What is climate change doing in Himalaya? Thirty years of the Pyramid Meteorological Network (Nepal)

Abstract. Climate change is deeply impacting mountain areas around the globe, especially in Himalaya. However, the lack of long-term meteorological observations at high elevations poses significant challenges to understand and predict impacts at various scales. This also represents a serious limit for model-based projections of future behavior of crucial elements of the mountain cryosphere such as glaciers. Here, we present the Pyramid Meteorological Network, located in Himalaya (Nepal), on the southern slopes of Mt. Everest. The network is composed of 7 meteorological stations located between 2660 and 7986 m a.s.l., which have collected continuous climatic data during the last 30 years (1994–2023). In this paper, details are provided regarding instrument types and characteristics as well as data quality control and assessment. The obtained data series are available on a newly created geoportal. We leverage these unique records to present new knowledge on the Himalayan climate, benefiting also from the highest observational climatic series in the world (Pyramid station, located at above 5000 m a.s.l., close to Khumbu Glacier). These data will provide fundamental knowledge on climate dynamics in Himalaya that will inform research at high elevations in the coming years. The dataset is available freely accessible from https://geoportal.mountaingenius.org/portal/ (https://zenodo.org/records/14450214) (Salerno et al., 2024).