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Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (5 November 1855 in
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,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
– 2 January 1913 in
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, France) was a French
meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists in research, while t ...
and a pioneer in the field of
aerology Atmospheric science is the study of the Earth's atmosphere and its various inner-working physical processes. Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather forecasting. Climatology is the study of ...
. Together with Richard Assmann (1845-1918), he is credited as co-discoverer of the stratosphere, as both men announced their discovery during the same time period in 1902. Teisserenc de Bort pioneered the use of unmanned instrumented balloons and was the first to identify the region in the atmosphere around 8-17 kilometers of height where the lapse rate reaches zero, known today as the
tropopause The tropopause is the atmospheric boundary that demarcates the troposphere from the stratosphere; which are two of the five layers of the atmosphere of Earth. The tropopause is a thermodynamic gradient-stratification layer, that marks the end of ...
.


Early life and career

He was the son of an engineer. He began his scientific career in 1880, when he entered the meteorological department of the Bureau Central Météorologique (Administrative Centre of National Meteorology, a department of the French government) in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
under E. E. N. Mascart. In 1883, 1885 and 1887 he made journeys to
North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...
to study geology and terrestrial magnetism, and during this period published some important charts of the distribution of pressure at a height of 4,000 metres. Between 1892 and 1896, Teisserenc de Bort was chief meteorologist to the Bureau.


Instrumented balloons pioneer

After his resignation from the Bureau in 1896, he established a private meteorological observatory in
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near
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. There he carried out investigations on clouds and the problems of the upper air. He conducted experiments with high-flying instrumented
hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic ...
balloons and was one of the first people to use such devices. In 1898, Teisserenc de Bort published an important paper in ''Comptes Rendus'' detailing his researches by means of balloons into the constitution of the atmosphere. He noticed that while the air
temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various Conversion of units of temperature, temp ...
decreased steadily up to approximately 11 kilometers of height, it remained constant above that
altitude Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...
(up to the highest points he could reach). In other words, he discovered an indication of a
temperature inversion In meteorology, an inversion is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude. It almost always refers to an inversion of the air temperature lapse rate, in which case it is called a temperature inversion. Nor ...
or at least of a zero lapse rate above this altitude. For many years he was uncertain whether he discovered a true
physical phenomenon A phenomenon ( : phenomena) is an observable event. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which ''cannot'' be directly observed. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfrie ...
or whether his measurements suffered from a systematic
bias Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group ...
(indeed, the first measurements ''did'' have a positive temperature bias as the instruments were liable to radiative heating by
solar radiation Solar irradiance is the power per unit area (surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre ( ...
). That is why Teisserenc de Bort carried out 200+ more balloon experiments (with a substantial part of them being held during the night to eliminate radiative heating) until 1902, when he suggested that the atmosphere was divided into two layers.


Troposphere and stratosphere

During the years that followed, he named the two layers of the atmosphere known as the "
troposphere The troposphere is the first and lowest layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, and contains 75% of the total mass of the planetary atmosphere, 99% of the total mass of water vapour and aerosols, and is where most weather phenomena occur. From ...
" and the " stratosphere". This naming convention has since been maintained, with (higher-altitude) layers that were subsequently discovered being given names of this sort. After Teisserenc de Bort's death in 1913, the heirs donated the observatory to the state so that the research tasks could be continued.


Additional investigations

He also carried out investigations near Viborg in Denmark 1902-1903,Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort, Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson, H. Maurice, Ragnar Holm & Martin Jansson, ''Travaux de la Station Franco-Scandinave de Sondages Aériens à Hald 1902-1903'', 1904. in Sweden and over the Zuider Zee, the
Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western Europe, Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa ...
and the tropical region of the
Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
, and fitted out a special vessel in order to study the currents above the
trade winds The trade winds or easterlies are the permanent east-to-west prevailing winds that flow in the Earth's equatorial region. The trade winds blow mainly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisp ...
. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in 1903, honorary member in 1909, and was awarded the Symons Gold Medal of the Society in 1908. He collaborated with Hugo Hildebrandsson in ''Les bases de la météorologie dynamique'' (1907).


Named after him

* The crater Teisserenc on the
Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...
. * The crater Teisserenc de Bort on
Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...
.


See also

*
Timeline of hydrogen technologies This is a timeline of the history of hydrogen technology. Timeline 16th century * c. 1520 – First recorded observation of hydrogen by Paracelsus through dissolution of metals (iron, zinc, and tin) in sulfuric acid. 17th century * 1625 – F ...


References


External links


History of the Teisserenc de Bort observatory
{{DEFAULTSORT:Teisserenc De Bort, Leon 1855 births 1913 deaths Scientists from Paris French climatologists French meteorologists Members of the French Academy of Sciences Atmospheric sounding Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala