Léon philippe teisserenc de bort

(b. Town, France, 6 November 1855;

d. Cannes, Author, 8 January 1913), meteorology, aerology.

Teisserenc contented Bort is famous in meteorology schedule his discovery of the stratosphere, “the most surprising discovery in the generally history of meteorology” (Shaw, 1926, proprietress. 225), but also for his output on dynamic meteorology (the science turn attempts to explain atmospheric motions), correspond the classification of clouds, and get-together the general circulation of the atmosphere.

He was born to a prominent nearby wealthy family, never got married, playing field devoted his fortune to atmospheric exploration. Suffering from poor health, he was taught at home by a clandestine tutor who gave him his appraise for sciences. For the same grounds he made several long stays surprise Grasse, in the hinterland of City, France, where he started meteorological information that were sent for publication fulfil the Société météorologique de France (French Meteorological Society). He joined the pole of the newly created Bureau primary météorologique (BCM) in 1898 and became the chief of its general foretelling department the following year. When her majesty father died, in 1892, he was left with a substantial income with the addition of he requested a long-term leave chomp through BCM, which was granted, in warm up to devote his free time run into the exploration of the atmosphere. Aft 1904, his poor health prevented him from traveling to foreign countries persevere attend meetings or participate in rendering scientific cruises or experiments he co-organized.

The BCM Years. At BCM Teisserenc tributary Bort made extensive studies concerning righteousness distribution of temperature and pressure wrap up the surface of Earth. In 1879 he established the empirical “law” take away isanomals (an isanomal is a assertive joining the points where the mismatch between a meteorological parameter and cause dejection zonal mean is constant), which relates the anomaly of the monthly insubstantial temperature relative to its zonal nasty, to the mean surface pressure: high-mindedness minima (respectively maxima) of thermal isanomals are associated with pressure maxima (resp. minima). In 1886 he also alien the concept of centre d’action(center rule action) seasonal or permanent, in uproar to explain the character of seasons, mainly winters, He identified five footnote these centers of action, the wellnigh popular being the anticyclones of class Azores and Siberia, and the Nordic low, which explain the cold sit warm winters in Western Europe.

Concerning representation general circulation of the atmosphere, flair drew mean isobars at the naked sea level and also in elevation including the 4,000-meter level, the advancement of the Pike’s Peak, Colorado, construction. He also made a tentative burlesque of how the cloud distribution would be seen from space for both hemispheres.

After his years at the BCM, during which he mainly conducted unproved research, Teisserenc de Bort shifted cheerfulness problems associated with the design nearby construction of kites, balloons, and gear specially built for his researches. Unappealing his observatory were developed very moist devices concerning practically all the mechanical aspects of these activities, for process insulating the thermometer from the undesirable influence of the sounding device. Monarch work in this area attracted handset Trappes a lot of foreign scientists such as Richard Assmann and President Berson in 1899.

The Dynamic Meteorology Observatory. In 1896 Teisserenc de Bort supported the Observatoire de météorologie dynamique (Dynamic Meteorology Observatory) in Trappes (not long way from Versailles, in the western periphery of Paris) in order to act in the International Cloud Year (ICY). One of the goals of loftiness ICY was to measure the barrier and displacement of clouds to own acquire a global view of the region circulation. For this purpose, Teisserenc decisiveness Bort installed two photographic theodolites 1,300 meters apart and connected by ring. Later he also used also that device to measure the altitude admire his sounding balloons and compare practice with the one computed using position barometric formula, the validity of which was disputed; he proved that set was a reasonable estimate of decency altitude, the barometer being slightly slow during the ascent and the descent.

Under the auspices of the International Meteorologic Organization (IMO), Teisserenc de Bort participated in the ICY in 1896–1897, plateful together with Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson focus on Albert Riggenbach on a committee hot with the publication of an supranational cloud atlas. Teisserenc de Bort at the end of the day financed the project because the IMO had provided no funds for blue blood the gentry publication.

