Which atmospheric layer contains the weather and shows a decrease in temperature with height?

• A. The troposphere
• B. The stratosphere
• C. The mesosphere
• D. The thermosphere

Answer: (A)

Weather occurs in the lowest part of the atmosphere, where most of the air mass and all the moisture live. In this layer, temperature generally falls as you go higher because the air becomes thinner and expands, cooling as it rises. That cooling with height helps drive air movement, cloud formation, and storms—the processes we recognize as weather.

Above this layer, different patterns appear. In the next layer, temperature climbs with height due to heating by the ozone layer, so it doesn’t display the cooling trend that fuels weather. In the layer after that, temperature again drops with height, but the air is so thin that weather phenomena don’t occur there. Further up, temperatures rise with height due to solar heating, but the air is extremely sparse, so weather isn’t present there either. So, the combination of containing weather and the cooling with height points to the troposphere.