the.com/stratosphere
the calm ceiling where jets cruise and ozone quietly stops the sun from killing you
means the layer of Earth's atmosphere above the troposphere, roughly 10 to 50 kilometers up, where temperature rises with altitude and the ozone layer sits — often used loosely to mean any dizzying height.
from Coined in the early 20th century by French meteorologist Léon Teisserenc de Bort, who stitched together Latin 'stratum' (a layer, from 'sternere,' to spread out — the same root that gives us 'street' and 'strata') with the Greek 'sphaira' (ball, globe). Literally 'the layered sphere,' named because he found this upper region surprisingly orderly and calm compared to the churning weather below.
- warms upward
- Temperature rises with altitude, opposite the air below
- ozone armor
- Absorbs most ultraviolet before it reaches the ground
- jet zone
- Airliners cruise in its smooth, stable lower edge
- felix's leap
- Baumgartner skydived from its frozen 39-kilometer heights
- no weather
- Too dry and stable for clouds or storms
concorde flight — supersonic aircraft that cruised at 59,000 feet, regularly entering the stratosphere during transatlantic flights (1969-2003)
felix baumgartner jump — skydiver who jumped from 128,000 feet above new mexico in 2012, breaking the sound barrier during freefall through the stratosphere
ozone layer depletion — antarctic ozone hole, a seasonal thinning at 9-10 miles altitude discovered in 1985, affecting stratospheric chemistry