Chapter 4: Atmosphere

Earth's atmosphere, composed mostly of nitrogen and oxygen, makes our lives possible. It provides
our planet with just enough warmth and pressure to enable water to cycle among all three phases
(solid ice, liquid water, and gaseous water vapor), it protects us from harmful solar radiation, and it
produces the weather patterns that variously bring us days of sunshine, clouds, and rain or snow.

In this chapter we will be studying these and some other related aspects of terrestrial atmosphere
with a major emphasis given to that of the Earth's atmosphere.
4.1 Composition and Structure of the Atmosphere
What is an atmosphere?
• An atmosphere is a layer of gas that surrounds a world. In most cases, it is a surprisingly
thin layer.
• On Earth, for example, about two-thirds of the air in the atmosphere lies within 10
kilometers of Earth's surface.
• The air that makes up any atmosphere is a mixture of many different gases that may consist
either of individual atoms or of molecules.
• In general planetary atmospheres exist in a perpetual balance between the downward
weight of their gases and the upward push of their gas pressure.
• Temperatures in the terrestrial atmospheres are generally low enough (even on Venus) for
atoms to combine into molecules. For example, the air we breathe consists of molecular
nitrogen (N2 ) and oxygen (O2), as opposed to individual atoms (Nor 0 ).
• Other common molecules in terrestrial atmospheres include water (H2O) and carbon
dioxide (CO2).
Atmospheric Composition
• Near the surface, the Earth’s atmosphere contains about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1%
argon, and traces of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and many other gases.
• Although nitrogen and oxygen predominate throughout the atmosphere, the atomic and
molecular makeup of the atmosphere changes with altitude.
Atmospheric Layers
• Most of the gas in the Earth’s atmosphere is in the lowest region, the troposphere.
• Temperature drops with altitude in the troposphere, something you've probably noticed if
you've ever climbed a mountain.
• On average, the troposphere extends from the ground to an altitude of about 10 km. The
ground absorbs sunlight and heats the air that is in contact with it. This heating, plus the
absorption of infrared solar radiation by water vapor, is concentrated in the lower
troposphere
• The tropopause is the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere.

• The stratosphere is very cold at its base (about 200 K), but temperature rises steadily until
it reaches a maximum at altitude of about 50 km.
• Temperature increases with altitude in the stratosphere because of heating due to the
absorption of solar radiation.
• Ultraviolet sunlight is absorbed by O2 molecules, which are broken up into oxygen atoms.
The oxygen atoms react with other O2 molecules to produce ozone, O3 , which is effective at
absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation.
• The heating produced by ozone absorption is greatest at about 50 km, where the temperature
is 300 K (about the same as the temperature at the ground).
• The ability of the ozone layer to block potentially lethal solar ultraviolet radiation is vital to
the continued existence of life on Earth.
 • High in the stratosphere, the temperature falls again.
• The thermosphere begins where the temperature again starts to rise at high altitude.
• The exosphere is the uppermost region in which the atmosphere gradually fades away into
space.
• The layering is shaped by the way atmospheric gas interacts with light. As shown in the
Figure below, only visible sunlight reaches all the way to the ground; the ground then emits
infrared light that heats the troposphere.
• Solar ultraviolet light warms the stratosphere, and solar X rays (and some solar ultraviolet
light) heat the thermosphere and exosphere.
• These ideas are depicted in more detail in the above two figures: with w/c we can
understand not only why atmospheric properties vary with altitude but also why storms
occur in the troposphere, why ozone is so important to life on Earth, and why the sky is blue
etc.
4.2 Air circulation and wind system
• From our experience on Earth, we know that surface and atmospheric conditions constantly
change. These changes are generally described as weather or climate.
• Weather and climate are closely related, but they are not quite the same thing.
• Weather refers to the ever-varying combination of winds, clouds, temperature, and pressure
that makes some days hotter or cooler, clearer or cloudier, or calmer or stormier than others.
• Climate is the long-term average of weather, which means it can change only on much
longer time scales.
 • For example, Antarctic deserts have a cold, dry climate, while tropical rain forests have a
hot, wet climate.
• Geological records show that climates can change, but most climate changes occur gradually
over decades, centuries, or millennia.
• Weather and climate can be hard to distinguish on a human time scale. For example, a
drought lasting a few years may be the result of either random weather fluctuations or the
beginning of a gradual change to a drier climate.
• The difficulty in distinguishing between random weather and real climate trends is an
important part of the debate about human influences on the climate to be discussed at the
end of this chapter.

