Atmosphere

Atmosphere

1. Troposphere

   • Main Composition: Air
   • Temperature and Pressure Span: Starts at 15C and decreases 6.5C for each km in altitude. Pressure from 200 to 1000 millibars
   • Functions: Regulate weather and hold life
   • Manmade flying machines: Commercial jets, airplanes and atmospheric baloon.
   • Extension: From sea level up to 12 km above

2. Stratosphere

   • Extension: Starts at 12km above the ground and ends at 50 km.
   • Main Composition: Air and ozone.
   • Temperature and Pressure Span: The average is -51C, as the altitude increases so does the temperature. 1 mb of pressure.
   • Functions; Absorbes ultraviolet sun light thanks to its ozone
   • Manmade flying machines: Spy planes, radiosonde and jet aircrafts.

3. Mesosphere

   • Functions: Weather control, burning of meteors and asteroids, and warming the ozone.
   • Main Composition: Air in very low concentration
   • Extension: 50km of the ground until 80 km.
   • Manmade flying machines: Sounding rockets
   • Temperature and Pressure Span: Temperature decreases as altitude increases, getting down to 92 C. Pressure varies from .001 atmospheres upt to .000001 atmospheres

4. Atmospheric pollution

   • Natural Sources: Wildfires, Volcanoes, Farm remainings.
   • Human sources: cities, factories, cars, etc.
   • AQI: Its measured in IMECAS (in Mexico)
   • Main atmospheric pollutants: SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide), nitrogen oxides, CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) and Particular Matter (PM),

5. Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon and Sulfur

   • Oxygen importance and presence: Creating ozone to protect us from radiation, respiration. Generally found as dioxides in solid form
   • Natural processes of oxygen: Photosynthesis vs Cellular Respiraation
   • Carbon importance and presence: It can be found as CO2 (Carbon Dioxide).
   • Natural carbon processes of carbon: Exhalation, volcanic eruptions. The main cycle begins when CO2 remains from fossil fuels and cities, then get absorbed by plants which create oxygen, into humans and then exhalation.
   • Nitrogen importance and presence: They are present on the 78% of air and they mainly are used for plant nutrition. They are present as N2 in air, NO2 (Nitrate), NH4 (Ammonium) and C-NO (Organic Nitrogen).
   • Natural processes of nitrogen: Nutrition of plants by turning N2 into nitrogen molecules such as ammonia by the use of bacteria and then being turned back to get back to the atmosphere
   • Sulfur presence: Products of volcanic eruptions that remain in the atmosphere, in form of SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide), and can then form acid rain.

6. Thermosphere

   • Extensioon: 90km up to 500 km above sea level
   • Main composition: Atomic nitrogen, atomic oxygen and helium.
   • Temperature and Pressure Span: From 500 C up to 2000 C depending on the daytime. Pressure around 100 kilopascals or 0.007 mb
   • Functions: Contain aurora borealis and raadiation protection.
   • Manmade flying machines: Satelites and the ISS

7. Exosphere

   • Extension: 500km up to 190,000km from sea level
   • Functions: Protection from radiation and works as a frontier that fades into space
   • Main Composition: Helium, CO2 (Carbon Dioxide), hydrogen and atomic oxygen.
   • Temperature and Pressure Span: Temperature varies from 0 C up to 1700 C. The pressure is almost null at .007 pa.
   • Manmade flying machines: Satelites