Mount Everest for International Mountain Day

11 December is International Mountain Day and to commemorate this day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite flies over Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth.

Mount Everest is part of a region known as "third pole", since the high-altitude ice fields in this area contain the largest reserve of freshwater outside the polar regions.

With such a large portion of the world’s population dependent on water from these cold heights, changes in the size and flow of these glaciers can bring serious consequences for society by affecting the amount of water arriving downstream. From the vantage point of space, satellites, such as the Copernicus Sentinels, provide essential information to monitor the changing face of Earth’s glaciers, which are typically in remote regions and therefore difficult to monitor systematically from the ground.