Atmospheric carbon dioxide record from Cape Kumukahi, Hawaii

Graphics Digital Data

C.D. Keeling and T.P. Whorf

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, La Jolla, California 92093-0244, U.S.A.

Period of Record

1979-2004

Methods

At Cape Kumukahi weekly air samples are collected in 5-L evacuated glass flasks exposed in triplicate. Flasks are returned to the SIO for CO2 determinations, which are made using an Applied Physics Corporation nondispersive infrared gas analyzer. In May 1983, the CO2-in-N2 calibration gases were replaced with CO2-in-air calibration gases, which are currently used (Keeling et al. 2002).

Cape Kumukahi, Hawaii, U.S.A.
Island seashore
19°31' N, 154°49' W
3 m above MSL

Trends

On the basis of flask samples collected at Cape Kumukahi and analyzed by SIO, the annual fitted average concentration of CO2 rose from 339.10 ppmv in 1980 to 377.93 ppmv in 2004. This represents an average annual growth rate of over 1.6 ppmv per year in the fitted values at Cape Kumukahi.

References

Bacastow, R.B., and C.D. Keeling. 1981.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and the observed airborne fraction. In B. Bolin (ed.), Carbon Cycle Modelling, SCOPE 16. John Wiley and Sons, New York.

Bacastow, R.B., J.A. Adams, Jr., C.D. Keeling, D.J. Moss, T.P. Whorf, and C.S. Wong. 1980.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Southern Oscillation, and the weak 1975 El Niño. Science 210:66-68.

Keeling, C.D., R.B. Bacastow, A.F. Carter, S.C. Piper, T.P. Whorf, M. Heimann, W.G. Mook, and H. Roeloffzen. 1989.
A three-dimensional model of atmospheric CO2 transport based on observed winds: 1. Analysis of observational data. In D.H. Peterson (ed.), Aspects of Climate Variability in the Pacific and the Western Americas. Geophysical Monograph 55:165-235.

Keeling, C.D., P.R. Guenther, G. Emanuele III, A. Bollenbacher, and D.J. Moss. 2002.
Scripps Reference Gas Calibration System for Carbon Dioxide-in-Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide-in-Air Standards: Revision of 1999 (with Addendum). SIO Reference Series No. 01-11.

CITE AS: Keeling, C.D. and T.P. Whorf. 2005. Atmospheric CO2 records from sites in the SIO air sampling network. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.

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