ELI5, why is it colder at the top of a mountain?
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lower air pressure. air molecules get thinner as you go up.
pressure is directly proportional to temperature. you can imagine that yourself. imagine 5 people grabbing you, you’ll feel heat because there’s pressure.
that’s why space is cold, because there’s no pressure.
hope i was clear, i’m not good at explaining.
Because when you expand a gas, it’s temperature drops. And as you go up in altitude, atmospheric pressure drops, so the air expands and thus cools.
It is easier to demonstrate that gas gets hotter when it is compressed. Take any tire pump or air compressor and pump up a tire. The pump will get hot as you do this. The main reason the pump gets hot is that when the air is compressed, its temperature goes up. But the reverse is just as true, as you expand air its temperature goes down.
Standard lapse rate (change in temperature with altitude) is 2 degrees C (3.5 F) per 1,000 feet. Obviously real world the numbers can vary significantly, especially with a temperature inversion).
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