Welcome to the Pilot Meteorology Course for the UK & Europe Area

The Atmosphere.

We will start the course off by describing the atmosphere. The atmosphere  is a thin layer of air which surrounds the earth. The air rotates around the earth. We can split the air into 2 parts 

The Troposphere

This is the area where most of the weather we get is. This is in the lower layers. Convection clouds  and all the other nasties etc.

The Stratosphere

This is the upper layer where fairly steady weather conditions apply. The winds are very strong here. A thin Cirrus cloud forms mainly in this area. Convection clouds like Cumulus normally form in the lower layers. The odd thunder cloud  (Cumulonimbus) may breach this area. 

The area is separated by the Tropopause  which if you like is an imaginary line dividing the two areas described above. Depending where you are in the world is where the Tropopause height line is. The Tropopause line for example over the Equator is about 11 miles high and slopes down to about 4 miles high over the North and South Poles. Over the United Kingdom this is about 7 miles high as a rule of thumb. You can now see why airline pilots like to fly as high as they can. They get out of the worst of the weather. A far cry from the days of the the pioneers who had to fly low level through the bad weather.

The atmosphere is made up of 75% Nitrogen 23% Oxygen the rest is made up of other gases such as Carbon Dioxide.

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