A big eruption cools the air because sulfur haze blocks sunlight. The volcano’s CO2 is tiny and does not do this.
A sink is a place that takes carbon out of the air. is plants and soil. (Earth’s other sink) is seawater and marine life. Together they take about half of what people emit.
CO2 stays in the air because the molecule is stable. It does not rain out like water, and it does not fall out like volcanic haze. Land and ocean take about half of each year’s emissions. The other half is still mixed through the whole atmosphere, trapping heat, until the slow ocean and even slower rocks take more — decades to centuries. That leftover stacks.
Scroll, pinch, or use + / −. Drag to slide. Double-tap to zoom in.
Annual global mean from HadCRUT5 (Met Office / UEA). Official series is vs 1961–1990; here it is shifted so 1850–1900 averages zero, matching the numbers at the top. Hover a year for the anomaly and an approximate actual °C. Actual is the HadCRUT5 anomaly plus 13.67°C, a working 1850–1900 mean so 2025 sits near the WMO 15.08°C global mean. Absolute GMST is only known to about half a degree. The +/− is the robust number. Gold is yearly sunspots (SILSO V2). The brown line is TSI, the Sun’s energy at Earth in W/m² (NOAA/LASP CDR v3, yearly). Both follow the 11-year cycle. They do not climb with the orange temperature line. Click a chip or a dot.
Teaching toy from the three reports. Bars update as you drag.