{"id":8439,"date":"2026-11-04T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/kyrgyzstan-mountain-weather-stations-ai-forecast\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T18:02:26","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T12:02:26","slug":"kyrgyzstan-mountain-weather-stations-ai-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/kyrgyzstan-mountain-weather-stations-ai-forecast\/","title":{"rendered":"Minus 25 on the Forecast, Minus 40 on the Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Also in: \u0420\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

An illustration.<\/strong> Imagine someone planning a winter trip to Kel-Suu, the lake beyond the Aksay valley on the border with China. Before leaving they check a forecast built on global data. It says about minus 25 \u00b0C, so they pack clothes, fuel and a schedule for minus 25.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

On the valley floor the air is closer to minus 40. At that cold, diesel thickens and stops flowing through the fuel line, and an engine that started without trouble in Bishkek may not start again. Clothing chosen for minus 25 stops being enough within an hour outside. Every decision on that trip was reasonable for weather that was not there.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"The
A winter trip to Kel-Suu through the Aksay valley, planned for \u221225 \u00b0C on the forecast and met by about \u221240 \u00b0C on the valley floor. Illustration. Source: KG Labs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The same gap sits under every plan made from the same numbers. A building crew decides whether concrete poured today will cure. A road team picks the week to work on a pass. A survey team sets out for a glacier, and a herder judges whether a cold night is coming. A difference of one degree changes some of those decisions. A difference of fifteen changes all of them, and it matters most at the extremes, where the cold or the heat is itself the danger.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What the ground says about the grid<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The trip above is imagined. The cold is real, and our Chatyr-Tash station on the valley floor has registered \u221239 \u00b0C. The gap between that and the forecast comes from our own research. Most weather products available for Kyrgyzstan’s mountains, including those built on satellite-era data and the global AI models trained on them, are checked against global reanalysis grids such as ERA5-Land. We compared those grids with stations that stood on the ground.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

At the old Aksai station in the Aksay valley, 3,135 metres up, whose record runs from 1951 to 1998, ERA5-Land runs 4.2 \u00b0C too warm on average, even after the usual correction for height. Susamyr, at 2,087 metres, shows the same 4.2 \u00b0C and Arpa, at 3,000 metres, 3.5 \u00b0C. In winter it gets worse. The Aksay valley is a closed basin, and on still nights the coldest air drains to the floor and stays there. At our Chatyr-Tash mast on the basin floor, the MERRA-2 reanalysis ran 10.5 \u00b0C warmer than the station in hours below \u221215 \u00b0C. At Chatyr-Kol, nearly 500 metres higher in an open lake basin, with the same instrument over the same season, it was within about one degree. The standard height correction assumes higher ground is colder. On those nights the valley floor is the coldest place in the landscape, and the correction pushes the estimate further from the truth.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Place<\/th>Elevation (m)<\/th>Grid compared<\/th>Grid runs warm by<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Aksai station, Aksay valley<\/td>3,135<\/td>ERA5-Land, after height correction<\/td>+4.2 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
Susamyr<\/td>2,087<\/td>ERA5-Land, after height correction<\/td>+4.2 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
Arpa<\/td>3,000<\/td>ERA5-Land, after height correction<\/td>+3.5 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
Chatyr-Tash, Ak-Sai basin floor<\/td>3,136<\/td>MERRA-2, hours below \u221215 \u00b0C<\/td>+10.5 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
Chatyr-Kol, open lake basin<\/td>3,623<\/td>MERRA-2, hours below \u221215 \u00b0C<\/td>+1.2 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

KG Labs analysis, October\u2013November 2026. Aksai, Susamyr and Arpa are historical station records (Aksai 1951\u20131998) compared with ERA5-Land, with elevations from the NSIDC G02174 station metadata (Williams & Konovalov). Chatyr-Tash and Chatyr-Kol are KGISOC masts carrying the same instrument model over the same 2025\u201326 cold season, with heights from the KG Labs station registry.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The warm bias is not peculiar to one product. At the ROMPS Ak-Sai station, 3,059 metres up on the same basin floor, we set four gridded products against fourteen years of hourly records. All four read warm in winter, and they were further off the colder it got. A finer grid did not help. The 10-kilometre downscaling did worst of all, and the 9-kilometre ERA5-Land did no better than the 28-kilometre ERA5.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Product<\/th>Grid<\/th>Whole year<\/th>Winter (Dec\u2013Feb)<\/th>Days below \u221225 \u00b0C<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
ERA5<\/td>28 km<\/td>+1.8 \u00b0C<\/td>+8.0 \u00b0C<\/td>+11.2 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
ERA5-Land<\/td>9 km<\/td>+2.0 \u00b0C<\/td>+8.7 \u00b0C<\/td>+11.9 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
MERRA-2<\/td>55 km<\/td>+4.3 \u00b0C<\/td>+11.7 \u00b0C<\/td>+15.9 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
HAR v2<\/td>10 km<\/td>+4.0 \u00b0C<\/td>+13.1 \u00b0C<\/td>+17.7 \u00b0C<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Grid minus station, daily means, 4,728 common days 2012\u20132026, 659 of them below \u221225 \u00b0C. Ak-Sai (ASAI) record: CAWa\/ROMPS, GFZ Potsdam, CC BY 4.0. Source: Internet Society Kyrgyz Chapter, Ak-Sai cold-pole study, October 2026.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Precipitation is further off still. Against mountain rain gauges, ERA5-Land gave two to eleven times the measured amounts. A satellite or a global grid shows the whole country at once, which no network of stations can. On the valley floor at Aksay in January, though, only a thermometer standing there knows how cold it is.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

