Professor Ralph Keeling
Ralph is a climate scientist whose research interests include climate change, changes in atmospheric composition, ocean biogeochemistry, and carbon cycling. Ralph received a B.S. in physics from Yale University in 1979, and a Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard University in 1988.
He was the first to demonstrate that the oxygen concentration of the global atmosphere is decreasing due to the burning of fossil-fuels and has directed a program to track this decrease since 1989. Since 2005 he has also directed the Scripps CO2 program which sustains the iconic record of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa and other sites, begun by his father, Charles D. Keeling.
He is engaged in ongoing research to refine estimates of sources and sinks of carbon dioxide using atmospheric measurements. Ralph is an active participant in teaching and advising graduate students at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
He has given keynote addresses to the American Geophysical Union in 2004, and to the G8 Legislators and Business Leaders Climate Change Forum in London in 2005. In 1997, Dr. Keeling received the Rosenstiel Award for his work on atmospheric oxygen.