How isolated is PEARL—the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory?

“Well,” explains the lab’s director, Dr. James Drummond, “let’s just say that the place on Devon Island where people run a Mars simulation is south of us.”

The remote location at the northern end of Ellesmere Island—about 1,100 kilometres from the North Pole—makes PEARL an ideal place for measuring what’s happening to the earth’s atmosphere. No nearby human activity can skew observations, and extreme conditions make atmospheric trends easier to spot. “The high arctic is always reckoned to be the place where things happen,” says Dr. Drummond. “If you’re going to see any changes in the atmosphere, you look for them in these extreme places first.”

To help scientists identify and measure those changes, PEARL is packed with sophisticated and sensitive devices. A lidar system—think radar, but with light waves—allows researchers to probe atmospheric conditions 30 kilometres up. The suite of equipment, plus renovation of the building—a former weather research station—was funded in part by an investment from the Ontario Innovation Trust.

Observations from PEARL will be important in building a picture of what’s happening to the atmosphere globally. “The key to understanding the environment is to measure it,” says Dr. Drummond. “If you don’t do that, no matter how much modeling you do, you’re never going to get it right.

By way of example, he points to the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in the 1980s, which revealed a global reduction in the earth’s ozone layer. “We didn’t predict that, we discovered it. If we hadn’t had someone there making observations over a long period, we wouldn’t have known it was happening. In the same way, we can’t predict reliably what the next environmental issue is going to be. We’re going to have to discover it.”

Dr. Drummond admits that the importance of gathering this data can be a hard sell. “If I don’t make my measurements, nobody will die tomorrow.” So why is it important? Jim Drummond has a very succinct answer.

“Breathe in. Breathe out.”