Why mauna loa co2

Importantly, Mauna Loa is not the only atmospheric measuring station in the world. As the graph from NOAA shows, other stations show the same year-after-year increasing trend. The seasonal saw-tooth varies from place to place, of course, but the background trend remains steadily upwards. The Keeling Curve is one of the best-defined results in climatology and there really are no valid scientific reasons for doubting it.

Weart also has a separate article on Keeling's struggle to fund his research. Last updated on 6 September by Andy Skuce. View Archives. Political, off-topic or ad hominem comments will be deleted. Comments Policy Does it mean partial molar volume of CO 2 relative to molar volume of whole air?

That would only be correct if all the constituent gases of air behaved as ideal gases, which we know is not true. Furthermore, the calibration standards used for greenhouse gases in air are made as, and expressed as, mole fractions in dry air. Data is available as hourly, daily and monthly averages. Although we describe measurement techniques for CO 2 , they apply also to measurements of methane CH 4 and carbon monoxide CO.

Prior to this date, an analyzer was used based on infrared absorption. CRDS is based on the measurement of the rate of absorption, rather than the magnitude of absorption, of light circulating in an optical cavity. The beam from a laser enters an optical cavity consisting of two or more highly reflective mirrors. The laser is then turned off and the light intensity inside the cavity steadily leaks out and decays to zero in an exponential fashion.

A detector measures the intensity of the transmitted light as a function of time. The decay time is called the cavity ring-down time. By comparing the ring down times when the laser is at a wavelength that the CO 2 molecule does not absorb, to the ring down time when the laser is at a wavelength that the CO 2 molecule does absorb, the amount of CO 2 can be calculated The analyzer also measures CH 4 and CO.

An important aspect of the measurements is the ongoing calibrations of the analyzer. Air flows continually through the instrument, after having first been dried in a cold trap where the water vapor freezes out as ice on the walls of the trap.

Unfortunately, the absorption that we measure in the instrument does not depend on the CO 2 mole fraction, but on the total amount of CO 2. Therefore, we also accurately control the temperature and pressure in the instrument, as well as the flow rate, and we do frequent calibrations with reference gas mixtures of known amounts of CO 2 -in-dry-air stored in high pressure aluminum cylinders spanning the expected range of the measurements. We continuously record the output from the analyzer, but we need some way to convert this output to true mole fraction values, that is, M.

In the case of Mauna Loa, the range of the standards is from about to ppm. This calibration sequence is performed approximately every two weeks. The calibration method allows us to determine the response of the analyzer without having to know the amount of CO 2 in the reference R0, and the highly calibrated standard gases are used sparingly.

An example of the output from the analyzer for one day is shown in Figure 1. Two separate intake lines are used for sampling ambient air. The intake lines are from the top of a 38 m tall tower next to the observatory, to avoid any influence on the measurements by human activities at the observatory.

Each intake line is measured for five minutes, alternating between line 1 and line 2. Once an hour, the reference gas R0 is measured for five minutes. Once per day, two target tanks are measured for fifteen measurements each seen in hour 6 and hour 17 in Figure 1. The first few minutes after each gas change are not used to allow time for the previous gas to be completely flushed from the analysis system. The difference of the ambient air measurements from the reference R0 are calculated, and these differences are put into equation 1 to calculate the true ambient mole fraction CO 2.

By making the measurements relative to the difference from R0, any short term drifts in the analyzer are accounted for. The calibration of the analyzer outlined above depends on accurate measurements of the standard gases. In reality the mole fraction of the target gas is very accurately known.

If the response of the analyzer as calculated in Equation 1 is incorrect, the measurement of the target gas will produce the wrong result. By comparing the calculated values of the target gases with their known calibrated CO 2 values, we can detect problems with the analyzer calibration.

One target gas is near the ambient levels of CO 2 , and the other is higher than ambient. Mauna Loa Observatory is a station that measures elements in the atmosphere that contribute to climate change on Earth. They also measure elements that may deplete the ozone layer. The observatory is approximately 3, meters 11, feet above sea level and remains a long distance away from significant pollution sources. This means the air is relatively clean, which makes it easier for scientists to study.

Scientists began studying the atmosphere at Mauna Loa in the s. Some of the gases they measure include carbon monoxide , methane , nitrous oxide , and sulfur dioxide.

Charles David Keeling. He was a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was the first researcher to report that the levels of CO 2 in the atmosphere were consistently rising on Earth. The information gathered there helps scientists protect habitats and settlements on Earth.

Carbon dioxide is also the byproduct of burning fossil fuels. It can be toxic to humans. Also known as laughing gas or happy gas. The latter is determined as a moving average of SEVEN adjacent seasonal cycles centered on the month to be corrected, except for the first and last THREE and one-half years of the record, where the seasonal cycle has been averaged over the first and last SEVEN years, respectively.

The vertical bars on the black lines of the first graph show the uncertainty of each monthly mean based on the observed variability of CO 2 in different weather systems as they go past the top of Mauna Loa. This is manifest in the deviations of daily means from a smooth curve that follows the seasonal cycle [Thoning, ]. We take into account that successive daily means are not fully independent, the CO 2 deviation on most days has some similarity to that of the previous day.

If there is a missing month, its interpolated value is shown in blue.