A new study has revealed that the atmosphere of the Earth is expanding at an alarming rate.
According to findings published in the journal Science Advances, weather balloon measurements taken in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 40 years reveal that the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere, has been expanding upward at a rate of roughly 164 feet (50 meters) per decade, and climate change is the cause.
"This is an unambiguous sign of changing atmospheric structure," study co-author Bill Randel, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement. "These results provide independent confirmation, in addition to all the other evidence of climate change, that greenhouse gases are altering our atmosphere."
We live and breathe in the troposphere, which is a layer of the atmosphere. It stretches from sea level to a height of 12.4 miles above the tropics, ranging from 4.3 miles above the poles to 4.3 miles above the poles. It's also where a lot of atmospheric weather happens because it's the layer of the atmosphere with the highest heat and moisture.
Because air expands when it's hot and contracts when it's cold, the troposphere's top barrier, known as the tropopause, shrinks and expands naturally as the seasons change.
Researchers discovered that as more greenhouse gases trap more heat in the atmosphere, the tropopause is rising higher than ever before by examining meteorological data such as pressure, temperature, and humidity gathered between 20 and 80 degrees north latitude and combining it with GPS data.
Data from the study has revealed the tropopause climbed at a rate of 174 feet per decade between 2001 and 2020, up from 164 feet per decade between 1980 and 2000. Even after accounting for natural events in their study area, such as two volcanic eruptions in the 1980s and the periodic Pacific warming El Niño in the late 1990s, the researchers determined that human activity accounted for 80% of the total increase in atmospheric height.
The rising tropopause is caused by a number of factors, including climate change. Because of past ozone-depleting gas releases, the stratosphere - the layer above the troposphere - is also diminishing. The depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer caused these gases to shrink the stratosphere, while recent curbs on their release have resulted in lower atmospheric quantities of these gases.
Although the tropopause is expanding faster, no conclusions have been reached about how this may affect the climate or weather. However, the study implies that in order to escape turbulence, planes may need to fly higher in the atmosphere.
