since heated air rises, why is snow found on top of a mountain and not at lower elevations?

Answer 1

The air is thinner up there

The main reason why it gets colder as you climb a mountain is because you are more exposed to elements like wind and rain. Wind travels faster the higher you go, and there are fewer objects (like trees) to protect you! There is also less atmosphere at high altitudes. Think of the Earth as wrapped in a thick blanket of air. As you go higher, this blanket becomes thinner, and the temperature drops. The temperature of space is below freezing, because there is no atmosphere to trap the warmth of the sun. When you climb up a hill, you're heading towards space!

Answer 2

Warm air rises only because cooler denser air is available to replace it, often causing storm fronts where the exchange takes place. As the warm air rises to elevations where there is less atmospheric pressure the air mass expands and cools. If a warm air mass rises far enough and expands and cools enough the moisture (water vapor) will condense releasing the latent heat of vaporization keeping the air mass warm enough to rise even more. As the air continues to expand and cool, the condensation freezes into snow (or even hail!). In winter the snow will fall all the way to the ground (or mountain top?) but in summer the snow will melt on the way down and we will receive cool refreshing rain on the ground. A very high mountain top is at an elevation where all the air has expanded and cooled keeping the mountain cold enough to retain snow (even during the summer). Hope that helps a little.

Answer 3

beause it does not rise that far.

the atmosphere is heated up only over ground, close to the surface. from there it rises, only to be cooled down again, as the warmth dissipates into the higher, cooler layers of the atmosphere... in this way the atmosphere is heated up from the bottom, like water in a kettle. only it will never boil, because it looses the warmth again towards space.

some factors however slow down this heatloss, popular among them the presence of so called greenhouse gases in the higher atmosphere, and that allows more heat to accumulate in the atmosphere, thus producing global warming.

nonetheless, the general gradient is always the same, air gets cooler the higher you get.

Answer 4

One of the early gas laws (Gay-Lussac's, see ref.) says that reducing the pressure of air (or any gas or mixture of gases) will reduce its temperature. When horizontally moving air encounters a mountain, it is forced upwards which reduces its pressure and cools it. This reduces its ability to carry moisture, so the water it is bearing condenses out; if cold enough, it falls as snow.

Answer 5

Higher places have lower pressure.Snow is found on the top of the mountian because the pressure is lower there, means lesser air .

Answer 6

ot air becomes cool when it goes up