Complete the provided clues. (1) Air helps in their movement through the sky.
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Part One
Most of us probably don’t think much about Earth’s atmosphere, let alone how much humans are affecting it. After all, it’s just there.
Gazing into the sky during the day, it’s tough to get a handle on what’s happening up there. Our atmosphere seems tantalizingly close and yet mysteriously distant. The life-sustaining air we breathe envelops our planet like a pale-blue security blanket, clinging to us by the force of gravity. We see birds, planes, an ever-changing patchwork of clouds and, in some places, air pollution. Farther out, our Moon glows down on us and a blazing Sun hangs in the sky. From our Earth-bound perspective, it’s hard to tell where our atmosphere ends and space begins. (Our atmosphere is like a multi-layered cake.)
Then darkness falls, and through the murky blackness, a portal opens to the heavens, punctuated only by the light of the Moon, stars and cosmos. The descent of night makes sizing up our atmosphere an even more baffling proposition.
It’s only when we view Earth from the unique vantage point of space that the true nature of our atmosphere becomes apparent. From Earth orbit, we gain a new window into our planet. Beneath us, the very edge of the atmosphere — known as Earth’s “limb” — appears as a glowing halo of colors; a luminescent layer cake that gradually fades into the blackness of space. And suddenly our atmosphere, which seemed so vast and mysterious from the ground, appears shockingly thin, even fragile.
So thought retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. As he neared the end of a one-year stay aboard the International Space Station in February 2016, he told CNN, "When you look at the ... atmosphere on the limb of the Earth, I wouldn't say it looks unhealthy, but it definitely looks very, very fragile and just kind of like this thin film, so it looks like something that we definitely need to take care of." Other NASA astronauts have made similar remarks.
Indeed, Earth’s atmosphere isn’t something we can take for granted. Without it, life as we know it wouldn’t exist. Not only does it contain the oxygen we need to live, but it also protects us from harmful ultraviolet solar radiation. It creates the pressure without which liquid water couldn’t exist on our planet’s surface. And it warms our planet and keeps temperatures habitable for our living Earth.
In fact, Earth’s atmosphere is very thin, with a mass only about one-millionth that of the planet itself. Further, about 80 percent of the atmosphere is contained within its lowest layer, the troposphere, which is, on average, just 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) thick.
While there’s no exact boundary line between the atmosphere and space, the accepted standard is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Earth’s surface. If you drove that distance on the ground, you might see a change in scenery. But travel that distance straight up, and you’ll quickly find yourself in an environment inhospitable to life. At about 8 kilometers (5 miles) altitude, there’s insufficient oxygen in the air to sustain human life. At around 19 kilometers (12 miles) altitude, your blood boils unless you’re in a pressurized environment.
So is Earth’s atmosphere big or small? Is it fragile or robust? Stable or volatile? And how much are humans affecting it, really?
The answer, it seems, is all of the above, and we’re affecting it a lot. In this five-part series, we asked several NASA atmospheric scientists to weigh in on the matter.
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