As air rises, expands, and cools, water vapor condenses and clouds develop. Clouds cover large portions of the earth at any given time and vary from fair weather cirrus to towering cumulus clouds. When liquid or solid water particles grow large enough in size, they fall toward the earth as precipitation.
The type of precipitation that reaches the ground, be it rain, snow, sleet, or freezing rain, depends upon the temperature of the air through which it falls. As sunlight enters the atmosphere, a portion is immediately reflected back to space, but the rest penetrates the atmosphere and is absorbed by the earth's surface. This energy is then remitted by the earth back into atmosphere as long-wave radiation. Carbon dioxide and water molecules absorb this energy and emit much of it back towards the earth again.
This delicate exchange of energy between the earth's surface and atmosphere keeps the average global temperature from changing drastically from year to year. What percentage of the total mass of the atmosphere does the troposphere contain?
The height of the tropopause ceiling is not constant in time or space. Air pressure and the density of the air also decrease with altitude. That's why the cabins of high-flying jet aircraft are pressurized. The layer immediately above the troposphere is called the stratosphere. The boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere is called the "tropopause". Skip to content. Image Moon Earth Troposhere Silver-blue noctilucent clouds are shown extending far above the orange-colored troposphere, the lowest and densest part of Earth's atmosphere.
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Interactives Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. Related Resources. View Collection. Parts of the Atmosphere. View Article. Technology and the Atmosphere. View leveled Article. The region above about 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 earth behaves like a huge magnet. It traps electrons negative charge and protons positive , concentrating them in two bands about 3, and 16, 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.
Jump to Navigation Skip to main content. The different layers of the atmosphere The atmosphere can be divided into layers based on its temperature, as shown in the figure below. The Troposphere This is the lowest part of the atmosphere - the part we live in. The Stratosphere This extends upwards from the tropopause to about 50 km.
The Mesosphere The region above the stratosphere is called the mesosphere. The Thermosphere and Ionosphere The thermosphere lies above the mesopause, and is a region in which temperatures again increase with height. The Exosphere The region above about km is called the exosphere.
The Magnetosphere The earth behaves like a huge magnet. Climate change information for climate solvers. Helping you understand the science of climate change.
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