Montsouris Observatory

Fig. 2.65 Historical records of CO2 measurements at Montsouris Observatory near Paris (data from Stanhill 1982), compared with CO2 data from Law Dome in Antarctica (see Fig. 2.66 for data source).

The longest continuous record of measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration available in the nineteen s century was made between 1877 and 1910 at the Montsouris Observatory on the outskirts of Paris (Fig. 2.65). 

April 1820-17 July 1893) was professor of physics in Montpellier (1844), of physics and chemistry in the Lyc6e Bonaparte (1857), astronomer in the Paris Observatoty (1862), and from 1873 director of the Meteorological Observatory of Montsouris most of his publications are on electricity and meteorology. 

The documentation of changes in background ozone in the time before the World War II is more difficult. Many surface ozone measurements were made by a chemical method in the last century at Montsouris, an observatory close to Paris. Careful tests showed that only SO2 is a significant interference of the method, which is very similar to the widely used Kl-method (arsenite was used instead of thiosufate, see Kl-method). Wind measurements of the same observatory were used to exclude measurements. 

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