People walk through cooling misters on June 4, 2024 in Las Vegas. Tens of millions of people from California to Texas are experiencing intense heat. New data shows that the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has hit a new record.
The new record comes as tens of millions of people are grappling with extreme weather in the United States. Much of the western U.S. is experiencing the first major heat wave of the year, which is driving temperaturesSuch extreme, prolonged heat is directly related to human-caused climate change, scientists say.
This May, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere hit nearly 427 parts per million, which is an increase of about 3 parts per million compared to last year’s peak. That’s one of the largest annual jumps on record, scientists say. But in recent years, growth of CO2 in the atmosphere has accelerated. In the first four months of this year, the CO2 concentration increased more quickly than it has during the first four months of any previous year on record, according to scientists at NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of San Diego.