Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas: it lets the sun light pass, but absorbs the long-wavelength energy from the Earth just like the glass of a greenhouse. Greenhouse gases are important because they keep the atmosphere warm and make life on Earth possible. However, in the last years, the concentration of CO2 kept rising to unprecedented levels because of human related activities.
On this map we visualize a reanalysis of CO2 concentrations as a regular 3D grid with the resolution of 480 x 241 x 41. A single cell in this grid is called a voxel.
Voxels are colored based on the CO2 value: blue means lower values, while pink means high values (above 400ppm - 400 molecules of CO2 per million molecules of dry air). The values represent average measurements for the month of January of each year.
The bar height in the histogram below represents how many voxels fall within the CO2 value range corresponding to that bar. As you drag the slider under the histogram, the voxels are filtered on the map.Displaying all the values will fill up the space all the way up to 20km altitude. The elevation is exaggerated 300 times.
When you change the year, you can notice how the histogram shifts to the right, towards higher values. This means that voxels have now higher CO2 values. On the map we display the voxels with the highest values, use the slider to also show lower values.
1 In the northern hemisphere CO2 emissions can come from byproducts of burning gasoline or diesel fuel for vehicles or from industry like manufacturing, mining, oil and gas production. Read more.
Forest fires can also release large amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.
2 Wildfires in the Amazon, caused by deforestation. Read more.
3 Widespread agricultural fires are a common occurrence in Central Africa. Read more.