Do we in Tasmania breathe the cleaneast air in the world? Hardly.
The Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station was established in 1976 to monitor and study global atmospheric composition.You can read about it here.
The Station’s scientific research is jointly managed by the Bureau of Meteorology and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) – Marine and Atmospheric Research. Other Australian and international research institutions contribute.
The Bureau funds and manages the station and liaises with the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme.
Station management, lead scientists and other specialists give advice on the overall program. Lead scientists manage individual scientific programs.
One of the core scientific programs conducted at Cape Grim is PARTICULATES, i.e., Pm10 and PM2.5.
Particulates get a mention here http://www.bom.gov.au/inside/cgbaps/programs.shtml
If, “Pollution threatens environmental sustainability and can have harmful effects on human health.” then why has the PM2.5 baseline air monitor at Cape Grim been out of action since it stopped operating in December 2008 for some years?
Smoke comes into Tasmania from the mainland.
Here in the right hand picture it can be seen entering the measuring segment of the Cape Grim base-line air monitoring station. It fails to be recorded when the PM2.5 measuring equipment is not working or the segment switch is turned off.
Cape Grim monitoring station can claim “This baseline air is representative of a large area of the Southern Hemisphere, unaffected by regional pollution sources (there are no nearby cities or industry that would contaminate the air quality).”
But it is not representative of Tasmania’s air quality, just the ocean’s, because winds coming into this sector occur only about 35 % of the time.
The PM sensor switch turns off when wind blows from outside the 190-280 degrees baseline sector.
Cape Grim measuring sector. Click to enlarge.
Image from EPA Technical
Report #9, page 59.
Scientists from around the world supposedly rely on data gathered at Cape Grim monitoring station. We are told governments make decisions based on data from Cape Grim. How can they, and what are these people being told?
We should not have been claiming Tasmania’s N/W tip has the cleanest air in the world when PM2.5 data was not being collected from the Cape Grim monitoring station from 2008- 2011+
Click on the The Guardian graphic…
You do not need to go to Linfen in China. Tasmania can be one of the filthiest paces on earth when forestry are burning their waste, when people are back-yard burning or have their wood heaters going, or there is pollution coming in from the mainland.
Go here and here to read more.
Cleanest place in the world? We do not think so at times.
Senate Question # 1854
Senator Milne asked the Minister in writing on 18/5/2012.
2. When will the PM2.5 Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station be reinstated and resume monitoring?
Senator Conroy: The Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities provided the following answer;
2. Cape Grim is currently monitoring PM2.5 and will continue to do so as part of the aerosol program.
Cradle Coast NRM says we have the cleanest air in the world at Cape Grim.
Then they add, “… as this air moves across Tasmania it is impacted by activities that reduce air quality.”
Read their fact sheet here
The ambient air monitoring station provided by EPA Air Tasmania at Smithton (ST) is about 8Km down wind from Cape Grim Base-line air monitoring station and records PM that is certainly not the cleanest air in the world.
People in Tasmania certainly are not breathing the cleanest air in the world with the dirty burning that goes on in our beautiful state, and the further you travel from Cape Grim the worse it gets.
For example check out the photos here.
“Despite what we might think about Tasmania, our air quality is not always the best. In fact, during winter parts of Tasmania have some of the dirtiest air in Australia.”Go HERE: Aurora was formed by the disaggregation of the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission (HEC) on 1 July 1998. Formed under the Electricity Companies Act 1997, Aurora is subject to the Corporations Act 2001. The company is wholly owned by the Government of Tasmania, with its two shareholders being the Minister for Energy and Resources, and the Treasurer.
Mr. Mike Dean, Tasmanian developer, took out a full page advertisement in the Sunday Examiner, February 23, 2014 which included the above photo.
He claimed, “…visitors…can enjoy what we do too, like; The world’s purest air. The purest water. The safest environment.”
We need to remember this development was to be at Grindelwald, near Launceston in the Tamar valley that is prone to temperature inversions. It is nowhere near Cape Grim base-line air monitoring station, is downwind from Cape Grim and the air will have picked up pollution.
A letter was written to the newspaper Editor as follows on the 25th February:
We in Tasmania do not enjoy the world’s purest air or water. Aurora Energy is on record as saying, “Despite what we might think about Tasmania, our air quality is not always the best. In fact during winter parts of Tasmania have some of the dirtiest air in Australia.”
And during autumn when forestry is burning our air quality can degrade severely.
In summer we get smoke from fires in Tasmania and the mainland.
Cape Grim claims to have the cleanest air in the world because the air being monitored only comes from the Great Southern Ocean. The monitoring switch is turned off if air enters from outside that measuring quadrant (http://cleanairtas.com/wp-content/uploads/archive/air-monitoring/cape-grim.html). Most people don’t live at Cape Grim or on the ocean.
Their clean air is soon fouled as confirmed by an air monitoring station at Smithton a short distance away. We certainly don’t enjoy the world’s purest air.
