Water vapor in the stratosphere forms a sponge-like barrier that prevents heat radiating from Earth from escaping out into space. Now, scientists are exploring the plausibility of dehydrating this layer of the atmosphere to cool our warming planet.
The stratosphere extends between 7.5 and 31 miles (12 and 50 kilometers) above Earth’s surface and sits above another layer of the atmosphere called the troposphere. Water naturally circulating in the troposphere leaks into the stratosphere — but this leak is not uniform across the planet, according to a study published Wednesday (Feb. 28) in the journal Science Advances.
“It turns out that most of the air is entering the stratosphere in the tropics,” lead author Joshua (Shuka) Schwarz, a physicist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Chemical Sciences Laboratory, told Live Science.
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