The US plans to shut it down

The greenhouse effect was discovered over 150 years ago and the first scientific article connecting carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere with climate change was published in 1896.

But it was not until the 1950s that scientists could definitively detect the effect of human activities on the earth’s atmosphere.

In 1956, the United States Scientist Charles Keeling chose the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii as a site of a new atmospheric measurement station. It was ideal, located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and at high altitude of the confusing influence of population centers.

The data collected by Mauna Loa from 1958 clearly allowed us to see the evidence of climate change for the first time. The station samples air and measures the levels of global Co₂. Charles Keeling and his successors used this data to produce the famous Keeling curve – a graph showing carbon dioxide levels increasing year after year.

But this precious record is in danger. US President Donald Trump has decided to finance the observatory recorded the data, as well as the American greenhouse gas monitoring network and other climate measurement sites.

We cannot solve the existential problem of climate change if we cannot follow the changes. Losing Mauna Loa would be a huge loss for climate science. If he stops, other observatories such as Kennaook / Cape Grim from Australia will become even more vital.

What has Mauna Loa showed us?

The first year of measures at Mauna Loa revealed something incredible. For the first time, the clear annual cycle in the atmospheric Co₂ was visible. As plants grow in summer, they absorb the Co₂ and draw it from the atmosphere. As they die and undress in winter, the Co₂ returns to the atmosphere. It is as if the earth was breathing.

Most land on earth are in the northern hemisphere, which means that this cycle is largely influenced by the northern summer and winter.

It only took a few years of measures before an even deeper pattern emitted.

Year on year, Co₂ The atmosphere levels increased tirelessly. The in-out natural cycle continued, but against a regular increase.

Scientists would later find that the ocean and the earth together absorbed almost half of the CO₂ produced by humans. But the rest accumulated in the atmosphere.

Above all, isotopic measures meant that scientists could be clear about the origin of additional carbon dioxide. He came from humans, largely through fossil fuels on fire.

Mauna Loa has now been collecting data for over 65 years. The resulting mud curve graph is the most emblematic demonstration of the way in which human activities collectively affect the planet.

When the last of the baby-boomers generation was born in the 1960s, Co₂ The levels were around 320 parts per million. Now they have more than 420 ppm. It is an invisible level for at least three million years. The increase rate far exceeds any natural change in the last 50 million years.

The reason why carbon dioxide is so important is that this molecule has special properties. Its ability to trap heat alongside other greenhouse gases means that the earth is not a frozen rock. If there was no greenhouse gas, the earth would have an average temperature of -18 ° C, rather than the sweetness of 14 ° C under which human civilization emerged.

The greenhouse effect is essential to life. But if there is too much gas, the planet becomes dangerously hot. This is what is happening now – a very strong increase in gas exceptionally good to trap heat even with low concentrations.

Keep our eyes open

It is not enough to know the CO₂ is climbed. Surveillance is essential. Indeed, as the planet warms up, the ocean and the earth should take less and less the emissions of humanity, leaving even more carbon in the air.

Continuous and high -precision surveillance is the only way to locate if and when it happens.

This surveillance provides vital means to verify whether new climatic policies really influence atmospheric CO₂ Curve rather than simply being presented as effective. Surveillance will also be vital to capture from the moment when many have worked when government policies and new technologies are ultimately slowed down and ultimately stop an increase in CO₂.

US administration plans to finance key climate surveillance systems and fully return green energy initiatives have a global challenge.

Without these systems, it will be more difficult to provide the weather and give seasonal updates. It will also be more difficult to provide dangerous extreme weather events.

In the United States and the world, scientists have sounded the alarm about what the closure would do to science. It is understandable. The stopping of data climates collection is like breaking a thermometer because you don’t like to know that you have a fever.

If the United States follows, other countries will have to carefully reconsider its commitments to bring together and share climatic data.

Australia has a long record of direct atmospheric co₂ Measurement, which began in 1976 in the Kennaook / Cape Grim This observation and other climatic observations will only become precious than if Mauna Loa is lost.

It remains to be seen how the leaders of Australia react to the American retirement of climate surveillance. Ideally, Australia would maintain not only but strategically broaden its atmosphere, land and ocean monitoring systems.

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