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| (Courtesy NOAA/ESRL) |
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have broken through a symbolic mark.
Daily measurements of CO2 at a US government agency lab on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million for the first time.
The station, which sits on the Mauna Loa volcano, feeds its numbers into a continuous record of the concentration of the gas stretching back to 1958.
The last time CO2 was regularly above 400ppm was three to five million years ago - before modern humans existed.
Carbon dioxide is regarded as the most important of the manmade greenhouse gases blamed for raising the temperature on the planet over recent decades.
Human sources come principally from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.
Geothermal plants emit about 5% of the carbon dioxide emitted by a coal-fired plant of equal size.
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