Main page

... Over the last 420,000 years, pre-industrial concentration of one of the most important greenhouse gases, CO2, had oscillated between 280 ppm (parts per million) during warm interglacials like the Holocene and 180 ppm during cold glacials (see Figure). Since the industrial revolution it has increased to 380 ppm (2004) ... (Chapter 1.3)

Variations of CO2 concentrations over the last 420,000 years as inferred from the Antarctic Vostok ice core and anthropogenic increase since the industrial revolution (~1850). The composition of the atmosphere is directly archived in air bubbles enclosed in the ice. The data is adapted from Petit et al. (1999)

Petit, J. R., Jouzel, J., Raynaud, D., Barkov, N. I., Barnola, J. M., Basile, I., Bender, M., Chappellaz, J., Davis, M., Delaygue, G., Delmotte, M., Kotlyakov, V. M., Legrand, M., Lipenkov, V. Y., Lorius, C., Pepin, L., Ritz, C., Saltzman, E., and Stievenard, M., 1999. Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica. Nature, 399(6735), 429–436.