The scientific community decided that Cape Grim was the most appropriate site for a permanent monitoring station, thereby establishing in 1976 the Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station.
The Cape Grim station has now been running for 40 years and the resulting data set chronicles the major changes in our global atmosphere.
The station, part of the World Meteorological Organisation’s Global Atmosphere Watch network, was sited at Cape Grim to take advantage of the “roaring forties” – the prevailing westerly winds that bring clean air from over the Southern Ocean to the station.
Air that arrives at the station from the southwest is classified as “baseline” air. Having had no recent contact with land, it represents the background atmosphere and is perhaps some of the cleanest in the world.
The human fingerprintCape Grim data are freely available and have been widely used in all five international climate change assessments (1990-2013), all ten international ozone depletion assessments (1985-2014), in four State of the Climate Reports 2010-2016 and in lower-atmosphere ozone assessments.
Measurements at Cape Grim have demonstrated the impact of human activity on the atmosphere. For example, CO₂ has increased from about 330 parts per million (ppm) in 1976 to more than 400 ppm today, an average increase of 1.9 ppm per year since 1976. Since 2010 the rate has been 2.3 ppm per year. The isotopic ratios of CO₂ measured at Cape Grim have changed in a way that is consistent with fossil fuels being the source of higher concentrations.
https://blogs.csiro.au/ecos/cape-grim/
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Cape Grim 40th anniversary (Read 740 times)
