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Atmosphere Essay

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Dominic Vawdrey
Aircraft systems essay

Atmosphere
The term atmosphere is described by Wikipedia as “An atmosphere (New Latin atmosphaera, created in the 17th century from Greek ἀτμός [atmos] "vapor" and σφαῖρα [sphaira] "sphere") is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low. Some planets consist mainly of various gases, but only their outer layer is their atmosphere.”

Air is mainly composed of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, which together constitute the major gases of the atmosphere. The remaining gases are often referred to as trace gases, …show more content…

It is stratified in temperature, with warmer layers higher up and cooler layers farther down. This is in contrast to the troposphere near the Earth's surface, which is cooler higher up and warmer farther down. The border of the troposphere and stratosphere, the tropopause, is marked by where this inversion begins, which in terms of atmospheric thermodynamics is the equilibrium level. The stratosphere is situated between about 6 mi and 30 mi altitude above the surface at moderate latitudes, while at the poles it starts at about 5 mi altitude.
Within this layer, temperature increases as altitude increases; the top of the stratosphere has a temperature of about 29.6°F, just slightly below the freezing point of water. The stratosphere is layered in temperature because ozone here absorbs high energy UVB and UVC energy waves from the Sun and is broken down into atomic oxygen and diatomic oxygen. Atomic oxygen is found prevalent in the upper stratosphere due to the bombardment of UV light and the destruction of both ozone and diatomic oxygen. The mid stratosphere has less UV light passing through it, O and O2 are able to combine, and is where the majority of natural ozone is produced. It is when these two forms of oxygen recombine to form ozone that they release the heat found in the stratosphere. The lower stratosphere receives very low amounts of UVC, thus atomic oxygen is not found here and ozone is not formed (with heat as the byproduct. This vertical stratification, with

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