Whenever you hear about historic carbon emissions by nations in the media, there's usually a huge omission in the information being transmitted. You'll often hear about the total CO₂ emissions that nations have emitted throughout history, but not necessarily how much of those emissions are still in the air.

That matters because carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is part of a global carbon cycle. One that begins reducing the emissions generated in any particular year from the very outset from when they were emitted. The following diagram illustrates major parts of the modern Earth's carbon cycle.

Not shown in the image are other natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions, like volcanoes, and natural sinks that absorb carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, like oceans.

We've updated our estimate of how much CO₂ emissions produced within the modern world's largest national producers of carbon dioxide emissions since 1850 are still in the air. The following chart updates that data through the end of 2023.

This chart illustrates both total historic emissions and the amount estimated to still be in the atmosphere today, which is the more meaningful value with respect to the modern political debates over climate change.

The chart shows the largest share for any single nation is that for the United States, to which a little over one-fifth of the CO₂ is attributed, where our estimate using this data through 2023 is 21.8%, about a half percent lower than our estimate from two years ago.

China still ranks second by that measure at over 18.1% of the global total, and the combined nations of the European Union come in third at 14.5%. We also find India's 4.1% share outranks the United Kingdom's 3.3%, which is remarkable because the U.K. was once the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions. The "Rest of the World" combines for nearly two-fifth's of the excess fossil-fuel based carbon dioxide emissions present in the atmosphere as of 2023, which exceeds the United States' total historic CO₂ emissions.

These relative shares have changed over time, with China and India's relative contributions to global CO₂ emissions increasing as the relative share of emissions of the United Kingdom, United States, and European Union have declined.

Looking forward, assuming no change in national carbon dioxide emissions from their 2023 levels, we estimate China will become the largest national historical contributor of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions still in the Earth's air in 2030.

References

Friedlingstein et al. National Fossil CO2 Emissions by Country (Territorial). 2024 v1.0. [Excel Spreadsheet]. 13 November 2024.

Political Calculations. How Long Does Carbon Dioxide Stay in the Atmosphere? [Online Article, Tool]. 19 July 2023.

Image credit: An Interactive Introduction to Organismal and Molecular Biology, 2nd ed. Copyright © 2021 by Andrea M.-K. Bierema is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

China is, by a very wide margin, the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide emissions.

China's emissions of CO₂ are so large that we can use measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere collected by the remote Mauna Loa Observatory to get a relatively good sense of how its economy is performing. The reason we can do that is because China's production of materials like steel and cement, which are major contributors to its CO₂ emissions, are directly linked to its growth. Not uncoincidentally, China is the world's largest producer of both materials, with much of its production supporting the construction and industrial sectors of its economy. The following video we found to illustrate this article shows both coming together in a Chinese factory that produces prefabricated reinforced concrete panels for buildings.

In July 2025, the rate at which carbon dioxide is accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere slowed for the fifth time in the last six months. Measured as the trailing year average of the year-over-year rate of change in the atmospheric concentration of CO₂, this measure peaked in January 2025. Since then, it has fallen by nearly 11%, reversing what had been an period of increase dating back to the end of China's zero-Covid lockdowns at the end of December 2022.

The following chart shows how this measure has evolved from January 2000 through July 2025:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration data lags behind changes in CO₂ output, taking several weeks to diffuse into the Earth's air after being emitted. The peak in January 2025 coincides with Chinese emissions peaking in December 2024, which itself coincides with efforts by China's exporters to crank up production to beat the clock on new U.S. trade tariffs going into effect in 2025. January 2025 saw the Biden administration final tariff increases go into effect, while President Trump's new tariffs were put into effect in April 2025.

Since the atmosphere's pace of CO₂ accumulation peaked at 3.57 ppm in January 2025, it has fallen by 0.38 ppm to 3.19 ppm in July 2025. With an estimate world population of 8.005 billion people, that drop represents roughly a reduction of 3 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. It also represents an estimated $12.6 trillion decline in the world's GDP during the last six months.

