Natural Sciences >> OtherAnalyzing Rates of Change and Trends Within Carbon Dioxide Databy Priscilla Santiago
Submitted : Fall 2019 Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that is continuing to build up in Earth’s atmosphere, which makes any heat energy more difficult to escape Earth’s boundaries. The findings of this paper show that there is no indication that the rising CO2 levels will slow down. The methods used to determine this were done by utilizing CO2 data provided on the NOAA website and applying 2nd-order polynomial fits to the graphed data to determine if the CO2 levels were concave up or concave down. The first and second derivatives of these data points were taken and graphed to observe patterns in the rates of change and acceleration of the data, respectively, and to determine if there was an indication that the present-day CO2 concentration increase might be reaching a maximum. The results demonstrate that there is agreement between numeric rates of change and acceleration computed from the data and the expressions obtained through the time derivatives. The analysis of the results indicate that the CO2 concentrations do not display any indication of decreasing in the near future, but rather exhibit a continuous increase in yearly average. Related Links:
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