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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 ...
Planetary aeronomy studies the regions of the atmospheres of other planets [5] that correspond to the Earth's mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere, and ionosphere. [6] In some cases, a planet's entire atmosphere may consist only of what on Earth constitutes the upper atmosphere, or only a portion of it.
The region above the turbopause is the heterosphere, where molecular diffusion dominates and the chemical composition of the atmosphere varies according to chemical species and their atomic weight. Earth's turbopause lies near the mesopause , at the intersection of the mesosphere and the thermosphere , at an altitude of roughly 90 km (56 mi). [ 2 ]
The composition of the Earth's atmosphere is different from the other planets because the various life processes that have transpired on the planet have introduced free molecular oxygen. [7] Much of Mercury's atmosphere has been blasted away by the solar wind. [8] The only moon that has retained a dense atmosphere is Titan.
The Hadley cell is a closed circulation loop which begins at the equator. There, moist air is warmed by the Earth's surface, decreases in density and rises. A similar air mass rising on the other side of the equator forces those rising air masses to move poleward. The rising air creates a low pressure zone near the equator.
The top of the mesosphere, called the mesopause, is the coldest part of Earth's atmosphere. [8] Temperatures in the upper mesosphere fall as low as about −100 °C (173 K; −148 °F), [9] varying according to latitude and season.
The composition of Earth's atmosphere is determined by the by-products of the life that it sustains. Dry air (mixture of gases) from Earth's atmosphere contains 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide, and traces of hydrogen, helium, and other "noble" gases (by volume), but generally a variable amount of water vapor is ...
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 ...