MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY , HAWAII — There are just a few moments from my past times that , having left an indelible mark on my life , I can now return to in an heartbeat . My first dance at my hymeneals to “ I Only Have Eyes for You . ” The speech sound call I received , as I dressed to go to work , telling me my female parent had died . spread my college espousal letter with a crisp roue of the gasbag .
These are life - altering highs and low gear . When Aidan Colton — a research scientist I had conform to for the first time just hr in the beginning — handed me a methamphetamine globe encased in tape , that simple rally became another one of those memories . It may seem odd that a stranger could affect me so profoundly , but what Colton handed me was more than a trinket . It was a flask filled with the very rummy time we live in , heavy as all of human chronicle . Standing there in the searing sunlight on the side of a volcano , I held everything for a brief moment .
The Mauna Loa Observatory , located smack in the center of the island of Hawaii , is one of the most sacred berth in science . Researchers there measure a variety of gas in the ambience , but none more important than carbon dioxide . As we enter a crucial decade in human account , the information collected in field glass flasks at Mauna Loa is more than just numbers in a logbook : it ’s a phonograph record of human success — or unsuccessful person .
A tower at Mauna Loa Observatory that samples various atmospheric gases.Photo: Brian Kahn (G/O Media)
While I ’m not inclined to mysticism , I find it firmly not to experience mystifying reverence for Mauna Loa Observatory and the Keeling Curve , the record that made it illustrious . When I strive out to see if I could visit , I carry to have to jump through a million hoops . or else , I just filled out a wide-eyed Google Form and exchanged a span emails with Colton , who provided direction for the drive from the seaside Ithiel Town of Hilo to the observatory sited at 11,135 foundation above sea level . I plant out at the crack of daybreak , twine my mode through verdant tropical forests into the sear moonscape of Mauna Loa . My married woman , a fellow climate grind , came along for the drive .
The Keeling Curve , which Colton sour on at the observatory , is part of the bedrock of climate scientific discipline . Charles Keeling , a Scripps researcher and the curve ’s eponymous Jehovah , began hold carbon dioxide measurement on the flanks of Mauna Loa in 1958 . Sitting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and sweep clean by barter winds , Mauna Loa is one of just a handful of places on Earth where it ’s possible to capture a well-defined snapshot of the atmosphere . Here , scientists can track carbon paper dioxide in measurements of parting per million .
The everyday measurements were ab initio meant to dog the Earth ’s breathing patterns as plants bloom and take up up atomic number 6 dioxide in the fountain and summer and then expire and decompose , releasing atomic number 6 dioxide back into the atm in free fall and winter . But as the record grew , it became clear that the Earth was n’t emit normally . It was being choked by increasing carbon dioxide from human activities . Nearly two - thirds of all atomic number 6 pollution has been dumped into the atmosphere since I was put up in 1981 .
Picarro software analyzes carbon dioxide concentrations in a sample at Mauna Loa Observatory. The NOAA carbon dioxide record is visible in the background.Photo: Brian Kahn (G/O Media)
The Keeling Curve is the individual clearest indicator of the stress humans have put on the satellite . In 2015 , it was dubbed anational landmarkby the American Chemical Society . It ’s madeappearances in congressional testimony , it showed up in Al Gore ’s An Inconvenient Truth , and it ’s regularly in the news , particularly at this time of year , because May is the calendar month of peak carbon dioxide . As long as human activities keep utter the natural gas , every yr is bound to see a newfangled made - for - the - headlines record .
The menace implied by the breaking ball ’s jagged , rise seesaw is n’t specifically what drew me to climate scientific discipline . or else , it was something far more mundane and personal : I was a ski can worried about snow disappearing . But in the days since , I have n’t been able-bodied to shake the impulse to natter the site of Keeling ’s work .
Part of it was a nerdy pastime in science story akin the lot of Bunker Hill for a Revolutionary War buff , but there was also a desire to feel something . The world ’s unshackled carbon dioxide emissions have ushered in an era of great unraveling . Still , this unprecedented world-wide event can feel oddly distant , the grownup picture always just out of view .
