Archive of Spotlight Feature Articles

Tales From Cape Grim

By Jana Goldman

If Bruce Hicks had had his way, Australia's baseline observing station on the island state of Tasmania would be in the Hartz Mountains.

"Other people had other ideas," said Tasmanian-bred Hicks, director of NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory, headquartered in Silver Spring. "Cape Grim was selected instead."

Cape Grim – the name conjures images of Gothic horror stories – but instead, the location is one of the most scenically spectacular in Tasmania, which is saying a lot because the entire state boasts some of the most beautiful landscapes in the Southern Hemisphere.

The six-hour bus ride from Hobart, nestled in the southeast coast of the island, up to Cape Grim, perched on the northwest tip of Tasmania, takes the traveller through countryside known for its production of sheep, apples, sheep, cheese, sheep, and, oh yes, sheep.

And while Cape Grim, high atop a hill with steep cliffs dropping off into the Southern Ocean, sounds foreboding it's a rather cheery place. Sea hawks wheel in the winds and sheep from the neighbouring farm graze contentedly. A picture-perfect blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds provides postcard backdrops for photographs.

Tiger snakes, one of the island's three venomous species, inhabit Cape Grim, and visitors are warned often to stay on the trails and watch where they step. A sign also warning of snakes is prominently posted on the observatory's noticeboard just above a guest book for visitors to sign.

In addition to the ubiquitous sheep and the abundant but less evident snakes, wallabies (like small kangaroos) and other marsupials, including the famous Tasmanian devil, visit the observatory usually at dusk or early dawn.

So what are the humans doing there? Cape Grim is a baseline observatory – like the four that NOAA operates in various parts of the world.

It is said that Cape Grim has the purest air anywhere, making it an ideal collection and monitoring station. The reputation stems from the fresh currents of air coming from Antarctica.

Samples are taken and used by scientists in Australia and other parts of the world, usually as controls, or baselines, of what unadulterated air should be. From those samples, they can analyse what is in air elsewhere and try to determine how it got there and what its affect might be.

But if the air circulates around the globe, much like the ocean, would not pollutants from other parts of the world end up in the air coming across Cape Grim?

"Pollutants have life spans," said Neal Tyndall, station manager. "By the time that air gets here, they are pretty much gone."

International scientists who were in Hobart attending the Joint Scientific Committee meeting of the World Climate Research Programme ended the weeklong meeting with a trip to Cape Grim, appropriately enough, on World Meteorology Day (March 23).

"In climate research achievements to date, we have much to celebrate on World Meteorological Day," says the Chairman of the Joint Scientific Committee, Prof Peter Lemke, from Germany. "And in terms of resolving some of our climate questions, much to look forward to."

The tour included a visit to the observatory roof, where a stiff wind activated the array of instruments attached to a high tower. Across the way, on top of a cliff, visitors could see the start of a new project that involves wind, but for the harnessing of it for energy, not for scientific purposes. HydroTasmania expects to have its first wind mill installed by our summer/their winter. Like other crops on farms, additional wind mills will be "planted" on the wind farm in the future.

The Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station is operated by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology as part of a joint program between the Bureau and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). It continuously monitors many important chemical components of the atmosphere in the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes.

It works closely with NOAA's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory in Boulder.

Contemporary in design, but not intruding on its environment, the building looks like a home one might find in any U.S. coastal community. There is a staff of seven with accommodation for visiting scientists. The main laboratory looks much like laboratories elsewhere – an array of computers, wires leading from one piece of equipment to another, and scientific posters on the walls – but with a fantastic view of cliffs and ocean and sky from the large windows. One window ledge provides a display area for the interesting and curious things found on the site and the beach below, such as a purple crustacean shell, a marsupial skull, and shells and stones of various sizes, shapes, and colours.

The station is a key international facility within the World Meteorological Organization's Global Atmosphere Watch network which serves as an early warning system to detect further changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases and chemicals that affect the ozone layer.

The Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station began taking samples of the atmosphere more than twenty-five years ago. Since the first sampling began in April 1976, there have been more than 3 billion measurements taken. Among these are measurements of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide as well as chemicals that deplete the ozone layer.

"Renewed emphasis is being given to the ability of scientists to predict variability and longer-term changes in the climate system," Lemke said. "Building the necessary observation networks including facilities such as those at Cape Grim will be integral to that capacity."

And that brings us back to Bruce Hicks.

In the late 1950s, scientist Charles Keeling started measuring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere found near Mauna Loa in Hawaii, now the location of one of NOAA's observation stations.

His classic work showed and continues to show a steady increase in the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

In 1960, the World Meteorological Organization called for the establishment of observing stations around the world to measure and monitor the atmosphere.

Hicks was then working with Bill Priestley – known as CHBP for Charles Henry Brian Priestley – the chief of the CSIRO group at Aspendale on the North Island (the land mass that includes the city of Sydney) . Because of Hicks's Tasmanian background, he was asked for suggestions where an observing station could be located.

"I strongly recommended the Hartz Mountains, southwest of Hobart," Hicks said. "But as I remember it, after a site survey, it turned out that the Tasmanian Government would not approve the construction of a paved road into that area, basically for environmental reasons at the time.

"So, Cape Grim grew out of the ashes as a second choice that quickly gained favour because it was closer to Aspendale and somewhat easier to get to. I suspect that Graeme Pearman wanted it in the first place" Pearman is the founder of the Cape Grim station, and now sits in the chair earlier occupied by CHBP.

It is said that Cape Grim received its name because it was reputed to be the site of a slaughter of Aboriginals, but that story is in question.

"There have not been any indigenous peoples' claim to that area as there have been for others, which leads us to believe that such an incident did not occur there," said Peter Price, of the Bureau of Meteorology's Atmospheric Watch Section. "But I did notice that in the notes of Matthew Flinders (the first person to determine that Tasmania is an island) on his chart at this place he writes ‘grim,' which is his description of the sea condition."

The sea has not changed, in that it is still grim. But the global atmosphere has changed, and it is stations like that at Cape Grim that demonstrate the magnitude of the change.

[4/22/02]

CLIMATE · OCEANS, GREAT LAKES, and COASTS · WEATHER and AIR QUALITY
ABOUT US · RESEARCH PROGRAMS · EDUCATION · HOME

Contact Us
Privacy Policy