Composition of Earth's Atmosphere
Key Findings
About This Dataset
Composition of Earth's AtmosphereEarth's dry air is overwhelmingly nitrogen (78.09%) and oxygen (20.95%), which together make up 99.04% of the atmosphere by volume. Argon, a chemically inert noble gas, is a distant third at 0.93%, and carbon dioxide, despite its outsized climate importance, is only 0.04%. Everything beyond that is a trace: neon, helium, methane, krypton and hydrogen each measure thousandths of a percent or less. The values span an enormous range, from nitrogen at 78% down to hydrogen at 0.00005%, a difference of more than a million-fold. Note that these figures are for dry air; water vapour, excluded here, can vary from near zero to several percent depending on location and weather.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- NASA Earth Fact Sheet
- Coverage
- 9 entities · 9 observations
- Measure
- Share of Dry Air (% by volume)
- Last updated
- 7 July 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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