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  • Review Article
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Elevation-dependent climate change in mountain environments

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 772–788 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Mountain regions show rapid environmental changes under anthropogenic warming. The rates of these changes are often stratified by elevation, leading to elevation-dependent climate change (EDCC). In this Review, we examine evidence of systematic change in the elevation profiles of air temperature and precipitation (including snow). On a global scale, differences between mountain and lowland trends for temperature, precipitation and snowfall are 0.21 °C century–1 (enhanced mountain warming), –11.5 mm century–1 (enhanced mountain drying) and –25.6 mm century–1 (enhanced mountain snow loss), respectively, for 1980–2020, based on averaging available gridded datasets. Regional analyses sometimes show opposite trend patterns. This EDCC is primarily driven by changes in surface albedo, specific humidity and atmospheric aerosol concentrations. Throughout the twenty-first century, most models predict that enhanced warming in mountain regions will continue (at 0.13 °C century–1), but precipitation changes are less certain. Superimposed upon these global trends, EDCC patterns can vary substantially between mountain regions. Patterns in the Rockies and the Tibetan Plateau are more consistent with the global mean than other regions. In situ mountain observations are skewed towards low elevations, and understanding of EDCC is biased towards mid-latitudes. Efforts to address this uneven data distribution and to increase the spatial and temporal resolution of models of mountain processes are urgently needed to understand the impacts of EDCC on ecological and hydrological systems.

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Fig. 1: Factors and processes associated with elevation-dependent climate change in mountain environments.
Fig. 2: Expected vertical profiles of important mountain variables in a warmer world.
Fig. 3: Observed temperature and precipitation changes in mountain regions.
Fig. 4: Projected temperature and precipitation changes in mountain regions.
Fig. 5: Synthesis of observed elevation-dependent climate change.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Mountain Research Initiative for providing financial and logistical support for a workshop on Elevation Dependent Climate Change at the International Mountain Conference in Innsbruck in September 2022, at which the idea for this Review was conceived. E.P. was jointly funded by a Leverhulme Trust ECR fellowship, NERC grant NE/X004031/1 and the AgroClim-Huaraz project. A.N. was supported by Fondazione CARITRO (Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto) within the project “Insight into the physical mechanisms underlying convection phenomena for a better understanding of its future evolution in the context of climate change in the Trentino region”. L.H. acknowledges the AgroClim Huarez project, funded by the Earth System Sciences Program of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW) and the European Union Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowksa-Curie Action HIGHLANDS.3 project (grant no. 872328). D.Z. acknowledges support from the European Union — NextGenerationEU through the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), PRIN 2022 (grant no. 2022NEWP4J, CUP E53D23004450006); from the strategic partnerships ‘Space It Up!’, funded by the Italian Space Agency and the Ministry of University and Research (contract no. 2024-5-E.0-CUP  I53D24000060005); and from the iNEST initiative (Interconnected Nord-Est Innovation Ecosystem) funded by the European Union under NextGenerationEU (PNRR, Mission 4.2, Investment 1.5, project no. ECS 00000043).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of the Environment and Life Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

    Nick Pepin

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Montana Technological University, Butte, MT, USA

    Martha Apple

  3. Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA

    John Knowles

  4. Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Research Council (ISAC-CNR), Torino, Italy

    Silvia Terzago, Enrico Arnone & Elisa Palazzi

  5. Department of Physics, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

    Enrico Arnone & Elisa Palazzi

  6. Institut für Ökologie, Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Lorenz Hänchen

  7. Center Agriculture Food Environment (C3A), University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Anna Napoli & Dino Zardi

  8. Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering (DICAM), University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Anna Napoli & Dino Zardi

  9. School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Emily Potter

  10. Institute of Geography and Regional Science, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Jakob Steiner

  11. Canadian High Arctic Research Station, Polar Knowledge Canada, Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada

    Scott N. Williamson

  12. Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Bodo Ahrens & Arathi Rameshan

  13. Department of Physics, Uttaranchal University, Dehradun, India

    Tanmay Dhar

  14. School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

    A. P. Dimri

  15. Climate change, Extreme events and natural hazards in mountain regions Research Center (CERC), WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos, Switzerland

    Nadine Salzmann

  16. Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Maria Shahgedanova

  17. Department of Geography, Universität Passau, Passau, Germany

    João de Deus Vidal Jr

  18. Afromontane Research Unit and Department of Plant Sciences, University of the Free State, Phuthaditjhaba, Republic of South Africa

    João de Deus Vidal Jr

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Contributions

N.P. conceived the original idea, wrote large sections of the manuscript and coordinated the overall submission. M.A., J.K. and S.T. coordinated the writing of individual sections of the manuscript. S.N.W., L.H., A.N., S.T., E.P. and J.S. produced figures and/or tables. E.A. performed the analysis of trend dependence on elevation and produced corresponding figures and tables. All authors provided input to group discussions and/or comments on the manuscript draft.

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Correspondence to Nick Pepin.

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Pepin, N., Apple, M., Knowles, J. et al. Elevation-dependent climate change in mountain environments. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 772–788 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00740-4

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