Point 2 of 7 — The Atmosphere: Layers, the Greenhouse Effect and Ozone DepletionQuestion bank: 0 questions (0 with pictures)
02Laws and quantitative relations
Pressure decreases with altitude: about 50% of the mass of the atmosphere lies below 5.5 km; at 12 km the pressure is a quarter of sea-level value.
Wien's law: λmax = 2.9×10⁶/T(nm·K). The Sun (≈ 5800 K) peaks at0.5 µm(visible); the Earth (≈ 288 K) peaks at10 µm(infrared) — that difference is why the atmosphere is transparent to the incoming radiation and opaque to the outgoing one.
Enhanced greenhouse effect: CO₂ has risen from about280 ppm(pre-industrial) to more than420 ppm today, a rise of about 50%, with a global mean temperature increase of roughly 1.1 °C.
Carbon budgets: 1 ppm of CO₂ ≈ 2.12 Gt of carbon in the atmosphere.
Ozone stoichiometry: one chlorine radical destroys up to100,000 ozone molecules before it is removed from the stratosphere.
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