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Climate and weather information are of course important for communications over the mountains (roads, trains), as well as all those people hiking or skiing in the mountan areas or going to their second homes (hytte).
Would it not be unsustainable to live up there? Here at 900m it would be snowbound all winter with a subarctic climate. Norway would be much worse.
I think Oceanic climates tend to have a lower lapse rate than Continental climates, so I would be surprised if your figure was that high.
Around here, two locations at about 850m/2700ft have average annual temps at 4C lower than sea level, and one location at 650m/2000ft is 3C lower.
There is no simple gradient following the seasons though. Summer maximums in two locations are close to sea level averages, with minimums coming in much lower lower. I think geography is the main factor at work.
Inversions make it hard to make easy comparisons. I've seen extreme inversions around here before, with valley floors being up to 15C/30F colder than slopes 800m/2600ft higher.
I live at 100m/300ft, and record maximums in line with the official recording site (at 8m/25ft), but with minimums about 1C warmer.
No. We have high lapse rates. Slieve donard avg jan high is 7c colder than low level locations.
Would it not be unsustainable to live up there? Here at 900m it would be snowbound all winter with a subarctic climate. Norway would be much worse.
Sure these places at higher altitude have subarctic climates. But most of these high altitude towns are surrounded by higher mountains and plateaus, so they are less windy compared to exposed mountains at the same altitude.
Many have modest annual precipitation: Dovre 430 mm or less, Tynset 400 mm, Oppdal and Røros 500 mm, Kautokeino 300 mm, so snowcover in winter, although always present, is not extreme by any means. These places do have a summer, even though a brief one (see for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tynset). Remember that they often border fairly large areas with mountain forest and alpine tundra, both of which in earlier days was and still is being used for grazing (sheep mostly, reindeer in Kautokeino and partly Røros-area), and often see skiing (winter) or hiking tourists in summer and early autumn. Røros is on the UNESCO - list and also has railway connection.
No. We have high lapse rates. Slieve donard avg jan high is 7c colder than low level locations.
Are you sure? That's as much as the difference between Fort William and Ben Nevis, even though Ben Nevis is a 500m/1500ft higher mountain. That would also give Slieve Donard's summit the same temperature as Ben Nevis.
That would make Slieve Donard viable for commercial skiing, which I suspect is not actually the case.
It all depends, but a 60m difference probably isn't going to make much of a difference at 30 C / 86 F. It would likely be between 29.5 and 30.0 C / 85.1 - 86.0 F still. I wouldn't put it past the weather to be as cool as 29.0 C / 84.2 F though.
However, I have heard of COLD air pooling in valleys when it's very cold, especially below -20 C / -4 F. Small changes in altitude can create large temperature changes then.
Yeah, I imagine our coldest lows in winter in the Vale of York are probably a bit colder than Leeds for example. I think it may be slightly warmer here in summer though?
Also regarding snow etc, there's a hill about 10 miles east of York that you have to go over to get to the coast. Anyway this hill is around 250m high, and is often closed in winter due to heavy snow, but the base of the hill there is absolutely nothing.
Here's the difference in climate between somewhere on the coast of NW England and somewhere about 50 km inland at 391 m asl.
It's not just the change in temperature but the whole feel of the climate is quite different, particularly in winter, with much more wind, low cloud, and temperatures below freezing while areas at sea level stay above.
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