Environment

Everest Becoming 'Dry and Rocky'

Mount Everest is losing snow and turning "dry and rocky," British climber Kenton Cool, who made his 17th ascent of the world’s highest peak this week, the most by a foreigner, said on Saturday. The 49-year-old Cool, who climbed the 8,849-meter (29,032 foot) peak for the first time in 2004, said the giant mountain appears to be drying now. "If you go back to early mid-2000s there used to be a lot of snow," he told Reuters in an interview in Kathmandu after returning from his record-setting expedition which was confirmed by Nepali and hiking officials this week.

Also this week, a 53-year-old Nepali guide, Kami Rita Sherpa, improved his own record of most summits after scaling Everest for the 27th time.

Climate scientists say the earth’s temperature has increased by an average of 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, but warming across the Himalayas has been greater than the global averages. Officials have said the average temperature in Nepal was rising by 0.06 degrees Celsius annually, due in part to its location between China and India, two of the world’s heaviest polluters.