\n<\/p>\n
Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, began his career searching for gravitational waves in the universe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started feeling a lot of anxiety that I wasn\u2019t committing my talents to doing something to stop global heating,\u201d said Dr. Kalmus, who stressed that he spoke for only himself, not his employer. After a few years of research in astrophysics, he pivoted to studying the physics of clouds and, later, to using climate models to examine the risks of extreme heat. (Dr. Kalmus has also become an outspoken climate activist who has been arrested for his protest tactics.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still kind of angry that, because of policymakers not doing enough to stop global heating, I felt compelled to leave astrophysics and become the climate scientist,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Telescopes must be built in places that are high, dry and removed from cities\u2019 light pollution, and they have often ended up in fire-prone places like mountaintops and forests. So it came as no surprise, in 2013, when a fire reached Australia\u2019s Siding Spring Observatory, a sister facility to Mount Stromlo that\u2019s located in a national park in New South Wales.<\/p>\n
By then, astronomers had learned some lessons. Employees had maintained the grounds at Siding Spring to keep vegetation away from telescope domes. Flames destroyed some infrastructure, but most of the observatory was spared.<\/p>\n
\u201cBushfires are a normal part of Australia\u2019s life,\u201d said C\u00e9line d\u2019Orgeville, director of the Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Center, a state-of-the-art facility that opened at Mount Stromlo three years after the 2003 disaster. \u201cBut in recent years, it\u2019s been clear that the frequency and the severity of the fires has increased significantly.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, a wildfire destroyed multiple buildings at Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona. And fires aren\u2019t the only danger: In 2020, the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed, in part because of repeated stress from hurricanes, according to a 2022 forensic investigation commissioned by the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have become acutely aware that they actually have to account for climate change when they\u2019re going to choose new sites,\u201d Ms. d\u2019Orgeville said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n