Scientists have created the first-ever dataset of Earth's entire atmosphere, which extends all the way to the edge of space.. They hope the data will help shed light on some little-understood processes that occur in the Earth's atmosphere, including auroras.. The study was published in the journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science, writes Space.

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Scientists are constantly studying some layers of the Earth's atomosphere. For example, millions of weather stations around the world and hundreds of weather balloons measure the entire troposphere, the lowest region of the atmosphere, every day.. The balls also reach the lower part of the stratosphere, which is above the troposphere. The amount of data obtained from these measurements allows for virtually error-free weather forecasts.

But what happens in the mesosphere, the layer of thin air above the stratosphere that reaches almost to the edge of space, remains virtually unknown. Due to the fact that scientists know very little about the processes occurring in the mesosphere, it is sometimes called the “ignorosphere.”.

The mesosphere is too high for meteor balls and too low to be studied by orbiting satellites.

The authors of the study tried to solve this problem using computer modeling. They took rare available measurements of meteorological parameters in the " In particular, the modeling was aimed at reconstructing processes in the mesosphere.

For this purpose, measurement data was used for the period from 2003 to 2023, which covered the entire atmosphere up to an altitude of 110 km. According to scientists, this dataset will allow them to study and model some of the mysterious phenomena that occur at high altitudes, including auroras..

The mesosphere is where many of the phenomena associated with space weather occur.. When bursts of charged particles from the Sun hit our planet, they mix with rarefied gases high above the Earth, exciting air molecules. When this happens, the molecules release light, which we can see as an aurora.. But there are other, less noticeable effects that space weather has on the atmosphere..

Solar particles can change ozone chemistry and destroy the ozone layer. Auroras can also create gravitational waves that travel down into the atmosphere, scientists say.

Gravitational waves (not to be confused with gravitational waves produced by black hole collisions) are vortices that occur throughout the atmosphere. They transport energy across the planet and influence climate patterns. But until now, scientists have not been able to understand the effects of gravitational waves that occur at high altitudes..

The study's authors say the new data set makes it possible to simulate gravitational waves throughout the entire atmosphere, from the surface to the edge of space..

The data will also help scientists better model how processes in the lower atmosphere affect the ionosphere, the layer of the atmosphere above 80 km where gaseous particles are constantly ionized by the solar wind.

Atmospheric waves, including gravity waves and tidal waves on a global scale, influence the ionospheric dynamo, a process that creates an electrical current around the planet through the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field lines and movements of ionized air in the ionosphere.

There are other mysteries of the Earth's atmosphere that a new set of data will help solve, scientists say.

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