Climate change is making fire season worse. Now astronomers are feeling
the heat.

IT WAS 4 am on June 17 when Michelle Edwards, associate director of
Kitt Peak National Observatory, got the news: A wildfire had breached
the road up to the telescopes. She felt a little bit of fear, even
though she’d already spent several long days coordinating the
observatory’s protection plan, turning her office into a command center
for a firefighting effort. “I don’t think you can ever really
anticipate that phone call,” Edwards says.

The Contreras wildfire had been triggered by a lightning strike six
days prior on Tohono O’odham nation lands in Arizona, a few miles
southeast of the summit where Kitt Peak is located. Winds and dry
vegetation quickly propelled the flames to burn through 500 acres,
prompting Edwards to initiate an evacuation of nonessential personnel
as a fire crew descended on the site a few days later. Then, they
prepared for the worst: Firefighters cleared away brush and spread
flame retardant. Teams of essential personnel visited each of Kitt
Peak’s 23 telescopes, covering up domes and powering down electronics.

On June 17, the fire blazed right up to many of the telescopes on the
southwest ridge of the summit, destroying a cabin, dormitory, and
utility shed. The flames damaged at least 18 power poles, wiping out electricity and data service, meaning that science operations at the observatory won’t resume until at least the end of August. “Arizona is unfortunately becoming a hotbed for wildfires,” Edwards says. “And we
have seen impact from fire before at Kitt Peak, although nothing as bad
as this.”

Kitt Peak isn’t the first observatory threatened as climate change exacerbates the severity of wildfires. Other research fields, which
depend on access to glaciers, snow, and remote weather stations, are
facing similar warming-related problems. “It’s just another example of
how so many important human endeavors are at risk,” says San Francisco
State University’s Adrienne Cool, who cofounded a global nonprofit
called Astronomers for Planet Earth, or A4E.

In 2011, a massive wildfire endangered the McDonald Observatory in
Texas. A bushfire swept over Australia’s Siding Spring Observatory in
2013. Two years ago, California’s Lick Observatory narrowly avoided destruction, though flames did nearly $8 million worth of damage to
surrounding homes and consumed an amateur observatory nearby. One month
later, Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles had a close call with a
wildfire that raged within a few hundred feet of the site.
(continue)...

https://www.wired.com/story/as-wildfires-get-more-extreme-observatories-are-at-greater-risk/
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