Data sources

Relief, 3D views and profiles

The relief comes from the Copernicus DEM GLO-30, the 30 m elevation model of the whole Earth measured by the TanDEM-X satellites (2011–2015). For each mountain we read a 22 × 22 km square around the summit, find the true summit (the highest point within 350 m of the official coordinates), and draw the 3D view, the profiles and the slopes. On very sharp summits the 30 m model sits slightly lower than the official height; in that case the last 350 m around the top are raised smoothly to the official figure. Produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved. The organisations in charge of the Copernicus programme by law or by delegation do not incur any liability for any use of the Copernicus WorldDEM-30.

Climate at the summit

Temperature, rain, wet days, sunshine and wind come from NASA POWER (MERRA-2 and CERES, averages 1991–2020 and month by month since 2020), for a cell about 55 km wide. NASA also gives the average height of that cell. Air cools by about 6.5 °C for every 1,000 m you climb (the standard atmosphere), so the summit temperature is the cell's minus 6.5 °C per 1,000 m of difference, and the 0 °C line is the height where that sum reaches zero. It is an estimate: on any given day the real gradient can be different. The data was obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center POWER Project funded through the NASA Earth Science Division.

Mountains, names and heights

The list of mountains, their names in seven languages, official elevation, prominence, isolation, range, first ascent and the highest point of each country come from Wikidata (CC0). Which mountains get a guide is decided by a written rule: how many Wikipedias write about them, their height and prominence. Wikipedia text is not copied; each guide links to it.

Around the mountain

Huts, lifts, ski areas, campsites, viewpoints, glaciers, via ferratas, climbing, waymarked routes and the SAC difficulty of paths are counted in OpenStreetMap © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database License. The towns at the foot of each mountain come from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) and the nearest airport from OurAirports (public domain).

Images

The satellite skin of every 3D view and the views from above are the Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 mosaic by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), under CC BY 4.0. Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons; only public-domain, CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA files are used, with the author and licence under each one.