Читать книгу Weather For Dummies - John D. Cox - Страница 67

The atmosphere is a thin envelope of gases surrounding Earth. Figure 3-8 lays out its contents, within about 50 miles of the surface, and quickly you can see that mostly it is nitrogen and oxygen. No, you can’t really smell the gases that make up the air. This mixture is odorless and tasteless. And you can only see it when it contains water drops or something else — when it’s dirty. Then you smell it and you can see it, even if you don’t want to. (Chapter 14 has the low-down on air pollution.)

FIGURE 3-8: The gases that make up the atmosphere.

While it makes up some 78 percent of the atmosphere, nitrogen is not in the weather-making business. It makes the natural nitrogen that is absorbed by the soil and is essential for the growth of plants. It does combine to form nitrous oxide, an important ingredient in smog, which is described in Chapter 14.

The following sections describe the gases that are most important to weather.