Calculus and CO2 Emissions
OverviewIntroduction to Calculus
Reading  •  30–45 min
Polynomial Derivatives
Video  •  10 min
Application of Polynomial Differentiation
Classroom Activity  •  60 min
Questions and Assignments
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Application of Polynomial Differentiation

Help your students apply the learned concepts through a classroom activity. This activity uses atmospheric CO2 data from the Mauna Loa Observatory for the period 1950 to 2017.

This activity will help students to

  • observe the trend in increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.
  • infer the approximate year when atmospheric CO2 levels could cause global temperatures to increase by 2°C (leading to serious climate change-related problems).
  • determine the desired trends in atmospheric CO2 levels that could help in avoiding or mitigating such climate change-related consequences.

On the worksheet, do exercises 1-6 to predict atmospheric CO2 levels in the future. Discuss the possible impact of these trends on global temperature and climate. You can expand this activity to introduce the concept of curve fitting.

The Mauna Loa Observatory, in the Pacific islands of Hawaii (USA), is a research facility that monitors and collects data on the atmosphere since the 1950s.

Here we will use some data on the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the atmosphere. The observatory records values of the concentration regularly for long periods of time (years), so we end up with a collection of points (time, concentration).

Mauna Loa Observatory

Using a technique called curve fitting, we can find the polynomial function that best describes the relation between the two variables, by passing the closest possible to all the points.

Once we have a mathematical description of the physical measures, we can use mathematical tools (such as the derivatives) to analyze and extract information from the data.

Solve exercises 1-6 on this sheet:

Exercises
Mauna Loa Yearly Average CO2 by Thomas J. Pfaff, from Sustainability Math (exercise).

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