We're here at the tip of the Scripps Pier at UC San Diego. The occasion is the
sixtieth anniversary of the start of the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide record. this was
a record begun by my father in 1958 tracking the increase in carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere this is a place that my father actually used to test methods
that he later used in Mauna Loa. The first step is taking an air sample. This is a
glass flask that's been evacuated and you take it out to a place where you
have a clean shot of air and you simply open this thing up and the air rushes in
here and you capture a sample and then you take this back to the lab and you
analyze how much carbon dioxide is in it.
This is the original lab that my father did the carbon dioxide measurements in
and this device here is called a manometer.
the manometer helps you measure the amount of carbon dioxide in air.
It's why we know that the carbon dioxide levels were much lower at 315
parts per million back in 1958.
After the flasks are brought back into the lab they're mounted here where they're analyzed for carbon dioxide
concentration by sending the air sequentially one flask at a time through an analyzer.
When the analysis is done we then mount them here where the air is
pumped away, the carbon dioxide is retained in these little glass tubes
where it's subsequently measured for its isotopic composition
That helps us decide whether the carbon dioxide say came from a car or it came from a plant
or it came from the oceans
When my father started these measurements in 1958, 60 years ago
the concentration levels in the atmosphere were around 315 parts per million.
Today, 2018, we're up essentially approaching 410 parts per million.
Why? Well, we keep burning fossil fuels, the carbon dioxide keeps building up in the air.
It's essentially that simple.