Sonnblick Observatory sits perched on a frigid summit in the Austrian Alps, 10,000 feet above sea level. It is one of the highest weather stations in Europe where meteorologists still live on the premises. For all the ice and snow blanketing the observatory, it used to be much colder here . The station’s temperature records show a warming of 2.1 degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since it opened in 1886, double the global average. Back then, local gold miners trudged through waist-high snow drifts to carry construction materials up the mountain. The meteorological rock tower of the original observatory, fitted with key recording instruments, is still in use . Meteorologists here have continuously recorded the temperature for 133 years — except for four days when troops left the station unmanned during World War I — and documented clear changes to climate. With millions of other measurements worldwide, their data […]