Author: Sid Perkins / Source: Science News
How thick is Earth’s atmosphere? Sorry, that’s a bit of a trick question: Our planet’s air simply gets thinner with altitude, fading away to nothingness somewhere far above the height at which the lowest satellites orbit.
It’s a fact, though, that 99 percent of Earth’s air lies below an altitude of 18 miles. Naturalist Christopher Dewdney uses that distance as the title of his latest book, which takes a deep dive into the science behind weather and climate.18 Miles is full of fun facts: A cloud a few hundred meters cubed contains only a bathtub’s worth of water, for instance. And the phrase “cloud nine” references a category that the International Cloud Atlas uses in its cloud classification system.
But the book is so much more than trivia. 18 Miles also contains detailed yet readable explanations of weather-related phenomena,…
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