The decline in China's CO₂ emissions have been large enough that scientists are speculating it may represent a permanent peak in the country's emissions, with China's expansion of renewable energy sources like solar and hydroelectric power. While that remains to be seen, for now, this observation tells us that the portions of China's economy that are the heaviest users of the reliable power production supported by burning fossil fuels are struggling. Those sectors are, not uncoincidentally, the ones that produce steel and cement, whose production has been falling because China's economy is struggling. As described by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air: "The steel and cement industries are the largest CO2 emitters in China, when emissions from their electricity use are included. They are also bellwethers of real estate, infrastructure and other fixed asset investments that play an outsized role in China's emissions and economy."

Research at the Mauna Loa Observatory has been targeted for potential funding cuts. We suggest that funding should continue because of the value of the CO₂ data it collects which is correlated with economic output, especially China's. Given that China's economic data is becoming more opaque over time and how large its CO₂ emissions are, U.S. intelligence services may find it useful to continue funding the observatory's measurements of carbon dioxide because of the practical application of what that data can tell us about the state of China's economy.

Or for that matter, assessing the magnitude of other geopolitical events.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 August 2025.

The rate at which carbon dioxide is accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere slowed in June 2025, reversing a brief uptick in the previous month's data. The change resumes a downward trend that has been in place since the end of 2024.

This period coincides with slowed output within China's economy. Much of this negative change occurred in response to new and expanded tariffs and trade sanctions imposed by the United States. 2024 had seen elevated carbon dioxide emissions arise out of China as the nation's factories rushed to meet orders for goods to beat the clock on the outgoing Biden administration's final trade restrictions and expanding tariffs expected to take effect in January 2025.

In April 2025, the Trump administration rolled out its global tariff program, which continued the downward pressure on China's industrial sector. Reuters describes several of the factors contributing to the nation's reduction in CO₂ emissions:

The latest tariffs imposed by U.S. president Donald Trump on Chinese products have impacted the demand for China-made goods and caused production lines to slow down across a variety of manufactured items.

The overall energy needs of these industries have been reduced by the slower pace on construction sites and production lines in factories. This has allowed power generation companies to reduce their production.

These dynamics have shown up in the pace at which carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere because China is, by far and away, the world's largest producer of CO₂ emissions. The following chart shows how the trailing twelve month average of the year-over-year change in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory has evolved from January 2000 through June 2025:

Because the industrial sector of China's economy has slowed so much since the end of 2024, the reduction of demand for electrical power is expected to reduce China's CO₂ emissions to a "record low". Here's Reuters again:

China's utilities have been able to achieve record-low emissions in the first half of 2025 by focusing on clean energy supplies.

According to the energy portal, electricitymaps.com, carbon dioxide emissions per Kilowatt Hour (kWh) of Electricity averaged 492 Grams during the first half of 2025.

This was the first time a reading under 500 grams per kWh had been recorded. It is also down from 514g/kWh in the same period of 2024, and 539g/kWh between January and June 2023.

With a large portion of its industries running at reduced capacity, China has been able to use a larger share of its renewable energy sources to provide power, reducing its CO₂ emissions by significant amount. Reuters indicates however that an improvement in fortune for China's industrial sector will reverse that achievement:

China's power requirements will rise if the manufacturing and construction sectors recover. This will lead to a return of fossil fuels that emit pollution.

If China's economy is still slowed by the construction debt and the tariff concerns, then the use of fossil fuels could be further reduced, which would lead to further emissions reductions from the power sector.

