Maxim Kleyer
Professor Vejdemo-Johansson
Hon 223
10/17/2021
The science article I chose this week to read and describe was about climate change and how our lower atmosphere has been rising over the past decades. The article I found Earth’s lower atmosphere is rising due to climate change by Freida Kreier is a very short article that talks about the increase of distance the lower atmosphere has moved from our planet. She mentions that the readings collected by a water balloon in the Northern Hemisphere have indicated the upper boundary of the troposphere is being pushed due to climate change. Jane Liu, an environmental scientist, says that the troposphere height from the earth ranges depending on where you are, 20km in the tropics and 7km in the poles, and the range increases and decreases as air expands in hot temperatures and contracts in cold ones. However, she mentions that greenhouse gases are being stored in the atmosphere, slightly expanding the troposphere every year. In comparison with the actual research article made by Jane Liu and her colleagues, the results go more into detail about their findings. Liu and her colleagues’ studies ranged from 1980-2020 and found that the troposphere is expanding at specific coordinates (20°N – 80°N) by 50-80m per decade. The reason for a wide range of expansion is because over 40 years there have been different temperatures in regards to climate change. Liu explains, “Variability in tropopause height is closely related to the thermal structure below and above. On the monthly scale, monthly anomalies of tropopause height are positively correlated with tropospheric temperature anomalies and negatively correlated with stratospheric temperature anomalies.“ In other words, the troposphere expansion is not only related to the rapid climate change, but also the stratosphere’s temperature changes as well. According to the trend analysis shown by Liu and her colleagues and correlation analysis on monthly and multidecadal scales, a combined influence of the continuous increase in GHG emissions and partial recovery of stratospheric ozone is directly related to the warming of the troposphere. In short, the troposphere is more prone to expanding and increase in temperature than the stratosphere.
Works Cited:
– L. Meng et al. Continuous rise of the tropopause in the Northern Hemisphere over 1980–2020. Science Advances. Published online November 5, 2021. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abi8065.
– Kreier, Freda. “Earth’s Lower Atmosphere Is Rising Due to Climate Change.” Science News, 5 Nov. 2021, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earth-lower-atmosphere-rising-climate-change-troposphere.
