Catching air
All around the planet, high-frequency climate observatories are collecting atmospheric data around the clock as part of the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), a 35-year-old project to study emissions and climate change. But there’s one problem: Despite a network of observatories that covers much of the globe, AGAGE lacks data on Africa — the world’s second-largest continent. That’s something that Jimmy Gasore, along with other scientists, is trying to change. Gasore, a fourth-year graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences under Ronald G. Prinn, the TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science, is working with research scientist Katherine Potter to build the first high-frequency climate observatory in all of Africa. Once finished, the observatory will sit atop Mount Karisimbi, on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, at an elevation of nearly 15,000 feet. (Climate observatories are often built at high elevations so that researchers can cast...