Its construction now complete, the science instrument that is the heart of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) spacecraft -- NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide -- has left its nest at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and has arrived at its integration and test site in Gilbert, Ariz.
Climate scientists have long argued that ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice is the smoking gun that links carbon dioxide to global warming. Over the past 800,000 years or so the planet has gone through a series of ice ages interspersed with relatively warm periods (during which glaciers retreat back toward the poles) - and inevitably, these warm interludes happen when there's more CO2 in the atmosphere
"The Arctic experienced an extended period of warm temperatures about 3.6 million years ago - before the onset of the ice ages - at a time when the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere was not much higher than the levels being recorded today, a new study finds."
CarbonTracker, a project of the U.S. government's National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory, has produced a telling time-lapse video chart of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) concentrations starting in January of 1979 and ending in January of 2011. Measurements were taken in dozens of locations around the world (the red ball measures CO2 in Hawaii and the blue dot measures CO2 at the South Pole)