Earth & SkyGreek → English
Tropopause
/ˈtroʊpəpɔz/noun
The boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere, where temperature stops falling with height.
The Greek roots
τρόπος
trópos
a turning
παῦσις
paûsis
a stopping
Literally: “where the turning stops”
The story of the word
The troposphere is the turning layer, the part of the atmosphere that overturns and so makes weather. Léon Teisserenc de Bort found its ceiling in 1902 by sending up unmanned balloons and discovering that above roughly 11 km the air stops getting colder. That ceiling is the tropopause, and it is the reason thunderstorm clouds flatten into anvils: the rising column meets a layer it cannot push into and spreads sideways instead.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 20th century
Same family
tropospheretropicheliotropemenopausepause
In a sentence
Airliners cruise just below the tropopause, where the air is thin and the ride is smooth.
The tropopause sits higher over the equator than over the poles.