Table of Contents

• Section 1: Keeling's 50 year curve
• 1: How would YOU measure CO₂?
• 2: How Keeling measured CO₂
• 3: Parts per what?
• 4: Roadtrip anyone?
• 5: Let's go to Hawaii
• 6: The Keeling Curve at 3 (years old)
• 7: The Keeling Curve at 50
• Section 2: Reading Keeling's Curve
• 8: Within vs. between year fluctuations
• 9: Do the fluctuations change?
• 10: Past and future
• 11: 80% reduction in CO₂ emissions

Roadtrip anyone?

So like I said, Keeling took his parts per million measurements in Pasadena, which is a nice place, but still pretty close to Los Angeles, which has pretty much the worst air quality in the US. Anyway, he found that CO₂ levels bounced around a lot, depending on air quality that day.

Darn! But, undaunted, Keeling headed off to Big Sur California, a wilderness area that was just beginning to be very hip with the in crowd. At Big Sur, he found that although CO₂ levels changed quite a bit, the changes were systematic -- a predictable daily cycle, with readings pretty consistently about 310 ppm in the afternoon.

So Keeling did what any good post-doc would — he wrote up a list of other places that would be fun and not too expensive travel-wise, then he went on some more camping trips, including the Pacific Rainforest and the Arizona mountains. And voila, the same pattern: daily fluctuations but about 310 ppm in the middle of the afternoon.

Big Sur California	Olympic Pennisula	High Mountain Forest Arizona