Calculating CO2 Levels 30 Years from now

by Kristin Reid

Submitted : Fall 2020

Carbon dioxide emissions in this country and around the globe have been an ongoing climate crisis since the start of the industrial revolution. The burning of fossil fuels for energy is one of the main causes to the CO2 rise in the air and there’s a growing concern as to when there will be irreversible damage done to the ozone layer. Policy makers and every day individuals need to become educated and aware of the direction this issue is heading so choices can be made now to protect the health and future of the planet. The purpose of this project is mostly to create awareness to put into perspective how real the CO2 emission crisis is through numerical representation. It’s simple to determine how much CO2 is expected to be in the atmosphere by 2040, which is 20 years from now. The formula generated to solve this includes factors such as how much CO2 is introduced to the atmosphere per year, and how much is eliminated per year. The way CO2 is introduced into the atmosphere can vary between natural causes, such as forest fires, or human causes, such as the burning of fossil fuels. These factors will be discussed in more detail later in the paper. When creating this equation, it was determined that the global average CO2 in the atmosphere is 409.8 parts per million (ppm) (Lindsey, 2020). From there the average annual added CO2 emissions was calculating and determined over a period of 20 years. Then, the average annual elimination of CO2 in the atmosphere was determined over a period of 20 years. It was calculated that from 2020 to 2040, there would be a total of 459.8 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.

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