Graphing the Rise in Earth’s Carbon Dioxide

In this activity, students will use global carbon dioxide (CO

) concentration data since 1930 to plot major life milestones of themselves, their parents, and grandparents along a curve. Students will learn about trends over time and the long-lived nature of CO

in the atmosphere, and discuss solutions to the problem.

• This lesson is best done individually, so students can see their own life milestones on a single graph.
• Students with more experience graphing can use spreadsheet software to graph the data in the original source CSV files.
• For advanced students using the 1832 to 1958 data from Antarctic ice cores, use columns Mean Air Age, year A.D. and CO2, 20 year smoothed, ppm.
• For advanced students using NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory CO₂ annual mean data, use columns Year and Mean.

Your students have probably heard about climate change. Earth’s climate is always changing, but the difference is that right now, these changes are happening very quickly compared with the past. This is because humans have developed a large footprint on the planet and, for the first time, human activity is driving Earth’s climate to change on a global scale. Your students may have seen news reports about massive wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes, all of which can be intensified by climate change.

Why is this happening? When going about our daily lives, humans often power our activities by combusting fossil fuels like oil and gas. This includes when we drive cars that use gasoline, when we heat our homes by burning oil or natural gas, and when we power our appliances using electricity generated by burning coal or natural gas. The combustion of oil and gas releases carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere. Because of this, CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have increased almost every single year in recent history. The atmosphere already has CO₂ in it, so this might not seem like a big deal. Also, we can’t see CO₂, and it doesn’t smell bad (or have any smell at all), so it’s hard to notice that its concentrations are increasing.

However, even if we can’t see or smell it, the increasing CO₂ concentrations are having a big effect. CO₂ acts as a greenhouse gas. This means that it absorbs and traps the heat from the Sun. Because CO₂ does this, it has helped keep our planet warm and insulated us from the harshness of outer space for all of human history. The issue is that everything on Earth is in a balance. When one thing goes out of balance, it can be the domino that falls and then causes many other things to go out of balance. In the case of CO₂, there’s now so much of it in the atmosphere that Earth’s temperature is rising faster than at any point in recorded history. Animals, plants, entire ecosystems, human health, and natural disasters are all hanging in the balance as CO₂ keeps rising.

We have many tools, including NASA satellite instruments, such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, or OCO, to help us measure how CO₂ is increasing worldwide. Launched in 2014, OCO-2 is a satellite that maps Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide every 16 days. OCO-3 is an instrument attached to the International Space Station, so it is able to measure CO₂ at different times of day, compared with OCO-2 that provides measurements at fixed times of day.

Watch this animation to learn about some of these tools, and see how CO₂ has risen over the life of Sandra, a fictional NASA scientist.

The lesson below will lead your students through creating their own lifetime graphs of CO₂ and comparing their graphs with graphs for older people in their lives. The lesson makes use of a spreadsheet of CO₂ concentration data. The data in the spreadsheet were acquired from NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory on Mauna Loa and the historical CO₂ record based on Antarctic ice cores.

• Discuss the causes of the CO₂ increases between each of the milestones students have identified. Encourage them to think about human actions that contribute CO₂ to the atmosphere.
• In the video, Sandra uses science ideas to protect Earth and its resources.
• What were some of the things she got involved in to protect Earth?
• What are some ways students can get involved?
• What would it take to reverse the trend of increasing atmospheric CO₂?

• What were some of the things she got involved in to protect Earth?
• What are some ways students can get involved?
• What would it take to reverse the trend of increasing atmospheric CO₂?

• Students should be able to read a Cartesian graph (rectangular coordinate graph), graph coordinate pairs, and identify trends.
• Students should be able to name some sources of carbon dioxide.

Have students use an online carbon footprint calculator to calculate their family’s carbon footprint and determine ways they can decrease their footprint.

• NASA Climate Change

• How Do We Know Climate Change Is Real?
• Climate Kids - What Is the Greenhouse Effect?
• Climate Kids - Planet Health Report: Air

• Climate Time Machine