The Earth’s Atmosphere – Its Origin, Composition and Properties

2.1 Introduction: Origin of the Earth’s Atmosphere

We know little about the origin of our atmosphere, just as we know little about the origin of our planet. In the
absence of any reliable evidence, one can only speculate. According to cosmologists, our planet most likely
originated from the sun about 4.6 billions of years ago in the wake of the latter’s encounter with a passing
star, following a cosmic event, popularly known as the Big Bang. After its separation from the sun, it started
revolving around the sun under the effect of the sun’s gravitational pull and rotating about its axis like a fiery
ball, surrounded by an extremely hot gaseous envelope which may be called the primordial atmosphere.

However, it may be imagined that the primordial atmosphere at that stage must have been at a great upheaval
as it hurled through space and its hot gaseous envelope rapidly cooled, condensed and solidified forming a
solid crust in the surface layers after giving out considerable amount of volatile hot gases and vapours from
the molten material at the surface. Part of the hot gases and vapours which cooled and condensed into water
formed the world’s oceans. The remainder formed a gaseous envelope around the planet or was stored in
rocks. The atmosphere thus formed had a preponderance of hydrogen and little or no oxygen, so could not
support life of the kind that we know on the earth to-day. However, as the earth cooled down further, complex
chemical actions and reactions in the crust and the interactions between the crust and the atmosphere
gradually led to the formation of an atmosphere which could support an early form of life such as single-
celled microbes which required little oxygen for their survival. Such microbial forms of life, also known as
blue-green algae, perhaps, first appeared in the oceans where they absorbed carbon dioxide and in the
presence of water and sunlight released oxygen by a bio-chemical process known as the green-plant
photosynthesis. The accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere facilitated the evolution of more complex and
multi-celled forms of life which we observe on our planet to-day. It is believed that all these developments
occurred within the first one billion years of the earth’s history and that, since then, our atmosphere has
gradually stabilized to its present state.

2.2 Composition of the Atmosphere

The gaseous envelope that covers the earth’s surface has no upper limit. It gradually merges into the
interplanetary space. It exists today as a mixture of several gases, the composition of which within the first 25
km of the earth’s surface is presented in Table 2.1. As shown in the Table, nitrogen and oxygen are the two
main constituents of the earth’s atmosphere with their combined proportions approaching almost 99% by
mass as well as by volume. Their compositions vary little with time, so they are treated as permanent gases.
Other gases exist in small amounts only. The proportions of carbon dioxide and ozone are variable. Another
constituent of the atmosphere which finds no place in the Table but is highly important for meteorology is
water vapour which also occurs in small and variable proportion. But, as we shall see later, the three gases,
viz., water vapour, carbon dioxide and ozone, though they occur in small proportions, play very important
roles in atmospheric processes because of their radiative and thermodynamic properties.
The presence of water substance in the atmosphere is especially important, because it can exist in three
phases, viz., vapour, liquid and solid. A change of phase involves either liberation or absorption of a large
quantity of heat which affects atmospheric properties and behaviour. Evaporation of water from the world’s
oceans, condensation of water vapour into cloud and rain in the atmosphere, formation of polar ice caps on
our planet, are all examples of change of phase of the water substance. Minor constituents at low levels of the
atmosphere may include variable quantities of dust, smoke and toxic gases and vapours such as sulphur
dioxide, methane, oxides of nitrogen, etc., some of which pollute the atmosphere and are highly injurious to
health. The above-mentioned composition of the earth’s atmosphere undergoes changes from about 25 km
upward, under the effect of the sun’s ultra-violet radiation. The gases most affected by this process are oxygen
and nitrogen. Their molecules gradually break up leading to formation of ozone in the middle atmosphere
(20–50 km approximately) and atoms and ions (charged particles) in the upper layers of the atmosphere (>
80km). Further discussion about the changes in the composition of air in the upper layers of the atmosphere
will be taken up in Chap. 8. Due to preponderance of diatomic molecules in the atmosphere, the mean gram-
molecular mass of dry air is taken as 28.699. For water vapour, which is triatomic (H2O), the mean
gram-molecular mass is 18.016. We may now, perhaps, address the question raised in Chap. 1 regarding the
loss of lighter elements, especially hydrogen and helium, from the earth’s atmosphere.
According to the kinetic theory of gases, the mean square velocity of a molecule of a gas is directly
proportional to the absolute temperature, as given by the relation 2.2.1 (see, e.g., Saha and Srivastava, 1931,
Fifth corrected edition 1969, reprinted 2003), c2 = 3RT (2.2.1) where c is the molecular velocity, R is the gas
constant and T is the absolute temperature of the gas. Table 2.2 gives the values of the mean molecular
velocity of some of the gases in the earth’s atmosphere at different temperatures. The values are taken
from a paper entitled ‘Is life possible in other planets?’ by Saha and Saha (1939).
However, it may be assumed that our atmosphere had been quite different in the past from what it is to-day,
especially at the time when the earth got separated from the sun and the temperature of the sun, in all
probability, might have been much in excess of the present value of about 6,000 ◦C. At such a high
temperature the mean velocity of the hydrogen atoms would be 12.8km s-1, and that for the hydrogen
molecules would be about 9km s-1. So, a mass like the earth, just separated from the sun, engulfed in hot
gases, would rapidly lose all hydrogen atoms and most of the hydrogen molecules.
But even if the temperature was lower, there would be steady loss of the lighter constituents, for according to
Maxwell’s law of distribution of velocities, all molecules in a gas do not move with the same velocity; there
would be some whose velocities may even at the ordinary temperatures exceed the velocity of escape and
such particles would escape. The rate of loss will increase with higher temperature and lower molecular
weight. Jeans has in fact calculated the time required for loss of planetary atmospheres from different planets
and for different temperatures. He finds that if the mean molecular velocity of the gas is one-fourth the critical
velocity of escape, the atmosphere would be lost in 50,000 years. But if the ratio is one-fifth, 25 million years
would be needed for complete loss. It is probable that the earth’s atmosphere lost most of its primordial
hydrogen, helium and other lighter gases quite early in the course of its geological history,
while the heavier gases were retained.

Table 2.1 Composition of pure dry air

Constituent Gas By Mass (%) By Volume (%) Molecular Wt
Nitrogen (N2) 75.51 78.09 28.02
Oxygen (O2) 23.14 20.95 32.00
Argon (Ar) 1.3 0.93 39.94
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 0.05 0.03 44.01
Neon (Ne) 1.2×10-3 1.8×10-3 20.18
Helium (He) 8.0×10-4 5.2×10-4 4.00
Krypton (Kr) 2.9×10-4 1.0×10-4 83.7
Hydrogen (H2) 0.35×10-5 5.0×10-5 2.02
Xenon(X) 3.6×10-5 0.8×10-5 131.3
Ozone (O3) 0.17×10-5 0.1×10-5 48.0
Radon (Rn) – 6.0×10-18 222.0

Table 2.2 Values of the mean molecular velocity c (km s-1) at different temperatures (◦C) Gas Temperatures (◦C)
-100 0 300
Hydrogen 1.47 1.80 2.66
Helium 1.04 1.31 1.90
Water vapour 0.49 0.61 0.88
Nitrogen 0.39 0.49 0.71
Oxygen 0.37 0.46 0.67
Argon 0.33 0.41 0.59
Carbon dioxide 0.31 0.39 0.57