A new peer-reviewed study calculates that fuel use and human urine at Everest Base Camp released enough heat during the 2023 spring climbing season to melt an estimated 2,492 tonnes of glacier ice and snow — including about 154 tonnes linked to urine — raising fresh questions about the sustainability and future location of the world’s most iconic mountaineering camp.
Asia (Tourism Reporter) — Every spring, a temporary city rises on one of the world’s most unstable pieces of ice.
Espresso machines hiss. Wi-Fi routers blink. Heated tent floors keep guides and climbers warm through sub-zero nights. For several weeks, Everest Base Camp becomes a remarkable feat of high-altitude logistics, supporting thousands of climbers, guides and workers on the Khumbu Glacier.
It is also becoming an increasingly important question for the future of Everest tourism.
A new peer-reviewed study published in Regional Environmental Change has produced one of the most detailed assessments yet of the heat generated by human activity at Everest Base Camp — and calculated how much glacier ice and snow that energy could theoretically melt.
The researchers estimate that activities at the camp during the spring 2023 climbing season generated 849,174 ± 179,774 megajoules of heat energy. In theoretical melting terms, that is equivalent to approximately 2,492 ± 528 tonnes of glacier ice and snow. The calculation covers heat associated with fossil-fuel use for cooking, heating and electricity, as well as heat contained in human urinary discharge.
Buried inside that calculation is the detail likely to attract the most attention.
Human urine alone accounted for an estimated 154 tonnes of the potential ice-melting equivalent.
The finding sounds almost surreal: at the world’s highest mountain, something as ordinary as human waste becomes part of a much larger environmental equation.
But the researchers are making a broader point.
The problem is not that urine is melting Everest. The problem is that a rapidly intensifying tourism and mountaineering operation is generating additional heat and environmental pressure on a glacier that is already experiencing the effects of a warming climate.
The study examined three contributors to glacier melt — global climate change, local fossil-fuel consumption and human urinary discharge — and found that the human-generated heat at Base Camp represents a measurable local environmental impact. The researchers also found that land-surface temperature at Everest Base Camp increased by 0.28°C per year between 1991 and 2023, roughly twice the rate recorded at the adjacent Khumbu Glacier surface.
And that brings the story back to tourism.
Everest is not simply a mountain being climbed. It is a tourism ecosystem operating on a glacier.
The study goes one step further, identifying two potentially safer sites on stable ground southwest of the existing Base Camp should relocation become necessary.
For Tourism Reporter, that is the bigger story behind the remarkable urine statistic: how long can one of the world’s most iconic tourism experiences continue to operate from a landscape that its own tourism infrastructure is placing under additional local environmental pressure?
A Season’s Worth of Heat, Measured Litre by Litre
The research team’s methodology was designed to quantify rather than sensationalise the human footprint at Everest Base Camp. Using field data from the spring 2023 climbing season, the researchers assessed the heat energy associated with fossil-fuel consumption at the camp — including liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), kerosene and petrol used for cooking, heating and electricity — alongside the thermal energy associated with human urinary discharge.
The resulting calculation puts the scale of the operation into perspective.
During the 2023 spring season, the researchers calculated that human activity at Base Camp released 849,174 ± 179,774 megajoules of heat energy. In theoretical melting terms, that amount of energy would be sufficient to melt approximately 2,492 ± 528 tonnes of glacier ice and snow.
Fossil-fuel consumption accounted for the overwhelming majority of that calculated heat contribution, while urinary discharge represented a much smaller component.
Yet the smallest number has become the most eye-catching.
The researchers estimate that the heat contained in human urinary discharge was equivalent to approximately 154 tonnes of potential ice and snow melt during the season studied.
That figure is striking not because urine is somehow the principal threat to the Khumbu Glacier — it is not — but because it illustrates how even seemingly insignificant sources of heat can become measurable when concentrated in a temporary settlement operating on a glacier.
At Everest Base Camp, human activity is no longer incidental.
Thousands of people, hundreds of tents, cooking systems, heating equipment and power generators are concentrated on the same fragile glacial environment for weeks every year.
The study therefore treats Base Camp as a localised human-activity zone rather than simply a collection of individual climbers.
And the researchers’ accounting deliberately remains conservative.
Their calculation focuses on the heat associated with fossil-fuel use and human urinary discharge, alongside the broader warming context identified through satellite observations. It does not attempt to turn every source of human-generated heat in the Everest tourism system into a single melt figure.
That distinction matters.
