Mauna Loa Observatory

While the devastating Haiti earthquake was happening, I was on the top of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano at the NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO). Mauna Loa is the world's largest volcano, and if you measure it from its base on the seafloor, it's the world's tallest mountain too at 17,170 m (56,000 ft). The massive mountain comprises half the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and amounts to about 85% of all other Hawaiian Islands combined.

Below is a picture of colleague Roger Gernold and me at the MLO with Mauna Kea in the background. If you squint, you can see the Mauna Kea Observatories on the top of that mountain. We went to the MLO to scout for a location to install a new seismic station to record ground shaking from earthquakes. This will help us better characterize earthquakes and to issue faster and more accurate tsunami warnings in Hawaiʻi.

The MLO is part of the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL). Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean near the top of Mauna Loa at 3,397 m (11,135 ft) above sea level, the MLO is situated in a prime location for sampling the Earth's atmosphere ...