 Poster: A snowHead
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I'm just curious.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I'll have a guess that the thinner atmosphere provides less insulation?
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Megamum, have you been reading wikipedia again 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Many children might comment shouldn't it be warmer on the mountain as you are nearer the sun, you might be but the odd km out of millions isn't going to make much odds.
Surface heating due to solar warming drives convection in the lower atmosphere, warm air rises, but as you rise through the atmosphere air pressure drops as you get higher. As the warm pocket of air rises the lower pressure allows it to expand and thus cool (look up gas laws), incidently this cooling of gas as it expands from a compressed state is utilised in high pressure air/water snow making guns. As the warm air rises, the parcel of air gains gravitational potential energy, according to the laws of physics energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so this energy has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is the internal thermal energy of the air.
This holds for the troposphere, the lower level of the atmosphere in which we live and weather happens. If mountains went further up well into the stratosphere the temperature would start to rise with altitude, different processes (reactions due to solar radiation) going on here and still not because your closer to the sun!
Google for adiabatic expansion and/or compression, or adiabatic lapse rates. Also for why it isn't always colder at alititude search for 'Temperature Inversions'
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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II, No I haven't
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Thanks for making me realise I've forgotten all I was taught in AS level geography..
It was only last year!
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micky, 1 degree C per 100 metres in dry air , 0.5degree in wet air. quite significant if you are staying in a low resort and then skiing at the top....
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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