WABI covers panel on UMaine, National Geographic Everest expedition

WABI (Channel 5) covered a Nov. 15 event titled “The University of Maine’s Role in the National Geographic and Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Extreme Expedition to Mount Everest.” The panel discussion held on campus included six UMaine faculty members and students who went on the expedition. The scientists spoke about the role humans play in one of the world’s most extreme environments, with the goal of helping people better understand climate change and water availability, WABI reported. “Right now the only information we have for these very high elevation areas comes from models. We want to find out if these models are making good predictions,” said Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute. “So we conducted all sorts of activities and placed automatic weather stations and drilled ice cores, did water and snow sampling, lake coring, looked for what sort of biology is at these high elevations and then some very detailed mapping.”