Carbon dioxide is not the only kind of emission that is being reduced. The reduction of China's economic output during 2020's Coronavirus Pandemic also reduced emissions of aerosols, which a new study indicates contributed to an acceleration of global warming. Here's the abstract from the recently published paper:

Global surface warming has accelerated since around 2010, relative to the preceding half century¹–³. This has coincided with East Asian efforts to reduce air pollution through restricted atmospheric aerosol and precursor emissions₄–₅. A direct link between the two has, however, not yet been established. Here we show, using a large set of simulations from eight Earth System Models, how a time-evolving 75% reduction in East Asian sulfate emissions partially unmasks greenhouse gas-driven warming and influences the spatial pattern of surface temperature change. We find a rapidly evolving global, annual mean warming of 0.07 ± 0.05 °C, sufficient to be a main driver of the uptick in global warming rate since 2010. We also find North-Pacific warming and a top-of-atmosphere radiative imbalance that are qualitatively consistent with recent observations. East Asian aerosol cleanup is thus likely a key contributor to recent global warming acceleration and to Pacific warming trends.

It's not yet clear how economists and environmentalists feel about the role of tariffs operating as a de facto carbon tax that reduces carbon dioxide emissions along with economic activity or to the reduction of the emissions of aerosol pollutants and the resulting cleaner air contributing to global warming.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 14 July 2025.

Samset, B.H., Wilcox, L.J., Allen, R.J. et al. East Asian aerosol cleanup has likely contributed to the recent acceleration in global warming. Commun Earth Environ 6, 543 (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-02527-3.

Image credit: Friedlingstein, Pierre et al. Global Carbon Budget 2024. GtCO2 slidedeck PDF. 14 March 2025.

The pace at which the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is increasing picked up in May 2025, fully reversing the downward trend that began after December 2024.

The latter half of 2024 had seen record high levels of CO₂ accumulation in the Earth's air thanks largely to efforts by Chinese firms to produce and export as many goods as they could ahead of new tariffs and trade restrictions that were expected to be imposed on China-produced goods. Industrial production slumped in China following its efforts to front-run (or front-load) their exports before these anti-free trade measures were implemented. Since China is by far and away the world's biggest producer of carbon dioxide emissions, changes in its economic output directly affect the rate at which the concentration of CO₂ changes.

From January 2025 through March 2025, the rate of CO₂ accumulation fell, before stalling in April. The data for May 2025 however shows it rose, which suggests a new effort to stimulate China's economy began in early April. This timing coincides with President Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement, which saw the U.S.' highest tariff rates applied to goods produced in China, which then escalated even higher as China imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-produced goods and the U.S. responded in kind.

The following chart, which tracks the trailing twelve month average of the year-over-year change in the rate at which the concentration of carbon dioxide measured at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory has changed from January 2000 through May 2025, shows the reversal:

The January-March 2025 downturn also coincides with a quarter of negative real economic growth in the U.S., which was highly influenced by the frontrunning (or front-loading) of exports to the United States following their production in China in 2024.

On the stimulus side of the story, there are several developments that indicate unusual interventions by China's government is behind the increase in CO₂. First, China's government has approved new coal-fired power plants:

China approved 11.29 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity in the first quarter of 2025, Greenpeace’s review of official documents showed. This pace of coal-fired electricity approvals already exceeds the 10 GW China approved in the first half of 2024.

Second, China's coal-fired power plant managers have been directed to buy more coal, even though China's economy has slowed and its demand wouldn't support it unless part of a larger stimulus effort:

China is pressing its coal-fired power plants to stockpile more of the fuel and import less in an effort to shore up domestic prices, sources with knowledge of the matter said, but traders are sceptical the measures will help to stop the slide.

The coal industry in China faces rising stockpiles of the fuel after a massive expansion of output following shortages and blackouts in 2021 is churning out more coal than even the world's largest thermal power fleet can consume.

To support miners whose profits are under pressure, the state planner has asked power plants to prioritise domestic coal and increase thermal coal stockpiles by 10%, setting an overall target of 215 million metric tons by June 10, the sources said.

Third, China announced earlier it will build additional coal-fired power generation capacity to compensate for gaps in the reliability of power produced by renewable energy sources. The announcement will see China continue producing coal-fired power plants through 2027 and represents a significant stimulus initiative.

On that final count, the world had a wake-up call from the collapse of Spain and Portugual's electricity grid on 28 April 2025, which was caused by unstable solar energy production and ensured by the absence of more reliable conventional fossil-fuel or nuclear-based power generation. China's government is backing increased coal-fired electricity production as a solution to this problem in the near term.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 June 2025.