About thirty stations, and records back to 2012<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Kyrgyzstan Weather View<\/a> draws those thermometers, and the anemometers and gauges beside them, over shaded relief as moving wind streamlines and colour layers. Two networks feed it. ROMPS, run by the Central Asian Institute of Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) and GFZ Potsdam, holds records reaching back to 2012, with stations from Abramov Glacier at 4,124 metres to three sites in Uzbekistan. KGISOC, the in-situ network of the Internet Society Kyrgyzstan Chapter, adds the recent years at glacier lakes, high pastures, a permafrost site and an active landslide. I built the KGISOC weather stations myself and installed them on the ground. I have been to every one of these sites. I know each sensor, each gateway and each data link, and the errors that can creep in at every stage between the instrument and the screen. That is why I trust the ground record where it disagrees with the grid, and also why I know where it can be wrong.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Map
The Kyrgyzstan Weather View, wind layer. Circles are KGISOC stations, diamonds are ROMPS stations. Kyrgyzstan, with ROMPS stations in Uzbekistan at the western edge, 4 November 2026, 09:00 GMT+6. Source: KG Labs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Aksay valley holds three of them. Korumdu sits on permafrost at 3,220 metres. Chatyr-Tash stands on the high steppe at 3,136 metres, and the ROMPS Ak-Sai station stands within a few hundred metres of it. The page keeps the two as separate points, so the two networks can be read side by side on the same slope.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Wind
The Aksay valley on the Kyrgyzstan Weather View, with Korumdu, Chatyr-Tash, Ak-Sai (ROMPS) and Chatyr-Kol to the west. Wind layer, 4 November 2026, 09:00 GMT+6. Source: KG Labs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Between the stations, every colour is an estimate. Wind is a distance-weighted mean of the station winds, bent along valleys rather than over ridges. Temperature is moved to the local ground height with the same standard correction described above. So in a cold-pooled valley far from any station the map carries the weakness this post is about. Next to a station it equals the record. Rain is drawn only within about fifty kilometres of a gauge, and where stations are few, in the south and the west, the colour fades. Clicking any point draws the path of the air through it, six hours back and six forward.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

