A clean air monitoring instrument at the South Pole, upwind from the station. Clean air samples are analyzed for a variety of constituents such as carbon dioxide and ozone levels. The South Pole's Atmospheric Research Observatory (not shown) is one of the six atmospheric baseline observatories for NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory's Global Monitoring Division. Atmospheric measurements were first taken at the South Pole in 1957 during the International Geophysical Year, a global scientific campaign that ushered in the modern era of Antarctic research.