Image credit: Shuozhou coal power plant in Shuozhou, Shanxi, China by Kleinolive on Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons CC by-SA 3.0 Attribution 3.0 Unported Deed.

The pace at which human carbon dioxide emissions are accumulating in the Earth's air held steady in April 2025. The trailing 12-month average of the year-over-year change in atmospheric CO₂ concentration was 3.29 parts per million.

That's a reduction of 0.28 parts per million, or about 7.9%, from the modern-era record of 3.57 parts per million recorded in December 2024. The change coincides with a sharp slowdown in China's economic output following boosted production aimed at beating expanded tariffs and trade restrictions on the nation's exports.

The slowdown is evident in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration data because China is, by a very wide margin, the world's leading producer of carbon dioxide emissions. The following chart shows how this measure has changed from January 2000 through April 2025:

The slowdown is evident in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration data because China is the world's leading producer of carbon dioxide emissions by a very wide margin.

The following tool gives an estimate of how much economic activity in worldwide (and predominantly in China) has declined since December 2024. If you're accessing this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may nbeed to click through ot our site to access a working version.

The tool's estimates are based on Jenny Cederborg's and Sara Snöbohm's 2016 paper. In their research, they investigated whether there is a relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions and identified a positive correlation between CO₂ emissions and GDP per capita. They found "CO₂ emissions increase by approximately 0.0002 [metric] tons (0.2 kg) per capita when GDP per capita increase by 1 dollar, holding all other variables constant".

That relationship doesn't take the effects of inflation into account, so the tool's results based upon it are likely understating the reduction in global GDP associated with the reduction in CO₂ emissions.

That said, global GDP for 2024 is estimated to be around $110 trillion, which means the indicated global GDP reduction of $9.3 trillion since December 2024, or about 8.5%, is substantial.

And to underscore the point, this figure represents a low estimate for GDP loss through March-April 2025 because of the effects of inflation recorded since 2016, which includes the period of high inflation unleashed by the Biden-Harris administration in early 2021.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 May 2025.

Cederborg, Jenny and Snöbohm, Sara. Is there a relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions? Semantic Scholar. [PDF Document]. 2016.

Image credit: Stable Diffusion DreamStudio Beta. Prompt: "Digital art concept of carbon dioxide emissions being used to measure economic growth."

The Global Carbon Project has released its 2024 Carbon Budget, detailing where carbon dioxide originates and goes throughout the entire known carbon cycle on Earth. The report is the among first to project the total year values for carbon dioxide emissions by nation. The following chart presents the amount of CO₂ emissions by the world's largest national producers of the greenhouse gas.

As it has been since 2006, China retains its title as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide in 2024 by a widening margin with most nations. That includes India, whose emissions have been rising, but at a slower pace than China's CO₂ output. The United States remains the second-largest national producer at about 41% of China's 2024 emissions, even though its output of carbon dioxide emissions has been falling since 2005.

Changing to look at monthly data of how fast carbon dioxide emissions accumulate in the Earth's atmosphere, the trailing twelve month average of the year-over-year change in atmospheric CO₂ levels peaked in January 2025. Since then, the rate of CO&8322; accumulation in the Earth's air has fallen off sharply from January 2025's record high pace.

This data is telling us something important about the state of Earth's economy. Since China is such an outsize contributor to the carbon dioxide that is emitted into the atmosphere, it indicates that China's economy has dramatically slowed since the end of 2024. And that happened before the U.S. imposed much higher tariffs on China's exports to the U.S. on 2 April 2025, which have slowed China's economy further.

In previous slowdowns, China's government has responded by stimulating the country's economy, resulting in higher CO₂ emissions to counter the slowing. Will 2025 be different?

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 14 April 2025. Note: The NOAA appears to have changed its schedule for releasing atmospheric CO₂ concentration data from the Mauna Loa Observatory. Previously, they had regularly reported their revised and latest data during the first week of the month, but since March 2025, have been posting it in the middle of the month.

