Atmosphere Contents

1. Structure And Composition

Interactions can occur between the stratosphere and the troposphere, when there are breaks in the tropopause

Breaks in the tropopause mainly occur at the position of the jet streams, fast jets of air that encircle the globe near the tropopause. Jet streams are thousands of kilometres long, a few hundred kilometres wide and only a few kilometres thick. The velocity in the central core often exceeds 100 knots. The sub-tropical jet stream is situated at about 13 km altitude and the polar front jet at approximately 10 km altitude. On average the direction of the flow is westerly.

Atmosphere

Atmosphere

What are jet streams?