A small helicopter appears above the clouds of smoke that rise from the wells of boiling magma. Serge Brunier circles the slopes of the Kilauea volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the archipelago of Hawaii. For more than thirty years, the lava has been flowing into the ocean. Here, everything is black and life seems to have abandoned this part of the island.
Our planet is an active planet, the core of which has been warmed for some 4 billion by colossal energy. Regularly, it expels bursts of heat by spitting out its magma through its 10,000 active volcanoes. Just like on Venus and Mars, volcanoes have shaped - and continue to shape - the crust of our planet but also its atmosphere. Releasing on Earth essential elements such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen and steam, volcanic activity has been a source of life. Indeed, the fact that the average temperature on Earth is 15 ° C is due to greenhouse gases that are produced naturally and in moderate levels in our atmosphere.
Somewhere between volcanic and climate research, Hawaii is at the crossroads of these two sciences. On the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano, a world-renowned observatory monitors and analyses the changes in our atmosphere. The message of the climatologists here could not be clearer: for two centuries, man has been playing with fire and the increased concentration of greenhouse gas emissions is severely affecting our climate. It might well be that, with current levels of C02; we have already crossed the red climate line from which there is no turning back…
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