Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the exosphere, beginning at about 600 km (375 mi) above sea level, the atmosphere turns into space, although, by the judging criteria set for the definition of the Kármán line (100 km), most of the thermosphere is part of space. The border between the thermosphere and exosphere is known as the thermopause.
The lower part of the thermosphere, from 80 to 550 kilometres (50 to 342 mi) above Earth's surface, contains the ionosphere. The temperature of the thermosphere gradually increases with height and can rise as high as 1500 °C (2700 °F), though the gas molecules are so far apart that its temperature in the usual sense is not
The temperature of the thermopause could range from nearly absolute zero to 987.547 °C (1,810 °F). Below this, the atmosphere is defined to be active [ clarification needed ] on the insolation received, due to the increased presence of heavier gases such as monatomic oxygen.
One classical thermal escape mechanism is Jeans escape, [1] named after British astronomer Sir James Jeans, who first described this process of atmospheric loss. [2] In a quantity of gas, the average velocity of any one molecule is measured by the gas's temperature, but the velocities of individual molecules change as they collide with one another, gaining and losing kinetic energy.
This decrease in temperature can be attributed to the diminishing radiation received from the Sun, after most of it has already been absorbed by the thermosphere. [ 3 ] The fourth layer of the atmosphere is known as the thermosphere, and extends from the mesopause to the 'top' of the collisional atmosphere.
2 (θ), with θ the co-latitude, etc. [9] Within the thermosphere, mode (1, −2) is the predominant mode reaching diurnal temperature amplitudes at the exosphere of at least 140 K and horizontal winds of the order of 100 m/s and more increasing with geomagnetic activity. [11]
Atmospheric thermodynamics is the study of heat-to-work transformations (and their reverse) that take place in the Earth's atmosphere and manifest as weather or climate. . Atmospheric thermodynamics use the laws of classical thermodynamics, to describe and explain such phenomena as the properties of moist air, the formation of clouds, atmospheric convection, boundary layer meteorology, and ...
This scaled quantity is known as virtual temperature, and it allows for the use of the dry-air equation of state for moist air. [5] Temperature has an inverse proportionality to density. Thus, analytically, a higher vapor pressure would yield a lower density, which should yield a higher virtual temperature in turn.