As we go from ground level to tropopause, the temperature

The stratosphere is a This diagram shows some of the features of the stratosphere. UCAR/Randy Russell The bottom of the stratosphere is around 10 km (6.2 miles or about 33,000 feet) above the ground at middle latitudes. The top of the stratosphere occurs at an altitude of 50 km (31 miles). The height of the bottom of the stratosphere varies with latitude and with the seasons. The lower boundary of the stratosphere can be as high as 20 km (12 miles or 65,000 feet) near the equator and as low as 7 km (4 miles or 23,000 feet) at the poles in winter. The lower boundary of the stratosphere is called the tropopause; the upper boundary is called the stratopause. The stratosphere is very dry air, containing little water vapor. Because of this, few clouds are found in this layer. Polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) are the exception. PSCs (also called nacreous clouds) appear in the lower stratosphere near the poles in winter. Made of ice, they are found at altitudes of 15 to 25 km (9.3 to 15.5 miles) and form only when temperatures at those heights dip below -78° C. They appear to help cause the formation of the infamous holes in the ozone layer by "encouraging" certain chemical reactions that destroy ozone. Due to the lack of vertical convection in the stratosphere, materials that get into the stratosphere can stay there for long times. Such is the case for ozone-destroying chemicals called CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons). Large volcanic eruptions and major meteorite impacts can fling ae...

Tropopause The tropopause is an important boundary layer in Earth’s atmosphere dividing the lowermost atmospheric layer, the troposphere, from the stratosphere. From: Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences (Second Edition), 2015 Related terms: • Cirrus • Jet Stream • Wave • Stratosphere • Troposphere • Methane • Mixing Ratio M. Dameris, in Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences, 2003 Introduction The tropopause denotes the natural limit between the troposphere (Greek troposturn; troposphereturning or mixing sphere) and the stratosphere (stratified as opposed to mixed). These two atmospheric regions differ in various dynamical and chemical parameters, such as the vertical temperature structure, the potential vorticity, or the concentration of climatically relevant chemical species (e.g., ozone, water vapor). The tropopause is often clearly visible in observations or analyses of these dynamical and chemical parameters. However, in order to compile quantitative statistics of tropopause properties, one needs an objective definition that picks out the tropopause as accurately as possible. The tropopause can be defined in terms of physical parameters. The tropopause can exist anywhere between 70hPa (≈18km) and 400hPa (≈6km), and it is therefore not convenient to use a constant pressure level to describe the tropopause. The properties of potential vorticity allow its use as a tracer in upper-level dynamics, which is crucial in mid-latitude synoptic developments. Upper-level disturban...

Temperature in the Atmosphere As you rise up through the atmosphere, the temperature can vary greatly. The lowest level is the troposphere, which starts from the surface of the Earth. This level reaches to about 8 km high at the poles and 18 km high at the equator. The temperature gradually decreases to about −55°C until the tropopause is reached. This is the level where weather occurs. After passing through the tropopause, which is just a transition zone, the stratosphere starts. Here the temperatures rise to about 0°C at the stratopause. This is about 50 km above the Earth. Above the stratopause is the mesosphere. The temperatures begin to fall again to about −90°C at the mesopause, which is about 80 km in altitude. The thermosphere is the uppermost layer of the atmosphere, and the temperatures again begin to rise here. Because the air is dry, the temperatures can rise to over 100°C. The thermosphere continues upward to about 500 km above the Earth's surface.

The mesosphere is a layer of Earth's atmosphere. The mesosphere is directly above the Temperature decreases with height throughout the mesosphere. The coldest temperatures in Earth's atmosphere, about -90° C (-130° F), are found near the top of this layer. The boundary between the mesosphere and the thermosphere is called the mesopause. At the bottom of the mesosphere is the stratopause, the boundary between the mesosphere and the stratosphere. This diagram shows some of the features of the mesosphere. UCAR/Randy Russell The mesosphere is difficult to study, so less is known about this layer of the atmosphere than other layers. Weather balloons and other aircraft cannot fly high enough to reach the mesosphere. Satellites orbit above the mesosphere and cannot directly measure the traits of this layer. Scientists use instruments on sounding rockets to sample the mesosphere directly, but such flights are brief and infrequent. Since it is difficult to take measurements of the mesosphere directly using instruments, much about the mesosphere is still mysterious. Most meteors vaporize in the mesosphere. Some material from meteors lingers in the mesosphere, causing this layer to have a relatively high concentration of iron and other metal atoms. Very strange, high-altitude clouds called " The stratosphere and mesosphere together are sometimes referred to as the middle atmosphere. At the mesopause (the top of the mesosphere) and below, gases made of different types of atoms and mol...

