NASA’s Alarming Video Shows How CO2 Is Being Dumped Into Earth’s Atmosphere

Human pollution is increasingly affecting the planet. As a result, we are facing extreme weather phenomena, such as global warming and climate change, which impact the normal functioning of the world and whose consequences, which we are already beginning to notice, are serious.

It is this alarming panorama which JAR wanted to show this with a recent video that shows how human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) swirl through the atmosphere, an image that worries scientists.

And that’s it CO2 is the greenhouse gas produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. — such as coal, oil and natural gas — from forest fires and volcanic eruptions.

This is what the world’s biggest climate problem looks like, according to NASA.

He NASA Scientific Visualization Study released an alarming video, in order to show and raise awareness about the impact of human carbon dioxide emissions on the Earth’s atmosphere.

This is how, from the GEOS (Goddard Earth Observation System) model, The space agency’s team has managed to show how CO2 swirls above the atmosphere. It also visualizes the trajectory of carbon dioxide between January and March 2020, which moves under the effect of wind.

As explained by Deutsche Welle The movement of this greenhouse gas shown by NASA is at a resolution “more than 100 times higher than that of typical weather models” and shows wind and atmospheric circulation patterns “that were previously invisible to scientists.”

“As policy makers and scientists, we are trying to understand where carbon comes from and how it affects the planet” Lesley Ott, climatologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center . “Here you see how everything is interconnected by these different weather patterns.”

The video also shows that The countries with the highest emissions are the United States, South Asia and China. : The CO2 in these territories comes, in large part, from industry, power plants and transport.

On the other hand, The main source of pollution in Africa and South America is agricultural burning and forest fires. .

This NASA video becomes more relevant with the current context of the planet, since in In 2023, all historical records for the highest temperatures in the world were broken. In addition, in the atmosphere, the concentration of CO2 increased from 178 parts per million (in 1750) to 427 in May 2024.

That’s to sayClimate change is wreaking havoc on the planet’s climate, a trend that could continue to worsen if human-caused pollution and carbon dioxide emissions are not reversed in some way.

And global warming would be determined by total CO2 emissions accumulated over time: according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, It is estimated that for every billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, the climate warms by 1.65°C.

A certain amount of CO2 is essential for life on Earth: If this type of gas did not exist, plants could not exist, since they need it for photosynthesis. Additionally, at low natural levels it is not directly harmful to humans.

But The high levels recorded worldwide in recent years are warming the planet at an accelerated and alarming rate.

For example, in 2021, CO2 accounted for more than 12% of global emissions in the United States. In China, that figure is about 33%.

According to International Energy Agency (IEA) Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions increased by 6% in 2021. In addition, in the same year, 36.3 billion tons were recorded, the highest level in history.

That’s why NASA hopes that the video will raise awareness and educate people to try to pollute as little as possible and that governments will implement plans to effectively reduce emissions, but also that scientists can better understand how they interact. different sources of greenhouse gases.

Some countries even account for more than two-thirds of total carbon dioxide emissions.

Among them, China, the United States and Asia stand out: these three territories represent more than half of the planet’s total carbon dioxide, according to a report by Joint Research Centre of the European Commission .

These are The 10 countries that emit the most CO2 in the world:

1. China. More than 14 billion tons of CO2.
2. UNITED STATES. 6 billion tons of CO2.
3. India. 3.5 billion tons of CO2.
4. European Union. (27 countries). 3.4 billion tons of CO2.
5. Russia. 2 billion tons of CO2.
6. Japan. 1,170 billion tons of CO2.
7. Brazil. 1.140 billion tons of CO2.
8. Iran. 1.130 billion tons of CO2.
9. Indonesia. 1.106 billion tonnes of CO2.
10. Mexico. 792 billion tons of CO2.