Image Credit: Friedlingstein, Pierre et al. Global Carbon Budget 2024. GtCO2 slidedeck PDF. 14 March 2025.

The pace at which carbon dioxide is accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere slowed in February 2025 after peaking in January 2025.

The change comes as the first significant decline since the period from December 2022 through January and February 2023, which marked the end of China's "zero-COVID" lockdowns. The end of China's restrictions initiated a massive surge in carbon dioxide emissions, which rocketed up in during the following two years.

The initial surge in 2023 was prompted by China's lifting of its repressive policy and the reopening of its economy. That recovery proved to be weak however, so China's government instituted policies to stimulate its economy in late 2023 and in 2024, which propelled the nation's carbon dioxide emissions to new heights.

Two recent headlines emphasize the extent to which the policies of China's government contributed to carbon dioxide emissions. The first headline is from September 2024, the second from February 2025:

• China's coal use and output are rising, even as renewables surge
• China’s construction of new coal-power plants ‘reached 10-year high’ in 2024

Since China was already, by far and away, the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, China's government's stimulus policies greatly contributed to the surge of carbon dioxide emissions during 2024.

The following chart illustrating the trailing year average of the year-over-year change in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory shows that two-year-long increase to a record high for the modern era, along with February 2025's decline:

Carbon Brief, the source of the second headline, provides more information about the policies that contributed the most to the increase of CO₂ in the Earth's air during the preceding 12 months:

Construction started on 94.5GW of new coal-fired power plants in 2024, according to the study. It says this is a sign of continued momentum in developing new coal projects, despite government pledges to “strictly” control the use of the fossil fuel. The report adds that 3.3GW of suspended projects also resumed construction in 2024.

Approvals for new coal construction rebounded in the second half of the year to 66.7GW, after permitting only 9GW in the first half.

Taken altogether, the report says this signals a substantial amount of new capacity will come online in the next few years, “solidifying” coal’s place as a major source of electricity.

China's government will miss all of the CO₂ emissions targets it claimed it was going to hit in 2025.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 March 2025.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer.. Prompt: "A diagram showing a coal power plant emitting carbon dioxide. The power plant has the Chinese characters for 煤 (coal) written on it."

The pace at which carbon dioxide is being emitted into the Earth's atmosphere is continuing to set new record highs.

China, by far and away, the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions, helped cinch the new record. A new analysis by Carbon Brief indicates "the tail end of China’s rebound from zero-Covid in January and February, combined with abnormally high growth in energy demand, stopped CO2 emissions falling in 2024 overall," despite China's surge in green energy production during the year.

Carbon Brief estimates China's overall CO₂ emissions "grew by an estimated 0.8% year-on-year". That growth may may sound small, but since China's emissions are so large, even a small percentage increase in its CO₂ output carries substantial impact. Carbon Brief also recently confirmed that China's emissions have caused more global warming than the 27 countries that make up the European Union. Not that that's any kind of surprise.

In the last two decades, much of the increases in the rate at which carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere can be traced to Chinese government's various efforts to stimulate China's economy. The following chart highlights that contribution from January 2000 through January 2025:

China's ending of its repressive zero-Covid lockdown policy at the end of 2022 constitutes the beginning of its latest stimulus. Combined with China's government's ongoing efforts to continue its stimulus effort to offset recessionary forces acting within the Chinese economy, the result is the record high rate of CO₂ accumulation in the modern era, which now extends back over sixty-five years. The next chart illustrates that history:

What defines the modern era is the collection of data on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's air. Those measurements began at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory in March 1958. Since our long-term chart tracks the year-over-year change in atmospheric CO₂ we could have set its initial month at March 1959, but we opted for January 1960 instead to align it with the beginning of a calendar year.

In any case, the following references provide links to the Mauna Loa Observatory's full dataset of its atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 February 2025.

Image credit: Jungliangcheng Power Plant in Tianjin, China by Shubert Ciencia on Flickr. Creative Commons CC by-SA 2.0 Attribution 2.0 Generic Deed.

