14 DAY TRIAL // The "breathing" cycle of the Earth's atmosphere is not a new phenomenon, nor is it the way it appears. But, in the light of the latest research, there is some novelty – and indeed a large amount of it – related to the rate at which it occurs. Previous theories claimed that our atmosphere breathes once roughly every month, but the new study indicates that this actually occurs a lot more often, as in every five, seven and nine days.
The breathing event takes place high in the thermosphere, some 60 to 300 miles (about 95 to 485 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, and is caused by the interaction with the outer layers of the Sun's atmosphere, as one of the scientists from the discovery team, Jeff Thayer from the University of Colorado in Boulder, indicated. This allows for an energy exchange process that alters the thermospheric density, causing its expansions and contractions. As such, the Sun's heating caused by intense UV radiation was thought to determine the atmosphere to breathe every 27 days.
But based on data provided by the German Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) and NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer Satellite, the experts were able to discover additional breathing patterns in the atmosphere, taking place every five, seven and nine days. The phenomenon responsible for the shorter cycles is believed to be the Sun's coronal holes which generate high-velocity winds. The team hopes that this new finding will aid improving the tracking of satellites, part of the initial goals of the study.
Thermospheric density could have a major impact on the way satellites move, by exerting more or less drag on them, thus raising uncertainties in the predictions of their location at a given moment and increasing the risk of their collision with other objects in their vicinity. Thermosphere is tangent to the ionosphere, therefore changes in the former have a large influence on the latter. And since "the ionosphere affects all kinds of radio operations," as LiveScience quotes study team member Geoff Crowley, president and chief scientist at Atmospheric & Space Technology Research Associates (ASTRA) in San Antonio, Texas, as saying, it clearly has a major impact on how communication is carried out.
And this is not all. The atmospheric breathing can also have major repercussions on the climate change process in time by triggering the "thermostat" in the upper atmosphere, according to research team member Martin Mlynczak from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The atmosphere is heated by the extra UV radiation, determining the gaseous molecules to radiate the respective heat as infrared radiation.