SHORT COMMUNICATION Modelling high-latitude summer temperature patterns using physiographic variables Giancarlo Sadoti 1 | Stephanie A. McAfee 1 | Carl A. Roland 2,3 | E. Fleur Nicklen 2 | Pamela J. Sousanes 2 1 Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada 2 Central Alaska Network, National Park Service, Fairbanks, Alaska 3 Denali National Park and Preserve, National Park Service, Fairbanks, Alaska Correspondence Giancarlo Sadoti, Department of Geography, University of Nevada, 1664 N. Virginia Street, Reno, NV 89557. Email: gcsadoti@gmail.com Funding information National Park Service Recent investigations of high-resolution temperature patterns employing dense obser- vational networks have improved our understanding of fine-scale climatic influences on hydrological and ecological processes. Few of these investigations, however, have focused on high-latitude environments. In this study—one of the first to evaluate drivers of fine-scale temperature patterns in a non-glaciated high-latitude environment—we evaluated physiographic controls on summer temperature while accounting for free-air temperature conditions along a north–south transect of tem- perature sensors on Mt. Healy, at the eastern edge of Denali National Park and Pre- serve in Alaska, United States. Although the study was limited to summer, when near-surface temperature inversions are rare, we identified average daily minimum temperature (T min ) lapse rates shallower than -2  C/km over five summers. Lapse rates of average temperature (T avg ) were steeper (-5.3  C/km), but still did not approach the global average lapse rate of -6.5  C/km. We also identified positive effects of solar radiation on both T min and T avg , variation in T min and T avg lapse rates across a range of synoptic temperature conditions, and variation in T min lapse rates across terrain convergence values. Finally, we compared relationships between eleva- tion and temperature from transect sensors and a gridded product. Over 15 months of comparison, sensor T avg was 0.6  C cooler than gridded data at similar elevations. Sensor lapse rates were on average 0.5  C steeper than those from gridded data but only significantly so in the cool month of June 2014. These differences highlight the need for additional instrumentation across this remote and topographically variable region to improve accuracy and reduce biases in gridded climate products. KEYWORDS Alaska, Denali National Park, elevation gradient, lapse rate, microclimate, topography 1 | INTRODUCTION Surface air temperature is a key driver of many hydrological and ecological processes, such as precipitation phase (McAfee et al., 2014), snow cover (Markon et al., 2012), snow melt (Hock, 2003; Ziemen et al., 2016), vegetation dis- tribution (Bliss and Peterson, 1992; Körner, 1998), and per- mafrost status (Osterkamp and Romanovsky, 1999). Studies suggest mountain areas may experience greater warming than lowlands under climate change (Bradley et al., 2004; Diaz et al., 2014; Pepin et al., 2015). Although recent inves- tigations employing dense observational networks have improved our understanding of fine-scale hydrological and ecological processes (Lundquist and Cayan, 2007; Dobrowski et al., 2009; Pike et al., 2013), monitoring of temperature in mountainous areas is insufficient to fully track warming trends (Bradley et al., 2004). This problem is even more pronounced at high latitudes, with available Received: 28 September 2017 Revised: 9 March 2018 Accepted: 12 March 2018 Published on: 14 April 2018 DOI: 10.1002/joc.5538 Published 2018. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA. Int J Climatol. 2018;38:4033–4042. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joc 4033