December 2024 saw the pace at which carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere reach a new record high.

Measured as the trailing twelve month average of the year-over-year change in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, December 2024's pace of CO₂ accumulation was 3.53 parts per million. This rate surpasses the previous record of 3.49 parts per million set in January 2017.

That older record had been boosted by the very strong El Niño event of 2015-16 and the related massive Indonesian wildfires of 2016.

2024 saw another very strong El Niño event, but unlike 2016, did not see wildfires on a similar scale. What makes 2024 different is the growth of carbon dioxide emissions in China, which surpasses all other industrialized and developing nations by a wide and growing margin.

The following chart presents the trailing twelve month average of the year-over-year change in the pace of carbon dioxide accumulation in the Earth's atmosphere from January 2000 through December 2024.

In terms of world history, China is on pace to become the largest national contributor of carbon dioxide to the Earth's atmosphere before the end of the 2020s.

References

Global Carbon Project. Global Carbon Budget 2024. 13 November 2024. Preprint DOI: 10.5194/essd-2024-519.

Global Carbon Project. Supplemental data of Global Carbon Budget 2024 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Global Carbon Project. 13 November 2024. DOI: 10.18160/gcp-2024.

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 January 2025. Accessed 9 January 2025.

Image credit: NASA. Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Tagged by Source, Australasia. 16 June 2023. "This view highlights CO2 sources and sinks over Asia and Australia. The most notable feature is fossil fuel emissions from China, which contribute to the increasing atmospheric burden of CO2 over the course of 2021."

The Global Carbon Project issued its Global Carbon Budget for 2024 on 13 November 2024. The report provides a wealth of data on the sources of carbon emissions, but very little of that data links those emissions to economic activities. One exception to that rule however is the following chart, which presents total emissions of CO₂ with the relative "intensity" of CO₂ emissions, measured as the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each dollar of global GDP recorded (in terms of constant 2017 U.S. dollars) from 1960 through 2024.

The chart is intresting because we've taken a different approach to visualizing how carbon dioxide emissions change in response to major economic and environmental events. Here's our version that tracks the pace of the year-over-year change in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which provides a more sensitive measure over the same timespan that we present against a color-coded backdrop indicating major economic events:

As 2024 comes to an end, we find the rate of accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is rising. It has not yet achieved the same height as what this measure did in 2016 thanks to that year's El Niño event and the related wildfires in Indonesia, but may surpass it before it might finally reverse.

The wildcard right now is China and how that nation's government will respond to its economic challenges. In 2018-19 and again after 2023, the government has actively stimuluated its economy, and CO₂ emissions to offset the negative impact of its 2018-19 tariff war with the United States and to recover from the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. China is, be a very wide margin, the world's largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions that are linked to human economic activities. When it acts to stimulate its economy, the results show up in the Earth's atmosphere.

References

Global Carbon Project. Global Carbon Budget 2024. 13 November 2024. Preprint DOI: 10.5194/essd-2024-519.

Global Carbon Project. Supplemental data of Global Carbon Budget 2024 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. Global Carbon Project. 13 November 2024. DOI: 10.18160/gcp-2024.

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 December 2024. Accessed 5 December 2024.

China's emissions of carbon dioxide are so immense that its difficult to fully grasp their scale. However, thanks to the United Nations, we have a unique set of data that makes it possible to visualize how immense its CO₂ emissions are compared to other nations.

That data was presented in the form of a table, which doesn't quite do the numbers justice. We've taken a portion of that data and visualized it, comparing China's carbon dioxide output to the combined CO₂ emissions of several of the world's major economic regions during 2023. In the following chart, those emissions are measured in millions of metric tons of CO₂ equivalent (MtCO2e) greenhouse gases, which factors together the contributions of several gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect in the Earth's atmosphere.

What makes this data unique is that China's output of 16,000 MtCO2e for 2023 coincidentally matches the combined output of carbon emissions from the United States, India, the 27 nations of the European Union, and the Russian Federation. That's something that's not easy to see in the table of numbers presented in the UN's Emissions Gap Report, but it leaps out when you visually compare the emissions side-by-side in a simple bar chart.

China's estimated population in 2023 was 1,413,142,846 people, which compares with a combined population of 2,331,402,007 for the United States, India, European Union, and Russian Federation. China's per capita emissions total 11.32 metric tons of CO2e, which is nearly 65% larger than the 6.86 metric tons of CO2e per capita emissions for the major economic regions featured in the chart whose combined total emissions equal those of China.

References

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air… please! Table ES.1 (and Table 2.2) Total, per capita and historical emissions of selected countries and regions. DOI: 10.59117/20.500.11822/46404. 24 October 2024.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook (2023 Archive). Field Listing - Population. [Online Data]. 28 December 2023.

The pace at which carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's air continues to rise. Through September 2024, that pace is nearing the record for the modern era recorded in January 2017.

That increase has taken place as China, the world's largest source of CO₂ emissions, has seen its factory output slow as the nation's industrial output has weakened. Even so, China's carbon dioxide emissions more than double those of the United States, which means a sluggish Chinese economy still cranks out more CO₂ than any other nation by a very wide margin.

The following NASA animation illustrates that output, showing how emissions originating from various locations around the world diffuse through the Earth's atmosphere. Check out the CO₂ 'smoke cloud' erupting from eastern China....

With Chinese factories slowing, the continued increase in the accumulation rate of CO₂ during the last few months may be a consequence of the strong El Niño event, which ran from May 2023 through April 2024. While not as strong as the 2015-16 El Niño event that was accompanied by extensive wildfires in Indonesia, it appears to be having a similar lingering impact, as seen in the following chart tracking the rate at which the trailing year average of the year-over-year change in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is changing.

New published research by Leipzig University researchers points to the role of strong El Niño events behind that observation. Here's a summary of their findings from the university's press office:

A recent study challenges previous assumptions about the connection between CO₂ in the atmosphere and temperatures in the tropics. Between 1959 and 2011, the CO₂ content in the atmosphere responded twice as strongly to temperatures in the tropics than before. This has often been attributed to increasing droughts in the tropics and to changes in carbon cycle responses caused by climate change. However, the current study conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and Leipzig University suggests that a small number of particularly strong El Niño events could be responsible for this.

Both tropical and non-tropical ecosystems absorb large amounts of carbon that were previously released into the atmosphere through human CO₂ emissions. Globally, land surface ecosystems act as a carbon sink and absorb on average around a third of human CO₂ emissions. These ecosystems are therefore a natural buffer for climate change. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, researchers observed an increased fluctuation in global carbon storage on land, and it appeared that the CO₂ growth rate was particularly sensitive to temperatures in the tropics. In a recent study, researchers from Jena and Leipzig found that this “doubling” of sensitivity was caused by the increased occurrence of El Niño events in the 1980s and 1990s compared to 1960–1979. This also includes the extreme El Niño events of 1982/83 and 1997/98. El Niño events cause severe droughts and heat waves in the tropics, which affect plant growth and thus reduce carbon uptake. In times of El Niño, vegetation even releases large amounts of carbon that would otherwise be sequestered in the soil or forests. This causes the CO₂ content in the atmosphere to increase.

The authors of the study emphasise that this CO₂ increase is due to internal climate variability rather than a systematic change in the carbon cycle caused by climate change. “Our results show that this doubling of sensitivity is not necessarily a sign of a fundamental change in the response of the carbon cycle to climate change,” says Na Li from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, first author of the study. Instead, it is caused by the combination of extreme El Niño events and their global impact.

Tropical droughts associated with strong El Niño events contribute to a faster pace of CO₂ accumulation in the atmosphere by reducing its absorption by plant life until the affected regions have had sufficient time to recover, which can be aggravated by related wildfire events. Our chart showing the strong El Niño events of 2015-16 and 2023-24 suggests that effect continues for many months after the El Niño events themselves have ended. Through this point of 2024, that effect would seem to be more than offseting the slowing output from China's economy.

