Fifty years ago this month, a young scientist from Libertyville took the first modest measurements of the wispy air high up Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano, starting what is now the most imposing collection of evidence that we are setting a course for a warmer global climate. The project that the late Charles Keeling started in 1958 quickly found that levels of carbon dioxide were creeping upward every year. Over five decades the research—now carried on by Keeling's son—has yielded the "Keeling curve," an icon of global warming science.
Moviegoers know the curve from its starring role in Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," but the work also reveals science at its least glamorous. For more than a generation Keeling's colleagues have fought for funding, fended off Hawaiian boars near the measuring station and stuck with the same 1950s-era equipment to get a constant, reliable read of the atmosphere, week after week. That hard work has paid off in the realization that not only are carbon dioxide levels increasing, but the rate of increase is constantly rising because of humanity's growing consumption of fossil fuels.
Scientists are concerned because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that can trap warmth in the Earth's atmosphere and gradually increase global temperatures. The steady rise in carbon dioxide may already be warming the planet, and most experts believe some increase is likely in the coming century.
"The curve in a sense is a diagnostic sign of how we're doing on global warming," said Ralph Keeling, a climate science professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego who took over the project upon his father's 2005 death. "If the curve keeps going up at the accelerating rate it's on now, it shows we haven't done much."
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-keeling_bd30mar30,1,376094.story
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