Global Wind Patterns

• The wind's direction and strength can change rapidly in any particular place, but we find
distinctive patterns on a more global scale.
• For example, winds generally cause storms moving in from the Pacific to hit the West
Coast of the United States first and then make their way eastward across the Rocky
Mountains and the Great Plains, heading to the East Coast.

Figure 3: Earth's major global wind patterns

• The above figure shows Earth's major global wind patterns (or global circulation).
• Notice that the wind direction varies with latitude: Equatorial winds blow from east to
west, mid-latitude winds blow from west to east, and high-latitude winds blow like
equatorial winds from east to west.
• Two factors explain this pattern: atmospheric heating and planetary rotation.

Atmospheric Heating and Circulation Cells

• Atmospheric heating affects global wind patterns because Earth's equatorial regions receive
more heat from the Sun than its polar regions do.
• Warm equatorial air therefore rises upward and flows toward the poles, where cool air
descends and flows toward the equator.
• If Earth's rotation did not influence this process, the result would be two huge circulation
cells (or Hadley cells, after the man who first suggested their existence), one in each
hemisphere as shown in the figure below.
 Figure 4: Atmospheric heating creates a circulation cell in each hemisphere that carries
warm equatorial air toward the poles while cool polar air moves toward the equator. This
diagram shows how the circulation cells would work if our planet's rotation didn't affect
them. The vertical extent of the circulation cells is greatly exaggerated; in reality, the tops of
the cells are only a few kilometers above Earth's surface.

• The circulation cells transport heat both from lower to higher altitudes and from the
equator to the poles.
• They therefore make Earth's polar regions much warmer than they would be in the absence
of circulation.
Rotation and the Coriolis Effect
• Earth's or in general planetary rotation affects global wind patterns through the
Coriolis effect (named for the French physicist who first explained it), which you can
understand by thinking about a spinning merry-go- round as shown in the figure below.
• The outer parts of the merry-go-round move at a faster speed than the inner parts,
because they have a greater distance to travel around the axis with each rotation.
• If you sit near the edge and roll a ball toward the center, the ball begins with your relatively
high speed around the axis. As it rolls inward, the ball's high speed makes it move ahead of
the slower-moving inner regions.
• On a merry-go-round rotating counterclockwise, the ball therefore deviates to the right
instead of heading straight inward.
• The Coriolis effect also makes the ball deviate to the right if you roll it outward from a
position near the center. In that case, the ball starts with your slower speed around the center
and lags behind as it rolls outward to faster-moving regions, again deviating to the right. (If
the merry-go-round rotates clockwise rather than counterclockwise, the deviations go to the
left instead of the right.)
• The Coriolis effect alters the path of air on the rotating Earth in much the same way as
shown in the figure below.
• Recall the fact that the Earth's equatorial regions travel faster than polar regions, which are
closer to the rotation axis.
• Air moving away from the equator therefore has "extra" speed that causes it to move
ahead of Earth's rotation to the east, while air moving toward the equator lags behind
Earth's rotation to the west.
• In either case, moving air turns to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the
Southern Hemisphere, which explains why storms circulate in opposite directions in the two
hemispheres.
• Uneven heating and cooling of Earth's surface creates regions of slightly higher pressure
("H" on weather maps) or lower pressure ("L" on weather maps) than average.
• Storms generally occur around low-pressure regions, which draw air inward from
surrounding regions; as shown in the above figure (fig a).
• The Coriolis effect makes the inward-flowing air rotate counterclockwise in the Northern
Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.
• This rotation around a low-pressure zone can be quite stable, which is why storms can
persist for days or weeks while being carried across the globe.
• The Coriolis effect plays an even more important role in shaping Earth's global wind
patterns: It splits each of the two huge circulation cells shown previously into three
smaller circulation cells as shown in the figure below.
 Figure 7: On Earth, the Coriollis effect causes each of the two large
circulation cells that would be present without rotation (see Fig. 4 given
above) to split into three smaller cells.
• You can understand why by considering air flowing southward along the surface from the
North Pole. Without rotation, this air would travel 10,000 kilometers due south to the
equator.
• But as Earth rotates, the Coriolis effect diverts this air to the right (westward) well before it
reaches the equator, forcing the single large circulation cell to split.
• The three resulting cells circulate the air somewhat like three interlocking gears. These
motions explain the global wind directions: Notice that surface air moves toward the
equator in the cells near the equator and near the poles, so the Coriolis effect diverts this
air into west-east winds (see figure 3: Earth's major global wind patterns).
• In contrast, surface air moves toward the poles in the mid-latitude cells, so the Coriolis
effect diverts it into winds that blow eastward. In essence, the Coriolis effect on a rotating
planet tends to divert air moving north or south into east-west winds.
• The Coriolis effect operates to some extent on all planets. Its strength depends on a planet's
size and rotation rate: Larger size and faster rotation both contribute to a stronger Coriolis
effect.
• Among the terrestrial planets, Earth is the only one with a Coriolis effect strong enough to
split the two large circulation cells.

