When MarketWatch last reported on data from the Mauna Loa Observatory, it painted a pretty grim story of the global economy, in April.
That observatory, on the world’s second-largest volcano, measures carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And the decline in the 12-month average of the year-over-year change in parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide preceded the declines in economically sensitive commodities like oil
CL.1,
and copper
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Now the news from the volcano is that the rate at which carbon dioxide is accumulating in June dropped to the levels that were typical at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis.
Political Calculations blog, using NOAA data
The sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine has disrupted energy flows. Earlier in the year, China’s severe COVID-19 lockdowns weighed down on activity from the world’s number-two economy. But now China has lifted many of those restrictions, and roadway congestion and port activity is picking up.
So that leaves the likely culprit for the latest drop to be the U.S. economy. And that would be consistent with more conventional measures of economic activity. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow, for instance, projects a 1.6% annualized drop during the second quarter.
“We think that June 2022’s decline may be explained by decreased economic activity elsewhere in the world,” says the blog Political Calculations, which regularly reports on the observatory’s data. “For example, there are strong indications the real U.S. economy shrank in the second quarter of 2022, which would offset positive GDP growth in China’s economy during June 2022.”
