Groups Plan Highest Altitude Climate-Change Monitoring Center Atop Mexican Volcano

Monday, September 24th 2007, 6:02 pm

By: News On 6

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- An international group announced plans on Monday to erect what it claims will be the highest-altitude, greenhouse gas-monitoring center to date, to be built atop the Sierra Negra volcano in central Mexico.

The Washington-based Climate Institute and other foundations and companies have raised the initial $1.9 million to pay for the station, which will join a worldwide web of similar labs at lower altitudes measuring air particles, radiation and gases such as carbon dioxide.

``The importance of having it high (in altitude), rather than low, is that you can get the global picture. For that reason, you go as high as you reasonably can,'' said Sir Crispin Tickell, Britain's former ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime advocate of confronting climate change.

Centers closer to sea level may capture local pollution variations, Tickell noted, while the 15,117-foot Sierra Negra mountaintop is further removed from such variations.

The station will bear Tickell's name when it goes into service sometime in mid-2008, said Luis Acosta, the Climate Institute's director for Mexico and Latin American Affairs.

According to the World Meteorological Organization Web site, the network of current greenhouse gas observatories include the Mt. Waliguan station in China, which stands at 12,575 feet, and the Niwot Ridge, Colo. station, at 11,467 feet.

The Sierra Negra is one of six Mexican volcanos that are higher than any peaks in the continental United States.