Latest Atmosphere of Earth Stories
NASA A constant stream of space debris flows toward Earth from the rest of the solar system. Large meteors can sometimes survive the intense friction and heat upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, but by and large the meteors evaporate and reform into tiny particles that are left to whiz through the atmosphere. Such particles are so light and so ubiquitous that scientists refer to them as smoke. Tracking how this smoke swirls around Earth has implications for understanding weather and...
[ Watch the Video: What is Bacteria? ] Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In 2010, a NASA DC-8 soared high up into the troposphere to collect air samples in order to study air masses associated with tropical storms. What they found was quite surprising. Bugs - microorganisms actually - in the troposphere. The troposphere is the portion of the Earth’s atmosphere that extends from ground level up to approximately 12 miles above sea level, and apparently it is...
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1988, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online NASA has announced plans to send an unmanned, remotely-controlled research vehicle into the upper atmosphere in order to find out what impact climate change is having on our planet. The program, which has been christened the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX), will utilize instruments on board a long-range Global Hawk aircraft to collect measurements above the tropical Pacific Ocean, the US space agency explained....
WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Starting this month, NASA will send a remotely piloted research aircraft as high as 65,000 feet over the tropical Pacific Ocean to probe unexplored regions of the upper atmosphere for answers to how a warming climate is changing Earth. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) The first flights of the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX), a multi-year airborne science campaign with a heavily...
[ Watch the Video: 2012 Ozone Hole Max ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online According to data from NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites, the average area covered by the Antarctic ozone hole this year was the second smallest in the last 20 years, which scientists attribute to warmer temperatures in the Antarctic lower stratosphere. The ozone reached its maximum size for the 2012 season on September 22. On this date, it covered...
UC Riverside-led research team finds evidence for a dramatic rise in early oxygen about 2.3 billion years ago followed, more surprisingly, by an equally impressive fall Most researchers imagine the initial oxygenation of the ocean and atmosphere to have been something like a staircase, but with steps only going up. The first step, so the story goes, occurred around 2.4 billion years ago, and this, the so-called Great Oxidation Event, has obvious implications for the origins and evolution...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The last space shuttle flight took place on July 8, 2011, sending Atlantis into space for its thirty-third, and final mission. This flight marked the end of a 20-year space shuttle program. As Atlantis reached a height of about 70 miles over the east coast of the U.S., it released 350 tons of water vapor exhaust. The vapor plume spread and floated on air currents high in the Earth's atmosphere, crossing through the observation paths...
Subtle connections between the 11-year-solar cycle, the stratosphere and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research results appearing this week in the journal Science. The findings will help scientists get an edge on predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance. "It's been long known that weather patterns are...
Latest Atmosphere of Earth Reference Libraries
Earth's Atmosphere -- Earth's atmosphere consists of nitrogen (78.1%) and oxygen (20.9%), with small amounts of argon (0.9%), carbon dioxide (variable, but around 0.035%), water vapor, and other gases. The atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation and reducing temperature extremes between day and night. 75% of the atmosphere exists within 11km of the planetary surface. Temperature and the Atmospheric Layers The temperature of the Earth's atmosphere...
Sky -- Although almost everyone have seen it, sky is hard to be defined precisely. Generally, sky is the space seen when one looks upward from the surface of a planet. Some people define sky as the denser gaseous zone of a planet's atmosphere. Clouds, rainbows and weather all occur amongst a planet's sky. In astronomy, the sky is divided into many regions, called constellations. The blue colour of the daytime sky results from the selective scattering of light rays. When the sunlight...
![Station Crew Sees \](/media/gallery/aim-aeronomy-of-ice-in-the-mesosphere/thumbs/thumbs_662919main_iss031-e-116058_lrg_full.jpg "Station Crew Sees \")