The 2,492-tonne figure is not a measurement of ice that disappeared because climbers burned fuel or urinated on it. It is the theoretical amount of ice and snow that the calculated heat energy would be capable of melting.
The researchers’ broader finding is nevertheless significant. Their 1991–2023 Landsat analysis found that surface temperature at Everest Base Camp increased by 0.28°C per year, roughly twice the rate recorded at the adjacent Khumbu Glacier surface. They conclude that reducing anthropogenic influences at Base Camp could help preserve the glacier and support the long-term sustainability of mountaineering in the region.
And that is where the research becomes particularly relevant to tourism.
Everest tourism has created an infrastructure problem that can no longer be separated from the environmental system on which the experience depends.
The question is therefore not simply how much heat one climber, one generator or one litre of urine contributes.
It is what happens when thousands of people repeatedly converge on the same glacier, season after season, to participate in one of the world’s most commercially significant adventure-tourism experiences.
That is the question the study ultimately pushes towards — and it is why its findings go well beyond the headline-grabbing urine statistic.
Satellite Data Shows Base Camp Warming Faster Than the Glacier Around It
Perhaps the study’s most consequential finding has little to do with urine or fuel at all.
Using Landsat satellite observations covering the period from 1991 to 2023, the researchers examined land-surface temperature trends at Everest Base Camp and compared them with temperature changes across the surrounding Khumbu Glacier.
The pattern is striking.
Surface temperatures at Everest Base Camp increased by approximately 0.28°C per year over the study period, while the surrounding Khumbu Glacier showed a lower rate of warming. The researchers describe the Base Camp warming rate as approximately twice that of the surrounding glacier surface.
In other words, the precise area occupied each spring by one of the world’s busiest high-altitude mountaineering camps has been warming considerably faster than the broader glacial environment around it.
That does not mean climbers are responsible for the glacier’s overall warming — or that Base Camp is driving the Khumbu Glacier’s retreat.
The distinction is crucial.
The researchers identify global climate change as the dominant driver of glacier melt, while their analysis examines the additional localised influence of human activity concentrated at Base Camp. Their work suggests that fossil-fuel consumption and human urinary discharge add heat to an already warming environment, creating an additional local pressure on the glacier.
That makes the satellite evidence particularly important.
The fuel and urine calculations tell us how much heat human activity at Base Camp generates. The satellite record shows that the Base Camp area itself has experienced a pronounced warming trend.
Together, the two strands of evidence create a more interesting picture than the headline urine statistic alone.
Everest’s tourism infrastructure is operating inside a climate system that is changing — while also adding a measurable local layer of human-generated heat.
The broader Himalayan context makes the issue even more consequential. Previous research has documented accelerating glacier loss across the region, with the rate of ice loss increasing substantially in recent decades.
But the Everest study introduces another question for tourism planners:
What happens when the infrastructure supporting a major tourism economy is located directly on an increasingly fragile environmental asset?
That is not simply a climate-science question.
It is a destination-management question.
And it could eventually force a decision that would have been almost unthinkable when Everest Base Camp became established in its current location: whether the world’s most famous mountaineering camp can continue operating on the glacier at all.
The researchers identify potential alternative sites on more stable ground southwest of the existing Base Camp, pointing towards a possible future in which protecting the glacier and protecting Everest tourism become part of the same planning exercise.
For Everest, the future of tourism may ultimately depend not only on how many people want to climb the mountain, but on where the tourism infrastructure supporting them can safely exist.
The Man Who Has Slept 365 Nights on the Glacier He Now Studies
Lead author Khimlal Gautam brings an unusually personal perspective to the research. A mountaineer and geospatial scientist, Gautam has spent extended periods at Everest Base Camp across multiple seasons — accumulating more than 365 nights at the camp by 2022, according to an account he published through the Group on Earth Observations. That experience has informed his interest in understanding how the settlement itself is interacting with the glacier beneath it.
Gautam’s involvement in questions surrounding the future of Everest Base Camp predates the latest study.
He previously led a technical committee that recommended that Nepal consider relocating the camp away from the Khumbu Glacier, after assessments highlighted growing concerns about the stability of the ice beneath the increasingly developed seasonal settlement.
The issue gained wider attention as climbers and guides reported changes in the glacier around the camp, including crevasses opening in areas used by mountaineers.
Speaking to the BBC during that earlier assessment, Gautam highlighted the scale of the human activity concentrated at Base Camp:
“We found that people urinate around 4,000 litres at the base camp every day. And the massive amount of fuels like kerosene and gas we burn there for cooking and warming will definitely have impacts on the glacier’s ice.”
