Several parts combine into one character.

Compound character: 阝 (mound / hill — left-side variant of 阜) + 夂 (downward feet). The encoded scene: feet stepping down a hillside. The character covers ALL downward motion: descending, falling rain, surrendering (submitting / "going down" before a victor). Identical across 繁體 / 新字体 / 简体.

降 is another 破音字 — same character, two pronunciations, two meanings:

Mandarin: — jiàng (4th tone): descend / fall. 降落 (jiàngluò, to land — used for airplanes), 降水 (jiàngshuǐ, precipitation), 降低 (jiàngdī, to lower / reduce), 下降 (xiàjiàng, to descend), 降级 (jiàngjí, to demote). — xiáng (2nd tone): surrender. 投降 (tóuxiáng, to surrender), 招降 (zhāoxiáng, to induce surrender). The "surrender" reading is rarer in everyday Mandarin but appears in war/strategy contexts.

Korean preserves the same split as (descend) vs. (surrender) — same logic across the language.

Japanese: on-reading コウ (kō) for compounds — 下降 (kakō, descent), 降下 (kōka, falling / descent), 降水量 (kōsuiryō, precipitation amount — used in weather forecasts), 投降 (tōkō, surrender), 降伏 (kōfuku, surrender / capitulation). Kun-readings split by what's descending: — お.りる (o.riru, to get off / descend): people descending. 電車を降りる (densha o oriru, get off the train — paired with 乗る no.ru, to board). — ふ.る (fu.ru, to fall / rain): weather. 雨が降る (ame ga furu, rain falls), 雪が降る (yuki ga furu, snow falls). — くだ.る (kuda.ru, to descend): more formal "go down". The 乗る/降りる pair (board / disembark) is the foundational train-taking vocabulary in Japan.

Memory aid: a hill with feet going down — descent in all senses.