Mauna Loa volcano eruption disrupts critical climate data collection

The eruption of the world’s largest active volcano earlier this week, Mauna Loa on Hawaii’s Big Island, has disrupted monitoring of global carbon dioxide levels. The Mauna Loa observatory has tracked rising levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere for more than six decades without interruption.

The observatory’s manager, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego, reported that the equipment that has maintained the famed Keeling Curve record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, created in 1958, lost power on Monday.