are highly related to the amount of carbon monoxide emitted from fossil fuels and retained in the atmosphere. This percentage is called the airborne fraction or retention ratio. If the airborne fraction is high, more CO2 emitted into the atmosphere will remain there. Climatic change is most likely to occur when the airborne fraction is high. Scientists have used recent data on worldwide fuel usage, rates of deforestation and reforestation, and rates in atmospheric CO2, to get an estimate value of 0.4 to 0.6 for the airborne fraction (Bach 74).
In future, this fraction of CO2 emissions retained in the atmosphere is likely to increase. This is based on the widely held belief that the top layers of the oceans, which serve as the main repository of carbon not retained in the atmosphere, will become saturated. The capacity of the ocean to absorb CO2 is also diminished as temperatures rise.
Deforestation has also come to play a major role in the CO2 problem. There are no exact estimates of the enormity of flow, however, because there is a lack of information on t
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