The World Meteorological Organization has just (9 Sep 2014) released its latest report on the atmospheric concentration of Carbon Dioxide (and other greenhouse gases). The recent annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration (mole fraction) that has been widely reported on in today's media headlines is 2.9 parts per million between 2012 and 2013, reaching a record high CO2 concentration of 396 parts per million in 2013.
Here is the executive summary of the report:
https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentr...r_1002_en.html
And here is the WMO report itself:
https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentr...G_Bulletin.pdf
While the headline figure of an 0.74 percent annual increase in CO2 concentrations in 2012-2013 is important, and this annual increase is more than previous annual increases, the broad trend with time of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1985 has been a steady and roughly linear increase in atmospheric concentration of CO2. The media has made much of the fact that the annual increase of CO2 concentration may have got slightly larger since 2010, but to some degree the truth (or falsehood) of this result depends on how the data is analyzed.
The report notes that the increased radiative forcing since 1990 due to the increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases since 1990 is very significant; it can be thought of as the equivalent of an increased energy input of about 0.7 watts per each square meter of the Earth's surface. However, I note that the actual globally-averaged surface temperature has not increased meaningfully since year 2000.
While this thread is about science, and not about politics and policy, it should be noted that costly (that is, heavily subsidized by taxpayers and consumers) CO2 emissions mitigation efforts in the economically developed countries have so far had
no effect whatsoever on reducing the annual increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
cheers,
Robert