More or less, yes. As someone else said, higher mountains also are just colder and often moister generally, due to their altitude (one of the reasons that Denver is colder than St. Louis at similar latitude). They can shade areas, but not the way a tree or building casts shade (you'll never see a mountain shaped shadow).
In the Northern Hemisphere (opposite below equator), the sun is never directly overhead, but rather slightly south, or very south if you are very north, of directly up. The sun really rises in the South East and sets in the South West rather than true E and W. Thus the north face of a mountain will have much less direct sun than the south. The same thing is true for even small hills, ravines, etc, although ravines and other things below surface have the N and S reversed, since the south wall of a ravine would have less direct sun. For hills, More direct sun tends to make the South side hotter and dryer than the north.
Does this mean that we could live on parts of a mountain but not others, well, I don't know how far that temp change would go -- it can still be hot in a desert before night comes, but it can be noticeable more in terms of the plants not being as baked as those in more direct sunlight.
2007-09-03 20:19:17
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answer #1
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answered by Not_Tires 2
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The biggest impact on the desert southwest is environmentallist intervention on forest management. Because the forests are not allowed to burn naturally over the last one hundred years the forest have turned into dog hair woods (the pine, spruce and firs that are only a couple of feet apart and not healthy). Now your thinking forests? the question is desert. In the west they're inter-related. The snow fall provides the water to the desert areas (Colorado & Rio Grande basins). Global warming has not been shown to have conclusivelly affected the snowfall in the Rockies yet and it might not.
2016-05-20 23:32:51
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answer #2
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answered by Anonymous
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I don't know about shade, but a mountain in the desert, if sufficiently high, will be cooler at the summit due to the decreased atmospheric pressure there.
Kilimanjaro is near the equator, yet it still has snow (for now) at its summit.
2007-09-03 19:19:09
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answer #3
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answered by gebobs 6
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