Mace Head Observatory, which marks its 50th anniversary, is an important centre for climate change research, writes Lorna Siggins.
DOES SEA spray help to keep the Earth cool? Can grassland help to cut carbon dioxide? Long ago, before such questions became so topical, an isolated outpost on the Irish Atlantic seaboard was building up an invaluable bank of data. Now at the centre of international climate-change research, today Mace Head station in Connemara marks its 50th anniversary.
The jubilee symposium, which opens this morning in NUI Galway's (NUIG) Cairnes Theatre, will acknowledge an impressive record. As Prof Gerard Jennings of NUIG's Environmental Change Institute (ECI) puts it, Mace Head is "unique in European atmospheric research".
What's more, its data is used by climatologists and modellers across continents, as it has been a baseline station for a United Nations agency, the Global Atmosphere Watch of the World Meteorological Organisation, since 1994. Scientists from more than 100 universities and institutions in 20 countries have drawn on the resource for national and international projects.
"Great foresight," is how Prof Jennings describes the decision to establish the station in Carna, some 88km west of Galway city, in 1958. "No one was talking about climate-change back then, but Dr Tom O'Connor of the university's school of physics was on a mission, and toured the coast on his bicycle in 1957," he says.
"He was looking for an exposed location with prevailing winds coming from the ocean, which was near a power source - but which had minimal human influence. Close to Carna, he found this disused wartime look-out post right on the edge of the ocean."
The look-out post (Lop) at Mace - named from the Irish word, más, for buttock or "broad elevated area" - was one of more than 80 extending from Louth round to north Donegal, established as part of the State's coastwatching service during the second World War. At 53 degrees 20 minutes N and nine degrees 54 minutes W, it lies in the path of the mid-latitude cyclones which traverse the north Atlantic.
Three small islands off the Carna coastline were and still are uninhabited, and so it was felt that they would not influence measurements taken at the site. The fact that the main Atlantic shipping routes were 150km away was also significant in ensuring provision of "clean air".
The LOP was refurbished, and the first measurements by university staff were of condensation nuclei and other aerosol particulates brought on the air. In 1973, a ruined cottage and seven acres nearby was purchased by the university, and it was fitted out as a laboratory with meteorological recording equipment.
In 1986, it was selected as the site for major international projects, following a visit there by Bob Duce, president of the International Commission of Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution. Four years later there were further developments with construction of a second laboratory near the shore and a 20m sampling tower.
Some of the Irish research undertaken at Mace Head over the years has been well documented in this newspaper, such as the work by Dr Colin O'Dowd on the physical and chemical properties of aerosols, clouds and gaseous species in the marine environment and their impact on slowing down the rate of global warming.
Measurement of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) , which has taken place over a number of years at the station, has proved invaluable in contributing to international climate change research, Prof Jennings says. Other statistics regularly gathered include meteorological data, solar radiation and ultra-violet levels.
Funding from the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI), means that it is also one of the few atmospheric cloud monitoring stations in the world.
Prof Jennings acknowledges that the location is a challenging work environment - calm conditions occur for "less than 1 per cent of the year", and sunshine is "scare", averaging 1,290 hours annually.
The station relies on "ad hoc funding" which makes it difficult to get full-time staff. Ireland has international commitments to meet in terms of measuring climate change, and there is also greater demand for "real time" data.
Prof Jennings is personally "cautious" about some aspects of the climate-change debate, and about "rushing to judgment on individual weather events". He believes that the work of Mace Head is invaluable in determining the differences between man-made and natural causes of pollution.