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Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego (Scripps CO2 Program)

Scripps CO2 Program atmospheric CO2 and carbon-13 records at Mauna Loa

The original Keeling Curve programme. Monthly mean CO2 from continuous in situ measurements at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, from March 1958, on the 2012 SIO manometric mole fraction scale, and the monthly carbon-13 to carbon-12 ratio (delta-13C, per mil) of CO2 in flask samples from February 1980. The falling delta-13C is the isotopic signature of carbon from fossil fuels and plants. Measured independently of NOAA's Mauna Loa record. Months from December 2022 to February 2023 were measured on nearby Maunakea after the 2022 Mauna Loa eruption, as the file's station column records. Missing values are -99.99. The vintage is the archive date in each file's header.

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Numbers published from it

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Licence and credit

Licence
CC BY 4.0
What the terms say
“data and graphics on scrippsco2.ucsd.edu are licensed under a CC BY license, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which clarifies appropriate uses and requirements, including that credit be given to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.”

From the producer's terms, checked 2026-10-04; re-checked automatically every week.

Credit we give
Scripps CO2 Program, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego (R. F. Keeling, S. J. Walker, S. C. Piper and A. F. Bollenbacher), data archive dated {version}. CC BY 4.0.
Copy of the raw file
Allowed: we keep a public copy of every version we use.
Cite as
C. D. Keeling, S. C. Piper, R. B. Bacastow, M. Wahlen, T. P. Whorf, M. Heimann, and H. A. Meijer, Exchanges of atmospheric CO2 and 13CO2 with the terrestrial biosphere and oceans from 1978 to 2000. I. Global aspects, SIO Reference Series, No. 01-06, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, 88 pages, 2001.

Files

Status

Programme
In situ file updated in September 2026 (data through 19 September 2026); the flask delta-13C file still carries the archive of 6 June 2025 (data through December 2024). The programme is privately funded: "Scripps CO2 measurements at Mauna Loa are currently supported by Schmidt Sciences with supplemental support from Earth Networks" (keelingcurve.ucsd.edu, 2026-10-04). It samples at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory, which the FY2026 and FY2027 US budget requests proposed closing with the rest of NOAA's research labs.
Updates
In situ file monthly or more often; flask isotope file roughly yearly, about a year behind
Last check
Unchanged since the last fetch (2026-10-05T11:04:40Z)
Independent sources measuring the same thing
Trends in atmospheric carbon dioxide