"Ever since an eruption in Hawaii halted a long-running record of carbon dioxide, scientists have found ways to carry on — atop a neighboring volcano."
"ATOP MAUNA KEA, Hawaii — Two and a half miles above the Pacific, with the combined exhalations of a vast swath of humankind and its cars and factories blowing toward him, Aidan Colton looked out over the volcano’s snow-streaked summit and lifted up a glass flask the size of a coconut.
He held his breath — even the carbon dioxide from his lungs might corrupt the sample. After a moment, he opened the valve.
The air he is collecting at Mauna Kea is feeding the world’s longest-running record of direct readings of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The measurements constitute the most complete body of firsthand evidence for how Earth’s chemistry has changed since the mid-20th century, contorting the global climate. They represent a triumph of long-haul scientific commitment. And they were thrown into crisis late last year.
For six decades, scientists had been taking their air measurements from a cluster of squat buildings on Mauna Loa, another giant volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island. Then, in November, Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in almost 40 years. No one was hurt, but lava flows up to 30 feet deep toppled the observatory’s power lines and buried a mile of the main road up the mountain. The facility was paralyzed."
Raymond Zhong reports for the New York Times with photographs by Erin Schaff February 6, 2023.
