Trump administration’s proposed NOAA cuts threaten decades-long CO2 data collection, scientist says

More carbon dioxide — released from cars, factories and power plants — was present in the atmosphere last year than ever before in recorded history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s latest report.

The federal agency has been monitoring CO2 levels since the 1960s. It’s part of the work started by Professor Ralph Keeling’s father, Professor Charles David Keeling, who first documented the building up of CO2 in the atmosphere, driving climate change. Now, the Trump administration’s proposed funding and personnel cuts threaten to put an end to decades of critical scientific research, according to leaked budget documents and climate scientists.

Standing at what he called the center of the operation that his father started at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, Professor Ralph Keeling continues his father’s work, analyzing air samples collected from around the planet inside volleyball-like flasks.

“He never encouraged me to go into the field. But he inspired me by what he did,” said Keeling as he worked in his La Jolla, California, lab.

His father — the climate scientist whose readings of carbon dioxide confirmed to the world to the possibility of the greenhouse effect — co-authored a federal science report in November 1965 and warned about high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, blaming the industrial burning of coal, oil and gas.

“The headline, sadly, is the same every year, is that we keep breaking records. And it’s concerning,” Ralph Keeling said.

What also concerns him are cuts proposed by the Trump administration that he said would slash climate research at NOAA, such as the ongoing collection of CO2 samples.

“It would be a big blow if that work stopped,” Ralph Keeling said. “Not just for me personally, but for the community and for the world at large.”

CBS News has reached out to the White House for comment.

NOAA’s carbon sampling program collects air from all over the world. Over the years, CBS News crews have stood on a volcano in Hawaii to see samples gathered, as well as see them shipped from Norway back for analysis at a NOAA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. 

The reason samples collected near the North Pole are sent to Colorado is because scientists want to confirm that they’re measuring on the same scale, according to Ove Hermansen, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.

The result is what’s known as the Keeling Curve, named after Ralph’s dad, who died in 2005. It’s a simple graph plotting the unchecked rise of carbon dioxide. The image below shows how closely the Keeling Curve matches the rise in global average temperatures.

“It’s beautiful data, but it’s also sad, underlying that sense of, wow, scientific wonder and beauty is also a sadness that this is actually what’s happening,” Ralph Keeling said.

The Trump administration’s plans would eliminate funding for NOAA’s global CO2 program and end decades of unbroken data collection, Keeling said, degrading the nation’s ability to project how climate change could impact us in the future.

“So, turning off a program like this would be like turning off the headlights on a dark street at night. You can’t see where you’re going,” he added.

David Schechter

David Schechter is a national environmental correspondent and the host of “On the Dot with David Schechter,” a guided journey to explore how we’re changing the earth and earth is changing us.