Abstract
Mountain ecosystems are highly sensitive to climate change, making them key indicators of environmental shifts. Studying these environments experimentally, however, is challenging because harsh conditions, remote field sites and high natural variability make alpine research logistically demanding and time-consuming. This complexity often limits the attribution of ecological responses to individual drivers. To address these limitations, controlled-environment facilities offer powerful platforms for ecological and physiological research, but their ability to simulate the combined extremes of alpine climates – low temperatures, high radiation (including UV) and reduced air pressure – has rarely been quantified. The magnitude of inherent chamber effects, particularly under combined alpine extremes where they are likely amplified, also remains poorly characterized. A systematic evaluation of realistic multi-driver climate simulations is therefore essential for designing reproducible and physiologically meaningful experiments.