The newly installed station will help Chile understand a historic drought with no signs of easing.
Tupungato is one of the tallest mountains in Chile and now home to the Southern and Western hemisphere's highest weather station, a tool that will help scientists understand how climate change is warming the region. At 19,000 feet above sea level on the Chilean mountain of Tupungato, Baker Perry and his fellow climbers were clobbered in the early morning hours by an unforecasted blizzard that pinned them in their tents with punishing winds and swirling snow. Perry, a climate scientist at Appalachian State University, was philosophical as he recalled it. "It's part of the beauty of the mountains that it is so challenging. That's one reason there's not many stations up in some of these places," Perry says. "We want to see it at its stormiest and at its most challenging as well. That's part of the climate. We need to measure that."
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