Beyond the troposphere is the stratosphere. When you see the top of a storm cloud flattening out into the classic anvil shape, you are looking at the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere. This invisible ceiling is known as the tropopause and was discovered in 1902 by a Frenchman in a balloon, Léon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort. Pause in this sense doesn’t mean to stop momentarily but to cease altogether; it’s from the same Greek root as menopause. Even at the troposphere’s greatest extent, the tropopause is not very distant. A fast lift of the
