Revision summary
Young fold mountains follow the Alpine–Himalayan and American cordilleran belts. Island arcs mark Pacific subduction. Alignment sets orographic rain, rain shadow, and foehn winds. Himalaya and Western Ghats are India’s teaching pair. Altitude zonation on Andes and Himalaya is climate stacked by height.
Model answer
Introduction
The world’s great ranges are not random wrinkles. They follow plate edges and old orogenies, and they steer wind, rain, and temperature for the people at their feet.
Body
Alignments
- Young fold west–east: Alps, Carpathians, Caucasus, Zagros, Himalaya–Karakoram — the Alpine–Himalayan belt from the Atlantic to the South China Sea.
- Young fold north–south in the Americas: Rockies and Andes along the Pacific Ring of Fire.
- Island arcs: Japan, Philippines, Indonesia — volcanic mountains on subduction trenches.
- Old residual: Urals (N–S), Appalachians, Western Ghats (more scarp than Alpine fold), Aravallis — lower, worn, still climatic.
Weather impacts, with examples
- Orographic rain and rain shadow: Western Ghats make the Konkan wet and the Deccan lee drier; Himalaya wring the monsoon onto India and leave Tibet and interior Asia drier; Cascades rain-shadow the US interior.
- Barrier to cold air: Himalaya largely blocks Siberian outbreaks from north India in winter, while also trapping western-disturbation moisture as snow.
- Foehn / chinook: downslope warming on the leeward Alps and Rockies melts snow and dries farms.
- Altitude climate: Andes and Himalaya create vertical zonation — coffee, potato, pasture — on one slope.
- Monsoon channel: Arakan Yoma and Naga hills steer Bay moisture into Northeast India; the gap at the Brahmaputra is a wet funnel.
- Mediterranean west coasts: west–east Alps help isolate a milder south; north–south Pacific ranges shape California’s wet-west, dry-inland pattern.
Local life
- Tea on Darjeeling slopes, rainfed rice on windward Konkan, and snowmelt rivers of Punjab are weather written by alignment.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD AL[Alpine Himalayan E-W] --> OR[Orographic rain] AN[Andes Rockies N-S] --> RS[Rain shadow foehn] OR --> WX[Local weather] RS --> WX
Conclusion
- Major ranges align with plates: east–west in Eurasia, north–south in the Americas, arcs in the Pacific. They make rain, shadow, foehn, and altitudinal belts. Name the range, then name the wind it stands in.
Quick related
Students also ask
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How do the melting of the Arctic ice and glaciers of the Antarctic differently affect the weather patterns and human activities on the Earth? Explain.
Next question in the 2021 paper (Q15). View answer →
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Do all mountains run east–west?
No. The Americas’ cordillera is mainly north–south. Alignment follows the plate boundary.
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Is the Western Ghats a fold Himalaya?
No. It is largely a faulted-and-eroded edge of the Deccan, but it still wrings monsoon rain.
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