At 3am on the 23rd, the expedition team set off from the Mount Everest assault camp at an altitude of 8300 meters. After an 8-hour climb, they arrived at the world's highest automatic meteorological observation station at an altitude of 8830 meters at around 11:00 am on the same day. Fix the steel wire rope, replace the battery, install the wind speed and direction sensor... After about an hour of intense work, the maintenance and upgrading work of the automatic weather station has been completed. "The sensor elements of the automatic weather station are always damaged by strong winds. We started to maintain and upgrade the meteorological station on Mount Everest in March to ensure the real-time transmission of observation data." Zhao Huabiao, a researcher at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told reporters. In 2022, an automatic weather station weighing up to 50 kilograms was successfully installed at an altitude of 8830 meters on the north slope of Mount Everest, breaking the global record for the installation of automatic weather stations. This work also filled the gap in the extremely high altitude meteorological observation records in China's Mount Everest region, and the Mount Everest gradient meteorological observation system was initially established. The Everest Gradient Meteorological Observation System consists of 8 automatic meteorological stations located at altitudes of 5200 meters, 5400 meters, 5800 meters, 6350 meters, 7028 meters, 7790 meters, 8300 meters, and 8830 meters. This automatic weather station is powered by a combination of solar panels and batteries, and can be used for many years under normal circumstances. However, the extremely high altitude area of Mount Everest has fast weather changes, strong winds, and low temperatures, which all pose a great challenge to the operation of the weather station, "Zhao Huabiao said. Since May, Zhao Huabiao and his team have traveled multiple times between the base camp of Mount Everest at an altitude of 5200 meters and the area at an altitude of 6350 meters, checking the automatic weather stations erected in the previous year, and discussing how to maintain and upgrade the automatic weather stations. To this end, they overcame high temperatures and hypoxia, and worked continuously in tents at the base camp of Mount Everest for several days. After maintaining several extremely high altitude automatic weather stations on Mount Everest this year, we will obtain longer periods of meteorological observation data, and add precipitation observations from automatic weather stations below 6500 meters. This is of great significance for studying the meteorological and climate change characteristics of the Mount Everest region and even the Qinghai Tibet Plateau. "Zhao Huabiao said that meteorological observation data in extremely high altitude areas is very scarce globally, After completing maintenance and technological upgrades, the automatic weather station can obtain more complete gradient meteorological observation data, which can be used to uncover the "mysterious veil" of the climate and ecological environment on the Qinghai Tibet Plateau. (New News Agency)