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.

The Lukla station was installed on September 2002. On 2004, the AWS has been implemented to include sensors for the determination of soil parameters (temperature, water content, thermal flux), snow level and shortwave/longwave albedo.

Geographical coordinates:
- Latitude: 27deg 41' 48" N
- Longitude: 86deg 43' 17" ELukla AWS provides data (with a 60 minute time resolution) of the following parameters:
- air temperature (degC)
- total precipitation (mm)
- relative humidity (%)
- atmospheric pressure (hPa)
- wind speed (m/s)
- wind direction (degree)
- global solar radiation (W/m2)

Thanks to the implementation carried out in 2004 it is possible to measure also:
- soil temperature (degC)
- soil moisture (%)
- soil heat flux (W/m2)
- incoming shorwave radiation (W/m2)
- outgoing shortwave radiation (W/m2)
- incoming longwave radiation (W/m2)
- outgoing longwave radiation (W/m2)

The net radiation is a derivered parameter.