The Observatory now maintains the instrument as a museum piece at its original location. John Chin of the Mauna Loa staff faithfully tended the analyzer from 1963 to 2004. The original strip chart recorder (top) also operated from 1958 until 2006. It used radio tubes and collected carbon dioxide data in its original configuration until its decommissioning in January 2006. The analyzer (center) was installed in March 1958. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Keeling) carbon dioxide analyzer at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory. Researchers soon abandoned this approach when they were unable to discern patterns or trends in their sporadic observations. Then, scientists believed a few measurements at a few places around the earth every few years would suffice for understanding global atmospheric carbon dioxide. Continuous carbon dioxide monitoring represented a break from the conventional wisdom in the early 1950s. In the meantime, Keeling attracted Revelle who invited him to Scripps to establish an atmospheric carbon dioxide laboratory and begin continuous measurement operations. This fit into Wexler’s plans to monitor carbon dioxide and also to use the new Mauna Loa Observatory for a suite of observations during the IGY.
Keeling came to Wexler’s attention and traveled to Washington in 1956 to discuss a continuous carbon dioxide measurement system. Charles “Dave” Keeling of California Institute of Technology to learn more about atmospheric carbon dioxide. One was declaration of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957-1958 another was the serendipitous construction of a new atmospheric observatory high on the slope of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, by the United States Weather Bureau in 1956 a third was the interest and patronage of Harry Wexler and Robert Simpson of the Weather Bureau and the passion of Dr. Several factors converged in the mid- to late 1950s that encouraged atmospheric scientists to study carbon dioxide distribution. The Weather Bureau founded the observatory in 1956 to gain access to clean, particle-free air when it could not find a suitable site in the continental U.S. The primary site for the Mauna Loa Observatory and its carbon dioxide sampling equipment is located at the 11,000 ft level on the island of Hawaii. Carbon dioxide is one of a number of chemical compounds in the atmosphere along with water vapor, methane, nitrous oxides, and others that are known as “greenhouse gases.” These gases trap the solar energy that radiates back toward space from the Earth’s surface, similar to the effect of the glass panes of a greenhouse, causing the lower atmosphere to warm.
It is also a man-made by-product of fossil fuel combustion. It therefore becomes of prime importance to attempt to determine the way in which carbon dioxide is partitioned between the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere and the lithosphere.”Ĭarbon dioxide is a naturally occurring, colorless, odorless gas that makes up less than one-tenth of one percent of the Earth’s atmosphere. Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was among the first to recognize this and wrote, “human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.” Revelle declared, “This experiment, if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes determining weather and climate. In the mid-1950s, a growing awareness among scientists led them to reason that accelerated burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) had the potential to alter the Earth’s climate on an unprecedented scale by greatly increasing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Burning coal, oil, and natural gas for energy, as at this power plant, produces carbon dioxide as a by-product of combustion which is then emitted into the atmosphere. Living organisms produce carbon dioxide as part of the natural process of obtaining energy. An Atmospheric "Experiment" on a Global Scale
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