Tectonic–climatic interaction
Tectonic–climatic interaction is the interrelationship between tectonic processes and the climate system. The tectonic processes in question include orogenesis, volcanism, and erosion, while relevant climatic processes include atmospheric circulation, orographic lift, monsoon circulation and the rain shadow effect. As the geological record of past climate changes over millions of years is sparse and poorly resolved, many questions remain unresolved regarding the nature of tectonic-climate interaction, although it is an area of active research by geologists and palaeoclimatologists.
Depending on the vertical and horizontal magnitude of a mountain range, it has the potential to have strong effects on global and regional climate patterns and processes including: deflection of atmospheric circulation, creation of orographic lift, altering monsoon circulation, and causing the rain shadow effect.
One example of an elevated terrain and its effect on climate occurs in the Southeast Asian Himalayas, the world's highest mountain system. A range of this size has the ability to influence geographic temperature, precipitation, and wind. Theories suggest that the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau has resulted in stronger deflections of the atmospheric jet stream, a heavier monsoonal circulation, increased rainfall on the front slopes, greater rates of chemical weathering, and thus lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations. It is possible that the spatial magnitude of this range is so great that it creates a regional monsoon circulation in addition to disrupting hemispheric-scale atmospheric circulation.
The monsoon season in Southeast Asia occurs due to the Asian continent becoming warmer than the surrounding oceans during the summer; as a low-pressure cell is created above the continents, a high-pressure cell forms over the cooler ocean, causing advection of moist air, creating heavy precipitation from Africa to Southeast Asia. However, the intensity of the rainfall over Southeast Asia is greater than the African monsoon, which can be attributed to the awesome size of the Asian continent compared to the African continent and the presence of a vast mountain system. This not only affects the climate of Southeast Asia, but modifies the climate in neighboring areas such as Siberia, central Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean basin as well. To test this a model was created that changed only the topography of current landmasses, which resulted in correlations between the model and global fluctuations in precipitation and temperature over the past 40 Myr. interpreted by scientists.
...
Wikipedia