1902 Stratosphere

Stratosphere

• Unmanned high-altitude hydrogen balloons
• hoisting scientific instruments
• to record pressure, temperature, humidity, and winds
• Richard Assmann and Léon Teisserenc de Bort
• separately released hundreds of such balloons
• and discovered that the lapse rate of temperature
• stopped decreasing with height
• at 39,000 feet up, and began to increase,
• marking the tropopause, where the stratosphere begins.

Stratospheric facts

• In the stratosphere,
• cooler layers lie closer to the earth.
• Cold temperatures of the lower stratosphere
• freeze-dry air rising from the troposphere.
• Ozone in upper levels stratosphere
• absorbs ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
• Stratification of temperatures
• results in little vertical convection.
• Commercial aircraft fly above the tropopause
• in the lower stratosphere.
• Few birds fly so high
• but bacteria survive in the stratosphere.

Living in the sky

• Living in the sky
• with my feet on the ground,
• I can’t help breathing
• air of the troposphere.
• Altitude gives me airs
• where gases are rarefied.
• An atmospheric wind
• blows hair in my ears.