Mauna Loa lava woes
...and for Aotearoa farmers too
Sorry about the incorrect link in my last post. The on-line version is corrected now. But, in case you don’t use the Substack App, the paper I mentioned can be found here. Thanks, Zim, for alerting me to the error.
Volcanic activity on Hawaii’s big Island late last year has been bad news for our UV spectrometer located 3.4 km above sea level at Mauna Loa Observatory. It’s been operating since the 1990s, and has recorded some of the highest UV values seen anywhere on the planet, approaching UVI = 22 at times. But it’s not producing data at the moment. It’s been off-line ever since huge lava flow in December 2022 cut off road access as well as power and fibre-optic connections to the observatory.
It will be weeks before our UV measurements resume.
It’s not just our data that’s been compromised. Keeling’s famous carbon dioxide record from the same observatory has too. Fortunately, they’ve been able to quickly relocate to the nearby Mauna Kea Observatory, which is across the saddle from Mauna Loa Observatory.
Here’s a recent update to the beautiful, but ominous. Keeling curve. The blue points at the end are from the new Mauna Kea site.
The data show obvious seasonal variations as the planet breathes. The seasonal varfiability depends on the balance between plant photosynthesis (which soaks up CO2) and respiration (which releases CO2). In summer when photosynthesis rates are high, there’s a net reduction in carbon dioxide because its used to make organic material in the plant, while in winter the emissions from plant respiration dominate, and the CO2 increases.
Similarly, CO2 levels increase at night and decrease during the day. Overall there these shorter term swings are in balance too. The nighttime increases are compensated the daytime decreases.
On top of those seasonal and diurnal swings, there’s a long term increase due mainly to the combustion of fossil fuels.
That’s the problem.
The ever-accelerating rate of increase clearly illustrates the source of our planetary woes. The concentration of CO2 was 320 ppm when I was at school at the time their measurements began, and its now close to 420 ppm. In those 60-something years it has increased by nearly 30 percent.
That’s about 3 percent per decade, a rate of increase similar to that for methane and nitrous oxide (CH4 and N2O).
Those other two gases aren’t the problem, but, of necessity through past inaction fuelled by climate deniers, they’re going to be part of New Zealand ‘solution’. We’re failing miserably in our attempts to control CO2, but unlike any other OECD countries, we have another knob to turn. In New Zealand, methane and nitrous represent more than 50% of our total greenhouse gas emissions, mainly through agricultural activities. And the benefits from curtailing those are more immediate than from controlling CO2.
I have some sympathy for the farmers who will bear the brunt of the problem. James Hansen alerted US Congress to the dire consequences of CO2 increases way back in 1988. If only we’d acted earlier, and not been duped by fossil-fuel lobbyists, a more equitable solution could have been found.