Edgepedia

Atmosphere of Earth

The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases retained by gravity, made mostly of nitrogen and oxygen, that supplies air, drives weather, and blocks harmful radiation.

Atmosphere of Io

The atmosphere of Io is the extremely thin, sulfur dioxide atmosphere of Jupiter's moon Io, supplied by volcanic outgassing and sublimating frost, collapsing nightly in Jupiter's shadow.

Atmosphere of Jupiter

The atmosphere of Jupiter (Jovian atmosphere) is an enormous envelope of hydrogen and helium with belts, zones, and the centuries-old Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth.

Atmosphere of Mars

The atmosphere of Mars, also called the Martian atmosphere, is a thin, carbon dioxide-dominated envelope of gas; its surface pressure is under one hundredth of Earth's sea-level pressure.

Atmosphere of Mercury

Mercury's atmosphere is a thin surface-bounded exosphere, the only planet without a substantial atmosphere, made of atoms blasted off its surface by solar wind and meteoroids.

Atmosphere of Neptune

Neptune's atmosphere, mostly hydrogen and helium with methane, is the most active of the giant planets, with winds up to 1,200 mph and storms like the Great Dark Spot.

Atmosphere of Pluto

The atmosphere of Pluto, also called Pluto's atmosphere, is a tenuous envelope of mostly nitrogen gas about 10 microbars in pressure, capped by a blue haze.

Atmosphere of Titan

The atmosphere of Titan is a dense envelope of nitrogen and methane surrounding Saturn's largest moon, the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere.

Atmosphere of Venus

The atmosphere of Venus is a dense carbon dioxide envelope with 92 bars of surface pressure and a 467 °C surface kept hot by a runaway greenhouse effect.

Atmospheric absorption is the process by which atmospheric gases, clouds, and particles take up electromagnetic radiation as heat; water vapor contributes about 50% of infrared absorption, clouds 25%, and CO2 20%.

Atmospheric chemistry

Atmospheric chemistry is the branch of atmospheric science that studies the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere and the reactions that produce and remove its gases and particles.

Atmospheric circulation

Atmospheric circulation, or the three-cell model, is the large-scale motion of Earth's atmosphere carrying heat, moisture, and momentum from the tropics poleward through Hadley, Ferrel, and polar cells.

Atmospheric CO2 concentration

Atmospheric CO2 concentration is the abundance of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, measured in parts per million and up from 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution to 423 ppm in 2024.

Atmospheric correction

Atmospheric correction is the remote sensing processing step that removes atmospheric scattering and absorption from satellite or airborne sensor measurements, recovering surface reflectance over land and water-leaving radiance over ocean.

Atmospheric dispersion model

An atmospheric dispersion model is a mathematical model simulating how pollutants released from emission sources are transported, dispersed, and deposited, producing concentration estimates used in air quality regulation.

Atmospheric dispersion modeling

Atmospheric dispersion modeling uses simulation methods, most commonly Gaussian plume models like AERMOD, to predict how airborne pollutants spread from sources such as stacks and spills.

Atmospheric distillation

Atmospheric distillation is the first step in every petroleum refinery, heating crude oil to about 600 to 750 degrees Fahrenheit in a tall column to separate it into naphtha, kerosene, gas oil, and residue.

Atmospheric diving suit

An atmospheric diving suit, or ADS, is a tethered one-person submersible shaped like a suit of armor, keeping the operator at surface pressure to avoid decompression sickness.

Atmospheric entry

Atmospheric entry, also known as re-entry or spacecraft reentry, is the passage of a spacecraft or natural object into a planet's atmosphere, requiring thermal protection against extreme heating.

Atmospheric escape

Atmospheric escape is the loss of a planetary atmosphere to space by gas particles whose energy exceeds the planet's gravity, shaping how planets evolve over time.

Atmospheric escape on Mars

Atmospheric escape on Mars is the ongoing loss of Martian atmosphere to space, driven by solar wind and photochemical processes; escape has removed at least 50% of the atmosphere.

Atmospheric methane

Atmospheric methane (CH4), second most important human-driven greenhouse gas; reached 1923 ppb in 2023, 2.6x preindustrial; agriculture 40% and fossil fuels 34% of anthropogenic emissions; ~9-year lifetime; record 17.69 ppb growth in 2021.

Atmospheric neutrinos

Atmospheric neutrinos are neutrinos and antineutrinos produced when cosmic rays strike nuclei in the upper atmosphere, the setting for the 1998 discovery of neutrino oscillation.

Atmospheric plasma spraying

Atmospheric plasma spraying, also called air plasma spraying, is a thermal spray process that melts powder in a plasma jet to build coatings, widely used for turbine thermal barrier coatings.

Atmospheric pressure

Atmospheric pressure, also known as air or barometric pressure, is the force per unit area exerted by the weight of air above a point, about 1013.25 millibars at sea level.

Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization

Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) is a soft mass spectrometry technique that ionizes vaporized compounds at atmospheric pressure via a corona discharge, suited to small, low-polarity analytes in LC–MS.

Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry

Atmospheric pressure chemical ionization mass spectrometry (APCI-MS) is a soft ionization technique using a corona discharge, suited to less polar compounds and complementary to electrospray ionization.

Atmospheric pressure photoionization

Atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI) is an ionization method for liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, developed around 2000, that uses vacuum-ultraviolet photons from a krypton lamp to ionize nonpolar compounds that respond poorly to electrospray ionization.

Atmospheric railway

The atmospheric railway, or pneumatic railway, is a railway where trains are pushed by air pressure on a piston in a tube between the rails, tried in the 1840s.