Mountains cover approximately one quarter of the earth’s land surface, and a significant fraction of the world’s population lives within them, in their vicinity, and downstream of them. Orography critically affects weather and climate processes across all scales and, in connection with factors such as land-cover heterogeneity, is responsible for high spatial variability in mountain weather and climate. This session showcases research that contributes to improving our understanding of weather and climate processes in mountain and high-elevation areas around the globe, as well as their modification induced by global environmental change, including studies connected to the TEAMx research programme.

We invite theoretical, modeling and observational contributions that address the influence of mountains on the atmosphere from meteorological to climate time scales, including terrain-induced flows, orographic gravity waves, orographic precipitation, land-atmosphere exchange over mountains, forecasting and predictability of mountain weather, and the interaction of mountain weather and climate with the terrestrial cryosphere.

Furthermore, we invite studies that investigate climate processes and climate change in mountain areas based on monitoring and modeling activities, including in particular contributions that address the interdisciplinary objectives of the Elevation-Dependent Climate Change (EDCC) working group of the Mountain Research Initiative, as well as the application and development of high-resolution (kilometer-scale) climate models over complex mountainous terrain, such as advances in model design, challenges, and observational gaps needed for robust model evaluation and improvement.