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The troposphere is the first and lowest layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, and contains 75% of the total mass of the planetary atmosphere, 99% of the total mass of water vapour and aerosols, and is where most weather phenomena occur. From the planetary surface of the Earth, the average height of the troposphere is 18 km in the tropics; 17 km in the middle latitudes; and 6 km in the high latitudes of the polar regions in winter; thus the average height of the troposphere is 13 km.
Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone around Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon is referred to as the ozone hole. There are also springtime polar tropospheric ozone depletion events in addition to these stratospheric events.
The stratosphere The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air high in the sky and the cool layers of air in the low sky, close to the planetary surface of the Earth. The increase of temperature with altitude is a result of the absorption of the Sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation by the ozone layer. The temperature inversion is in contrast to the troposphere, near the Earth's surface, where temperature decreases with altitude.
The tropopause is the atmospheric boundary that demarcates the troposphere from the stratosphere; which are two of the five layers of the atmosphere of Earth. The tropopause is a thermodynamic gradient-stratification layer, that marks the end of the troposphere, and lies approximately 17 kilometres (11 mi) above the equatorial regions, and approximately 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) above the polar regions.
The atmosphere of Earth, commonly known as air, is the layer of gases retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for liquid water to exist on the Earth's surface, absorbing ultraviolet solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention, and reducing temperature extremes between day and night.
Ground level ozone (O3) also tropospheric ozone, is a trace gas of the troposphere, with an average concentration of 20–30 parts per billion by volume (ppbv), with close to 100 ppbv in polluted areas. Ozone is also an important constituent of the stratosphere, where the ozone layer exists which is located between 10 and 50 kilometers above the Earth's surface. The troposphere is the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere. It extends from the ground up to a variable height of approximately 14 kilometers above sea level. Ozone is least concentrated in the ground layer (or planetary boundary layer) of the troposphere. Ground level or tropospheric ozone is created by chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (NOx gases) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The combination of these chemicals in the presence of sunlight form ozone. Its concentration increases as height above sea level increases, with a maximum concentration at the tropopause. About 90% of total ozone in the atmosphere is in the stratosphere, and 10% is in the troposphere. Although tropospheric ozone is less concentrated than stratospheric ozone, it is of concern because of its health effects. Ozone in the troposphere is considered a greenhouse gas, and may contribute to global warming.
Atmospheric chemistry is a branch of atmospheric science in which the chemistry of the Earth's atmosphere and that of other planets is studied. It is a multidisciplinary approach of research and draws on environmental chemistry, physics, meteorology, computer modeling, oceanography, geology and volcanology and other disciplines. Research is increasingly connected with other areas of study such as climatology.
Paul Jozef Crutzen was a Dutch meteorologist and atmospheric chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for his work on atmospheric chemistry and specifically for his efforts in studying the formation and decomposition of atmospheric ozone. In addition to studying the ozone layer and climate change, he popularized the term Anthropocene to describe a proposed new epoch in the Quarternary period when human actions have a drastic effect on the Earth. He was also amongst the first few scientists to introduce the idea of a nuclear winter to describe the potential climatic effects stemming from large-scale atmospheric pollution including smoke from forest fires, industrial exhausts, and other sources like oil fires.
The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry is a non-university research institute under the auspices of the Max Planck Society in Mainz. It was created as a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1911.
CLaMS is a modular chemistry transport model (CTM) system developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. CLaMS was first described by McKenna et al. (2000a,b) and was expanded into three dimensions by Konopka et al. (2004). CLaMS has been employed in recent European field campaigns THESEO, EUPLEX, TROCCINOX SCOUT-O3, and RECONCILE with a focus on simulating ozone depletion and water vapour transport.
Over the last two centuries many environmental chemical observations have been made from a variety of ground-based, airborne, and orbital platforms and deposited in databases. Many of these databases are publicly available. All of the instruments mentioned in this article give online public access to their data. These observations are critical in developing our understanding of the Earth's atmosphere and issues such as climate change, ozone depletion and air quality. Some of the external links provide repositories of many of these datasets in one place. For example, the Cambridge Atmospheric Chemical Database, is a large database in a uniform ASCII format. Each observation is augmented with the meteorological conditions such as the temperature, potential temperature, geopotential height, and equivalent PV latitude.
A chemical transport model (CTM) is a type of computer numerical model which typically simulates atmospheric chemistry and may give air pollution forecasting.
MOZART is a chemistry transport model (CTM) developed jointly by the (US) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-Met) to simulate changes in ozone concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere. MOZART was designed to simulate tropospheric chemical and transport processes, but has been extended into the stratosphere and mesosphere. It can be driven by standard meteorological fields from, e.g.,
Stratospheric sulfur aerosols are sulfur-rich particles which exist in the stratosphere region of the Earth's atmosphere. The layer of the atmosphere in which they exist is known as the Junge layer, or simply the stratospheric aerosol layer. These particles consist of a mixture of sulfuric acid and water. They are created naturally, such as by photochemical decomposition of sulfur-containing gases, e.g. carbonyl sulfide. When present in high levels, e.g. after a strong volcanic eruption such as Mount Pinatubo, they produce a cooling effect, by reflecting sunlight, and by modifying clouds as they fall out of the stratosphere. This cooling may persist for a few years before the particles fall out.
ECHAM is a general circulation model (GCM) developed by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the research organisations of the Max Planck Society. It was created by modifying global forecast models developed by ECMWF to be used for climate research. The model was given its name as a combination of its origin and the place of development of its parameterisation package, Hamburg. The default configuration of the model resolves the atmosphere up to 10 hPa, but it can be reconfigured to 0.01 hPa for use in studying the stratosphere and lower mesosphere.
SAGE III on ISS is the fourth generation of a series of NASA Earth-observing instruments, known as the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment. The first SAGE III instrument was launched on the Russian Meteor (satellite) spacecraft. The recently revised SAGE III will be mounted to the International Space Station where it will use the unique vantage point of ISS to make long-term measurements of ozone, aerosols, water vapor, and other gases in Earth's atmosphere.
Barbara J. Finlayson-Pitts is Canadian-American atmospheric chemist. She is a professor in the chemistry department at the University of California, Irvine and is the Director of AirUCI Institute. Finlayson-Pitts and James N. Pitts, Jr. are the authors of Chemistry of the Upper and Lower Atmosphere: Theory, Experiments, and Applications (1999). She has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2006 and is the laureate for the 2017 Garvan–Olin Medal. In 2016 she co-chaired the National Academy of Science report "The Future of Atmospheric Chemistry Research"
Mian Chin is a Chinese atmospheric chemist. She is a physical scientist in the atmospheric chemistry and dynamics laboratory in the earth science division at Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research includes aerosol-cloud-chemistry-climate interactions. She received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2005.
Jennifer Logan is an atmospheric scientist known for her research on how human activities influence the atmosphere, particularly with respect to biomass burning and the ozone hole.
References
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