The atmosphere is the envelope of air surrounding the Earth. It consists of a physical mixture of gases and particle matter. Based on its temperature structure, the atmosphere can be divided into several sections. Below about 12 km is the troposphere , where the majority of the world's weather occurs and the temperature broadly decreases from about 15°C at the Earth's surface to −54°C at the top. Almost all of the processes of vertical transfer of atmospheric properties through turbulence and mixing occur in the troposphere.
Above the troposphere, temperatures increase to a level of about 50 km, in the region called the stratosphere . Here the atmosphere is very stable and contains layers of gaseous and particle matter, mainly of volcanic origin. The troposphere and the stratosphere are separated by the tropopause , which is located where temperatures suddenly begin to increase with altitude. Above the stratosphere is the stratopause, which separates the stratosphere...
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Bibliography
Barry, R. G., and Chorley, R. J. 1987. Atmosphere, Weather and Climate (5th edn). London: Methuen.
Lutgens, G. E., and Tarbuck, J. F., 1995. The Atmosphere: An Introduction to Meteorology (6th edn). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 462 pp.
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© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Bridgman, H.A. (1999). Atmosphere. In: Environmental Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_24
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