A Breathtaking Discovery (Literally): Taking It to the Next Layer

In the last decade of the 19th century the invention of the sounding balloon in France allowed temperature measurements well above 10 km, which lead to the discovery of the stratosphere. Subsequent improvements in these soundings allowed balloons to reach heights above 30 km by the early 1950's. This lead to another middle-atmosphere discovery: the explosive warmings of the polar winter stratosphere. This talk will summarize the developments leading to these discoveries and discuss some of their impacts on the atmospheric sciences.