The concern was serious enough to prompt Nepal’s tourism authorities to begin considering a potential relocation.
“We are now preparing for the relocation, and we will soon begin consultation with all stakeholders,” Taranath Adhikari, then director general of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, told the BBC. He described the move as an adaptation to changes occurring at Base Camp and said it had become important for the sustainability of the mountaineering business itself.
That relocation has yet to take place.
The new peer-reviewed research does not, by itself, establish that Base Camp must be moved. What it does is add another layer of quantitative evidence to a debate that Nepal has already been having: how should one of the world’s most important mountaineering destinations adapt when the physical environment supporting its tourism infrastructure is changing?
And that question extends beyond Everest.
Co-author Virginia Burkett, discussing the study’s implications with The New York Times, placed the issue in a broader context of climate adaptation.
“We have to think about the future. What better place to start than Everest?”
For the tourism industry, that may be the most important question raised by the research.
Everest Base Camp is not simply a scientific observation point or a collection of expedition tents. It is critical infrastructure for one of the world’s most recognisable adventure-tourism experiences.
If that infrastructure eventually has to move, the challenge will be more than finding another patch of ground.
It will be about redesigning how Everest tourism operates in a landscape that is changing faster than the tourism system built upon it.
What This Means for an Industry Built Around One Fragile Site
For Nepal’s mountaineering economy, the implications extend well beyond a single scientific paper. Everest expeditions support livelihoods across the Khumbu region, from guides and porters to lodge operators and other businesses serving climbers and visitors. The mountain also generates significant government revenue through climbing permits and associated tourism activity.
Everest Base Camp is not incidental infrastructure. It is the operating hub around which the commercial climbing season is organised.
Expeditions use the camp as a staging point for acclimatisation rotations, equipment management, logistics and the coordination of clients and support teams. Over time, the seasonal settlement has also become more sophisticated, with cooking facilities, generators, heating systems and other amenities designed to support climbers and staff living there for weeks.
That evolution matters because every additional service has an operational footprint.
More power requires more fuel or renewable-energy capacity. More equipment requires more logistics. More people require more water, sanitation and waste management. And when all of those activities are concentrated on a glacier, the tourism infrastructure itself becomes part of the environmental equation.
The study does not argue that comfort is inherently responsible for glacier degradation. Rather, it provides a way of quantifying a component of the energy footprint associated with operating Base Camp at its current scale.
For expedition operators and tourism authorities, that sharpens a question that has been circulating for years: how long can a seasonal settlement of this scale continue operating on an increasingly unstable glacier before environmental pressures become operational and safety considerations as well?
The researchers identify two potential alternative sites southwest of the existing Base Camp on more stable terrain. But relocation would not be a simple matter of moving tents from one location to another. It would involve new logistics, infrastructure, waste-management arrangements, access routes and costs — while potentially changing how expeditions organise their operations.
The study’s recommendations therefore focus first on reducing the local footprint of the existing operation.
Among the measures discussed are greater use of solar energy to reduce fossil-fuel consumption, improved collection and removal of urine, and consideration of relocating infrastructure away from areas of greater glacier degradation.
None of these measures requires Everest tourism to stop.
The more fundamental question is whether the industry can redesign the way it operates at altitude as the physical environment changes.
That could mean cleaner energy systems, better sanitation, tighter waste-management practices and, if conditions ultimately require it, moving at least part of the tourism infrastructure away from the glacier itself.
For an industry built around one of the world’s most extraordinary natural environments, sustainability is no longer simply about protecting the destination. It is about redesigning the infrastructure that makes tourism there possible.
And Everest may be an early test of a much wider tourism question: what happens when the destination’s most valuable tourism asset is also the place most vulnerable to the infrastructure created to experience it?
A Traveller’s Footprint, Measured in Litres and Megajoules
For the climbers and trekkers who make the journey to Everest Base Camp each year — whether attempting Everest itself or trekking into the Khumbu to experience the mountain — the study offers an unusually tangible reminder that tourism at extreme altitude has a physical footprint.
Staying hydrated at around 5,300 metres is not optional. It is a fundamental part of acclimatisation and a standard recommendation for people operating at high altitude. The study does not suggest that climbers should drink less. Instead, it raises a more practical question:
Does the infrastructure managing human waste at Everest Base Camp match the scale of modern mountaineering tourism?
That distinction matters.
