The seismological station on Everest installed by the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS), together with the EvK2CNR association and the Nepalese Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), has been upgraded with new instruments. 

Located at an altitude of 5,050 metres, the IO.EVN station is located at the Italian Piramide Observatory/Laboratory of EvK2CNR, 5 km from Mount Everest base camp. 

‘A new accelerometer has been added, to be paired with the existing seismometer for measuring local and global earthquakes, and an infrasound sensor to record environmental noise, including rock and ice falls and noises associated with glacier movements,’ explains Franco Pettenati, geophysicist at the OGS CRS and representative of the EvK2CNR Seismological Station. He adds: ‘This upgrade will allow us to further our ongoing research into “icequakes”, i.e. earthquakes caused by seismic waves generated by ice movements; these investigations are particularly useful for studies on climate change.’ 

Other work has been carried out on the GPS station: ‘We replaced the Master GPS station's data acquisition device, i.e. the device that acquires and determines the geographical position,’ continues Pettenati. ‘A commercially available device was installed, alongside a low-cost device designed by David Zuliani, an engineer at the OGS Seismological Research Centre (Receiver GNSS LZER0 NET S/N #1013)’. 

The GPS will be used in conjunction with the University of Trieste, which owns the antenna, to study the geodynamics of the region. Finally, a new Wi-Fi bridge was installed to connect the IO.EVN seismological station and the new GPS system to the server of the Piramide Observatory/Laboratory. The new Wi-Fi system will thus replace the previous underground cable connection system. 

The seismological station was inaugurated on 19th May 2014. Since then, it has been operating continuously at 100, 20 and 2 Hz sampling frequencies with 24-bit Guralp digitisers. From the Piramide server, the signals are sent via satellite to a server in Kathmandu and then to the OGS acquisition centre in Italy. On 7th January 2025, the seismological station recorded the Mw 7.1 earthquake in central Tibet, being the closest broadband station to the epicentre of the earthquake (approximately 70 kilometres away).