Tom Boden is the director of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), which is located at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge 

National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The CDIAC is the primary climate-change data and information analysis center of the US 

Department of Energy (DOE).


On a global scale, some 9,139 teragrams – a teragram is a million metric tons – of oxidized carbon were emitted from fossil-fuel combustion and 

cement manufacture. This represents an increase of about 512 teragrams, or 5.9%, over the 2009 global estimate. In 2008, 8,749 teragrams were 

emitted worldwide making the 2010 estimate about 104.5% of that, or 391 teragrams more. When all of this oxidized carbon, along with the mass 

from oxygen molecules, is converted to carbon dioxide (CO2), we’re looking at amounts of over 33.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide being 

dumped into the atmosphere in 2010.


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Tom Boden, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center - US Department of Energy
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Among factors scientists considered when determining reasons why levels of carbon rose or fell over this three year period (2008 through 2010) 

were the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_financial_crisis" class="news_link" target="_blank" title="global financial and economic 

crisis">global financial and economic crisis</a> that started in 2008. Boden and his colleagues were a bit surprised that the impact of 

the financial crisis didn’t result in lower global numbers, but instead jumped even higher than previous years.


Much of that 5.9% global increase from 2009 to 2010, according the latest estimates, is due to increased emissions from the world’s largest 

fossil-fuel emitter, the People’s Republic of China, where emissions rose by 10%. 2010 carbon emissions from the United States were up by almost 

4%, of the 2009 estimates. But when comparing this recent data with the numbers from 2007, the record high year for the US, the 2010 carbon output 

was 6% less. The recent set of estimates also show that other countries had similar experiences. While a number of nations did have decreases in 

the amount of emitted carbon, Boden says “the big story here is some of the large increases in the developing countries.”


The estimates the CDIAC generates are from underlying statistics that are reported by a number of sources including the United Nations, The 

International Energy Agency in Paris, related agencies from individual countries, for example the United States information is from the US 

Department of Energy, among others and data that is produced by private companies such as British Petroleum (BP).


If you want to examine the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center carbon emission estimates and check out similar data from the past you can 

do so by <a href="http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/perlim_2009_2010_estimates.html" class="news_link" target="_blank" title="Carbon Dioxide 

Information Analysis Center">visiting their web site</a>.




Source: Voice of America, Science World

2010 Global Carbon Dioxide Levels Hit Record High