Great Basin National Park's Sensor Network: 14 Years of Temperature and Humidity

A university research team has kept a network of temperature and humidity sensors in Great Basin National Park since 2006, set up with the permission and help of park staff. Each sensor sits inside a radiation shield, hung from a tree or post, and logs temperature, relative humidity and dewpoint every hour.

The network

• 29 sensors today, spread across nearly 1.5 vertical miles — from the lower Visitor's Center to the summit of Wheeler Peak.
• Sites include the tops of Wheeler, Bald and Buck mountains, Lehman and Baker creeks, Buck Ridge, the Lehman Rock Glacier and the alpine lakes.
• Every summer, students from the partner universities in Ohio and Georgia come to swap batteries and download the data.

Networks like this are rare in mountains worldwide: they are hard to install and maintain, and harsh weather breaks sensors. Yet temperature and humidity at different elevations shape precipitation, water, where plants and animals live, and even tourism — so more than 15 years of direct measurements is a valuable record of a changing climate.

What changed, 2007–2020

• Warming was mostly at night and in the cold seasons; winter warmed fastest of all.
• Absolute humidity rose over the 14 years, in every season but fall. Spring's rise was nearly twice summer's; winter rose slightly. More humidity may point to faster spring snowmelt and more rain and storms in spring and summer.

Surroundings matter more than height

Elevation generally did not change how fast temperature or humidity shifted. Local surroundings did:

• sensors among trees mostly showed strong warming;
• sensors among rocks showed weak warming or even slight cooling — strongest at the Lehman Rock Glacier.

Plants affect the air through shade and transpiration, which is why daytime highs are often lower under trees. The park, the team concludes, is feeling both large-scale weather and climate shifts and local factors such as vegetation. With data now running through August 2023, and more coming, they expect future work to sharpen the picture.

2022's extremes

Sources

Based on "The Highs and Lows of Monitoring Temperature in the Park," by Emily Mazan, Bryan Mark, James Degrand, David Porinchu, Scott Reinemann, Adam Tjoelker and Harrison Frenken (Ohio State University, University of Georgia and Sinclair College), The Midden – Great Basin National Park, Vol. 23, No. 2, Winter 2023, National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words.