[mentalfloss]

Closure of polar lab a blow to Canada's scientific reputation

The announcement this week that the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Lab (PEARL) in Canada's High Arctic will be closed has once again lowered this country's environmental reputation on the world scene. This is ironic because, also this week, Canada's highest scientific prize, The Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal, was awarded to a scientist who studies climate change.

One of the scientists who relies on data from PEARL is Dr. Richard Peltier from the University of Toronto, winner of this year's Herzberg Award. As you will hear this week on Quirks & Quarks, Dr. Peltier develops models of the Earth's systems to not only understand changes in the past, but to try to provide indicators of what's to come.

But any model is only as good as the real data that backs it up.

In other words, models have to be checked against reality to make sure they reflect the way nature works; otherwise, they are just elaborate guesswork. That validation has to come from instruments out in the field, such as PEARL, that track the atmosphere year-round.

When PEARL closes, one third of the data from the High Arctic will be gone, making the climate models less precise.

The cost of running PEARL is about $1.5 million per year. That may sound like a lot, but when you consider the government has spent about $1.5 billion on submarines that still don't work a decade after we bought them, it's not a lot of money. Especially when you consider the returns.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story ... osure.html