Retreat of glaciers since 1850 doing so due to transient local weather conditions, which have brought more precipitation and cloudier, cooler summers since 2002. Tropical glaciers are located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, in the region that lies 23° 26′ 22″ north or south of the equator. Strictly, a tropical glacier is located within the astronomical tropics; the area where the annual temperature variation is less than the daily variation, and is within the oscillation area of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Tropical glaciers are the most uncommon of all glaciers for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the regions are the
Degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry) capacity. This is because these degrees of freedom are "frozen" because the spacing between the energy eigenvalues exceeds the energy corresponding to ambient temperatures (). In the following table such degrees of freedom are disregarded because of their low effect on total energy. Then only the translational and rotational degrees of freedom contribute, in equal amounts, to the heat capacity ratio. This is why = for monatomic gases and = for diatomic gases at room temperature. However, at very high temperatures, on the order of the vibrational temperature (Θ), vibrational motion cannot be neglected. Vibrational temperatures are between 10 K