Research Article 2026-04-20 under-review v1

Climate variability and warming at the Aragats high-altitude station, Armenia, during 2011–2026

A
Ashot Chilingarian Alikhanyan National Laboratory

Abstract

Mount Aragats in Armenia hosts a high-altitude research station at 3200 meters above sea level, with a 1-minute meteorological archive covering 2011 to 2026. In this initial study, we analyze three baseline variables measured by the DAVIS weather station: outside temperature, solar radiation, and UV dose. The goal is to establish their climatology, quantify annual and monthly variability, estimate long-term trends, and examine pairwise correlations on minute and daily scales. After transparent quality control and restricting trend estimates to complete years 2012–2025, Aragats shows a statistically significant warming of 0.116 ± 0.029°C per year, equivalent to 1.16°C per decade, while daytime solar radiation decreases by 2.62 ± 0.79 W/m² per year, and the UV trend remains weak. Monthly trends are uneven, with the strongest warming in late winter, spring, and late autumn, indicating seasonal redistribution rather than a uniform upward shift of the entire annual cycle. Correlation analysis reveals that solar radiation and UV dose are tightly coupled radiative channels, whereas temperature is only moderately linked to them, especially on the minute scale. The coexistence of significant warming with declining daytime solar radiation suggests that climate change at Aragats cannot be explained by a simple increase in incoming shortwave radiation. Instead, local mountain processes, cloudiness, transparency, snow conditions, and atmospheric dynamics must be explicitly considered. This three-variable study provides the physical baseline for future multivariate analyses, including humidity, pressure, wind, atmospheric electricity, geomagnetic conditions, and particle fluxes.

Citation Information

@article{ashotchilingarian2026,
  title={Climate variability and warming at the Aragats high-altitude station, Armenia, during 2011–2026},
  author={Ashot Chilingarian},
  journal={Theoretical and Applied Climatology},
  year={2026},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9359980/v1}
}
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