A Pearl Saved, For Now.

The Trudeau government has come up with $1.6 million to keep the doors open at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory. It's enough money to keep the lab operating for almost two more years.

The funding, announced jointly by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and Science Minister Kirsty Duncan, will serve as a bridge that may be used to buy time for a longer-term approach to funding the laboratory that tracks climate change, ozone depletion, and atmospheric pollution from its frigid perch on Ellesmere Island about 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole.

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Scientists stress that one of the important functions of PEARL is to provide an unbroken record of the atmosphere in the high Arctic, the part of the world where climate change is projected to unfold most rapidly.

The facility faced a crisis and scaled back under the Harper government when its funding body was phased out in 2012. At that time, Ms. Duncan, then in opposition, was among those who strongly advocated for saving PEARL. The Harper government responded by establishing a five-year funding program for a number of climate science projects, including PEARL, called the Climate Change and Atmospheric Research Initiative (CCAR).

That program expires this year and climate scientists grew alarmed when the federal budget gave no indication that it would be renewed or replaced. Today's announcement ensures that PEARL will continue for a while longer but it also means that, so far, there is no reprieve for the other projects despite a favourable internal review of CCAR.