Already, climate change is having an impact on the conditions of space observation at the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert.
Already, climate change is having an impact on the conditions of space observation at the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert. In future, new telescopes will have to be adapted to the expected changes, a study in ‘Nature Astronomy’ finds.
Climate changes associated with global warming can affect astronomical observations. That is the result of a study involving scientists from the University of Cologne. The international research team investigated a range of climate parameters at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal in the Atacama Desert in Chile, where the European Southern Observatory (ESO) operates its telescopes. Among other things, the team evaluated the data for temperature, wind speed and wind direction, and the water vapour content in the atmosphere over a period of several decades. This revealed an increase in temperatures above the world average and also increasing image blur due to air turbulence – so-called seeing.
The study ‘The impact of climate change on astronomical observations’ was published in the current issue of Nature Astronomy and can be viewed online. Its results are not only important for astronomers to adapt their observations to changing environmental conditions, but must also be taken into account when planning new large telescopes – such as the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is currently being built near the Paranal.
The Cologne-based scientists Professor Dr Susanne Crewell and Christoph Böhm from the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology were involved in the study. In the past, they had already explored various aspects of the past, present and future climate at the telescope’s site in the framework of Collaborative Research Centre 1211 ‘Earth – Evolution at the Dry Limit’. The first author of the article is Faustine Cantalloube from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.
Read more at University of Cologne
Photo Credit: J.L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO via Wikimedia Commons
