Mt.Everest is often referred to as the earth's ‘third' pole.As such it is relatively inaccessible and little is known about its meteorology.In 2005, an automatic weather station was operated at North Co(28°01' 0.95" N, 86°57' 48.4" E, 6523 m a.s.l.) of Mt Everest.Based on the observational data, this paper compares the reanalysis data from NCEP/NCAR(hereafter NCEP-I) and NCEP-DOE AMIP-II(NCEP-II), in order to understand which reanalysis data are more suitable for the high Himalayas with Mt.Everes region.When comparing with those from the other levels, pressure interpolated from 500 hPa level is closer to the observation and can capture more synoptic-scale variability, which may be due to the very complex topography around Mt.Everest and the intricately complicated orographic land-atmosphere-ocean interactions.The interpolation from both NCEP-I and NCEP-II daily minimum temperature and daily mean pressure can capture most synoptic-scale variability(r>0.82, n=83, p<0.001).However there is difference between NCEP-I and NCEP-II reanalysis data because of different mode parameterization.Comparing with the observation the magnitude of variability was underestimated by 34.1 %, 28.5 % and 27.1 % for NCEP-I temperature and pressure, and NCEP-II pressure, respectively while overestimated by 44.5 % for NCEP-II temperature.For weather events interpolated from the reanalyzed data, NCEP-I and NCEP-II show the same features that weather events interpolated frompressure appear at the same day as those from the observation, and some events occur one day ahead, while most weather events interpolated from NCEP-I and NCEP-II temperature happen one day ahead of those from the observation, which is much important for the study on meteorology and climate changes in the region, and is very valuable from the view of improving the safety of climbers who attempt to climb Mt.Everest.
Mt.Everest (27°54' N,86°54' E),the highest peak,is often referred to as the earth's 'third' pole,at an elevation of 8844.43 m. Due to the difficult logistics in the extreme high elevation regions over the Himalayas,observational meteorological data are very few on Mt. Everest. In 2005,an automatic weather station was operated at the East Rongbuk glacier Col of Mt. Everest over the Himalayas. The observational data have been compared with the reanalysis data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR),and the reliability of NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data has been investigated in the Himalayan region,after the reanalyzed data were interpolated in the horizontal to the location of Mt. Everest and in the vertical to the height of the observed sites. The reanalysis data can capture much of the synoptic-scale variability in temperature and pressure,although the reanalysis values are systematically lower than the observation. Furthermore,most of the variability magnitude is,to some degree,underestimated. In addition,the variation extracted from the NCEP/NCAR reanalyzed pressure and temperature prominently appears one-day lead to that from the observational data,which is more important from the standpoint of improving the safety of climbers who attempt to climb Mt. Everest peak.
Mt. Qomolangma (Everest), the highest mountain peak in the world, has little been studied extensively from a meteorological perspective, mostly because of the remoteness of the region and the re-sultant lack of meteorological data. An automatic weather station (AWS), the highest in the world, was set up on 27 April 2005 at the Ruopula Pass (6523 m asl) on the northern slope of Mt. Qomolangma by the team of integrated scientific expedition to Mt. Qomo-langma. Here its meteorological characteristics were analyzed according to the 10-minute-averaged and 24-hour records of air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure and wind from 1 May to 22 July 2005. It is shown that at 6523 m of Mt. Qomolangma, these meteorological elements display very obvious diurnal variations, and the character of averaged diurnal variation is one-peak-and-one-vale for air tem-perature, one-vale for relative humidity, two-peak-and- two-vale for air pressure, and one-peak with day-night asymmetry for wind speed. In the 83 days, all the air temperature, relative hu-midity and air pressure increased with some dif-ferent fluctuations, while wind speed decreased gradually and wind direction turned from north to south. The variations of relative humidity had great fluctuations and obvious local differences. Then thepaper discusses the reason for the characters of diurnal and daily variations. Compared with the corresponding records in May 1960, 5-day-averaged maximums, minimums and diurnal variations of air temperature in May 2005 were apparently lower.
