Weather And Atmosphere Essay

1.4 The Weather

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. – John Ruskin (1819 – 1900), an English social thinker

By weather we generally mean the state of the atmosphere at a given time and place, with respect to variables such as temperature, humidity (moisture), wind velocity, barometric pressure, rain, cloud, snow and other meteorological conditions that happen in its very first layer of 5 layers. The Earth's Atmosphere (or Air) is about 300 miles (480 km) thick. The most of the atmosphere – about 80% of mass – is within 10 miles (16 km) of the surface of the Earth. There is no exact place where the atmosphere

It is a thin layer (3 mm max) at the upper stratosphere. It has a high concentration of ozone which is a reactive form of oxygen. Ozone layer absorbs 97 to 99% of the medium-frequency ultraviolet light from Sun. Ozone (O3) is created when ultraviolet light strikes oxygen molecules (O2) containing two oxygen atoms and splits them into individual oxygen atoms and then that atomic oxygen (O) combines with molecule oxygen (O2) to create O3. O3 is unstable. As ultraviolet light strikes ozone again, it splits into oxygen molecule (O2) and atomic oxygen (O). It is a continuous process called the ‘ozone-oxygen cycle.’ This occurs only in the ozone layer which is anywhere 6 to 31 miles (10 to 50 km) above the Earth's surface. Its thickness is only 1 to 3 mm which varies over seasons and over geographical locations. About 90% of the ozone in our atmosphere is contained in the stratosphere. Ozone concentration is higher (about 2 to 8 parts per million) at 12-25 miles (20-40 km). While ozone layer is important to absorb ultraviolet radiations from Sun, man-made fluorocarbon compounds are causing its depletion. The depletion of ozone layer is a dire consequence for the life on

On earth’s surface, weather is conditioned by many factors, especially the presence of mountains, deserts and large water bodies, such as oceans, rivers and lakes. Temperature anomalies at the water/atmosphere interface can cause extreme vicissitudes in the weather. One example is the ‘El Niño/Southern Oscillation’ (ENSO) as it is known. It occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean roughly every 5 years. It is a phenomenon due to variation in temperature of the surface of the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean – warming or cooling. It causes extreme weather conditions in the equatorial pacific region like drought in Australia or nonstop rainfall in South America. In U.S., Texas burns while Mississippi