One model from the bench<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Most of the work behind this page is foundational and normally out of sight. It means collecting and cleaning station records, scoring models against them, correcting the models and keeping only what survives the comparison. Since 2024, under AI for Climate Action<\/a>, KG Labs has evaluated or integrated more than a dozen forecasting models on this bench, among them GraphCast, Pangu-Weather, FuXi, ECMWF AIFS, NOAA AIGFS, WeatherNext 2, Aardvark and others. Each is kept, held back or dropped according to how it does against Kyrgyz mountain stations.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Kyrgyzstan Weather View runs one of these approaches in the open. It nowcasts from the latest station readings and carries the forecast on 24 hours ahead. For each station and each quantity, a selector looks at past performance and picks between models trained on that station’s own history and public forecasts corrected against it. It forecasts temperature, humidity, station pressure and wind 24 hours ahead.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Close-up
Forecast readout for Chatyr-Kol, a closed alpine lake at 3,623 m in Naryn, for 4 November 2026, 19:00 GMT+6. Ranges are estimated. Source: KG Labs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What one degree is worth<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We ran the forecast back over October 2026 at the KGISOC stations, one day ahead, against the simplest rival there is, the assumption that tomorrow at this hour will look like now.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Quantity<\/th>Selected forecast (RMSE)<\/th>«Same as now» (RMSE)<\/th>Unit<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Temperature<\/td>1.35<\/td>2.41<\/td>\u00b0C<\/td><\/tr>
Humidity<\/td>8.7<\/td>14.8<\/td>percentage points<\/td><\/tr>
Station pressure<\/td>1.02<\/td>1.78<\/td>hPa<\/td><\/tr>
Wind speed<\/td>1.26<\/td>1.42<\/td>m\/s<\/td><\/tr>
Wind direction<\/td>\u2248 58<\/td>\u2248 59<\/td>degrees<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Retrospective test, KGISOC stations, October 2026, forecasts one day ahead, matched rows. Source: KG Labs forecast evaluation, November 2026.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The temperature error fell from 2.41 to 1.35 \u00b0C, a cut of just over one degree. Set that beside the number the world has organised its climate commitments around. The Paris Agreement aims to hold global warming to 1.5 \u00b0C above pre-industrial levels. A daily forecast error at one station and a global average over decades are different measures. They meet in the same places, in the frost and heat thresholds for crops, the dates that open road and building seasons, melt estimates for glaciers and the lakes behind them, and the length of a city’s heating season.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Two
Temperature error, one day ahead, KGISOC stations, October 2026. The dashed line marks the 1.5 \u00b0C global warming limit, drawn for scale only. Source: KG Labs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Anything calibrated on data that runs two or four degrees warm in a mountain valley carries that offset into every threshold built on top of it, whether a frost alert, a melt model or a heating plan. At 2.41 \u00b0C, the everyday forecast error was larger than the whole 1.5 \u00b0C margin. At 1.35 \u00b0C it sits inside it. A model corrected against ground sensors lets those thresholds be set against the weather that actually happens at the place, and as more stations report, the thresholds can be checked again.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The same arithmetic holds over a whole year. Permafrost maps are commonly modelled from the mean annual temperature. A one-degree warm bias in that annual mean can be enough to move an area on the map from continuous permafrost to discontinuous permafrost, or off the permafrost map altogether, while the ground underneath is still frozen. Korumdu, the KGISOC station in the Aksay valley, stands on permafrost at 3,220 metres. Decisions about where to route a road, how deep to set a foundation, and whether to invest in a mine or an exploration licence are made from maps like these. A map that has lost its permafrost by one degree treats the ground as if the ice were already gone.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The gain is uneven. Humidity and pressure improved by a similar share to temperature. Wind speed improved a little and wind direction hardly at all, so in the forecast hours the streamlines show the broad drift of air rather than the exact path through one valley.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Ahead of COP31<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We built the Kyrgyzstan Weather View ahead of COP31 to show, on one page, work that is mostly foundational and rarely seen. It demonstrates one model and what it changes. The other models on the bench still have to be tested and validated against ground sensors and the values they record, and every new station gives them more ground to be checked against. In Kyrgyzstan, as in much of the region, the conversation about 1.5 \u00b0C usually happens in global averages. On the floor of the Aksay valley on a January night, the distance between a grid and a thermometer can be more than ten degrees. Measuring it takes a sensor on the ground. This is why I stand for improving the measurement models. The future of these valleys is being planned on them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Aziz Soltobaev, KG Labs Public Foundation, Bishkek, 4 November 2026<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

#MountainsMatterMeasured<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

KGISOC in-situ observations \u00a9 Internet Society Kyrgyz Chapter. Shown for viewing; data access on request. ROMPS data: CAIAG \/ GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Hydrometeorological data from the ROMPS network, CC BY 4.0. Relief: Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data. Outlines: Natural Earth. Suggested citation: KG Labs Public Foundation (2026), Kyrgyzstan Weather View, kglabs.org\/weatherdata.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahead of COP31, KG Labs has put about thirty mountain weather stations of Kyrgyzstan on one map, with records reaching back to 2012, and runs one of the AI forecasting models it has tested over every station. In valleys like Aksay, global data can run more than ten degrees warm on a winter night. A forecast corrected against the ground closes part of that gap, and a single degree turns out to matter, for a winter trip, a building site, or a permafrost map that decides where money goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[296,357],"tags":[1035,1037,811,1034,965,1040,1038,13,1033,1032,1036,809,1039,634,721],"class_list":["post-8439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climatetech","category-research-and-evidence","tag-ai-weather-forecast","tag-aksay-valley","tag-chatyr-tash","tag-cop31","tag-era5-land","tag-kgisoc","tag-korumdu","tag-kyrgyzstan","tag-kyrgyzstan-weather-view","tag-mountainsmattermeasured","tag-nowcasting","tag-permafrost","tag-romps","tag-geo-tien-shan","tag-weather-stations"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.6","language":"ru","enabled_languages":["en","ru"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":true},"ru":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8439"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8446,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439\/revisions\/8446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}