Mount Everest and Adiabatic Cooling

Say you are on a trip to Nepal, and you’re hanging out with friends in Kathmandu a few days before you set out to climb Mount Everest. You remember about Adiabatic Cooling, something you learned in that one Geography class with that cool teacher that was always wearing cool bowties every day.

You tell your friends that you can calculate out what the temperature would be at the various base camps along the way, and also at the top of Mount Everest.

The trail up Mount Everest and the elevations of the camps along the way.
SRC: http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~meto200/meto200.liftingcondensation_files/image002.gif

You get out a piece of paper, a pencil and your phone. Using your google-fu you quickly find the relevant information, perform the calculations and tell them that at base camp one the temperature would be about 12.5F right now, the temp at Camp 2, half way up would be about -5.5F right now and it would be about -22.1F at the summit.

If the temperature at Kathmandu is about 79F, the temperature at the
Mount Everest Base Camp is about 12.5F. When Adiabatic Cooling occurs,
it has two rates. The Dry Adiabatic Rate and the Saturated Adiabatic rate.
The Dry Adiabatic Rate is about 5.5F/1000ft and the Saturated Adiabatic Rate
is about 2-3F/1000ft. 

This is super cool, your friends are impressed and you have gained cool science cred with them, but what they really want to know is how it works.       

On earth, air moves around as an air mass. Air masses are volumes of air defined by their temperature and how much water they contain. When an air mass moves up, and over something like a mountain it cools down as it goes up in elevation. This is because of a process known as Adiabatic Cooling, as a gas goes up in elevation the pressure, forces acting upon the air, lessen so it has a chance to expand. As it expands, the temperature of the air mass goes down because the total heat energy that the air mass has is now spread over a larger area.  

Once this air reaches the lifting condensation level, the level where the air temperature has reached the dew point and can start forming clouds, the temperature still decreases, but at a slower rate.

The temperature about half way up, at Camp 3 is about -5.5F
 and the temperature at the summit is about -22.1F 
Because the LCL was reached getting to the base camp
only the SAR was used in the calculations.

                

The Glaciers of Nepal

                Glaciers form in bowl shaped hollows called Cirques, where more snow falls than gets melted each year. This snow slowly becomes compressed into ice sheets in a process called Firnification. These ice sheets eventually form together, creating glaciers. These glaciers contain nearly 70% of the Earths freshwater, and they are slowly melting, slowly causing problems for those dependent on glacial melt water. The majority of the world’s glaciers are located in the Himalayas, and their melt water feeds several of Asia’s greatest rivers. 

                After a glacier begins to overflow the Cirque is was formed in they start moving down the mountain. Extreme pressures created by meters of ice cause the bottom layers of glacialice.to melt without the temperature increasing to over 32°F. This water melt, combined with the wonderful force of gravity move glaciers downhill, anywhere from a couple of centimeters in a single day to fifty meters in a single day. As glaciers move across the landscape, nothing can stop them. They erode the landscape around them, carving a trail down the mountain. Sediment gets dragged along with them, from soil and clay to large rocks weighing thousands of pounds.

As Glaciers flow, ice crystals move around due to extreme forces and lots of sediment. This sediment is called Glacial Till, its unsorted sediment from the movement of the Glacier. At the end of the glacier, this Till is deposited and the resulting formation is a Glacial moraine.

                These glaciers, while beautiful and powerful are slowly going away. In recent years, due to global warming, these glaciers are melting rapidly. If a glacier disappears, important stored water will disappear, hurting those who rely on this water to survive. Glaciers are great water stores, because people rely on melt water from them, and when they aren’t melting the replaced by a larger amount of fallen snow.  A more immediate danger to people is glacial lakes, which are formed by excessive melting. These lakes are at risk for bursting, creating large floods that can wipe away people and buildings located in surrounding locations.

In 2009, a report by the Nepali Minister for Forest and Soil Conservation warned that more than 20 glacial lakes in Nepal were at risk for bursting. This became a reality last year,when one finally burst. The resulting flood killed 10 people, and another 60 went missing.

Sources:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/30/content_11287152.htm

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/10-killed-60-missing-as-glacial-lake-burst-in-nepal/article3387581.ece

http://www.ekantipur.com/2011/08/03/intl-coverage/two-glaciers-in-nepal-to-disappear-research/338486.html

http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/glacier/?ar_a=1

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fassets.panda.org%2Fdownloads%2Fhimalayaglaciersreport2005.pdf&ei=Za0_UbHDBMyhyAH15oGoDg&usg=AFQjCNEqPv82Bp2DIDNeN4tb30gD_IewmA&sig2=dWMJMVFS73qiZ-9UBpFlsQ&bvm=bv.43287494,d.aWc

Building the landscape of Nepal, the formation of the Himalayas

Fig. 1 Satellite Image of Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau

Fig. 2\ Movement of the Indian plate

Intro Blog

Hello, I'm Dakota and I'm doing my geography blog about Nepal. I chose to do Nepal because its home to the Himalayas, and the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. When my dad was about my age he spent a few weeks in Nepal, and that got me interested in choosing Nepal for this project. In the following weeks I hope to inform you about the interesting geography of this wonderful country.

Fun Fact: Nepal is the only country without the traditional rectangle shape