4.3 Factors of Weather

• We now turn our attention to climate, which varies much more slowly than weather.
• Scientists have identified four major factors that can lead to long-term climate change on
the terrestrial worlds:
• Solar brightening: the Sun has grown gradually brighter with time, increasing the amount
 of solar energy reaching the planets.
• Changes in axis tilt: the tilt of a planet's axis may change over long periods of time.
• Changes in reflectivity: an increase in a planet's reflectivity means a decrease in the
amount of sunlight that it absorbs, and vice versa.
• Changes in greenhouse gas abundance: more green- house gases tend to make a planet
warmer, and less make it cooler. Figure below summarizes these four factors, which we
now investigate in a little more detail. Keep in mind that more than one factor may be acting
at any given time.

4.4 The water cycle and clouds

Clouds and Precipitation

• In addition to winds, the other key components of weather are rain, snow, and hail, which
together are called precipitation in weather reports.
• Precipitation requires clouds. We may think of clouds as imperfections on a sunny day,
but they have profound effects on Earth and other planets, despite being made from minor
ingredients of the atmosphere.
• Besides being the source of precipitation, clouds can alter a planet's energy balance. Clouds
reflect sunlight back to space, thereby reducing the amount of sunlight that warms a
planet's surface, but they also tend to be made from greenhouse gases that contribute to
planetary warming.
• On Earth, clouds are made from tiny droplets of liquid water or flakes of ice, which you can
feel if you walk through a cloud on a mountaintop.
• Clouds are produced by condensation of water vapor as shown in the figure below.
The water vapor enters the atmosphere through evaporation of surface water (or
sublimation of ice and snow). Convection then carries the water vapor to high, cold regions
of the troposphere, where it can condense to form clouds.
 • Clouds can also form as winds blow over mountains, since the mountains physically
push the air high enough to allow condensation.
• The condensed droplets or ice flakes start out very small, but gradually grow larger. If they
get large enough so that the upward convection currents can no longer hold them aloft, then
they begin to fall toward the surface as rain, snow, or hail.
• Stronger convection means more clouds and precipitation. That is why thunderstorms
are common on summer afternoons, when the sunlight-warmed surface drives strong
convection.
• The linkage between clouds and convection also explains why Earth has lush jungles near
the equator and deserts at latitudes of 20°-30° north or south.
• Equatorial regions experience high rainfall because they receive more sunlight, which
causes more convection. This high rainfall depletes the air of moisture as Earth's
circulation cells carry it away from the equator (see Fig. 7 given above), leaving little
moisture to fall as rain at the latitudes of the deserts.
4.5: Major global climatic zones and change in weather
Polar Zone
• The polar climate zones fill the areas within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles,
extending from 66.5 degrees north and south latitude to the poles.
• Characterized by a short, cool summer and long, bitterly cold winter, the polar
zone features frequent snowfall, particularly during the winter months.
• The far northern portions of Canada, Europe and Russia fall within this
climate zone.
• Farther north and south, the ice caps that make up Greenland and Antarctica
represent a sub-zone of the polar climate region known as the ice cap zone.
• Within the ice caps, temperatures rarely, if ever, rise above freezing, even during
the warmest months of the years.
Temperate Zone
• Extending from the southern edge of the Arctic Circle to the Tropic of
Cancer in the northern hemisphere, and the northern edge of the Antarctic
Circle to the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere, the temperate climate
zone falls between 23.5 degrees and 66.5 degrees north and south latitudes.
• Temperate climate zones experience warm to hot summers and cool winters,
with the greatest temperature variations throughout the year of any climate zone.
• Climate within the temperate regions ranges from the cold, snowy winters of New
England to the balmy, moderate weather associated with the Mediterranean or
Southern California.
• Much of the United States, Europe and the southern half of South America fall
within this climate zone.

Tropical Zone
• The tropical climate zone stretches from the Tropic of Cancer at 23.5 degrees
north latitude to the Tropic of Capricorn at 23.5 degrees south latitude,
with the equator centered within this zone.
• Climate within the tropical zone varies from the tropical wet regions of the
rain forest, to the drier arid and semi-arid climate of north Africa or
central Australia.
• Within the tropical wet zone, the weather remains hot and muggy, with
frequent rainfall and little temperature variation.
• The arid and semi-arid regions experience wet, warm summers and cooler, drier
winters, with much greater temperature variation than the tropical wet zone.
 Considerations
• Sun angle plays a major role in creating Earth's climate zones.
• Thanks to the tilt of the Earth on its axis, the sun strikes the area around the
equator at a near-vertical angle, delivering substantial solar heat energy to this
region.
• Closer to the poles, the sun strikes the Earth at a much shallower angle, resulting in
less solar heat gain compared to the tropical zone.
• Prevailing winds and ocean currents then transport this solar heat energy
throughout the globe.
• Factors such as elevation and proximity to the coast help to explain
climate variations within a climate zone.
4.6: Severe Weather
• We have see that the layers of Earth’s atmosphere are defined by temperature
variations with altitude.
• Warm regions are those in which solar radiation is absorbed.
• Cold regions are those in which absorption of sunlight is small or in which cooling is
effective.
• The troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, is heated from the
ground.
• Convection in the troposphere causes weather.
• The greenhouse effect takes place when the atmosphere of a planet absorbs the infrared
radiation emitted by the planet’s surface, raising the planet’s temperature.

What is the temperature of the Earth?

• The temperature of the planet/Earth is the one at which the planet/Earth is in thermal
equilibrium and absorbed solar energy just balances emitted infrared radiation.
• If the gases in the atmosphere of the planet are effective absorbers of infrared radiation,
they absorb some of the infrared energy emitted by the ground and lower atmosphere.
• This absorption reduces the fraction of the infrared radiation that escapes into space after
it is emitted by the planet.
• The temperature of the surface and lower atmosphere rises, and the amount of infrared
radiation increases, until the infrared energy escaping through the atmosphere just
balances the solar energy absorbed by the planet.
• As shown in the Figure below, the net effect of the presence of the atmosphere is to
make the planet warmer than it would be with no atmosphere.
• Generally speaking, the thicker the atmosphere of a planet, the stronger the greenhouse
effect and the larger the increase in temperature.
• Note: the Earth’s atmosphere produces a greenhouse effect that, so far, has been
beneficial for the Earth’s environment. Because without the greenhouse effect, the Earth
would be about 31 degree Celsius cooler than it is (show this!!), as a result the
Earth would then probably have much larger polar regions and smaller habitable zones
than it actually does.
 The surface of the Earth is warmed by absorbing sunlight and cools itself by emitting
infrared radiation. A, In the absence of an atmosphere, the infrared radiation emitted by
the Earth would freely escape into space and keep the Earth cool. B, Atmospheric gases
such as carbon dioxide and water vapor partially block the escape of infrared radiation.
The temperature of the Earth and the rate at which its surface emits infrared
radiation rise until the rate at which infrared energy escapes through the
atmosphere equals the rate at which solar energy is absorbed.

Carbon Dioxide:
• Water vapor and carbon dioxide are the principal “greenhouse gases,” or absorbers of
infrared radiation, in the Earth’s atmosphere.
• It is clear that the improved green- house effect caused by increased CO2 will lead to
increases in the Earth’s average temperature and the problem of the greenhouse effect is
now recognized as a serious threat to our present climate.

Aerosols:
• Aerosols are liquid droplets and solids suspended in the atmosphere. The general
effect of aerosols is to reflect sunlight and increase the Earth’s albedo.Thus
aerosols act to reduce the temperature of the Earth. They also help water vapor
form clouds, which also reflect sunlight.
• It is possible that increased aerosol production may cancel a significant part of the
greenhouse effect. However, either effect by itself could have serious
consequences.

Ozone:
• Chlorofluorocarbons, such as the freons commonly used as coolants in refrigerators
and air conditioners and once used as propellants in hair sprays and deodorants,
gradually spread upward to the ozone layer. Once they reach the ozone layer,
chlorofluorocarbons are extremely effective in destroying ozone molecules.
• A reduction in the amount of upper atmospheric ozone reduces the atmosphere’s
ability to block solar ultraviolet radiation. In populated parts of the planet, an
increased amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the ground will lead to increased
skin cancers and possible damage to crops.
 4.7 Human Impact on weather and climate

• Natural changes in the Earth’s atmosphere are probably going on today, but these
changes are significant only over thousands or millions of years.
• Changes induced by human activity have been much more rapid and are occurring
at an accelerating pace. None of the changes caused by human activity seems likely
to be beneficial for human beings.

What causes global warming?

• Human activity is releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere, and scientific evidence confirms that this is causing global
warming.
• This warming may have many consequences, including a rise in sea level, an
increase in severity of storms, and dramatic changes in local climates.