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Greenhouse Gas Emissions 'On Wrong Track'

Jessica Marshall, Discovery News

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April 24, 2008 -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its 2007 measurements of atmospheric greenhouse gases yesterday, and the results were not encouraging.

"We're on the wrong track," said NOAA scientist Pieter Tans, who is in charge of its greenhouse gas measurements program headquartered in Boulder, Colo.

The average level of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by 2.4 parts per million in 2007, bringing the total to nearly 385 parts per million. Pre-industrial levels were around 280 parts per million.

"The rate of increase is accelerating," Tans said. CO2 levels rose about 1.5 ppm per year in the 1980s, and have risen around 2 ppm per year in recent years. Since 2000, levels have increased 3.3 percent per year on average, he said. 2007 marks the third highest annual increase in CO2.

"For the last four to five years we have set new records in burning fossil fuels," Tans added. Fossil fuel burning is the primary source of CO2 in the atmosphere.

"They're completely not surprising," Steven Wofsy of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., said of the findings. "With the big increase that we've seen in fossil fuels, the new values of 2-2.5 ppm are going to have to become the norm."

More surprising to climate researchers is that atmospheric methane levels increased this year by 27 million tons, after a decade of staying relatively constant.