SHARE (Stations at High Altitude for Research on the Environment) Network

In the Khumbu Valley, located in the central part of the Himalayan range and including the area of Sagarmatha National Park, a network of 7 Automatic Weather Stations (AWSs) has been installed since 1994.
These weather stations are located at different altitudes: Lukla (2,660 m a.s.l), Namche (3,570 m a.s.l), Periche (4,260 m a.s.l), Lobuche (5,050 m a.s.l) near the Pyramid - Laboratory Observatory, Kala Patthar (5,600 m a.s.l), Changri Nup Glacier (5,700 m a.s.l) and Mt. Everest - South Col (8.000 m a.s.l).
The network mainly takes measurements of 7 standards parameters: air temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, global radiation and total precipitation.
Meteo-climatic observations in this area are very important to better understand the environmental changes that are affecting the ecosystem, helping the scientific community to improve the prediction of this environmental phenomena's evolution and modification.
In particular, within the Ev-K2-CNR/SHARE Project on February 2010 an Automatic Weather Station (AWS) has been installed on the debris-free surface of the Changri Nup Glacier (Nepal, Himalayas) at 5,700 m asl. This AWS is acquiring meteorological data and energy fluxes on the glacier surface in order to permit the calculation of the glacier energy balance and the high resolution analysis of glacier albedo.

Geographical coordinates:
- Latitude: 27deg 58' 54.5" N
- Longitude: 86deg 45' 53.8" EChangri Nup AWS provides data (with a 30 minute time resolution) of the following parameters:
- air temperature (degC)
- relative humidity (%)
- incoming shortwave radiation (W/m2)
- outgoing shortwave radiation (W/m2)
- incoming longwave radiation (W/m2)
- outgoing longwave radiation (W/m2)
- wind speed (m/s)
- wind direction (degree)