# How does elevation affect the amount of rainfall received?

How does elevation affect the amount of rainfall received? Does elevation affect precipitation?

• You question is unclear. Are you talking about comparing an area with elevation H1 with another area with elevation H2 (a 'static' situation), or are you talking about a moving air mass passing areas with varying elevation (a dynamic situation). Please edit your question. – Jan Doggen Jul 3 '17 at 14:27

Wherever there is significant relief in a catchment, the first step is to determine whether the catchment is all below the EMP. The second step is to process the historic record to see if a second order, or even third order rainfall altitude regression is a significant improvement upon 'linear'. If you want further refinement the seasonal rainfalls, or rainfalls from different directions, often have markedly differing rainfall-altitude relationships. If you want to go the whole hog, and be scientific about it, then the rainfall approximates a multi-variate solution, with components of altitude, altitude squared, aspect, regional trend, rain shadow and barrier effect. This can be solved as an equation of the form: $$R = aH + BH^{2} + cA + dT + eS +f'BE'$$