The data, from NASA's TIMED mission, show that Earth's thermosphere (the layer above 62 miles or 100 km above the Earth's surface) "responds quite dramatically to the effects of the 11-year solar cycle, " Stan Solomon of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

MSN: Earth's upper atmosphere cooling dramatically

Many old fridges contain chemicals called Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which damage the Earth's ozone layer.

BBC: Ghana bans second-hand fridges

Nitrous oxide is also considered a greenhouse gas and is 310 times more dangerous to the Earth's ozone layer than carbon dioxide, said Joseph Johns, chief of the U.S. attorney's environmental crimes section.

NPR: Feds Raid 17 Calif. Businesses For Nitrous Oxide

When intense enough, flares can disturb the Earth's atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

BBC: Four colossal Sun flares in 48 hours

One of these satellites, CloudSat, has given the first glimpses of the middle layer of clouds in the Earth's atmosphere.

ECONOMIST: Climatology

The ozone layer protects living things on the Earth's surface from the Sun's ultra-violet radiation.

BBC: Ill wind 'killed dinosaurs'

During the dinosaurs' time on Earth, "the atmosphere became charged with methane, which finally damaged the ozone layer and brought about great changes in the vegetation, " it added.

BBC: Ill wind 'killed dinosaurs'

While the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere plays an important role in limiting harmful ultraviolet light reaching the Earth's surface, low-level ozone is a pollutant that is harmful, causing respiratory problems in animals as well as well-documented cases in humans.

BBC: Invasive plant 'increases ozone pollution'

This was when the iridium layer was formed (many extra-terrestrial rocks are far richer in iridium than those found on Earth, so a large impact that scattered the iridium seemed a reasonable conclusion to draw), and when the dinosaurs disappeared.

ECONOMIST: Some new ideas about why life on Earth has periodic crises