The big question for the months ahead is whether the Chinese government's new efforts to stimulute China's economy will offset the natural recovery from the 2023-24 El Niño event and cause the rate of CO₂ accumulation to continue increasing rather than diminishing.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 October 2024. Accessed 11 October 2024.

The pace of carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere increased again in August 2024.

The increase comes as China, the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions by a widening margin, has stated its emissions have not peaked and will continue to increase.

The increase in the rate at which CO₂ is being added to the Earth's air also comes as the 2023-24 El Niño event has dissipated. These weather events contribute to dry weather conditions that when combined with wildfires, often increase the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere. It's no accident two of the worst years for CO₂ accumulation were 1997 and 2015, which saw major wildfires in Indonesia coincide with very strong El Niño events. Fortunately, 2024 hasn't seen a similar level of natural wildfire disasters.

With 2023-24's El Niño in the rear view mirror, what's happening with CO₂ emissions traces directly back to human activities. The current rise of atmospheric CO₂ began after December 2022 when China, the world's largest source of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions, lifted its zero-COVID restrictions, stimulating its economy. The following chart shows the results.

Since the concentration of carbon dioxide is measured at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory, it represents a lagging indicator of human activities because it takes several weeks for CO₂ emissions to diffuse into the Earth's air. Since China is such a large source of emissions, they correspond with China's economic output. Chinese factories cranked up their production of goods for export in recent months as part of a strategy to beat new tariffs being imposed on many of these goods by the United States, the European Union, and other nations.

That strategy increases CO₂ emissions now, but also sets the stage for declines after the new tariffs go into effect. It's a bit like a sugar rush, which spark a frenzy of activity only followed by a crash. In the case of CO₂ emissions, declines in the rate at which carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere are associated with recessions and other negative economic events when not countered with massive stimulus efforts.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 August 2024. Accessed 5 August 2024.

Image credit: Thermal Power Plant photo on pxhere. Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain.

The rate at which carbon dioxide accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere rose in July 2024.

At present, the trailing twelve month average of the year-over-year change in the concentration of CO₂ in the air as measured at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory rising at 3.26 parts per million per year, which is among the highest rates on record. Only the period from September 2016 through March 2017 has been higher.

That period coincided with the global impact of widespread wildfires in Indonesia, which was fueled by drought conditions in that country during the very strong El Niño event of 2015. The excess contribution of CO₂ entering the atmosphere from that event remained elevated for months after the wildfires themselves died down.

Since May 2023, the world has been experiencing another very strong El Niño event, which now appears to be on the cusp of ending. Unlike 2015 (and 1997 before it), the El Niño event of 2023-24 has not been accompanied by extensive wildfires in Indonesia's carbon-rich peat lands.

With that being the case, the carbon dioxide data is telling us more about human activities. The current rise of atmospheric CO₂ began after December 2022 when China, the world's largest source of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions, lifted its zero-COVID restrictions, stimulating its economy. The following chart shows the results.

We've updated the chart to also indicate previous periods in which China's government acted to stimulate the nation's economic growth, which often coincide with increases in the pace of carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere.

These periods also often coincide with or follow periods of economic downturns in China, pointing to the role of China's economic stimulus initiatives in putting more CO₂ in the air. In the current rising cycle for CO₂ accumulation, in addition to the lifting of its zero-COVID lockdowns that hampered its economic output, China increased its production of electricity from coal-fired power plants to offset unreliable hydroelectric power generation, while seeking to offset the impact of new tariffs imposed by the Biden-Harris administration to stimulate its domestic economy. On that latter count, the Chinese government's efforts have been similar to those it adopted during the previous Trump administration's tariff war with China in 2018-19.

References

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth System Research Laboratory. Mauna Loa Observatory CO2 Data. [Online Data]. Updated 5 August 2024. Accessed 11 August 2024.

Image credit: Comparison of pollution haze and sunny days in Liaoning, China Fanhe Town 10 day interval contrast (2019) by Tomskyhaha on Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.