"Some of the lower Himalayan regions are fairly well studied, but a place like Everest is less studied because it's just so hard to do work up there." says Aurora Elmore, a climate scientist at the National Geographic Society. The changes will impact climbers scaling the peak and local people who live in the shadow of it. According to two new studies published today in iScience and One Earth, the air pressure near Everest's summit is rising, making more oxygen available to breathe, and glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates, leading to more meltwater. But both of those elements are changing fast. The only place that punctures the stratosphere-Everest's peak reaches 29,035 feet above sea level-has an atmosphere so thin that it leaves mountaineers gasping for breath and glaciers so big that they stretch for miles on end. Despite being the highest point on Earth, Mount Everest still can't escape the effects of climate change.
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