[muawiyah]

"Thinner atmosphere"?

Now that's a new one. Time for some fact checkers to check facts ~ sea level atmospheric pressure is about 14.7 psi worldwide.

Atmospheric pressure drops 1.0 psi for every 2,343 feet increase in altitude.

This village is at sea level. Barring storms it has the same amospheric pressure that might be found on the Chesapeake Bay on any given day.

That is to say the atmosphere is as "thin" in the Arctic as it is "thin" in Washington DC.

I would imagine the writer is under the false impression that as you go North you go higher ~ just like the maps at school showed.

The other erroneous factoids in that piece are equally incredible.

[neverhillorat]

HEY! Mica is a reporter, what do facts have to do with anything?

[drtom]

The atmosphere is thinner wrt to thickness, not density. Due to earth's rotation the atmospheric mantle flattens at the poles. Look at a picture of Jupiter - its high rotational speed produces a much higher diameter at the equator than from pole to pole.

For the atmospheric pressure to remain the same, the air layers will have to be denser in order to compensate for the lack in thickness. Any gas, greenhouse or not, will thus exist at a higher concentration.

That's actually only one effect. There are Coriolis forces, seasonal changes related to temperature, and other effects. But that'll have to be another day.