Mass elevation effect
The mass elevation effect is a climatic phenomenon that occurs in larger mountain ranges and weakens the hypsometric temperature decrease.
The air is generally heated by the absorption of short-wave solar radiation on the earth's surface and conversion into long-wave thermal radiation. If this "heating surface" is now higher, the directly surrounding air is warmed up more than at the same height in the free atmosphere. The effects of this effect are the rise in altitude and the snow line from peripheral to central areas of mountains.
credentials
- ^ Veit: Die Alpen - Geoökologie und Landschaftsentwicklung (2002), p. 46.