The weather station placed on top of Mt. McKinley will provide valuable information that will help ongoing and future research in a number of areas.
Jet stream
The strategic location of McKinley station, combined with its elevation, allow it to frequently intersect an important feature of the high atmosphere called the jet stream. This is a narrow corridor of high-speed winds that flows from west to east around the northern hemisphere. McKinley station will help track day-to-day changes in jet stream position.
Warm events
During winter, the interior region of Alaska occasionally suffers from large increases in temperature. These can bring freezing rain, a major hazard. These events are caused by pulses of warm air that cross over the Alaska Range from the south. McKinley station is in position to provide additional information about how these events evolve and possibly even act to give several hours warning of approaching freezing rain.
Mountain winds
Winds in mountain regions are influenced by the rough terrain. This includes rapid changes in speed and direction, including up and down, and areas of turbulence. Data gathered from McKinley station will help improve understanding about the behavior of winds in high alpine regions.
Temperature modeling
It is important for many types of research to have accurate air temperature data. Examples of study areas include glacier work, understanding watershed behavior, permafrost and thaw studies, or ecology work. However, air temperature is only measured at weather stations and it can be difficult to estimate air temperature if a research site is not near a weather station. Models have been devised to do this, but they need to be checked against observed data. McKinley station is an important resource for this because there are few weather stations at high elevations.
High elevation comparisons
McKinley station is one of only two weather stations in the world located above 18,000 feet and just a handful are at high elevations. Comparing results from this site with data from stations at Mauna Loa (Hawaii), Illimani (Bolivia), Mt. Fuji (Japan), and Sagarmatha (Nepal) will provide useful insight into similarities and differences in high-elevation weather at these different locations.
High elevation monitoring
Recent research has indicated that the sparse weather station network in high elevation areas restricts our ability to monitor change in these areas. McKinley station will help to address this problem.
Some computer models of air temperature are guided by temperature data gathered by weather balloons. However, for a given altitude, the temperature in the free air is often different from the air temperature near the earth's surface. Temperature data gathered at McKinley station can be compared, at that specific altitude, with data gathered from weather balloons launched twice daily from a variety of locations around Alaska.
