Four kilometers over the Pacific, with the combined exhalations of humans and their cars and factories blowing toward him, Aidan Colton held up a glass jar the size of a coconut. He held his breath—even carbon dioxide from his lungs could corrupt the sample—and opened the valve.
The sample taken on Mauna Kea is feeding the world’s longest record of direct readings of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The measurements constitute the most comprehensive body of firsthand evidence of how Earth’s chemistry has changed since the mid-20th century. They represent a triumph of long-term scientific commitment. And they went into crisis at the end of last year.
For 60 years, scientists had been taking air measurements from facilities at Mauna Loa, a nearby volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. But in November 2022, Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in nearly 40 years. No one was injured, but lava flows up to 30 feet deep downed the observatory’s power lines and buried a section of the road up the mountain. The facilities came to a standstill.
It took a transoceanic race and a dose of luck for scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory to restart their readings—taking them, for the first time, on Mauna Kea.
The disruption highlights the careful planning and delicate labor that goes into collecting this data, as well as the obstacles, both human and natural, that can get in the way. It shows how the seemingly simple task of measuring air is far from it.
After Mauna Loa began spewing lava, technicians from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the observatory, flew to the site and set up instruments on Mauna Kea. They did this very quickly because, months before, NOAA had already begun exploring the location of a backup site there, at a telescope run by the University of Hawaii.
“It definitely happened at the right time,” said Brian A. Vasel, a NOAA official. But “it’s definitely not a coincidence.”
The agency went a little over a week without taking action.
NOAA is now transporting solar panels and batteries to Mauna Loa by helicopter to restore power to the observatory. The plan is to collect parallel measurements at both volcanoes over a year to see how they compare and assess whether Mauna Kea, which last erupted 4,600 years ago, could become a long-term support for Mauna Loa, the volcano. largest asset in the world.
Once the lava cools enough to build a new road, probably by summer, The agency plans to begin upgrading its observatory on Mauna Loa with renovated lab space, fiber optic connectivity, and its first septic system.
Both Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea sit high up, away from nearby towns, cars, and forests, and in the path of high-altitude, globe-spanning air masses, swirling the gases over many of the more developed regions of the Earth. Land.
But most likely, the air at the two sites is blowing from somewhat different heights in the atmosphere, which could influence the levels of greenhouse gases they detect. The facilities on Mauna Loa have an elevation about one kilometer lower than those on Mauna Kea. It also sits below the summit of the volcano, allowing it to catch clean high-altitude air that cools and flows downhill as it reaches the chilly night slopes. The Mauna Kea site is on top of the mountain, where this effect does not exist.
NOAA expects to complete the first of its improvements to Mauna Loa by fall 2024, Vasel said. The price: 5.5 million dollars.
For funding agencies, long-term atmospheric monitoring is a hard sell, said Ralph Keeling, a scientist at the Scripps Institution.
“Climate change is occurring decade by decade; You don’t know what’s going on unless you’re looking at it decade by decade,” Keeling said. “That means measurements over a much longer time frame than a typical science project.
“At some point, agencies say, ‘Well, why are we paying for this?’” he said.
RAYMOND ZHONG
The New York Times
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6569548, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-02-13 23:50:07
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