Reducing the story to individual climbers urinating on the glacier risks missing the study’s much broader finding. Fossil-fuel consumption for cooking, heating and electricity accounted for approximately 94% of the human-generated melt potential calculated by the researchers, while urinary discharge accounted for the remaining 6%.
The disproportionate attention given to urine therefore says more about the novelty of the finding than its relative contribution to the study’s overall heat calculation.
Yet the urine finding remains useful because it makes an otherwise abstract environmental footprint remarkably easy to understand.
Sustainable tourism is often discussed in broad terms — reducing emissions, protecting ecosystems, managing waste and limiting environmental pressure. At Everest, those concepts can be measured in extraordinarily concrete ways.
18,935 litres of kerosene.
Thousands of litres of petrol.
Thousands of litres of human urine generated during a single season.
And hundreds of thousands of megajoules of human-generated heat energy calculated by the researchers.
The numbers reveal something important about the evolution of Everest tourism.
The environmental footprint of a destination is not created only by the journey to get there. It is also created by the infrastructure required to keep people there.
For an industry that has built its appeal around access to one of the world’s most extraordinary wilderness environments, that distinction is becoming increasingly important.
The answer is not to tell travellers to stop drinking water, stop climbing or stop visiting the Himalayas.
It is to make the systems supporting those travellers more sustainable.
That means cleaner energy, better waste collection, more efficient logistics and, potentially, infrastructure that is moved away from the most vulnerable areas of the glacier.
For Everest, sustainable tourism may ultimately be less about asking whether people should come and more about asking how the mountain can accommodate them without compromising the environment that brought them there in the first place.
And that is a question that extends well beyond Everest.
As climate change reshapes destinations around the world, tourism’s next sustainability challenge may increasingly be about redesigning the infrastructure of visitation — not simply reducing visitation itself.
The Broader Himalayan Reckoning
The Everest findings arrive amid a wider reassessment of high-altitude tourism’s environmental footprint across the Himalayas, where glacier retreat, glacial lake outburst floods, landslides and other climate-related hazards are increasingly shaping the conditions in which communities and tourism businesses operate.
Nepal’s tourism authorities and the researchers themselves are clear on an important point: human activity at Everest Base Camp is not the primary driver of the Khumbu Glacier’s decline. Climate change is. The new research nevertheless adds a measurable local dimension to that much larger process, quantifying the heat associated with fossil-fuel consumption and human urinary discharge at a major tourism settlement located directly on the glacier.
That distinction — between the dominant global force of climate change and the local, potentially addressable footprint of tourism infrastructure — is perhaps the study’s most transferable lesson.
Everest is an extreme case by almost every measure: extreme altitude, extreme environmental sensitivity and an unusually concentrated seasonal tourism operation. But the underlying question applies to destinations far beyond the Himalayas.
What happens when the infrastructure built to accommodate visitors is located directly on the natural asset those visitors have come to experience?
At a glacier, the answer may be measured in heat and ice.
At a coral reef, it may be wastewater and physical damage.
At a fragile island, it may be freshwater consumption and waste.
At an overcrowded historic centre, it may be pressure on housing and public infrastructure.
The common thread is the same: tourism does not interact with a destination from a distance. It operates physically inside it.
That means destination managers increasingly have to look beyond visitor numbers when assessing tourism capacity.
The harder question is what each visitor requires the destination to consume, build, heat, transport, remove and maintain — and whether the natural system can absorb that footprint over time.
For Everest, that conversation brings the future of Base Camp back into focus.
The question of relocation has been under consideration for several years, alongside proposals to reduce the camp’s environmental footprint through cleaner energy, improved waste management and other operational changes. The new research does not prescribe a single solution. Instead, it provides additional quantitative evidence for a decision that Nepal’s tourism authorities and other stakeholders will ultimately have to make.
Move the infrastructure. Reduce its footprint where it stands. Or develop a combination of both approaches.
Whatever path Nepal ultimately chooses, the decision is no longer simply about where climbers should sleep before attempting Everest.
It is about how a global tourism industry adapts when the physical landscape supporting its most valuable experience is changing beneath it.
And that may be the most important lesson of the research.
Sustainable tourism is not simply about protecting the places people travel to see. It is about designing the systems that allow people to visit those places without undermining the very assets that make the journey worthwhile.
This report draws on peer-reviewed research published in Regional Environmental Change and supporting scientific sources. Tourism Reporter has analysed the findings in the context of Everest tourism, environmental sustainability and the future of high-altitude tourism.
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