1902: Stratosphere - The book of science

Stratosphere
Stratospheric facts
Living in the sky
Commentary

Richard Assmann, Léon Teisserenc de Bort atmospheric sciences

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.

In the troposphere, temperatures decrease with altitude. Above the troposphere, in the stratosphere, temperatures increase with altitude. Above the stratosphere, in the mesosphere, temperatures again decrease with altitude. And above the mesosphere, in the thermosphere, temperatures again increase with altitude to where individual molecules become very hot but are so widely scattered that you wouldn’t feel their heat.