Cheesy warning over climate

CHEESE being stored at the bottom of a Welsh coal mine has also been monitoring the effects of global warming – and it has confirmed a rise in temperatures.

The Blaenafon Cheddar Company has built an award-winning business by maturing its products 300ft underground at the Big Pit National Coal Museum, inset right.

As well as producing mouth-watering cheese, it has provided vital data for scientists predicting the effects of climate change.

Once the lifeblood of the nearby town of Blaenavon, Pontypool, the pit is now a tourism monument to the area’s mining past.

But the colliery, like many inwales, is close enough to the surface to avoid the temperature below ground heating up. There is also not a breath of wind to disturb the cheese, which sits in the corner of an emergency evacuation room at the pithead bottom.

Every two weeks, 180 cheeses in 20 kilo blocks sealed in plastic wrapping are taken down the pit in six stainless steel chests by workers using wheelbarrows.

The temperature of the cheese – all 120kg of it – is then monitored over the fortnight by a data logger tucked into each crate.

When the cheese is brought back to the surface its information is uploaded to a computer. Cheese firm boss Susan Fianderwoodhouse

said: “The temperature started creeping up over five years. It has not gone down yet. So scientists are very interested in the data. Every batch is checked every 15 minutes using a data logger and the results are meticulously recorded. Scientists find it an intriguing source of information.”

So far, more than 34,000 handmade cheeses have made the journey to the bottom of the pit and back – providing a rich harvest of ecological data. The temperature when the experiment began was a constant 10.5C.

It crept up to 10.9 and then 11. Then one night five years ago, in the space of 15 minutes there was another half a degree rise. It has remained at 11.5 since then.

Climate change expert John Hunt said: “The spike in this data would be consistent with a continuous trend.

“If we have a climbing trend it is likely to be evidence of global warming.”