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Why is it colder up on the mountains?
As we move towards a fire we feel warmer, but high up on the mountains it is freezing coldalthough as we climb up a mountain we are in fact getting closer to the Sun. The temperatureon the Everest summit is always below zero degrees centigrade, even though it is about29,000 feet closer to the big “fireball” -- the Sun.Why this paradox?Let’s look at it carefully and ask ourselves a few questions.What is a fire and why do we feel warmer as we get closer to one?Is Sun really a “fireball”?A fire is produced by burning. The fires we often come across are a result of burning a pieceof wood, paper or any other combustible substance, say petrol, kerosene or plastics. For thiskind of burning air is essential. That’s why we cover a burning object to put off fire. So,commonly a fire is something that is produced when a combustible object burns in the presence of air. We feel hot as we move closer to a fire, because as the object burns, it produces several hot gases, mainly water and carbon dioxide. As these gases diffuse away
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from the fire they heat the air and any object around, and thus get colder. When we movecloser to a fire we feel warmer largely because the air near a fire is hotter.Is the fire inside the Sun similar? NO! The fire inside the Sun is very different. There are nocombustible substances -- wood, petrol, etc. on the Sun. There is no air either. In fact there isno air in space beyond a few thousand kilometers from the Earth’s surface. The gases produced by the fire on the Sun cannot reach us, because they are held by Sun’s gravity. Thedifference is evident in the temperature. The Sun is several hundred times hotter than thehottest place on the Earth.How then, does the Sun provide us heat?The ‘fire’ in the Sun is a result of atomic nuclei, like hydrogen, combining with one another through a process known as nuclear fusion. This process produces not only hot gases, whichcannot escape away from the Sun but also much more energetic radiations including light. Weget heat from the Sun not through gases, but through such kinds of radiation only. Light andheat are forms of energy, and one form of energy can be converted into another. Sunlight,when it falls on objects on Earth: soil, water, air, rocks, gets converted into heat.The air around us is really heated from the bottom, not from the top -- the direction of theSun. The soils, the roads, the buildings, the lakes, the sea in our neighborhood heat the air around us by absorbing sunlight. The trees and plants though contribute very little, becausemost of the sunlight falling on them is used either to evaporate water in them or for their growth. Larger the unvegetated land area around us that receives direct sunlight for longer time, higher is the temperature of the air. Now, it is not very difficult to understand why the air on the high mountains is colder. In themonth of June, when the day temperature in Delhi city, or Jaisalmere deserts can climb upto45 degrees centigrade, in Shimla it remains below 30. This is largely because while in Delhi(or Jaisalmere) it is only buildings (or desert) every where around, in Shimla, one sees lotsmore sky -- the land area at higher altitudes becomes progressively scarce. So, as we go up inthe mountains, we are not moving moving towards the real source of heat, rather we aremoving away from a bigger towards a smaller heat source.Thus, generally higher the altitude of a hill station lower is its ambient temperature. In fact, itis said that the temperature falls by about 6
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C for every 1000m increase in altitude. But, thereare exceptions to this rule, for example, Ladakh. It is located at very high altitude. The highest
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