High altitude ecology: Mountain climate

[First paragraph...]
In many parts of the world meteorologists began to take interest in mountain meteorology in the latter half of the 19th century and at this time a number of well-known mountain top observatories were set up, among them Mt Washington and Pike's Peak in North America, Ben Nevis in Scotland, and Sonnblick and Mt Blanc in the European Alps (Stone 1934, Paton 1954, Talman 1934). Except in Europe, this interest appears to have declined by the early years of this century and many of the mountain observatories were closed down. However, there was a renewal of activity in the nineteen-thirties, when regular daily data from a network of upper air stations were needed for weather forecasting for aviation. Much effort was applied to discovering relationships between wind and weather on the mountain tops and in the free air, with a view to using mountain observations in the routine preparation of upper air weather maps.