GEOG 3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Tropopause, Free Good, Greenhouse Gas
Document Summary
Thin, shell-like envelope of air that surrounds our planet. What is air: a mixture of gases, odorless, colorless, tasteless, and formless, top of the atmosphere = 480 km above earth"s surface. To study the atmosphere, we view it in layers, each with distinctive properties and processes. Layers are de ned by one or more of the following criteria: composition, temperature, function. Density is a measure of mass per unit volume (i. e. , how much stu ts into a given space) Higher density = more mass (air molecules) Gravity compresses air, making it denser near the surface: density decreases with height, thinning of air at higher altitudes. A greater portion of the atmosphere"s mass is concentrated near the earth"s surface. Tuesday, october 3, 2017: only 0. 1% of the total mass of the atmosphere remains above 50 km, half of the total mass of the atmosphere lies below 5. 5 km.
