The Stratosphere, specifically, the lower Stratosphere has, it seems, been drying out. Water
vapor is a greenhouse gas, and the cooling effect on the Earth's climate due to this desiccation
may account for a fair bit of the slowdown in the rise of global temperatures seen over the past
ten years. The Stratosphere sits on top of the Troposphere, the lowest, densest layer of the
atmosphere.
The boundary between the two, the Tropopause, is about 18km above your head, if you are in
the tropics, and a few kilometers lower if you are at higher latitudes (or up a mountain). In the
Troposphere, the air at higher altitudes is in general cooler than the air below it, an unstable
situation in which warm and often moist air below is endlessly buoying up into cooler air
above. The resultant commotion creates clouds, storms and much of the rest of the world's
weather. In the Stratosphere, the air gets warmer at higher altitudes, which provides stability,
The Stratosphere-which extends up to about 55km, where the Mesosphere begins, is made
even less weather-prone by the absence of water vapor, and thus of the clouds and
precipitation to which it leads. This is because the top of the Troposphere is normally very cold.
causing ascending water vapor to freeze into ice crystals that drift and fall, rather than
continuing up into the Stratosphere
A little water manages to get past this cold trap. But as Dr Solomon and her colleagues note
satellite measurements show that rather less has been doing so over the past ten years than
Answers
Answered by
0
Answer:
see in your book answers is there
Answered by
1
Answer:
feeling less girl here ☺☺
Similar questions