“ESTIVAL ATMOSPHERIC PATH” ON MONTE CIMONE

Hundreds of people visited the weather station and greenhouse gas measurement laboratory of the Centro Aeronautica Militare di Montagna located on the highest peak of the central-northern Apennine range. Now in its seventh year, the initiative has allowed more than 500 tourists and hikers to visit the laboratories of the Centro A.M. di Montagna (CAMM) and the National Research Council (CNR) at the weather-climate station of Monte Cimone every Wednesday in July and August. During these visits, visitors were shown the activities carried out in the field of meteorology and environmental monitoring carried out by the only Italian station for the study of the atmosphere considered to be of global importance among 31 other stations worldwide.
The “Atmosphere Trail”, created in 2004 thanks to a collaboration between the Air Force, the CNR, and the Frignano Park, consists of an environmental educational path that goes from Pian Cavallaro at 1,850 meters up to the 2,165 meters of the summit of Mount Cimone, through a CAI (Italian Alpine Club) trail along which information signs on the climate and the environment have been placed to introduce visitors to the characteristics of the atmosphere. Originally created primarily for schools, in view of the growing general attention to climate issues, it has also become, since 2012, a very much anticipated summer event for the numerous visitors to the Emiliano Apennine Mountains. In recent years, the “Atmosphere Trail” has been explored by several thousand citizens and students of all ages, from secondary school students to university courses in physical or chemical subjects. The initiative also offers the opportunity to learn about a reality of the territory of global scientific importance. The activities carried out by the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council for the measurements of the main greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide and methane) and of atmospheric pollutants are included in the Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW) program of the World Meteorological Organization. In particular, the Italian Air Force, through the CAMM at Monte Cimone, is responsible for measuring the background concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since March 1979, possessing the longest continuous historical series in Europe and the second longest in the world after the Mauna Loa station in the Hawaiian Islands. The other measurements carried out by the CAMM since 2015 concern methane gas, considered another important greenhouse gas, and, since 1975, ozone at the Sestola logistics area at 1020m.