CO₂ THROUGH TIME

The content was inspired by the graphic ‘Atmosphärische CO₂-Konzentration in den letzten 14.000 Jahren’ from the exhibition ‘Das Klima’ at the LWL Museum of Natural History in Münster.

Much of the content comes from the climate curve in the permanent exhibition at focusTerra.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to express our sincere thanks to:

LWL Museum of Natural History, Münster, for providing content from their exhibition free of charge as a basis for this content;
Prof. Dr. Heather Stoll and Noee Knecht from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at ETH Zurich for their support in developing the content;
Prof. Dr. Hubertus Fischer and Prof. em. Dr Thomas Stocker from the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research / Climate and Environmental Physics at the University of Bern for their advice and provision of data;
Prof. Dr Maria Schönbächler, Prof. Dr Derek Vance and Prof. em. Dr Helmut Weissert from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at ETH Zurich for their support with content.

REFERENCES

IPCC, 2021: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/

IPCC, 2023: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report (scenarios from Chapter 1, Section 1.6), https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

Underlying data (according to IPCC, 2021):

CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere:

60 million to 800,000 years ago:
A compilation of marine proxies, presented with the raw data points and a cubic spline fit (see Chapter 2 in IPCC, 2021).

800,000 years ago to 1850:
Bereiter, B., S. Eggleston, J. Schmitt, C. Nehrbass-Ahles, T. F. Stocker, H. Fischer, S. Kipfstuhl, and J. Chappellaz (2015), Revision of the EPICA Dome C CO₂ record from 800 to 600 kyr before present, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, https://doi.org/10.1002/2014GL061957 (see Chapter 2, Section 2.2.3 in IPCC, 2021)

1850-1959:
Bereiter, B., S. Eggleston, J. Schmitt, C. Nehrbass-Ahles, T. F. Stocker, H. Fischer, S. Kipfstuhl, and J. Chappellaz (2015), Revision of the EPICA Dome C CO₂ record from 800 to 600 kyr before present, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, https://doi.org/10.1002/2014GL061957 (see Chapter 2, Section 2.2.3 in IPCC, 2021)

1959-present:
Tans & Keeling, 2019 (‘Keeling Curve’), https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/data.html (accessed on 02.12.2020; see Chapter 2, Section 2.2.3 in IPCC, 2021)

Projected atmospheric CO₂ concentration for three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways:
Meinshausen et al., 2020, https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/13/3571/2020/gmd-13-3571-2020-discussion.html (see Chapter 1, Section 1.6 in IPCC, 2021)

Global surface temperature:

60 million to 800,000 years ago:
Hansen James, Sato Makiko, Russell Gary and Kharecha Pushker (2013), Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A. 371: 20120294, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2012.0294 (relative to 1850-1900 by adding +0.36°C; see Chapter 2, Section 2.3.1 in IPCC, 2021)

800,000 years ago to 1850:
Hansen James, Sato Makiko, Russell Gary and Kharecha Pushker (2013), Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A. 371: 20120294, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2012.0294 (relative to 1850-1900 by adding +0.36°C; see Chapter 2, Section 2.3.1 in IPCC, 2021)

1850-present:
Estimated mean from the AR6 4 dataset (see Chapter 2, Section 2.3.1. and Box TS.3)

Projected global surface temperature for three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways:
Projections (see Chapter 1, Section 1.6)