What are the layers of the atmosphere separated by?
Category:
science
environment
The different layers of the atmosphere. The atmosphere can be divided into layers based on its temperature, as shown in the figure below. These layers are the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere and the thermosphere. A further region, beginning about 500 km above the Earth's surface, is called the exosphere.
Consequently, what separates the layers of the atmosphere?
The tropopause is at the top of the troposphere and separates it from the stratosphere. As air rises through the troposphere it cools due to reduced air pressure (Gay-Lussac's law). Incidentally, the reason we see the warming in the stratosphere is because this is the point of the atmosphere where the ozone layer is.
Keeping this in consideration, what causes the layers of the atmosphere?
We call this region of atmosphere the ionosphere. The main source of these layers is the Sun's ultraviolet light which ionizes atoms and molecules in the Earth's upper atmosphere. During this process, electrons are knocked free from molecules or particles in the atmosphere.
thermosphere