Is the impact of carbon emision dependent on the location on the earth?

Question

While I was reading how the EU taxes aviation companies based on carbon emissions it occurred to me that the effect of carbon emissions on global temperature etc. may depend on where the carbon is emitted. My question is: Is it the case that the effect of the release of carbon is dependent upon the location (environment) in which it was released? (For example I could imagine that if CO2 were to be released in a rainforest the effect on the "global atmosphere" would be different than if it were emitted in an already more saturated atmosphere with less potential to utilize (or process) CO2. Any reference to studies done on the effect of CO2 emissions relative to the environment in which it is emitted would be welcome.

Answer 1

The atmosphere is a rapidly mixed (and well mixed) reservoir. While some cities and other centers of high emissions can cause higher relative concentrations of carbon dioxide at Earth's surface, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a whole is what causes global warming (the augmentation of the greenhouse effect and rapid homogenous warming of Earth's surface). We see the influence of seasons in the long-term record of carbon dioxide concentration at the HI station: the N. hemisphere has more plant growth so there's a lower concentration in summer and higher concentration in winter. Additionally, winds and climate modes can change relative concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, including the stratosphere. These also affect how various ocean mixed layers take up carbon dioxide (surface). So, yes, you can have variability in surface concentration on several scales, but global warming concerns global scales, as the name suggests, which will look at the total concentration in every reservoir as well as the average trends. Scale is an important part of answering many climate questions and I'm happy to discuss this more if you'd like.

Here are some papers you may find useful for your inquiry:

Jiang and Yung (2019)

Prather (2022)

Kurbatova (2020) - to look at variability in concentration around a Vietnamese forest

Coutts, Beringer, and Tapper (2007) - study around urban concentrations in AUS

Gao et al. (2018) - probably the most interesting to you as it's looking at an urban to rural transect

The continuation of Keeling's work (HI monitoring): https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/