Earth's Atmosphere

A jacket for the planet

Earth is a great planet to live on because it has a wonderful atmosphere around it. This jacket of gases does a lot for us. It keeps us warm, it gives us oxygen to breathe, and it’s where our weather happens.

The atmosphere surrounds our planet like the peel of an orange. But it’s not the same everywhere. It has different layers with different qualities.



a diagram of earth with a thick layer of blue around it compared to an orange cut so you can see how thick the peel is and how it's similar to the thickness of the atmosphere around earth, relatively


One atmosphere, many layers

Earth’s atmosphere has six different layers. They go from the ground all the way to outer space. To learn more about each layer of the atmosphere, click the images below.

a button for the troposphere, a layer in earth's atmosphere
a button for the stratosphere, a layer in earth's atmosphere
a button for the mesosphere, a layer in earth's atmosphere
a button for the thermosphere, a layer in earth's atmosphere
a button for the ionosphere, a layer in earth's atmosphere
a button for the exosphere, a layer in earth's atmosphere
a landscape with trees and mountains
article last updated December 11, 2019

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