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The tile of this paper on ArXiv today caught my eye. It mainly focuses on the effect of climate change (in last 30 years and projecting into the future) on obs made at the VLT site in Chile. You can also read the full paper in Nature Astronomy.
Essentially, the authors investigate the effect on seeing of local temp rises (also effect on telescope operation), the increase in the surface layer turbulence, and increase in southern subtropical jet stream activity (affecting the adaptive optics and hence on quality of exoplanet obs).
All-in-all an interesting read. But to be honest I’m more worried about the affect of climate change (and local weather) in south Cheshire. This is insignificant compared to the problems that our colleagues in California are having to deal with regarding forest fires….
…another ArXiv paper on “The carbon footprint of large astronomy meetings”, compares the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society held physically in France in 2019, but online in 2020. They conclude a 3000-fold reduction in C footprint resulted. Full paper also in Nature Astronomy.
Presumably the BAA’s C footprint has also reduced, but less so since few members travel by air. Nevertheless, I am longing for the time we can meet F2F again….
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