气象科技英语翻译介绍.docVIP

Like a fish in the ocean, man is confined to a very shallow layer of atmosphere.The gaseous envelope of the Earth is physically inhomogeneous in both the vertical and horizontal directions, although the horizontal inhomogeneity is much less marked than the vertical inhomogeneity. Various criteria have been devised for dividing the atmosphere into layers. This division can be based on the nature of the vertical temperature profile, on the gaseous composition of the air at different altitudes, and the effect of the atmosphere on aircraft at different altitudes, etc. The division based on the variation of the air temperature with altitude is used most commonly in the meteorological literature. According to a publication of the agrological commission of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1961, the Earth’s atmosphere, is divided into five main layers: the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere and the exosphere. These layers are bounded by four thin transition regions: the tropospause, the stratospause, the mesospause, the thermospause . The troposphere is the lower layer of the atmosphere between the Earth’s surface and the tropopause. The temperature drops with increasing height in the troposphere, at a mean rate of 6.5 ℃ per kilometer (lapse rate). The upper boundary of the troposphere lies at a height of approximately 8 to 12 km in the polar and troposphere contains about 75% of the total mass of atmospheric air, while in the tropics it contains about 90%. The tropoause is an intermediate layer in which either a temperature in version or an isothermal temperature distribution is observed. The stratosphere is the atmospheric layer above the troposphere. In the stratosphere the temperature either increases with height or remains nearly constant. In the lower part of the stratosphere (up to approximately 20 km above the Earth’s surface) the temperature is practically constant (about －56 ℃). While further up the temperature incr