THE EARTH'S ENVELOPE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 368, 10 June 1911, Page 2

THE EARTH'S ENVELOPE.

The new science of the air is the result of many hundred kite and sounding balloon nights 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. Most people know that the warm air surrounding the earth is only a thin belt, but we do not most of us know that at ten miles above the earth it would not only be bitterly cold but the sun would 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 and anti-cyclones. At two miles the freezing point is reached, and then there is a second stratum extending upwards for about another six miles. Hare the air grows steadily colder and drier, the lowest temperature recorded bcin* 167 degrees below freezing point. Here the air moves in great plane tary 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 more furious is the blast Df 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 the permanent inversion stratum, because the temperature increases with the height reached. But the temperatures so far recorded in the second stratum are not high, being far below zero Fahrenheit, generally somewhere from 122 degress to 140 degrees below it.

Here the air no longer swirls in planetary circles. The wind may blow in a direction contrary to that in the 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 that 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.—"'Chicago Tribune."