A glass globe holding that day’s Keeling Curve measurement.Photo: Brian Kahn (G/O Media)
Carbon dioxide is invisible . The aura is everywhere . Mass experimental extinction , collapsing ice , and acidifying sea are consequence we all must live with , but as concepts , they ’re unmanageable to grasp . While I wrap up these subject every Clarence Day and exist in the same earned run average as everyone else , clime change stay maddeningly distant .
Visiting Mauna Loa Observatory feel like a chance to , at least briefly , take everything in . The observatory is now be given by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , which is the agency Colton work on for . Colton himself is up at the observatory roughly three day a workweek . Every morning he ’s there , he goes to the same spot on the fringe of the quickness battered by sear ultraviolet radiation rays ( and the occasional tropic blizzard ) to take the day ’s measurements .
The Clarence Shepard Day Jr. I was there was a distinctive one for Colton or any of the other researchers who give to keep the record . First , he draw out a briefcase - like kit from the bole of a government SUV . Opening the briefcase , he then deploy an antenna with a tube-shaped structure that snaked up it to roll up the first sample . Next , he flipped a permutation and walked aside , allowing the flasks inside to fill with rarified aviation . The sample would by and by be analyse on - site and supply to the NOAA record . ( On that day , the C dioxide concentration was 409.1 character per million . )
Aidan Colton holds his breath as he takes one of two Keeling Curve samples for the day. The day’s NOAA sampling equipment is visible in the background.Photo: Brian Kahn (G/O Media)
The Keeling Curve measuring are made using a dissimilar set of containers . Colton reached into the back of SUV again , pulling out the first of two vacuum - sealed glass spheres covered in magnetic tape . The tape block out the sun , which can cause changes to the gun once they ’re lactate into the flasks , and also keep them from shattering into a million un - gatherable piece if the welkin implodes . These are the same eccentric of flasks Charles Keeling used .
Unlike the first , semi - automated sampling cognitive process , this measure is taken using some old school scientific discipline . Colton had to walk to an open blank and immerse a small possibility in the flaskful that broke the seal , sucking in air . Because human race emanate carbon dioxide , he held his breath before and after breaking the sealing wax , which is no small effort at 11,135 feet . Once capped , the sample is send back to the mainland for analysis , another little stop in the menacing sawtooth of the Keeling Curve .
Watching Colton try the sky made the Keeling Curve experience more concrete and the worldwide clime in general more tangible . I asked the investigator if I could snap him holding the flask , its pear-shaped bod and white tape measure contrasting sharply with the busted , mordant lava rock . He kindly obliged .
He then asked if I wanted to carry the sample . To tell the trueness , I have take hold babies with less anxiety than I palpate as he handed me the glass revolve . Like a new driver with their fingers glue at 10 and 2 , I kept both hand on the flask at all multiplication . Tactilely , it was like an over - inflated volleyball . The tape felt soft from month , maybe years , of being handled as samples were carry , packed and shipped across the Pacific , empty and analyse , and the flask was sent back to Hawaii for reuse .
It may not have looked like much , but I was gripping much more than just a worn patch of lab equipment between my fingers . All the world ’s efforts were trapped inside this tiny Earth . Here in my hands were Exxon ’s lies , a million clime strikers ’ pleas , me and my flight across the Pacific . Here was the fortune of the West Antarctic ice sheet , the fate of koalas , the fate of farmers in India .
Here was a scale , one that homo — particularly a small subset of loaded ones with carbon - intensive lifestyles — have iron out a expectant thumb on . That ’s thrown thing off - balance , but there ’s time to bring up the weight before the scale topples completely .
I ’ve write about all of this for years , but holding the daily measurement of the Keeling Curve was the closest I ’ve ever felt to the mood I cover . After take the flask back , Colton offered to permit my wife and I “ sample ” the air . Like he ’s done with uncounted school groups who have tour the lookout before , Colton gave us tiny ampoule to defy up into the wind to accumulate our own little pieces of human story . Scientifically , this was a bit like panning for gold at a holidaymaker stop in an old excavation township , but we gladly accepted . My married woman laugh at the absurdity of it , two grownup holding glass tubes tilted above their heads like kid on a stratum slip . I still held my breath .
Data
You May Also Like
