Lethal Low Pressure Fronts

On a giant 50 mile high volcano, created and sustained by magic, there is extreme weather. Storms, high winds, snow, everything you'd find at the flanks of exceedingly high mountain. Explorers have started to push up the flanks, trying to push the bounds of how high they can go. Like all alpine explorers they are acutely aware of the weather and it's ability to impede their progress.

These explorers have :

• No breathing equipment in the form of space suits or supplemental oxygen
• Standard alpine equipment for the 1940's
• Standard issue human bodies that are well adapted to life at extreme altitudes

The volcano itself is no steeper than 10° and usually around 5°. Climbing it is more akin to a shallow hill rather than what people usually think of mountain climbing.

My suspicion is that a human climber could get high enough on the sides of this volcano that the line between (barely) breathable atmosphere and hypoxia is the difference between a high pressure front and a low pressure front.

At what altitude on this volcano would a low pressure front, in and of itself, be lethal?

posted about 7 years ago

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