reading

This figure shows how annual average temperatures worldwide have changed since 1901. Surface data come from a combined set of land-based weather stations and sea surface temperature measurements. Satellite measurements cover the lower troposphere, which is the lowest level of the Earth’s atmosphere. “UAH” and “RSS” represent two different methods of analyzing the original satellite...Continue Reading

Let’s think of carbon on its own terms. Let’s define the circumstance the carbon finds itself in. Okay, if I burn carbon and I release it into the atmosphere, I call it fugitive. It’s escaped. You don’t want to do more of that. In the case of plastic, it’s a form of carbon that’s often...Continue Reading

The European Parliament approved Tuesday 04-10-2016 the ratification of the Paris Climate Change Agreement aiming to limit global average temperatures growth and reduce emissions, the European Commission said. “Today the European Union turned climate ambition into climate action. The Paris Agreement is the first of its kind and it would not have been possible were it not...Continue Reading

Researchers have reconstructed atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past 2.1 million years in the sharpest detail yet, shedding new light on its role in the earth’s cycles of cooling and warming. The low carbon dioxide levels outlined by the study through the last 2.1 million years make modern day levels, caused by industrialization, seem...Continue Reading

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities. In 2014, CO2 accounted for about 80.9% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Carbon dioxide is naturally present in the atmosphere as part of the Earth’s carbon cycle (the natural circulation of carbon among the atmosphere, oceans, soil, plants, and animals)....Continue Reading