Mauna Loa Eruption Shuts Down Key Climate Monitoring Site

The Mauna Loa Observatory, the world's premier site for
measuring carbon in the atmosphere, has been shut
down by the volcano's eruption. 

 You might have heard that the big Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii is erupting for the first time in 38 years.  

One big problem this eruption has caused is it has temporarily shut down the worlds premier atmospheric carbon monitoring site. 

As Yahoo News reports:

"The Hawaiian station goes back to 1958 and is the main site for the famous Keeling Curve that shows rising carbon dioxide levels from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that tracks with rising temperatures. Levels of carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa have increased 33 percent since 1958."

The monitoring station is at an elevation of 11,300 feet and has a 131-foot tower that collects air to measure levels of carbon dioxide, radiation and other substances, reports Yahoo News. 

The lava flows are not threatening the actual monitoring station, but the eruption cut power lines further down the mountain. Also, lava crossed the road leading to the observatory. 

The world has something like 300 carbon monitoring stations, so measurements will continue. But Mauna Loa is regarded as the most accurate and cleanest. That's because there's no big population centers nearby. There's not much vegetation around, either. 

And the elevation is so high that it really helps grab a good sample of the atmosphere. It's too high up to contaminate measurements with day to day pollution from cars, houses, factories and such. 

 I'm seeing conflicting reports about whether this is the first time the volcano has screwed up carbon measuring on Mauna Loa. Another Mauna Loa eruption in 1984 halted measurements for 36 days, but that time away was short enough so that it didn't really mess up records, says Yahoo News. But Hawaii News Now says this is the first time in 60 years or more that measurements were interrupted.

The Keeling Curve is named after Charles David Keeling, who in 1958 started taking carbon dioxide measurements atop Mauna Loa.  The Keeling Curve demonstrates the carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere are currently higher than they've been in 3 million years. 

His son, Ralph Keeling, told Axios that scientists are scrambling to find a similar location to Mauna Loa to take CO2 readings, at least on a temporary basis. 

"In the long run, but I don't know how long, the station will be up again. So the record will continue as before, and we'll have some kind of gap where the data is slightly different or missing," Keeling said. 

Incidentally, some very large volcanic eruptions can temporarily change the climate. Tambora, in 1815, caused a world-wide chill down, leading to New England's "Year Without A Summer" in 1816.

To a lesser extent, Pinatubo in 1991  cooled the world by 1 degree Fahrenheit for a year or two after its eruption.  That almost, briefly wiped out all the heating from climate change at that point in history. 

Most volcanoes, when they do affect the Earth's climate, cool it. But last January's massive Tonga eruption might have the opposite effect. It injected lots of water into the dry stratosphere, which might temporarily accelerate global warming for the next couple of years or so. 

Mauna Loa's eruption is producing lots of lava, but smoke and ash are not rising particularly high in the atmosphere, so this event won't affect the world's climate in any measurable way.