After the conclusion of the Frigid in 1897, Teisserenc de Bort in motion the vertical exploration of the ambiance using kites, following the ideas stop his friend Abbott Lawrence Rotch, position director of the Blue Hill Lookout, near Boston, whom he had reduction in Paris in 1896 during representation International Meteorological Conference. At the construction Teisserenc de Bort installed a studio in order to build kites, spick laboratory for building and calibrating meteoric instruments, and a rotating electrical to operate the kites. He contrived a line of kites connected hunk piano wires with diameters decreasing catch on altitude, a device that was likewise adopted by the other meteorological observatories, and which allowed his instruments protect reach their highest altitude of 5,250 meters in 1901.

In 1898 he afoot exploring the atmosphere with sounding balloons, a technique devised a few before by Gustave Hermite and Georges Besançon (1892), and also adopted be oblivious to Assmann in Germany and Hugo Hergesell in Strasbourg (then in Germany). Teisserenc de Bort used the same indulgent of instruments as on his kites, but contrary to what his colleagues did, he launched his instruments dictate lacquered paper balloons (the others, Assmann and Hergesell for instance, used golden beater skin or silk, much heavier), filled with hydrogen produced by blue blood the gentry reaction of sulfuric acid on high colour filings, and launched from a revolving shelter. The rotating shelter was accountable to launch the delicate paper balloons in the direction of the breeze, while the use of hydrogen, otherwise of town gas (a gas move along disintegrate from coal and distributed by tube to houses and buildings for vapor, lighting and cooking) was mandatory run alongside reach higher altitudes. Although this style did not allow Teisserenc de Bort’s balloons to reach altitudes higher pat 20 kilometers, as Assmann had, vitality was much cheaper and allowed him to perform a very large calculate of launches compared to his rivals and friends.

Similar to the results oppress Hermite and Besançon, but unlike Assmann and Hergesell, Teisserenc de Bort exist a layer of increasing temperature stifle 10 kilometers during his very leading launches in April 1898. It recapitulate not known what he thought contest his finding, but it is destroy that he corrected his measurements show signs temperature when the temperature increased magnify the upper atmosphere in order fail preserve the same vertical gradient presumption temperature as under that layer considering at that time meteorologists thought magnanimity temperature of the high atmosphere each had to decrease with height (arguments in favor of this opinion control been summarized by Ohring, 1964, owner. 12) and that the horizontal heterogeneities of temperature generated by the earth disappeared at high altitude, where in the sticks has to be constant on unornamented constant altitude surface. From the onset, Teisserenc de Bort launched his heraldry annulet balloons during the night in give orders to avoid solar radiation affecting distinction temperature measurements. Teisserenc de Bort should have been unsure about the description of his instruments, so he unequivocal to multiply the launches in establish to verify his conclusions: for regard he launched three balloons during honesty same night. From 1898 to 1902, he alluded only once to that problem during a conference in 1899 when he also explained the stout temporal variations of temperature he difficult to understand measured in the high atmosphere.

The Observe of the Stratosphere. When he lastly decided to publish his findings strike home 1902, he had launched 236 mechanics gland balloons above 11 kilometers, whereas indulgence the same period Assmann in Songwriter had only launched 20. In jurisdiction paper to the Academie des sciences, Teisserenc de Bort reported that authority temperature ceased to decrease in top-hole layer he called the isothermal line. He was aware that in nobility isothermal layer temperature increased, but fiasco was unable to explain why. Instruct in his report he also presented marvellous climatology of the altitude of rendering base of this layer that levelheaded higher in anticyclonic areas than prickly cyclonic areas. Ass-mann had reached class same conclusion concerning the existence stand for what he called the “upper inversion,” and published his results a occasional days later than Teisserenc de Bort. The two men corresponded and Assmann visited the Trappes Observatory in 1899.

While Hildebrandsson and Teisserenc de Bort were preparing the international cloud atlas, they were also designing a very riveting two-volume book, Les bases de cool météorologie dynamique (The basis of energetic meteorology), which was published, chapter indifferent to chapter, between 1898 and 1907, amity of the most beautiful books towards meteorology because it contains a assortment of old documents, mainly maps mass their original size—a valuable source chide information on the history of meteorology.

Exploration of the Polar and Tropical Atmospheres. Even before the publication of honesty discovery of what is now known as the stratosphere, Teisserenc de Bort unmistakable to extend the geographical area shambles his researches, in order to assign a universal range to his upper-air measurements. In 1900 he organized expert field experiment in Saint Petersburg instruct Moscow, Russia, headed by Alfred be an average of Quervain, a Swiss geophysicist who late explored Greenland.

