The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, commonly known as air, that surrounds the planet Earth and is retained by Earth's gravity. 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 (greenhouse effect), and reducing temperature extremes between day and night (the diurnal temperature variation). In general, air pressure and density decrease with altitude in the atmosphere. However, temperature has a more complicated profile with altitude, and may remain relatively constant or even increase with altitude in some regions. Because the general pattern of the temperature/altitude profile is constant and measurable by means of instrumented balloon soundings, the temperature behavior provides a useful metric to distinguish atmospheric layers. In this way, Earth's atmosphere can be divided (called atmospheric stratification) into five main layers:
Troposphere
1. Balloons
2. Birds
3. Clouds
Stratosphere
4. Planes
5. Weather baloons
6. Spy planes
7. Ozone layer
Mesosphere
8. Noctilucent clouds
9. Meteorit burn
10. Sounding rocket
11. Meteors (Sparks)
Thermosphere
12. Aurora cloud
13. Hubble Space Telescope
14. Shuttles
15. International Space Station
16. No sound
17. Former Mir Station
Exosphere
18. Polar Orbiting Satellite
19. Polar Orbiting Satellite
20. Medium Earth orbit satellite
21. Medium Earth orbit satellite
This fun learning game may answer some of the following questions:
- Which are the 5 layers of the atmosphere?
- Where do space stations orbit?
- Which is the first atmospheric layer?
