Station shut to save $300,000 for other meteorological needs
Peter Calamai
SCIENCE REPORTER
OTTAWA — Canadian and foreign scientists are blaming government penny-pinching for tearing a gaping Arctic hole in a global network that probes ozone depletion and climate change.
To save an estimated $300,000 a year, federal environment officials have mothballed a scientific observation post near Eureka on Ellesmere Island, one of only two fully equipped high Arctic stations in the global network.
"It's a major loss," said Stuart McDermid, a U.S. ozone expert who helps direct the Network for the Detection of Stratospheric Change.
McDermid said scientists trying to solve the ozone problem will now have to rely totally for many crucial Arctic atmospheric measurements on a station in Spitsbergen, a remote archipelago north of Norway. They will probably miss some of the crucial stratospheric changes Eureka recorded because the Arctic vortex shifted back and forth over Ellesmere Island.
The Eureka post, known as the Arctic Stratospheric Ozone Observatory (ASTRO), was first touted as a showplace for Canadian high technology and a home for international research.
Since 1993, sophisticated instruments there have measured the thinning of the protective ozone layer that takes place in the stratosphere over the Arctic every spring. ASTRO measurements provided the first evidence that global warming was exacerbating ozone depletion in the Far North.
Ozone in the stratosphere, the layer 10 kilometres to 40 kilometres above Earth, screens out the ultraviolet rays linked to skin cancer.
Scientists from Canada, the United States and Japan also used the Eureka observatory to study other aspects of climate change over the past decade, particularly the northward shift of the jet stream, which has a major impact on the severity of winter storms.
"ASTRO could have played a significant role in understanding why ozone levels in the stratosphere aren't recovering as expected," says Keith Puckett, a senior official with the Meteorological Service of Canada.
Despite a 1986 global ban on ozone-eating chlorine chemicals, the level of protective ozone over most of Canada has not yet begun to recover. One recent study predicted ozone levels will not rebound in this century and could drop lower due to interactions with greenhouse gases.
Peter Johnson, an Arctic researcher who heads the Canadian Polar Commission, said the ASTRO closing will bring international criticism because Canada is already seen as not doing its fair share of circumpolar research.
The meteorological service earlier had to mothball the Mould Bay station on Prince Patrick Island, which monitored weather and climate observations for the entire Arctic Ocean.
"People are really questioning the government's commitment to science in the North," Johnson said yesterday from Kluane National Park in the Yukon.
Federal officials say they must close Canadian observing stations, even crucial ones, to free money to patch up the aging infrastructure of the remaining meteorological network.
