How are cold mountains formed
Answers
Explanation:
Generally the climate on mountains get progressively colder with increased altitude (the higher up you go). This happens because as altitude increases, air becomes thinner and is less able to absorb and retain heat.
To more directly estimate rates of erosion, researchers use techniques generally known as thermochronometry, or the measure of how a rock’s temperature has changed through time. Many such techniques rely on assessing how the decay of radioactive elements within a rock has affected its minerals. For their new study, Herman and his colleagues used four such techniques. In two of them, the researchers measured how much decay-produced helium had built up in a rock’s minerals. (Once the rock falls below a certain temperature, the helium stops diffusing out of the minerals efficiently.) In the other two, the team tallied the amount of microscopic damage produced by radioactive decay. (Once the rock falls below a certain temperature, the atoms in a crystal aren’t able to shift and heal the damage.) Using these approaches, the researchers could estimate the dates at which the rocks cooled to temperatures between 250°C and 70°C—and therefore track the speed at which the rocks rose toward ground level as the overlying strata eroded away.