Encyclopedia > Mesopause

  Article Content

Mesosphere

Redirected from Mesopause

The mesosphere is that layer, of the Earth's atmosphere, which is directly above the stratosphere and directly below the thermosphere. The mesosphere is located 50-80/85km above Earth's surface. Within this layer, temperature decreases with increasing altitude.

Temperatures in the upper mesosphere fall as low as 200K, varying according to latitude and season. Millions of meteors burn up daily in the mesosphere as a result of collisions with some of the billions of gas particles contained in that layer. The collisions create enough heat to burn the falling objects long before they reach the ground.

The stratosphere and mesosphere are referred to as the middle atmosphere. The mesopause, at an altitude of about 80 km, separates the mesosphere from the thermosphere--the outermost layer of the Earth's atmosphere.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Great River, New York

... 3.04 and the average family size is 3.36. In the town the population is spread out with 29.0% under the age of 18, 5.0% from 18 to 24, 29.0% from 25 to 44, 24.2% from 45 ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 23.1 ms