Prior to Covid-19, one of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center's most popular outreach activities at festivals and other gatherings was our jumbo carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration diagram. As visitors would stop by our booth, we would ask them to mark their birth year on the chart. Then, together, we'd talk about how much CO2 levels had changed from their birth year compared to present day, why CO2 levels are changing (human activities), and what it means for our current and future climate (global warming). For many, it was startling to see how much the atmosphere has changed just in their lifetime.
Looking back at our jumbo chart (pictured below), we can see it is already outdated. As of this writing in late March 2021, the weekly average CO2 concentration measured in at 417 parts per million (ppm), up 7 ppm since we printed our jumbo chart in 2018. Looking back further in time, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels have risen about 49%. Going back hundreds of thousands of years, CO2 concentrations had never exceeded 300 ppm.
We want to know what the CO2 levels were when our newsletter readers were born. Visit this interactive CO2 chart, and then submit your name (first name only) and birth year here. Next month we will share the results!
SUBMIT YOUR RESPONSE
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