SOCECOL E8 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Isotope-Ratio Mass Spectrometry, Keeling Curve, Harrison Brown

• School: UC-Irvine
• Department: Social Ecology
• Course: SOCECOL E8
• Professor: John M.Whiteley

Document Summary

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas produced by natural processes and everyday human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels. The keeling curve is a measurement of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere made atop hawaii"s mauna loa since 1958. It is the longest-running such measurement in the world. The scripps co2 program was initiated in 1956 by charles david keeling and operated under his direction until his death in 2005. It is currently being continued by ralph f. keeling, who also runs a parallel program at. Scripps to measure changes in atmospheric oxygen abundances. Carbon dioxide measurements at mauna loa are also being made by an independent instrument operated by noaa. In the first part of the 20th century it was suspected that the concentration of atmospheric co2might be increasing in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel combustion. However there were relatively few measurements of this gas and the measurements varied widely.