Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
One classical thermal escape mechanism is Jeans escape, [1] named after British astronomer Sir James Jeans, who first described this process of atmospheric loss. [2] In a quantity of gas, the average velocity of any one molecule is measured by the gas's temperature, but the velocities of individual molecules change as they collide with one another, gaining and losing kinetic energy.
The Sahara Desert in North Africa is the largest hot desert in the world and is one of the hottest, driest and sunniest places on Earth. Located just south of the Sahara is a narrow semi-desert steppe (a semi-arid region) called the Sahel , while Africa's most southern areas contain both savanna plains , and its central portion, including the ...
Thus, any energy that enters a system but does not leave must be retained within the system. So, the amount of energy retained on Earth (in Earth's climate system) is governed by an equation: [change in Earth's energy] = [energy arriving] − [energy leaving]. Energy arrives in the form of absorbed solar radiation (ASR). Energy leaves as ...
The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface (both lands and oceans), known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates (which create weather features such as clouds and hazes), all retained by Earth's gravity.
The first exoplanet whose atmospheric composition was determined is HD 209458b, a gas giant with a close orbit around a star in the constellation Pegasus. Its atmosphere is heated to temperatures over 1,000 K, and is steadily escaping into space. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and sulfur have been detected in the planet's inflated atmosphere. [8]
Earth's energy budget (or Earth's energy balance) is the balance between the energy that Earth receives from the Sun and the energy the Earth loses back into outer space. Smaller energy sources, such as Earth's internal heat, are taken into consideration, but make a tiny contribution compared to solar energy.
Benefits like this may be why interest is growing so quickly. More than 20 countries now have national space programs, and African nations budgeted more than $400 million for the sector in 2024 ...
Carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas in the current Venusian atmosphere, owes its larger concentration to the weakness of carbon recycling as compared to Earth, where the carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes is efficiently subducted into the Earth by plate tectonics on geologic time scales through the carbonate–silicate cycle, [27 ...