Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1910 — ABOUT EARTH’S ENVELOPE. [ARTICLE]

ABOUT EARTH’S ENVELOPE.

Layers of Air—CoM and Galea of Hlsk Altitudes. I The new science of the air is the result of many hundred kite and sounding balloon flights made by day and by night in fair weather and foul, over land and sea, at all seasons of the year and from the equator to the arctic circle, an exchange says. Most, people know that the warm air surrounding the earth la only a thin, belt, but we dp not most of us know that at ten miles above the earth it would not only be bitterly cold, but the sun Vould appear quite different. The air is stratified In three more or less distinct layers. In the lowest we live. It extends about two miles and Is a region of turmoil, whimsical winds, cyclones dhd anticyclones. At two miles the freezing point Is reached and then there is a second stratum, extending upward for about another six miles. Here the air grows steads fly colder and drier, the lowest temperature recorded being 167 degrees below freezing point. Here the air moves In great planetary swirls produced by the spinning of the earth on» its axis, so that the wind always blows In the same easterly direction. The greater the height the mors furious is the blast of this relentless gale. After this layer comes the third or Isothermal stratum, discovered almost simultaneously by M. de Bort and Dr. Assmann. This is called ths permanent inversion stratum, becauss the temperature Increases with ths height reached. But the temperatures so far recorded in the second stratum are not high, being far below zeroFahrenheit, generally somewhere from 122 degrees to 140 degrees below it. Here the air no longer swirls In & planetary circle. The wind may blow in a direction contrary to that in ths second layer. And the air invariably is excessively dry. Where this third stratum ends no one knows. But it must be at more than eighteen miles above the earth, for sounding balloons have reached this height and have not found the end of the permanent Inversion layer of air. When the Influence of the upper regions of air upon> the lower is fully understood It may be possible to foretell the weather not merely for a day, but for a week.