Everest: I journeyed into the `death zone` to install the world´s highest weather station
(WorldNews Environment)

Perched at almost 8,500 metres on Everest, we paced back-and-forth, attempting to stave off frostbite as temperatures hovered close to -30°C and our drill batteries became too cold to work. Our ambition to install the highest automatic weather station in history looked destined for failure. We were at the end of an almost two-month expedition to conduct a hugely ambitious scientific survey of the 8,848-metre Mount Everest. I am a climate scientist who specialises in extreme environments , and together with Baker Perry (a geographer at Appalachian State University), I was trying to install the highest weather station in the world. Weeks of sickness had plagued the expedition (from diarrhoea...