Weather: Boy, that atmosphere sure feels heavy

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Weather Boy, that atmosphere sure feels heavy

• How you lift weights every day without knowing it
  until todayand what it has to do with weather

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Just how thick is it?
Closest guess gets a prize!!! Each person only
gets one guessand yes, this is totally random

• ?

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Its like an onion. Its got layers
550 km (344 mi) Exosphere 80 km (50 mi)
Ionosphere 80 - 550 km (50 344
mi) Thermosphere 50 80 km (31 50
mi) Mesosphere 17-50 km (10 - 31
mi) Stratosphere 0 17 km (10 - 7.5
mi) Troposphere
Pop question what do these terms have in common?
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Troposphere

• In just 10 km/6.3 mi, the troposphere contains
  75 of the mass in the entire atmosphere!!!
  (thats about 3750 trillion metric tons of it)
• 1 metric ton 1000 kg 2204.6 lbs

• How many of you does it take to make 1 metric
  ton? To equal the mass of the atmosphere?

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A few more things about the troposphere

• Our weather mostly occurs in this layer (clouds,
  snow, storms etc)
• thicker at the equator than at the poles
• Temperature drops 6.5 Celsius/11.7 Fahrenheit for
  every 1 km in altitude to -60 C/-76 F at the top

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The other spheres

• Stratosphere
• 17-50 km (10 - 31 mi)
• Air is thin
• -60 C /-76 F but warmer in near the top where we
  find ozone
• Mesosphere
• 50-80km (31mi-50 mi)
• Air is even thinner
• Brrr, its cold up here. -90C/ -130F
• The meteoroid force field layer

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• Thermosphere
• 80 550 km (50-344mi)
• The air is extremely thin. (get the pattern?)
• In a given size of space, Theres 0.001 as many
  particles in the air up here compared to where
  you are
• (1m 3 of air here is the same mass as 100,000 m3
  up there!)
• Thats what we call low density
• it thins gradually into space
• And though it would feel verrrry cold, its
  actually HOT?!! 2,000 C (3632 F)!

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Lets not forget the ionosphere
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Ooooh, aaaaahonosphere

• 80km (50 mi)
• The closer part of the ionosphere has
• charged particles (ions) that reflect radio waves
  back to earth
• The farther part has
• gases that light up when struck by ions carried
  by solar winds, and traveling at 300 1200 kph
  (188 750mph) zoom zoom

Aurora borealis, Northern lights
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And finally, the exosphere

• 550 km (344 mi)
• Home of satellites and space junk
• Lots and lots of space junk

Random fact 2006984 there are now over 13,000
man made objects more than 4in traveling over
22,000 miles an hour (35,000 kilometers an hour).
At such high velocity, even small junk can rip
holes in a spacecraft or disable a satellite by
causing electrical shorts that result from clouds
of superheated gas.
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To sum up
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And what does this have to do with weather???

• Weather patterns are caused by differences in
  air density, pressure, humidity and temperature
  of the air.