About us

Mt. Fuji is symbolic of Japan because of its beautiful scenery and height (3776m a.s.l). At the end of the 19th century, Mt. Fuji became an important meteorological observation point. The Mount Fuji Weather Station was established in 1932, owing to the great efforts of pioneers in observation such as Mr. & Mrs. Itaru Nonaka (Obs. period: Oct.-Dec., 1895) and Mr. Junichi Satoh (Obs. period: Jan.-Feb., 1926), and has been operated manually by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) since then.

The station has been proved very effective in forecasting typhoons and other meteorological observations, as well as being a proud symbol nationwide for engineers and researchers. Recently, however, it was announced that Mount Fuji Weather Station is moving to an unattended operation in 2004. Terminating the manual operation means losing the precious living knowledge of high mountainous station maintenance. Once lost, this knowledge is difficult to recover.

Currently, meteorological data at the summit of Mt.Fuji are collected automatically by the meteorological equipment installed in the Mt.Fuji Weather Station. However it must be stressed that this highest point of our land is the perfect site for a variety of research that utilizes the benefits of the high altitude, as well as for weather observation.

In other countries, an array of achievements has been made by research conducted in high-altitude bases, such as the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii which is noted for greenhouse gas observations, the High Altitude Research Station Jungfraujoch in Switzerland, which conducts astronomical research, and the Monte Rosa Laboratory in Italy, which is famous for high altitude medicine. In this field, Japan is far behind.

With this as the background, we established NPO Mount Fuji Research Station (former Valid Utilization of Mount Fuji Weather Station), a nonprofit organization with more than 250 members including researchers and mountaineers in order to make good use of the former MT. Fuji Weather Station. The organization began observation and research at the Mount Fuji Weather Station after receiving permission to use the facilities from the Japan Meteorological Agency int the summer of 2007, when the station became available for summer research work by the private sector.

For two months between July and August each year since 2007, research studies have been conducted at the Mount Fuji Weather Station, on themes including atmospheric chemistry, high altitude medical sciences, cosmic-ray science, ecology, etc. The researchers who took part in the Mt. Fuji project have been increasing in number yearly.

Q: How high is the Mount Fuji Research Station?

A: The altitude is 3776 meters, six times as high as Tokyo Sky Tree which boasts a height of 634 meters. The Research Station is also the nearest laboratory to the Space Station in Japan.

Q: Why has the Mt. Fuji Weather Station been unmanned?

A: In 1964, weather RADAR was installed at the site to instantaneously detect tyhoons approaching Japan in any direction within a range of 800 kilometers ; a measure takenin response to the great damage from the Isewan Typhoon (Tyhoon Vera) that hit the country in September 1959 and left more than 5,000 people dead or missing.
However, because of the development of meteorological satellites and technologies that enable collection of meteorological data from remote areas, the Japan Meteorological Agency stopped using the weather radar for observation in 1999, and since 2004, the station has been unmanned.

Q: Why is Mount Fuji Research Station the optimum site to observe the atmosphere?

A: Mt. Fuji's advantage in observing such substances lies in the fact that data can be collected without direct influence from automobile and factory fuel emissions because the mountain is located away from metropolitan areas.
Moreover the summit of Mt. Fuji extends into the free troposphere，the atmosphere between an altitude of one kilometer above ground and the stratosphere. In this layer, substances travel long distances without being subject to land surface frictions.
Since substances generated on the Eurasian Continent are carried from west to east by westerly winds generated in the mid-latitude of the northern hemisphere, Mt. Fuji, located at the eastern edge of the Eurasian Continent, is the optimum site for such observation.

In addition, recently,  the station is also found to be an ideal site for the lightning research, especially for the observation of summer lightnings whose clounds are higher than 4 km.