English: This figure shows the growth of sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆) in Earth's atmosphere during years 1978-2018. Upper graph shows the concentration in picomole per mole (=parts per trillion) from air samples gathered in the lower troposphere of the northern (blue) and southern (red) hemispheres. Thin lines are model fits to the measured data shown as monthly error bars (after ~2003) and as the less frequent circles (before 2003). Most SF₆ emissions originate in the northern hemisphere, leading to a relative lag in farther southern abundances. Lower graph shows the accelerating trend in annual growth rates as inferred from the model fits.

Credit:

Simmonds, P. G., Rigby, M., Manning, A. J., Park, S., Stanley, K. M., McCulloch, A., Henne, S., Graziosi, F., Maione, M., Arduini, J., Reimann, S., Vollmer, M. K., Mühle, J., O'Doherty, S., Young, D., Krummel, P. B., Fraser, P. J., Weiss, R. F., Salameh, P. K., Harth, C. M., Park, M.-K., Park, H., Arnold, T., Rennick, C., Steele, L. P., Mitrevski, B., Wang, R. H. J., and Prinn, R. G. (2020) "The increasing atmospheric burden of the greenhouse gas sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)", Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20: 7271–7290. doi:10.5194/acp-20-7271-2020. Material was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.