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    Atmosphere!

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    Saeed Ahmed Chachar
    The troposphere is the lowest part of the atmosphere where weather occurs. It contains 75% of the air and almost all water vapor, and temperature decreases with height due to decreasing pressure causing air expansion and cooling. The boundary layer at the bottom is influenced by the Earth's surface and turbulence redistributes heat, moisture, and pollutants. The tropopause marks the top of the troposphere and varies in height from 7-18 km.

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    Atmosphere!

    Uploaded by

    Saeed Ahmed Chachar
    8 views2 pages
    The troposphere is the lowest part of the atmosphere where weather occurs. It contains 75% of the air and almost all water vapor, and temperature decreases with height due to decreasing pressure causing air expansion and cooling. The boundary layer at the bottom is influenced by the Earth's surface and turbulence redistributes heat, moisture, and pollutants. The tropopause marks the top of the troposphere and varies in height from 7-18 km.

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    It is about Environmental science

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    The troposphere is the lowest part of the atmosphere where weather occurs. It contains 75% of the air and almost all water vapor, and temperature decreases with height due to decreasing pressure causing air expansion and cooling. The boundary layer at the bottom is influenced by the Earth's surface and turbulence redistributes heat, moisture, and pollutants. The tropopause marks the top of the troposphere and varies in height from 7-18 km.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    8 views2 pages

    Atmosphere!

    Uploaded by

    Saeed Ahmed Chachar
    The troposphere is the lowest part of the atmosphere where weather occurs. It contains 75% of the air and almost all water vapor, and temperature decreases with height due to decreasing pressure causing air expansion and cooling. The boundary layer at the bottom is influenced by the Earth's surface and turbulence redistributes heat, moisture, and pollutants. The tropopause marks the top of the troposphere and varies in height from 7-18 km.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    The Troposphere

    This is the lowest part of the atmosphere - the part we live in. It contains most of our weather -
    clouds, rain, snow. In this part of the atmosphere the temperature gets colder as the distance
    above the earth increases, by about 6.5°C per kilometre. The actual change of temperature with
    height varies from day to day, depending on the weather.

    The troposphere contains about 75% of all of the air in the atmosphere, and almost all of the
    water vapour (which forms clouds and rain). The decrease in temperature with height is a result
    of the decreasing pressure. If a parcel of air moves upwards it expands (because of the lower
    pressure). When air expands it cools. So air higher up is cooler than air lower down.

    The lowest part of the troposphere is called the boundary layer. This is where the air motion is
    determined by the properties of the Earth's surface. Turbulence is generated as the wind blows
    over the Earth's surface, and by thermals rising from the land as it is heated by the sun. This
    turbulence redistributes heat and moisture within the boundary layer, as well as pollutants and
    other constituents of the atmosphere.

    The top of the troposphere is called the tropopause. This is lowest at the poles, where it is
    about 7 - 10 km above the Earth's surface. It is highest (about 17 - 18 km) near the equator.

    The Stratosphere

    This extends upwards from the tropopause to about 50 km. It contains much of the ozone in the
    atmosphere. The increase in temperature with height occurs because of absorption of
    ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun by this ozone. Temperatures in the stratosphere are
    highest over the summer pole, and lowest over the winter pole.

    By absorbing dangerous UV radiation, the ozone in the stratosphere protects us from skin
    cancer and other health damage. However chemicals (called CFCs or freons, and halons) which
    were once used in refrigerators, spray cans and fire extinguishers have reduced the amount of
    ozone in the stratosphere, particularly at polar latitudes, leading to the so-called "Antarctic
    ozone hole".

    Now humans have stopped making most of the harmful CFCs we expect the ozone hole will
    eventually recover over the 21st century, but this is a slow process.

    The Mesosphere

    The region above the stratosphere is called the mesosphere. Here the temperature again
    decreases with height, reaching a minimum of about -90°C at the "mesopause".

    The Thermosphere and Ionosphere

    The thermosphere lies above the mesopause, and is a region in which temperatures again
    increase with height. This temperature increase is caused by the absorption of energetic
    ultraviolet and X-Ray radiation from the sun.

    The region of the atmosphere above about 80 km is also caused the "ionosphere", since the
    energetic solar radiation knocks electrons off molecules and atoms, turning them into "ions"
    with a positive charge. The temperature of the thermosphere varies between night and day and
    between the seasons, as do the numbers of ions and electrons which are present. The
    ionosphere reflects and absorbs radio waves, allowing us to receive shortwave radio broadcasts
    in New Zealand from other parts of the world.

    The Exosphere

    The region above about 500 km is called the exosphere. It contains mainly oxygen and hydrogen
    atoms, but there are so few of them that they rarely collide - they follow "ballistic" trajectories
    under the influence of gravity, and some of them escape right out into space.

    The Magnetosphere

    The earth behaves like a huge magnet. It traps electrons (negative charge) and protons
    (positive), concentrating them in two bands about 3,000 and 16,000 km above the globe - the
    Van Allen "radiation" belts. This outer region surrounding the earth, where charged particles
    spiral along the magnetic field lines, is called the magnetosphere

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