Fascinating variations — Weather made (sort of) understandable: Part Two
By Dr. Jay Lehr, Terigi Ciccone |December 16th, 2020|Climate
As we did in Part One of this series of essays on the weather, we shall start with what you may believe is a shocking exclamation. Weather is nothing more and nothing less than nature trying to equilibrate the balance of all energy transmitted to the Earth by the Sun. It is a never-ending multi-level physics show trying to overcome imbalances and irregularities too numerous to quantify accurately. Yet, we try hour after hour, day after day, all across the Earth.
TEMPERATURE AND LOCALIZED DIFFERENCES
There are significant temperature differences between the air in valleys and air at the top of the mountains. In Figure 1, we see snows on top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. While Mt Kilimanjaro is on the equator, the higher up you go on the mountain, it no longer has equatorial temperatures. It gets very cold. It’s so tall and massive that iFascinating variations -- Weather made (sort of) understandable: Part Twot creates its own sub-weather system. The top of the mountain is cold enough to snow and accumulate it. The low atmospheric pressure there literally sucks up much of the available water vapor/air from miles around its base. This rising air/ water vapor condenses and becomes clouds. Then it precipitates on the colder northern side of the mountain in the form of rain or snow, depending on temperature and pressure differences.
https://www.cfact.org/2020/12/16/fascinating-variations-weather-made-sort-of-understandable-part-two/
