We also need to share our data. So says world’s most prominent geoscientist, professor Markku Kulmala.
Environmental challenges, climate change, water and food security and urban air pollution, they are all interlinked, yet each is studied as such, separately. This is not a sustainable situation, for anybody anymore. To tackle this, professor Markku Kulmala calls for a continuous, comprehensive monitoring of interactions between the planet’s surface and atmosphere in his article “Build a global Earth observatory” published in Nature, January 4, 2018.
We also need to share our data. So says world’s most prominent geoscientist, professor Markku Kulmala.
Environmental challenges, climate change, water and food security and urban air pollution, they are all interlinked, yet each is studied as such, separately. This is not a sustainable situation, for anybody anymore. To tackle this, professor Markku Kulmala calls for a continuous, comprehensive monitoring of interactions between the planet’s surface and atmosphere in his article “Build a global Earth observatory” published in Nature, January 4, 2018.
In his article, he refers to his long experience of collecting environmental data. He has built a station, and not just one, but probably the most impressive station, called SMEAR II (Station for Measuring Ecosystem-Atmosphere Relationships), in the boreal forests of Finland showing how a rounded set of environmental measurements can be obtained.
Global Earth observatory
Now building on a large scale, the answer is a global Earth observatory, consisting of 1,000 or more well-equipped ground stations around the world that track environments and key ecosystems fully and continuously. Data from these stations would be linked to data from satellite-based remote sensing, laboratory experiments and computer models accordingly.
Read more at University of Helsinki
Image: SMEAR II is a station for measuring environmental data in Hyytiälä, Finland. (Credit: Juho Aalto)
