Energy & Science
Climate Scientists Turn Mount Everest Into a Lab
In an expedition last year, researchers examined plastic garbage, ice melt and oxygen levels
Climbers with the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition make their way to the summit.
Source: Courtesy Mariusz Potocki/National Geographic
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Climate science started on mountaintops. John Tyndall was a mid-19th-century British scientist and devoted mountaineer who scaled several Continental peaks, making the first recorded trip up Switzerland's Weisshorn. He sketched out the glaciers he saw there, and how they moved. By 1859, he’d become the first European to demonstrate that carbon dioxide absorbs heat.