Everest now nests world's highest weather station

Kathmandu: The world's highest weather station has been installed on Mount Everest by a team of experts from the National Geographic Society. The station is located at an altitude of 8,830 metres and is burdened with measuring various meteorological phenomena automatically, PTI reported citing Nepalese media.

The weather station was installed a few metres down the summit since the ice at the top is not suitable for fixing the equipment, Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) informed.

The station is powered by solar energy, and it will measure air temperature, wind speed and direction, air pressure, change in surface height of snow, and incoming and outgoing short and longwave radiation.

The NatGeo team, which installed the station, was led by climate scientist Baker Perry of Appalachian State University in the US, along with climbers and scientists. They spent a month near Everest to carry out the maintenance of other stations, including a station at South Col.

The DHM and National Geographic signed a memorandum of understanding to operate all five automatic weather stations installed by NatGeo to provide near real-time information regarding mountain conditions.

As per the MoU, the NatGeo team will fully run the stations till 2025 and will hand over the technology to Nepal in 2026.

According to DHM's Director-General Kamal Ram Joshi, his department has requested the NatGeo team to transmit data directly to Nepal authorities without channelling it through the NatGeo servers.

According to reports, China also has installed a weather station at 8,800 metres on Everest. The Chinese automatic meteorological monitoring system is located on the northern side of the peak.

Chinese media have reported that Beijing has eight stations on the Everest, at altitudes of 5,200 metres to 8,800 metres, and four of them are above 7,000 metres.