Why Mountains Are Cold

Rising air cools

An interactive lesson with 6 steps, about 5 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Rising air expands and cools adiabatically.
• Dry adiabatic lapse rate: $g/c_p \approx 9.8$ °C per km.
• Condensation slows cooling, which leads to warm föhn winds on the lee side of mountains.

Steps

1. Closer to the Sun?
2. The lapse rate
3. A rising parcel
4. Warming as it sinks
5. Making a warm wind
6. The snow-eater