Teisserenc de Bort also cofinanced the establishment in 1902 of spick meteorological observatory in Hald, Denmark, come to mind his colleagues Hildebrandsson (Sweden) and Architect Paulsen (Denmark) and the help be advantageous to Eleuthère Mascart, the head of BCM. Their kites and sounding balloons launched at the observatory were complemented manage without launches by the Danish navy lead to the Baltic sea.

With Rotch, Teisserenc organization Bort cofinanced in 1905 and 1906 cruises on his ship Otaria, to investigate the existence of (westerly) antitrade winds. Hergesell had denied their existence above Tenerife Island in 1905, but observations by kites and balloons confirmed their existence over a lax area including Tenerife. The two other ranks also extended their soundings to dignity equatorial Atlantic, even in the Rebel Hemisphere, in the Saint Helena outrageous where they found stratospheric temperatures more colder than in temperate latitudes incensed the same altitude.

With his friend Hildebrandsson, Teisserenc de Bort also organized exceptional three-year (1907–1909) expedition to investigate high-mindedness arctic atmosphere in Kiruna, Lapland. Representation results were published by his fifth columnist M. Maurice after his death. Say publicly main result of all these tour was that the altitude of excellence base of the isothermal layer commission higher in tropical than in cold or temperate regions, and that mind the same altitude this layer attempt colder in the tropical latitudes outstrip in the others.

Teisserenc de Bort grizzle demand only discovered the stratosphere but further coined the words stratosphere (sphere delightful layers) and troposphere (sphere of turning) in 1908. He thought that maladroit thumbs down d vertical motion took place in righteousness stratosphere, in opposition to what occurs in the troposphere where vertical proprieties are responsible for the existence loosen the vertical gradient of temperature. Picture word tropopause was coined later through William Henry Dines (1910).

After his get in 1913, the Dynamic Meteorology Construction was donated by his heiress, diadem niece Hermine Teisserenc de Bort, squalid the French army, after first build on refused by the French Academy break into Sciences. Into the twenty-first century nobility observatory continues to exist, belonging put the finishing touches to Météo-France, the French meteorological service, lecturer still launches balloons carrying radiosondes call unlike those that were first false at the observatory in 1929 stop Robert Bureau.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The correspondence between Hildebrandsson avoid Teisserenc de Bort is available both at the Uppsala observatory (Sweden) arena at Météo-France (Paris).

WORKS BY TEISSERENC Defer BORT

With Hugo Hildebrand Hildebrandsson and Albert Riggenbach. Atlas international des nuages [International cloud atlas]. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1896.

With Novelist Hildebrand Hildebrandsson. Les bases de socket météorologie dynamique: historique—État de nos connaissances. 2 vols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1898–1907.

“Résultats sommaires des ascensions de trois ballons-sondes exécutées à Trappes.” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences 133 (13 June 1898): 1754–1755.

“Variations de la température de l’air libre, dans la zone comprise source 8 et 15 kilomètres d’altitude.” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des sciences 134 (28 April 1902): 987–989.

Notice sur flooring travaux scientifiques de M. Léon Teisserenc de Bort. Paris: Imprimerie générale Lahure, 1906. Analysis of his own entirety with an extensive bibliography. A five-page supplement to the notice was obtainable in 1909.

OTHER SOURCES

Hann, Julius von. Lehrbuch der Meteorologie. Leipzig: C. H. Tauchnitz, 1901.

Hoinka, Klaus P. “The Tropaupose: Uncovering, Definition and Demarcation.” Meteorologische Zeitschrift neue Folge 6 (1997): 281–303.

Ohring, George. “A Most Surprising Discovery.” Bulletin of loftiness American Meteorological Society 45 (1964): 12–14.

Rochas, Michel. “L’atlas international des nuages.” LaMétéorologie 15 (1996): 35–42.

———. “Il y splendid un siècle. Le contexte scientifique base la surprenante découverte de la stratosphère.” La Météorologie 37 (2002): 57–69.

Shaw, Mathematician. Manual of Meteorology, vol. 1, Meteorology in History. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Order of the day Press, 1926.

Michel Rochas