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The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface (both lands and oceans), known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates (which create weather features such as clouds and hazes), all retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere serves as a ...
The Earth's weather is a consequence of its illumination by the Sun and the laws of thermodynamics. 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 ...
BBC Bitesize, [1] also abbreviated to Bitesize, is the BBC's free online study support resource for school-age pupils in the United Kingdom. It is designed to aid pupils in both schoolwork and, for older pupils, exams .
The atmosphere envelops the earth and extends hundreds of kilometres from the surface. It consists mostly of inert nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%) and argon (0.9%). [4] Some trace gases in the atmosphere, such as water vapour and carbon dioxide, are the gases most important for the workings of the climate system, as they are greenhouse gases which allow visible light from the Sun to penetrate to ...
Earth's atmosphere absorbs only 23% of incoming shortwave radiation, but absorbs 90% of the longwave radiation emitted by the surface, [9] thus accumulating energy and warming the Earth's surface. The existence of the greenhouse effect (while not named as such) was proposed as early as 1824 by Joseph Fourier . [ 10 ]
The exchange between the ocean and atmosphere can take centuries, and the weathering of rocks can take millions of years. Carbon in the ocean precipitates to the ocean floor where it can form sedimentary rock and be subducted into the Earth's mantle. Mountain building processes result in the return of this geologic carbon to the Earth's surface.
The layers are to scale. From the Earth's surface to the top of the stratosphere (50km) is just under 1% of Earth's radius. The exosphere is a thin, atmosphere-like volume surrounding a planet or natural satellite where molecules are gravitationally bound to that body, but where the density is so low that the molecules are essentially collision ...
Τhe absorption bands of Earth's atmosphere (grey colour) delimit its atmospheric windows (middle panel) and the effect they have on both downgoing solar radiation and upgoing thermal radiation emitted near the surface is shown in the top panel. The individual absorption spectra of major greenhouse gases plus Rayleigh scattering are shown in ...