BOULDER, COLORADO — Scientists have looked at data from weather balloons since 1980 and calculated that the Earth’s troposphere is expanding like a balloon.
Here are the details: Scientists recently published a study in the journal Science Advances, showing that the lowest part of Earth’s atmosphere, called the troposphere, is expanding at an increasing rate.
The troposphere stretches from sea level up to around 7 kilometers high at the poles, and up to around 20 kilometers at the equator.
It is the layer that contains most of the atmosphere’s moisture and heat, so it is where most of Earth’s weather is formed.
The researchers say the data shows that this layer has been expanding by 50 meters per decade between 1980 and 2000.
However, since 2000 the rate has increased to 53.3 meters per decade.
They say the expansion is mainly being caused by global warming, but another contributing factor is the shrinking of the stratosphere, which is the layer above the troposphere.
The stratosphere shrank due to new technologies releasing ozone-depleting gases into the air, which in turn depleted the stratosphere, which in turn caused the troposphere to expand.
Global legislation managed to limit the release of these gases, but their remnants still affect the stratosphere.
The researchers noted: “The study captures two important ways that humans are changing the atmosphere.
The height of the tropopause is being increasingly affected by emissions of greenhouse gases, even as society has successfully stabilized conditions in the stratosphere by restricting ozone-destroying chemicals."