Home About Us Climate Change FAQ's Contact Us Join Latest News on Carbon Conservation Real-World Climatology: Records and Observations Reference Center Signup For E-mail Alerts Virtual Climate Alerts World Climate Report Online Sitemap The atmosphere can be divided into regions (or areas) for various characteristics: temperature, composition or dominant physical processes. Since each system division gives more terms, then dialed a whole family of "spheres." Most common is the stratification atmospheric temperature characteristic. Exactly it gives a well-known concept of "troposphere" and "Stratosphere." From there we will begin its campaign on "Celestial spheres", which as a map You can use rice. 1. We are starting from the ground. Let our summer and the temperature + 27 ° C, or 300 K. Moving up, we quickly find that temperature drops (that everyone knows who was raised in the mountains). In other words, there negative temperature gradient. Region of the atmosphere, where we are now, is called the troposphere. Where the upper boundary of the troposphere? Where stops palenie temperature with height, and begins its growth (obviously, at this point the temperature gradient is zero.) Is located above the stratosphere, where the temperature gradient positive. The boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere (or a thin layer where the gradient temperature is zero) is called the tropopause. Going by the troposphere, we have time to thoroughly frozen, because the tropopause temperature is only about 200 K. As As to its height, it varies from the equator to the pole and at mid-latitudes is 12 - 13 km. To warm up, let's continue to actively raise the stratosphere. Now, the above, the warmer. And so until the stratopause - an area where there is a break in the second altitude profiles of temperature. Here (height of about 50 km), the temperature (270 - 280 K) almost equal to that with which we started. And then - again in the cold. Temperature again decreases with height, the newly observed negative temperature gradient. This - mesosphere. Its upper boundary - mesopause - Lies at an altitude of 85 km (of course, like other boundary height, it can vary about 5 km in either direction).