Introduction
Observed High Temperatures and Analysis
Introduction The mountains are always thought of as being cooler than the valleys. After all, the mountains get snow in the winter, and the valleys do not. Nearly everyone on vacation has experienced the delightful coolness of higher altitudes compared to the summer heat of lower elevations. Many of us have learned in school that temperatures fall with elevation at a rate of 3-5° F per 1,000', and so we can easily calculate that temperatures at 5,000' should be 15-25° F cooler than at sea level.
Like much of common knowledge, there is a lot of truth to all the comments above. However, in the summer, the San Diego County Mountains are nearly always hotter than most coastal San Diego County communities, shattering all the beliefs above.
There are two fundamental reasons why summer temperatures in the San Diego County Mountains are hotter than expected by most people:
- Southern California frequently experiences a temperature inversion layer, with the temperature increasing with altitude instead of decreasing.
- Most San Diego County Mountains are too far from the ocean to receive significant ocean cooling.
The Temperature Inversion Layer
Southern California's inversion layer is famous for creating our cloud-free sunny summer days and for trapping pollutants to form smog. The inversion layer is a hallmark of our relatively-rare Mediterranean climate, found in only a handful of other places in the world.
The Mediterranean climate, and the inversion layer, are formed under a persistent high-pressure area, where the air is descending to the Earth's surface, heating up by compression as it descends. Under normal conditions, the air descends to a certain altitude that is then the top of the inversion layer. Small horizontal movements of air complete the flow of the descending air.
The top of the inversion layer is where the air reaches its highest temperature. The air below that level cannot ascend. (Because each parcel of air below has a cooler temperature, it is therefore denser, and gravity keeps it trapped in place.)
The result of all of this is that temperatures decline with altitude only for a few thousand feet to the bottom of the inversion layer, followed by a rapid increase in temperature with altitude to the top of the inversion layer. Only then does the temperature fall again with elevation.
Most of the time, hikers ascending the San Diego County Mountains above 3000-5000' can tell precisely where the top of the inversion layer is at any moment. The top is the boundary between the hazy lower air and the clear air above it. During the summer, the top is often found at an elevation of 2,000-4,000' and hikers above that elevation can clearly tell that they are above the top.
The top can be as low as several hundred feet, creating smog days in coastal San Diego County, or at much higher elevations, allowing smog to penetrate the mountains. Since pollutants tend to concentrate at the top of the inversion layer, some places in the mountains are often the smoggiest places in San Diego County. For example, Crestline, at 4710' in the San Bernardino Mountains is now the smoggiest monitoring location in the L.A. Smog Basin, and Alpine, at 2000' in San Diego County, consistently is the smoggiest monitoring location in San Diego County. Most likely, locations at even higher altitude are smoggier than Alpine, but no smog monitoring stations are located at higher altitudes. (See Crestline's Air Quality May Take Breath Away (LAT 7/26/98) and San Diego: An Introduction to the Region, Pryde, Third Edition, 1992, p. 263.)
Due to the variable altitude of the inversion layer, it is difficult to make general statements about the net cooling or warming with altitude. The data below show the extreme variability of this effect.
Distance From The Ocean
Most areas of San Diego County above 4000' are 25-40 straight-line miles from the ocean, which eliminates much of the moderation in high temperatures due to the maritime influence. In contrast, most of the populated area of San Diego County is within 15 miles of the coast and therefore experiences summer high temperatures cooled significantly by the ocean.
The maritime cooling is ~10-20° F at a distance of 12 miles from the coast and ranges up to 30° F at the coast. Thus even in the absence of an inversion layer, the normal temperature lapse rate of 3° F / 1,000' predicts that elevations of 3,000-7,000' in the San Diego County Mountains would have the same high temperature as Fallbrook or La Mesa, both about 12 miles from the coast. Since the existence of the inversion layer increases the expected temperature of a given elevation above it, one would expect those elevations in the Mountains to be hotter than Fallbrook or La Mesa on a normal summer's day, and significantly hotter than coastal communities.
Observed High Temperatures and Analysis Beginning on 12/13/98, I have kept track of the high temperatures of Fallbrook (698'), Palomar Mountain (5550'), Julian (4240') and Mt. Laguna (5760') as reported in the North County Times. My major goal was simply to try to understand what temperatures to expect when hiking during each time of year. I have used Fallbrook as my base comparison simply because I live in Fallbrook, but the results would be similar using other cities about 12 miles from the San Diego Coast.
These stations give interesting comparisons. Fallbrook and Palomar Mountain are only ~17 miles apart, and thus should experience nearly the same air masses, showing directly the variation of temperature with altitude and distance from the coast. Julian is about 20 miles from Palomar Mountain, farther from the ocean, and possibly in a different air mass at times than Fallbrook and Palomar Mountain. Mt. Laguna is yet another 17 miles from Palomar, and will be in a different air mass more frequently.
Beginning on 6/3/00, I added the Temecula temperatures, since they are representative of the lower parts of the Dripping Springs Trail.
Plots
High Temperature Difference In High Temperatures Fallbrook Palomar Mountain minus Fallbrook Palomar Mountain Julian minus Fallbrook Julian Mt. Laguna minus Fallbrook Mt. Laguna Mt. Laguna minus Julian Temecula Palomar Mountain minus Temecula The plots of the differences in high temperatures also show the expected difference in high temperature using the dry and moist lapse rates, 5.5 (yellow line) and 3.3° F (pink line) per 1,000', respectively.
The date range of the data set used for the conclusions below is 12/13/98 to 3/20/00. The plots will be updated later to keep track of current temperatures.
The plots show the following:
- As would be expected from our fairly uniform summer climate, all stations show a quite consistent high temperature in June, July and August. Fallbrook, Palomar Mountain, and Mt. Laguna all have highs typically of ~80-85° F. Julian typically has highs of ~80-90° F. Temperatures in the 80s are tolerable for hiking, but are not considered cool temperatures by nearly anyone. Hikes in the mountain areas at altitudes lower than 4000' would be hotter yet.
- There are essentially no days in summer and fall when Palomar Mountain is as cool as predicted by either the dry or moist lapse rate from the Fallbrook temperature. Instead of the 15-27° cooler temperature difference predicted by the lapse rate, the observed temperature difference ranges from 10° F. cooler to 12° F. hotter than the Fallbrook high temperature.
- The summertime high difference between Fallbrook and both Palomar Mountain and Julian show a fairly narrow range of ~20° F. The Julian summertime high temperature is typically 5° F. hotter than Fallbrook, ranging from 5° F. cooler to 17° F. hotter.
- However, the summertime high difference between Fallbrook and Mt. Laguna shows a much larger range of ~40° F. The Mt. Laguna summertime high temperature ranges from 30° F. cooler than Fallbrook to 10° F. warmer. Thus Mt. Laguna is on average about 10° F. cooler than Fallbrook.
- Consistent with the expectation that closely separated stations experience similar air masses most of the time, the scatter between the summertime high temperature of Julian and Mt. Laguna is much smaller than that between Fallbrook and Mt. Laguna, a range of 12° F. compared to 40° F.
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Copyright © 2000-2003 by Tom Chester.
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Last update: 9 September 2000 (two urls updated 12 April 2003).