Atmospheric Sciences

Oxygen. Earth's early(first) atmosphere is believed to contain hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and water. but still it only had little to no oxygen.

That depends upon how it is done. If we switched to renewable alternative energy supplies, the economy would actually be stimulated, and our foreign trade deficit would be substantially reduced. It would be great for our economy.

If we just suddenly stopped importing fuel without developing alternatives, that would reduce our CO2 emissions close to 50%, but the economic impact would be severe.

i dont know but wouldn't that bee cool?! ---- The prism is not angled that way, if the sky and grass were that way then you would ask your question the other way around because it would be natural to us.

Photosynthesizing prokaryotes affected the ancient atmosphere by adding oxygen. In ancient times the oxygen level was .42%, compared to the 21% oxygen level now. Photosynthesizing prokaryotes have made the world livable today.

Plants are the primary organisms that absorb sunlight energy through a process called photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, plants use chlorophyll to capture sunlight and convert it into chemical energy stored in the form of glucose. This energy is then used by plants for growth and other metabolic processes.

A basic answer is that the densest ocean water is the saltiest - a ship floats higher in salt water (sea) than in fresh water (lake).

Also cold water tends to sink towards the ocean floor, or may form a layer mid way.

At the bottom of the troposphere

This process is called transpiration.

According to the Precambrian rock record, much of Earth's first free oxygen combined with iron to form iron oxide minerals, which settled to the ocean floor as banded iron formations. This process occurred around 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxidation Event.

The levels have risen from 0.028% to the present (2013) 0.04%. This increase has occurred because humans discovered fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) and started burning them. They also committed deforestation!

See the simple graphs at the link below.

Oxygen:) hope this helped

Have a great day :) :p :D

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a diatomic molecule found in Earth's atmosphere. It consists of two atoms of carbon and one atom of oxygen. It is a greenhouse gas that plays a significant role in regulating the Earth's temperature.

Airplanes fly in the Stratosphere, which is the second major layer of the Earth's atmosphere. It is below the mesosphere and above the troposphere. It is stratified in temperature, with warmer layers higher up and cooler layers farther down. This is in contrast to the troposphere near the Earth's surface, which is cooler higher up and warmer farther down. The winds in the stratosphere run parallel to the Earth in fast moving air streams. 

Water stripping can remove many harmful and reactive gases such as Sulphur dioxide (SO2) and sulphur trioxide (SO3) since both gases react with water and form sulphurous (H2SO3) and sulphuric acid (H2SO4). Chlorine gas can also be remove using water stripping.

1. Color: The physical color of a mineral can be a key characteristic in identifying it.
2. Hardness: Using the Mohs scale, minerals can be tested for their hardness by scratching them with different materials.
3. Streak: The color of the powdered form of a mineral obtained by scratching it against a rough surface.
4. Cleavage/fracture: The way a mineral breaks along certain planes (cleavage) or irregularly (fracture) can be diagnostic.
5. Luster: The quality and intensity of light reflected from the surface of a mineral.
6. Specific gravity: The density of a mineral compared to the density of water.
7. Crystal structure: The internal arrangement of atoms in a mineral, often visible in its crystal shape.

As altitude increases, air pressure decreases. Gravity causes the atmosphere to become heavier the closer you are to the ground. The atmosphere may seem weightless but all the air molecules add up to a tremendous amount of mass. If you think of the atmosphere like blankets, the more blankets you have piled on you the heavier they become, thus pressing down on your body more and more. This is the same in the atmosphere, where the higher the altitude, the less overlying atmosphere, the less pressure on air molecules. At higher altitudes the air molecules have more freedom to move around.

The principal source of heat to the Earth's atmosphere is the Sun. Solar radiation heats the Earth's surface, which in turn warms the air above it, creating temperature variations that drive atmospheric circulation. Without the Sun's energy, Earth's atmosphere would be much cooler.

This is the troposphere. It is the layer of air where all weather occurs. Above the troposphere is the stratosphere, home of the ozone layer.

The depth of the atmosphere is difficult to define because it has no clear outer boundary; the top­most layer - the exosphere - becomes increasingly rarefied, gradually merging into outer space. The troposphere, the lowest layer, contains about 80 per cent of the total mass of the atmosphere. It extends up to about 8km over the poles, 10 to 11km over the middle latitudes, and 18km over the equator, where the greatest heating takes place.

The troposphere is the atmospheric zone of most interest to meteorologists, because it con­tains almost all of the water vapor and because most of the various weather phenomena occur in it. In the troposphere temperatures generally fall with increasing altitude; near the upper boundary (the tropopause), however, they stabilize at about -57°C, although this may vary by as much as 20°C. Above the tropopause is the stratosphere.

In the middle latitudes, strong winds rotate around the Earth in shifting bands from west to east. These winds are concentrated in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. Called the circumpolar vortex, or jet streams, these winds blow between the permanent areas of low press­ure over the poles (caused by the sinking of cold air) and permanent areas of high pressure over the tropics (caused by ascending warm air).

These high-level jet streams are fairly regular, because they are not subject to friction with land surfaces nor are they affected by various other fac­tors that complicate wind flows near the Earth's surface. The jet streams often move as fast as 290km/h and so they are of great importance to aircraft. On long flights a subsonic jet plane can save up to one hour and 10 tons of fuel if it uses routes with the strongest tail winds or the weakest headwinds. First discovered by high-flying aircraft during World War II, the jet streams are now known to have a considerable influence on the weather at ground level in middle latitudes.

The stratosphere extends from the tropopause to about 50km above ground level. In this zone is the important ozone layer, where heat is generated by the absorption of ultraviolet radiation. Hence, although temperatures are stable in the lower stratosphere, they increase steadily at higher levels, reaching about -10°C at the stratopause.

Between 50 and 500km above the surface is the rarefied ionosphere, which is often divided into the mesosphere (50 to 80km) and the thermosphere (80 to 500km). In the mesosphere tempe­ratures fall again, reaching about -80°C at the mesopause (the boundary between the mesophere and the thermosphere). But in the thermosphere, they increase steadily with height. This pheno­menon occurs because at an altitude of about 200km a layer of atomic oxygen (0) absorbs ultraviolet radiation.

In addition to ultraviolet radiation, the ionosphere is also bombarded by cosmic radiation and solar X-rays, which cause the gases in the ionosphere to ionize (that is, the gas molecules are changed into electrically-charged particles called ions). Brilliant displays of colored lights in the sky - called the Aurora Borealis in the Northern Hemisphere and the Aurora Australis in the Southern Hemisphere - occur when streams of electrically-charged particles from the Sun (the solar wind) ionize the atmos­pheric gases. Aurorae are normally visible only relatively near the poles and are usually accom­panied by magnetic storms.

Beyond 500km above the Earth's surface is the very rarefied exosphere, which consists only of scattered atoms of oxygen, hydrogen and helium.

Yes, the temperature of the atmosphere can affect the position of your shadow. This is because temperature can cause variations in air density, which can refract light differently and change the apparent position of shadows.

No, spaceships cannot bounce off the atmosphere. When entering the Earth's atmosphere, spaceships experience atmospheric drag which slows them down, causing them to eventually descend and land or burn up if they are moving too fast.

Oxygen is the gas that accounts for about 20 percent of Earth's atmosphere.