
While the bulk of the team’s work would happen at base camp or lower elevations, Mayewski had challenged Matthews, Perry, and climate scientist Mariusz Potocki to climb to the summit for scientific purposes.
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The multi-disciplinary group included geologists, glaciologists, biologists, cartographers, and climate scientists, who set out to collect hundreds of water, snow, and rock samples as well as install sensors to record vegetation growth, and survey the landscape using high-resolution laser technology. “We believe the best way to do science on Everest isn’t just to do one kind of science, but do many kinds of science.” “This is a new window into the planet,” said Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine and the expedition's scientific leader. The National Geographic Society, working in partnership with Tribhuvan University, the Government of Nepal, and funded by Rolex, launched the two-month expedition, which ultimately involved more than 30 scientists conducting fieldwork at various elevations on the mountain as well as across the rugged Khumbu Valley. Matthews and Perry had come to Everest as part of an ambitious scientific assessment of the mountain. For climate scientists, there are few more pressing phenomena to understand than the jet stream, and the weather station would provide scientists an important new tool with which to gather data about it.Īnd yet there they were, on the roof of the world, with no way to attach the wind sensor-the most important part of the station. The reason any of this was worth the effort, risk, and cost is because only Mount Everest and a few of its Himalayan cousins are tall enough to reliably pierce the Sub-tropical Jet Stream-one of the narrow bands of powerful winds that circle the globe at high altitudes, influencing everything from storm tracks to agriculture growing seasons. They stared at each other, both simultaneously turning over this fact in their oxygen-deprived brains and seeking a solution. The men searched and re-searched the packs, but it was nowhere to be found. And among the coils of guy-wire, aluminum poles, and various scientific instruments, there was supposed to be two short sections of metal tubing that connect the wind sensors to the main structure. To lug the weather station to top of the world had required parceling its pieces out among the members of their team. Follow along as the team climbs into the mountain’s “death zone” to complete the network of weather stations in order to improve our understanding of climate change. Everest, including the highest weather station on Earth.


In 2019, members of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition set out to install five new weather stations on Mt.
