Atmospheric CO2 levels jumping a record 3.5ppm in 2024, while human emissions remained largely constant. This suggests reduced carbon absorption by land and ocean sinks which will accelerate warming.
Good analysis and a stark reminder that nature’s buffering systems are reaching their limits. Outside of reducing emissions, investing in the natural systems that regulate our climate to build resilience is key. Rewilding, soil health, ocean protection must be climate priorities.
This preprint could also be important - microbial respiration went up by 3.5Gt C in 2024 due to abnormal wet and warm conditions mostly over grasslands - but not sure if their results will hold, so lets see:
I have to thank for your important article as it is vital that ever more people understand that we have here a massive feedback in the making of single subsystems not only weakening their carbon uptake but switching suddenly into sources.
Really wonder how strong the SO signal will be as it should now increase the carbon release from the Southern Ocean.
The next temperature jump will bring us deep into red territory of synchronizing feedbacks.
There exist even the possibility that the next temperature jump will become even larger than the last two.
The good in the bad: ocean heat uptake rates seem to set the clock as ocean heat release and shifting ocean heat redistribution during these jumps synchronizes the feedbacks including a poleward amplitude so it will be visible if this could be the case from the coming data of ocean heat uptake.
Unfortunately we have just more neutral to La Nina conditions which point to larger OHC increase in 2025, but the cloud-SST pattern effect just crashed again and only seems now again to recover, so maybe not too extreme in 2025...
Highly curious about the new numbers - guess the preprint of: "Ocean heat content in 2025" will be out in Feb. - the last had been published in April:
What is noteworthy here, look at the numbers of upper 300m ocean heat uptake the last two years - not all El Nino related - so possible we see now that the decoupling of the upper ocean becomes serious - next massive feedback rolling on...
this gives a good summary of the ocean in 2023 and to extrapolate this into 2024 with a weaker EL Nino, this would probably have lead to a much stronger global outgassing plus reduction in co2 sink in the ocean.
I am interested in the upwelling you talk about around Antarctica and will look into this further as co2 is only one nutrient in an upwelling and I would like to see its constituents and how this plays into the whole picture.
Ali in Regenesis did a good overview in changes we are making to sensitivity and it looks like the oceans may be more sensitive to our impacts than thought.
Hi Tom, Very interesting and informative article. I have one comment. I get very nervous when i see R^2 fit of an equation =1 a perfect fit. In principle it doesn't detract from the point you are making that there is evidence that the carbon sinks are unable to cope with the atmospheric carbon. I think the sinks are just overwhelmed
Hi Brian, Thanks. I agree with the R^2=1. That figure was taken from the Curran’s paper. They got there by fitting two polynomials to the min and max trend, so ironed out all the noise that way. I should have reproduced the graph from the data myself.
It will be interesting to see what the 2025 data looks like by the end of the year.
Good analysis and a stark reminder that nature’s buffering systems are reaching their limits. Outside of reducing emissions, investing in the natural systems that regulate our climate to build resilience is key. Rewilding, soil health, ocean protection must be climate priorities.
This preprint could also be important - microbial respiration went up by 3.5Gt C in 2024 due to abnormal wet and warm conditions mostly over grasslands - but not sure if their results will hold, so lets see:
"Dramatic increase in ecosystem respiration causes record-breaking atmospheric CO2 growth rate in 2024"; https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6956425/v1
Thanks Jan.
I have to thank for your important article as it is vital that ever more people understand that we have here a massive feedback in the making of single subsystems not only weakening their carbon uptake but switching suddenly into sources.
Really wonder how strong the SO signal will be as it should now increase the carbon release from the Southern Ocean.
The next temperature jump will bring us deep into red territory of synchronizing feedbacks.
There exist even the possibility that the next temperature jump will become even larger than the last two.
The good in the bad: ocean heat uptake rates seem to set the clock as ocean heat release and shifting ocean heat redistribution during these jumps synchronizes the feedbacks including a poleward amplitude so it will be visible if this could be the case from the coming data of ocean heat uptake.
Unfortunately we have just more neutral to La Nina conditions which point to larger OHC increase in 2025, but the cloud-SST pattern effect just crashed again and only seems now again to recover, so maybe not too extreme in 2025...
Highly curious about the new numbers - guess the preprint of: "Ocean heat content in 2025" will be out in Feb. - the last had been published in April:
2024
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-025-00655-0
2023
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00539-9
What is noteworthy here, look at the numbers of upper 300m ocean heat uptake the last two years - not all El Nino related - so possible we see now that the decoupling of the upper ocean becomes serious - next massive feedback rolling on...
All the best
Jan
Thanks again Jan, I appreciate that. Thanks for the pre-print link.
Hopefully its wrong... but if not WTF!
the sea surface temperatures for the last couple of years have been off the charts part due to the cleaning up of shipping emissions
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2025/09/04/the-ocean-carbon-sink-is-ailing/
this gives a good summary of the ocean in 2023 and to extrapolate this into 2024 with a weaker EL Nino, this would probably have lead to a much stronger global outgassing plus reduction in co2 sink in the ocean.
I am interested in the upwelling you talk about around Antarctica and will look into this further as co2 is only one nutrient in an upwelling and I would like to see its constituents and how this plays into the whole picture.
Ali in Regenesis did a good overview in changes we are making to sensitivity and it looks like the oceans may be more sensitive to our impacts than thought.
https://r3genesis.substack.com/p/200-how-restoring-nature-lowers-climate
Thanks Theodore, I’ll read the post.
Hi Tom, Very interesting and informative article. I have one comment. I get very nervous when i see R^2 fit of an equation =1 a perfect fit. In principle it doesn't detract from the point you are making that there is evidence that the carbon sinks are unable to cope with the atmospheric carbon. I think the sinks are just overwhelmed
Hi Brian, Thanks. I agree with the R^2=1. That figure was taken from the Curran’s paper. They got there by fitting two polynomials to the min and max trend, so ironed out all the noise that way. I should have reproduced the graph from the data myself.
It will be interesting to see what the 2025 data looks like by the end of the year.
Thank you Dr Tom, a really informative and comprehensive article.
Thanks Jacquie, I really appreciate that.