A VITAL part of the world鈥檚 effort to track climate change is under threat from cuts in German research spending. A laboratory in an old hotel on Germany鈥檚 highest mountain, which should have become the only laboratory in mid-temperate latitudes that could monitor long-term changes in the atmosphere, is facing closure before it even opens its doors.
The High Altitude Observatory, which was to have operated from near the top of the Zugspitze in Bavaria, was proposed at a meeting in Bermuda before the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It would have formed a key part of the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), a network of laboratories monitoring concentrations of atmospheric gases, suspended particles and ultraviolet radiation.
Such laboratories must be in remote places, or at high altitude, in order to measure background values that are not affected by daily fluctuations in pollution, says John Miller, head of the GAW at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, and former head of an atmospheric monitoring observatory on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. The GAW needs data from all latitude zones, he says.
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The Zugspitze laboratory was the only monitoring station planned in the temperate zone, north of 45掳. At the Earth Summit the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, pledged to fund it, and the state of Bavaria has spent about 拢4.8 million refurbishing the 1930s-vintage Schneefahne Hotel to house the laboratory. At 2700 metres above sea level, the hotel was at the transfer point between a railway from the foot of the mountain and a cable car to the ski slopes, until a tunnel from railway to slopes was completed in 1990.
In addition to its monitoring function, run by the German weather service and the environment ministry, the Zugspitze laboratory was to have had a research programme devised by the Fraunhofer Institute for Atmospheric Environmental Research in nearby Garmisch-Partenkirchen and scientists at Europe鈥檚 existing, smaller high-altitude laboratories on the Jungfraujoch in Switzerland and the Sonnblick in Austria.
A panel of German scientists has now reviewed this research plan. 鈥淭hey said it would be nice to have the research, but it really isn鈥檛 a priority,鈥� says Wolfgang Seiler, head of the Fraunhofer institute. He suspects that cuts in government funding for basic research are the problem. 鈥淢oney for the High Altitude Observatory means less money for other scientists,鈥� he says. The German research ministry says that a decision will be made later this month.
Without money for research at the laboratory, 鈥渋t is very unlikely that the government will fund the monitoring programme alone鈥�, says Seiler. The German weather service has a laboratory at an altitude of 1000 metres that it says could be used instead. 鈥淚t is too low down, and right in the pollution plume from Munich,鈥� says Seiler.
鈥淚t will be a real pity鈥� if the Zugspitze observatory is cancelled, says Miller. There is no similar laboratory in North America, and the one on the Tibetan plateau in China is at a lower latitude, he says. 鈥淭his would have been the only way to observe what was happening over Europe, and in air from the Atlantic.鈥�
There would also have been space on the Zugspitze for different laboratories to calibrate their instruments. 鈥淣ow we don鈥檛 know if the decline in the ozone layer is allowing more ultraviolet to reach the Earth, because different laboratories get different answers,鈥� says Seiler.
