Rare Air: Observations From (Near) the Top of the World

Interesting account of research being conducted on a mountain top in Chile in an attempt to improve climate models.  Example of scientists who are, quite literally, going "above and beyond" to improve our understanding of global climate change.

The Air is Rare Up There!

Science team ascends nearly to height of Everest’s base camp for atmospheric data

This week, on a mountain rising from the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert, researchers began a two-month effort to obtain rare and valuable measurements from the far reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Using several sophisticated optical instruments called spectrometers, phase two of the Radiative Heating in Underexplored Bands Campaign will obtain a detailed data set of measurements in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. These data will ultimately improve the mathematical formulas used to calculate energy transfer in climate models.

Sponsored by the ARM Climate Research Facility, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Atmospheric Environmental Research, Inc. are being joined by researchers from the University of Denver, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, NASA’s Langley Research Center, and the Istituto di Fisica Applicata in Italy. Each organization is providing a different type of spectrometer that will allow the team to obtain simultaneous measurements from specific portions of the infrared spectrum – a first, according the study’s lead scientist.

You can read the whole story here