A physician in a hilly village notices that bedrooms near the mountain base feel cooler at night. Which atmospheric process best explains this observation?
Cold air descending as mountain breeze
After sunset the exposed rocky slopes of a hill lose heat rapidly by long-wave radiation, so the layer of air touching them becomes colder and denser than the air over the valley floor at the same height.
This heavy chilled air is pulled downhill by gravity and drains into the valley, giving a katabatic wind called the mountain breeze that peaks late at night and cools houses sitting at the foot of the slope.
Land and sea breezes are driven by day-night contrasts between land and adjacent water, not slope drainage, and the valley breeze is the daytime up-slope flow that warms the base, so it cannot chill bedrooms at night.
Hence, the cooling is best explained by cold air descending as a mountain breeze.
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