Roger Revelle

Roger Revelle was an American scientist whose work in oceanography helped lay the observational foundation for the modern understanding of human-caused climate change. As director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1950 to 1964, Revelle recruited chemist Charles David Keeling in 1956 to establish continuous, precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, first at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii and in Antarctica, producing the long-term record now known as the Keeling Curve. In 1957 Revelle and physicist Hans Suess co-authored a landmark paper using carbon-14 measurements to show that the oceans could not absorb industrial carbon dioxide emissions as quickly as had been assumed, concluding that humanity was carrying out what they called a large-scale geophysical experiment; a newspaper report on the paper later that year is credited with an early use of the term global warming. Revelle also helped expand American oceanographic research after the Second World War through major Pacific expeditions including MIDPAC, TRANSPAC, EQUAPAC and NORPAC, and he played an instrumental role in establishing the University of California, San Diego in the late 1950s, which later named its Revelle College after him.