Ensuring reliable cave temperature data for climate change research.

ABSTRACT: Caves are unique natural laboratories for studying climate change and its ecological impacts. However, analyzing air temperature in these environments is challenging due to stable microclimatic conditions and high humidity. Collecting reliable data requires dedicated devices and protocols. We developed a standardized quality control procedure-Cave Air Temperature Quality Control (CAT-QC)-to assess the reliability of temperature data collected inside caves. The protocol consists of four main steps: (i) assessing data completeness; (ii) identifying physically implausible values; (iii) detecting statistical outliers using three progressively sensitive methods; and (iv) conducting a final manual check. We tested CAT-QC on a dataset from 19 caves in the Piedmont region (Northwest Italy), record

SUBMITTER: Cimenti A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12858822 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature