Earth's atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth and retained by the Earth's gravity.
It contains roughly 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen 0.97% argon and carbon dioxide 0.04% trace amounts of other gases, and water vapor.
This mixture of gases is commonly known as air.
The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation and reducing temperature extremes between day and night.
The atmosphere has no abrupt cut-off.
It slowly becomes thinner and fades away into space.
There is no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space.
Three-quarters of the atmosphere's mass is within 11 km of the planetary surface..
Planetary boundary layer The planetary boundary layer (PBL) is also known as the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). It is the lowest part of the atmosphere and its behavior is ... >
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Altitude Altitude is the elevation of an object from a known level or datum. Common datums are mean sea level and the surface of the WGS-84 geoid, used by ... >
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Solar radiation Solar radiation is radiant energy emitted by the sun, particularly electromagnetic energy. About half of the radiation is in the visible short-wave ... >
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Inversion (meteorology) A temperature inversion is a meteorological phenomenon in which air temperature increases with height for some distance above the ground, as opposed ... >
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Atmospheric chemistry Atmospheric chemistry is a branch of atmospheric science in which the chemistry of the Earth's atmosphere and that of other planets is studied. It is ... >
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Hadley cell The major driving force of atmospheric circulation in the tropical regions is solar heating. Because of the Earth's 23.5 ° axial tilt, the sun is ... >
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Climate model Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, and ice. They are used for a variety of ... >
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Jet stream Jet streams are fast flowing, relatively narrow air currents found in the atmosphere at around 12 km above the surface of the Earth, just under the ... >
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Ozone layer The ozone layer is the part of the Earth's atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone (O3). "Relatively high" means a few ... >
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Carbon cycle The carbon cycle is the biogeochemical cycle by which carbon is exchanged between the biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere of the Earth. ... >
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