clouds The lower levels of the troposphere are usually strongly influenced by Earth’s surface. This sublayer, known as the planetary Under clear, sunny skies over land, the planetary boundary layer tends to be relatively deep as a result of the heating of the ground by the Sun and the resultant generation of convective turbulence. During the summer, the planetary boundary layer can reach heights of 1 to 1.5 km (0.6 to 1 mile) above the land surface—for example, in the humid eastern United States—and up to 5 km (3 miles) in the southwestern When the rate of temperature decrease with height exceeds the adiabatic lapse rate for a region of the atmosphere, The ability of the convective bubbles to break through the top of the boundary layer depends on the environmental lapse rate aloft. The upward movement of penetrative bubbles will decrease rapidly if the mixed-layer inversion. On clear, calm nights, radiational cooling results in a temperature increase with height. In this situation, known as a nocturnal inversion, turbulence is suppressed by the strong thermal stratification. Thermally stable conditions occur when warmer air overlies cooler, denser air. Over During windy conditions, the mechanical production of turbulence becomes important. Turbulence eddies produced by In general, there tends to be little turbulence above the boundary layer in the troposphere. Even so, there are two notable exceptions. First, turbulence is produced near The top of the troposphere, called t...

The tropical tropopause layer (TTL) is the transition region between the well-mixed convective troposphere and the radiatively controlled stratosphere with air masses showing chemical and dynamical properties of both regions. The representation of the TTL in meteorological reanalysis data sets is important for studying the complex interactions of circulation, convection, trace gases, clouds, and radiation. In this paper, we present the evaluation of climatological and long-term TTL temperature and tropopause characteristics in the reanalysis data sets ERA-Interim, ERA5, JRA-25, JRA-55, MERRA, MERRA-2, NCEP-NCAR (R1), and CFSR. The evaluation has been performed as part of the SPARC (Stratosphere–troposphere Processes and their Role in Climate) Reanalysis Intercomparison Project (S-RIP). The most recent atmospheric reanalysis data sets (ERA-Interim, ERA5, JRA-55, MERRA-2, and CFSR) all provide realistic representations of the major characteristics of the temperature structure within the TTL. There is good agreement between reanalysis estimates of tropical mean temperatures and radio occultation data, with relatively small cold biases for most data sets. Temperatures at the cold point and lapse rate tropopause levels, on the other hand, show warm biases in reanalyses when compared to observations. This tropopause-level warm bias is related to the vertical resolution of the reanalysis data, with the smallest bias found for data sets with the highest vertical resolution around ...

The atmospheric pressure is measured by instruments called barometers. such as: • Aneroid is used to determine the possible day weather based on • The altimeter is used in airplanes to measure the elevation of navigation based on The greatest Atmospheric pressure maps In the The wind blowing from a region to another on the Earth’s surface due to the difference in Layers of the atmospheric envelope The atmospheric envelope consists of four layers above sea level, which are classified according to the change in There is a region between every two successive layers. In these regions, the temperature remains constant. The tropopause is the region between the Troposphere Characteristics and the importance of the troposphere layer The All-weather phenomena are present in the The Weather phenomena such as rains, wind, clouds, ….. etc. take place in The air movement in this layer is vertical, because the hot air currents (of less density) move upwards, while cold air currents (of high density) more downwards. The temperature of this layer decreases at a rate (6.5°C) for each (1 km) height until it reaches the lowest value of about (-60°C) at the tropopause. The temperature at the top of a mountain is less than that at its foot because, in , the temperature decreases as we go up by a rate (6.5°C) for each 1 km height. We can calculate the amount of change in the temperature in the troposphere layer using the following relation: The amount of change in temperature (decreases or incr...

Last Updated on Thu, 23 Mar 2023 | The For a grey gas, the problem of finding the tropopause height is relatively simple. Since the radiative equilibrium profile depends only on OLR - and that only via a simple formula - one starts with the radiative equilibrium profile for the desired OLR, picks a guess for the tropopause pressure, and then replaces the temperature between there and the ground with the adiabat for the gas under consideration. One then computes the actual OLR for the resulting profile, and generally will find that it is generally somewhat different from the OLR assumed in computing the radiative equlibrium. To make the solution consistent, one then adjusts the tropopause height until the computed OLR including the troposphere is the same as the target OLR within some desired accuracy. This is a simple problem in root-finding for a function of a single variable (the tropopause pressure), and can be solved by any number of means, Newton's Method and bisection being among the most commonly employed. For a real gas,the radiative equilibrium in the upper atmosphere depends on the spectrum of the infrared upwelling from below, so we no longer have the luxury of assuming that the stratospheric temperature profile remains fixed as we vary the estimate of the tropopause height. Instead, one must simultaneously solve for both the tropopause height and the corresponding equilibrium profile aloft. This is most easily done by a modification of the time-stepping method ...