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The influence of the evolution of life has to be taken into account rather soon in the history of the atmosphere because hints of earliest life forms appeared as early as 3.5 billion years ago. [48] How Earth at that time maintained a climate warm enough for liquid water and life, if the early Sun put out 30% lower solar radiance than today, is ...
The solar wind flux was about 100 times the value of the modern Sun, so the presence of the magnetic field helped prevent the planet's atmosphere from being stripped away, which is what probably happened to the atmosphere of Mars. However, the field strength was lower than at present and the magnetosphere was about half the modern radius. [32]
About 3.4 billion years ago, nitrogen was the major part of the then stable "second atmosphere". An influence of life has to be taken into account rather soon in the history of the atmosphere because hints of early life forms have been dated to as early as 3.5 to 4.3 billion years ago. [21]
An atmosphere (from Ancient Greek ἀτμός (atmós) 'vapour, steam' and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere') [1] is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low.
The atmosphere present from this point in Earth's history until the origin of life is referred to as the prebiotic atmosphere. It is unknown when exactly life originated. The oldest direct evidence for life on Earth is around 3.5 billion years old, such as fossil stromatolites from North Pole, Western Australia. [ 14 ]
Nation's Worst Cold Outbreak. Adding an exclamation point to a two-week siege widely considered the nation's worst, most prolific cold outbreak, a Blue Norther plowed through the Plains on Feb. 10 ...
The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
The atmospheric circulation can be viewed as a heat engine driven by the Sun's energy and whose energy sink, ultimately, is the blackness of space. The work produced by that engine causes the motion of the masses of air, and in that process it redistributes the energy absorbed by the Earth's surface near the tropics to the latitudes nearer the ...