If heat rises, why is it cold up in the moutains?

Question

Shouldn't it be the closer you are to the sun the warmer you are?

Answer 1

Heat rises but air cools and expands as it rises, it is described by the first law of thermodynamics.   Density and volume are inversely related to temperature.

Answer 2

Moghusai uses a lot of big words but doesn't have a clue what he is talking about.  Kevin's got it right.

Answer 3

In your fridge, a gas is compressed then released in a nozzle. That's what creates cold and it is called adiabatic cooling.

When air rises, it also cools down because the air pressure decreases. Hence the higher you go, the colder it is. The fall in temperature is on average 0.65 C per 100 meters.

The interesting point is that colder air is heavier than warmer air and therefore it tend to sinks if there is not an uplift by the heating of the ground.

In a mountainous country, during the night when there is no wind, cold air sinks from the mountain tops into the valleys. In places like the coast of Greenland it can create winds that reach storm forces!

Answer 4

As warm air rises, it expands and cools.

When talking about small heights, like to the top of a building, there is no significant decrease in air pressure. The parcel of rising warm air does not expand, and therefore, remains warm. As a matter of fact, solar energy forces expansion at the surface, which is why it becomes lighter and rises. Until it hits an area of even lower pressure than itself (way, way above building heights), it won't cool.

As for your other question, being on top of a mountain does not put you any closer to the sun than walking to the south side of your house puts you closer to Antarctica. See what I mean? It's completely insignificant, even if technically true. The sun is 150 million km away. The tallest mountain is short of 9 km high.

Lastly, air pressure is as important as distance to the sun. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has nights colder than nights on Mars, all because Mercury has no atmosphere.

Answer 5

air density

Answer 6

Energy radiated by the sun is absorbed by the earth's surface as heat energy.  The amount of energy reaching the earth's surface determines the temperature.  If there are a lot of clouds present in the morning, it is difficult for the sun's rays to heat the earth and the temperature will be cooler.  The heat in the earth's surface is transferred to the adjacent layer of the atmosphere - called the tropopause.  From the tropopause the heat is transferred to the next layer, the stratopause, then the mesopause, then the thermopause and finally the exosphere.  Less and less heat energy is transferred to the different layers of the atmosphere, and that is why the temperature decreases as the altitude increases.

This is the reason for a cooler temperature on top of mountains.

Answer 7

heat does rise, but the answer here has to do with air density, not rising air.  The higher one goes, the less dense the air gets.  As a result, the amount of air is much less at the top of a mountain than at the bottom.  What we feel as heat is the vibration of molecules.  Since there is less air, the amount of vibrations from the air molecules that hit our skin is greatly reduced, we feel colder.  the average decrease in temperature is 3 degrees F for every 1000 ft.