Stratosphere around at midlatitudes, and at about at the poles. Temperatures range from an average of near the tropopause to an average of near the mesosphere. Stratospheric temperatures also vary within the stratosphere as the seasons change, reaching particularly low temperatures in the polar night (winter). Winds in the stratosphere can far exceed those in the troposphere, reaching near in the Southern polar vortex. The mechanism describing the formation of the ozone layer was described by British mathematician Sydney Chapman in 1930. Molecular oxygen absorbs high energy sunlight in the UV-C region, at wavelengths shorter than about 240 nm. Radicals produced
Earth Radiation Budget Satellite was one of three satellites in the ERBE and it carried two instruments as part of that effort. The ERBE scanner was a set of three detectors that studied longwave radiation, shortwave radiation and total energy radiating from the Earth along a line of the satellite's path. The ERBE non-scanner was a set of five detectors that measured the total energy from the Sun, and the shortwave and total energy from the entire Earth disk and the area beneath the satellite. The other two ERBE missions were included on the NOAA-9 satellite when it was launched in January 1985, and