And for purest water, the Rubicon River had a MCPA reading of 19.1 in January!
The Liberals are blind to the developer’s claims and have promised $3.4million for the Craggy Ridge eco health development but they too want an unhealthy stinking pulp mill just across the river from it. Tell this to the eco investors.
I wish Liberal would make their mind up, health or pulp mill.
Footnote: Craggy Ridge ecotourism turned into a 15 lot subdivision.
Forestry Tasmania lit these burns (green dots) in the N/W of Tasmania on the 8th April 2015.
Cape Grim cannot be seen in this NASA aqua modis satelite image at 14.25 AEST because of the smoke.
Cleanest air in the world at Cape Grim?
Cape Grim Wind Roses
To enlarge click on the wind roses supplied by the Bureau of Meterology / CSIRO.
Not only does wind come into Cape Grim from the Great Southern Ocean it comes in from other not-so-clean directions as well.
Screen shots of live wind animations.
Thanks to earth.nullschool.net
Check out the above link to see where our air is actually coming from.
The air does not always come from the Southern Ocean as claimed but can come from mainland Australia, or even from across Tasmania.
You can see on these occassions the air has not reached Cape Grim from the Southern Ocean.
“Encircled by the Southern Ocean, Tasman Sea and Bass Strait, we breathe the world’s cleanest air….”
CAPE GRIM Water – off the market or not?
“Cape Grim is located North of Antarctica and SOMETIMES receives air that has travelled 16,000 kilometres across nothing but the freezing Antarctic Ocean./…”
Whilst it is true some air entering Cape Grim,”… has travelled 16000 Km across nothing but the freezing Antartic Ocean” there are many times the air coming into Cape Grim does not meet this basic baseline condition.
Would people need to demonstrate by letting off smoke flares if we breathe the cleanest or purest air in the world?
Go HERE to read the story.
Clean-Air Credentials: “The air in Tasmania is as clean as it is in Antarctica,” says Paul Fraser, an expert in ozone and climate change from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation – CSIRO. “If you go further south in the Southern Hemisphere, the background concentrations of pollutants don’t change much.”
The baseline air measured at Cape Grim Baseline air monitoring station might be as clean as it is in Antarctica, but it should not be claimed the air in Tasmania is as clean as it is in Antarctica.
Most Tasmanians do not breathe baseline air, we do not breathe the world’s purest air; at times we mostly breathe air that has been polluted by woodsmoke.
Here it is again and it is stunning!
No, Tasmania’s air is not stunning and this has been determined by those who are forced to breathe it.
What is stunning are the claims being made below by Tourism Tasmania.
In fact Cape Grim does not have a lighthouse (there are no lighthouses anywhere near Cape Grim according to the Admiralty list of Lights and Foghorns Vol K which covers Oceania).
The glossy photograph Tourism Tasmania has used is of Maatsuyker Island lighthouse which is nowhere near Cape Grim!
This is a government department promoting Tasmania in a manner that is obviously wrong.
3.2. 2017 – Kenya ranked country with cleanest air in the world
Diaspora Messenger
Kenya has been ranked the country with the cleanest air in the World, topping a list that considered air pollution, energy consumption and renewable energy production.
Data used to rank the countries was obtained from the International Energy Agency and the World Health Organization. It was used by renewable energy firm The Eco Experts to rank the most toxic countries in the world.
PM2.5 and PM10 readings at Cape Grim for 2015 to 2019.
Samples are only collected when the switch is turned on during 190 – 280 degree air coming into the monitor. This is only about 35% of the time.
Sick of Pollution? This Remote Cape Offers Tourists ‘World’s Cleanest Air’
Advance to 2013 – We get pretty much the same thing
“A picturesque island with the cleanest air on earth”
Go HERE to read how some Tasmanians see it
To recap:
At Cape Grim Baseline Air Monitoring Station, according to the CSIRO, baseline time (BL) is the time the air samplers are actually running.
The samplers are connected to a baseline switch and samples are taken only during baseline conditions.
The main condition for baseline is that the wind direction is between 190 and 280 degrees. This is only about 35% of the time.
Air can enter the measuring segment but on a great many occassions it has not come come from Antarctica or great distances across the Southern Ocean.
No sampling is done during non-baseline conditions so the mass on the filters is claimed to be made up purely from marine sources.
This is the only time when Cape Grim monitoring station should be monitoring the cleanest air in the world, and even this ‘purest’ air soon gets polluted after it is monitored.
Southern-hemisphere-joins-north-in-breaching-carbon-dioxide-milestone.
The other 270 degrees of air coming into Cape Grim monitoring station is not classed as baseline and does not lend itself to be so loosely referred to as the cleanest/purest air in the world.
We cannot just latch onto 90 degrees of baseline air measured sometimes under baseline conditions at Cape Grim to say we breathe the cleanest/purest air in the world. These statements are simply not correct.
Baseline air quality from the Southern Ocean is not representative of Tasmanian air quality.