Scientists will begin collecting the first near-real-time measurements of the isotopes in water vapour on Hawaii's Mauna Loa this week, trialling what could prove to be a new way to study climate and weather systems. The month-long experiment will deploy a trio of laser-based instruments to measure the iso-topic composition of water vapour at least once every few minutes. That information can then be used to create a kind of 'life history' of the vapour, whether the source is a nearby forest, evaporation from the ocean or a cold air mass descending from higher in the atmosphere. "This could be a new way of detecting fundamental changes in Earth's atmospheric circulation," says Joe Galewsky, an atmospheric scientist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
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