High School Earth Science: Earth’s Atmosphere - Atmospheric Layers — Flashcards

The atmosphere can be divided into layers based on its temperature. These layers are the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere and the thermosphere. A further region, beginning about 500 km above the Earth's surface, is called the exosphere. The earth behaves like a huge magnet. It traps electrons (negative charge) and protons (positive), concentrating them in two bands about 3,000 and 16,000 km above the globe - the Van Allen "radiation" belts. This outer region surrounding the earth, where charged particles spiral along the magnetic field lines, is called the magnetosphere.