Topic summary
Atmospheric stratification
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Atmosphere of Earth.
Stratification
In general, air pressure and density decrease with altitude in the atmosphere. However, temperature has a more complicated profile with altitude and may remain relatively constant or even increase with altitude in some regions (see the temperature section). Because the general pattern of the temperature/altitude profile, or lapse rate, is constant and measurable by means of instrumented balloon soundings, the temperature behavior provides a useful metric to distinguish atmospheric layers. This atmospheric stratification divides the Earth's atmosphere into five main layers with these typical altitude ranges: