Q1.
Do you know that there are some places in India where temperatures can go below 0 °C? Find out the places in India where temperatures sometimes go below 0 °C. What is common among these places? Why does it become colder there and not in other places?
Answer
Places in India where the temperature falls below 0 °C:
- Ladakh — Leh, Kargil, Drass (Drass is one of the coldest inhabited places on Earth, once recording about – 45 °C).
- Jammu & Kashmir — Srinagar, Gulmarg, Pahalgam.
- Himachal Pradesh — Keylong, Manali, Spiti, Kalpa.
- Uttarakhand — Auli, Munsiyari, Badrinath.
- Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh — Lachung, Tawang, Sela Pass.
What is common among them: every one of these places is in the Himalayas — high up in the mountains, and in the far north of the country.
Why it gets colder there:
- Altitude. The air gets thinner and cooler as you go up — roughly 6 °C colder for every 1000 m of height. Leh is about 3500 m up, so it is about 20 °C colder than a plain at the same latitude.
- Snow. White snow reflects most of the sunlight back instead of absorbing it, so the ground never warms up.
- Dry, thin air. Whatever little heat the ground gains in the day escapes quickly at night.
- Latitude. These places are the furthest north in India, so the winter sun stays low and weak.
Math Talk: Discuss in class — is 0 °C ‘no temperature’? No! It is only the mark where water freezes. Temperatures continue below it, just as floors continue below the ground.