For every thousand feet in elevation the temperature drops at least three degrees. Heat rises. This seems to defy logic. I've never been able to figure it out.
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Why is it colder at higher altitudes if heat rises?
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The heat does rise, but warm air thins at it rises making it cooler, likewise air warms up as it descends as the air becomes more dense
Heat depends on air density and less dense air allows heat to disburse faster. Locally, warm air will rise above colder air, but the 3 degrees you are talking about is ground temperature. The higher the altitude, the thinner the air, the faster that heat put in the ground dissipates at night, lowering the average temperature.
It al depends on the pressure at different altitudes. The more pressure the faster the atoms move creating heat. Heat rises because heat behaves in a way that it always goes to where it is colder. Being "hot" requires energy. Matter always wants to exist with the least amount possible so "heat" leaves "hot" things for colder places. Hope this helps.
in fact it does. warmth is ability, chilly is "much less ability". outdoors the earth atmosphere that is amazingly very very chilly. The earth is warmed by skill of the radiation of the solar. This heat temperature (ability) is led faraway from earth, contained in the path of the ambience, into area. that is such as you have been asking: i'm putting a needle with a crimson warm tip in a freezer, why would not all of the ice contained in the freezer soften? Al the flexibility (warmth) that's radiated out, and led away by skill of convection streams contained in the ambience, and is unfold over a larger section, finally into the sky. via fact the flexibility gets unfold out, the temperature decreases, and the better into the ambience you come back, the closer to the chilly empty area you get, cooling the turning out to be heat air.