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