Ascension : Met Office Ascension Island Base
Submitted by The Islander (Met Office) 08.10.2009 (Article Archived on 22.10.2009)

The Met Office Weather Report

         If you had to pick one month in the UK for a reliable period of unseasonal fine and warm weather it would have to be September. There are exceptions of course, which is when I have booked some leave and then it rains. However September usually comes up trumps as it has done again this year. It was, over most of Britain, a lovely warm and dry month. But it changed quickly into autumn as October arrived bringing firstly a cold northerly and then strong westerly winds with periods of rain.

         This week the Met office and the Conservation Department played host to a Professor Euan Nisbet from the Department of Earth Sciences at the Royal Holloway London University. Accompanied by his daughter, they were here to collect air samples and measure the Carbon Dioxide levels. Its to do with an investigation into the effect of CO2  on Global Warming and is funded by his London University and the EU. We have been helping, in a small way, by collecting air samples once a fortnight on Sundays from the Met office enclosure. For myself, I have to admit to being somewhat sceptical on parts of the theory. Mainly in the predictions of the rate at which temperatures are expected to rise.  I spent one evening with Euan and a couple of pints of Speckled Hen at the Obsidian Hotel. Euan is very passionate about Global Warming, and hardly stopped taking about the subject, after about an hour my enthusiasm was directed more towards the beer.  He is a very engaging and convincing speaker and each of my arguments and doubts were shot down before I could reach for my beer glass. His view is that once we reach a ‘tipping point’  very serious temperatures rises could occur within a relatively short time scale of  about 20 years.

        The following day, Thursday, I met him again on Green Mountain, while I was helping at the Conservation nursery site just below the Dew Pond. He was very excited about the levels of CO2  he had just measured on the hill. They were lower than any samples he had seen other than those from Greenland and the Antarctica. Not surprising as the air that arrives here has had a very long Ocean track and often originates in Argentina or Brazil. It was just what he wanted - a possible site for more continuous (automated CO2 readings).  With the initial levels low, and little pollution, it makes any increases in Carbon Dioxide here, in the future, that more noteworthy. The conversation then turned to the possibility of sampling the air a little higher than Green Mountain. Just above and below the general cloud tops ( we call it the temperature inversion) which is usually about 3000/4000 FT. Using Kites and balloons to lift an air canister might be possible with lighter winds and more level and clear ground, than available on Green Mountain. Then Euan said he might be able to arrange for a micro-light aircraft to be shipped here. But who could we get to Fly it? Have we any brave, fearless pilots willing to risk their lives to save the Planet? No problem I said, the very people you need are, at this moment in time, living at Travellers Hill and could easily be persuaded to do anything for a few cans of lager, or failing that, Speckled Hen.