Climate Change and Astronomy: A Look at Long-term Trends on Maunakea

Abstract

Maunakea is one of the world’s primary sites for astronomical observing, with multiple telescopes operating over submillimeter to optical wavelengths. With its summit higher than 4200 m above sea level, Maunakea is an ideal location for astronomy, with a historically dry, stable climate and minimal turbulence above the summit. Under a changing climate, however, we ask how the (above-)summit conditions may have evolved in recent decades since the site was first selected as an observatory location and how future-proof the site might be to continued change. We use data from a range of sources, including in situ meteorological observations, radiosonde profiles, and numerical reanalyses to construct a climatology at Maunakea over the previous 40 yr. We are interested in both the meteorological conditions (e.g., wind speed and humidity) and the image quality (e.g., seeing). We find that meteorological conditions were, in general, relatively stable over the period with few statistically significant trends and with quasi-cyclical interannual variability in astronomically significant parameters such as temperature and precipitable water vapor. We do, however, find that maximum wind speeds have increased over the past decades, with observed wind speeds above 15 m s−1 increasing in frequency by 1%–2%, which may have a significant impact on ground-layer turbulence. Further, we note that while the conditions themselves are not necessarily changing significantly, the combination of conditions that lead to dome closures (i.e., freezing conditions, increased summit wind speeds, and/or high humidities) are worsening to the point that the number of closure conditions have more than doubled in the last 20 yr. Importantly, we find that the Fried parameter has not changed in the last 40 yr, suggesting there has not been an increase in optical turbulence strength above the summit. Ultimately, more data and data sources—including profiling instruments—are needed at the site to ensure continued monitoring into the future and to detect changes in the summit climate.