The Temperature of the Upper Atmosphere

Abstract

SINCE my last letter on the above subject the columns of NATURE have contained some interesting data from Mr. E. Gold, and an account of the meeting at Monaco on April 1 of the International Commission for Scientific Aëronautics. The proceedings of the commission seem to have included the enunciation of a creed in which the members expressed their individual belief in the existence of an “isothermal layer” (aliter “stratosphere”). This promulgation was apparently intended mainly for the benefit of heretics in England. As is not unusual with creeds, an exact definition of the essential term stratosphere does not seem to have been supplied, and I am thus in doubt whether I am or am not one of the elect. The term “stratosphere” can hardly have been employed in its very strictest sense, which would seem to imply that at any given instant of time temperature is a function only of the distance above the ground. This obviously could not be true at altitudes where either a diurnal or an annual variation was sensible, and I doubt whether members of the commission are yet prepared to deny the existence of these variations at the heights with which they are concerned. In the recent German balloon ascents in Central Africa temperatures were recorded which differ somewhat notably from those met with at corresponding heights in Europe, while in the polar regions, temperatures are sometimes recorded at ground-levels which are lower than those usually encountered in balloon ascents here.