Atm Ocn 100 1st Edition Lecture 6 Outline of Last Lecture I Website of the day Notes II Surface Pressure III Humidity IV Vertical Structure of Atmospheric Temperature Outline of Current Lecture II Guest lecture notes III Information for Balloon Launching IV Weather for Friday notes Current Lecture Research Balloon Soundings Guest Lecture Erik Olson Space Science and Engineering Center UW Madison We are going to do the balloon launch at Engineering Measurements are taken at equal measurements around the United States Guest lecture not sure if we need to know for tests Sensor and Retrieval Algorithm Testing Retrieval This means not directly measuring the data it means trying to guess what the temperature is in the atmosphere The instrument is used to measure at the surface and gets data about once a minute Sometimes instruments are measured on airplanes or using satellites The weather company sets up wind turbines to test whether specific places are preserving the flow of atmosphere as well as they can Wind profiler is used to measure directly if the flow is as best as possible They compare retrieved profiles to sounding Profiles are used to remove water vapor effects Which then provide accurate profiles for use in retrievals Aircraft Sensor Calibration these are sensors that are on airplanes used to gather data Two projects are TAMDAR Memphis TN WVSS Louisville KT and Rockford IL These sensors measure moisture and temperature on airplanes Problem is that the only useful data from an aircraft is when the aircraft is taking off and when it is landing A sensor is more useful if put it on a commuter aircraft which has way more flights These flights go up for 20 minutes and then go down This is way more useful for forecasting UW SSEC Ground Station Laptop electronic package System Electronics There is an inside embedded PC which size wise is like a 15 inch laptop An embedded pc has a GPS card with multiple channels The GPS information is sent to some stations 30 years ago the radar reflection gathered track data and send it back by radio Then a system was created simpler than radars to get winds and data Nowadays we use GPS sensors and get data a lot simpler and faster There is a sample balloon and sample radiosonde being passed around Radiosonde Ground Check While in channel the temperature sensor is checked to make sure degree is same as ground check Also the relative humidity sensors are checked to make sure they are accurate There is a relative humidity sensor which is a passive sensor which means it has a plate that is measuring capacity of that plate as it goes through the air More humidity there is the less capacity something has These plates are very sensitive to debre or other things We are looking at a picture of a sonde The sonde has a GPS antenna which is a sensor wand that gets data points Temperature sensor wands want to get data every second The temperature sensors are very thin wirers Wire is very thin to equalize the air to get an accurate measurement of the temperature The humidity sensors on the sonde go through clouds which make water deposits go on it these clouds have 100 humidity To combat this there are two sensors on there While in flight sonde package will heat one of those sensors while water is deposited and then vaporized the other sensor at this time will take data After a bit they switch and then data is gathered from the other one There is a little chip between the white dots that gathers the data for this Ground Station Antennas We have to look back to electronics There is an ethernet cable that goes from the laptop to the antenna One cable that s in the middle goes to the GPS antenna Middle antenna is UHF antenna We are going to use a smaller one for our launch Balloons This is a picture of a summit camp that studies interaction of ice sheet and lower point of the atmosphere They launch balloons there twice a day There is a need to control how much helium are in the balloons in order to gather data accurately There are two ways to control helium amount in the balloons one way is to create weights and the balloon till they then get to the appropriate rate The other way is to just see how much pressure of helium is taken from the tank This is easier Not as much pressure in these balloon as we would think Balloon release videos Can still launch a balloon when there are 45 mph winds Not to expensive for equipment good chance balloon will just go along surface and trash the data Ever get sonde package back They used to put names on those It ended up being not a cost effective thing so no they do not get sonde package back anymore Back to Lecture Sort of Balloon launching just east of Engineering Building Engineering Mall on Friday 9 19 at 11 am So meet at launch site Get to watch getting the balloon ready and then we will see it for a few minutes There are rooftop cameras we can follow the balloon for quite a while Do assignment to predict what the balloon is going to observe when it raises Predict what balloon is going to see at 500 mb We need to know pressure humidity temperature and wind So we are to predict what it s going to measure at 500 mb at 3 qualities When it gets to 500 mb pressure will take temperature humidity and wind predict these based on the predictions online Best place is central operations can look at 500 mb map at time it is going to be launched 6Z midnight night before can look at forecast and then from that map read off the map what the temperature humidity and wind will be at 500 mb in Madison Get connection between what balloon is measuring and what website says When they do measurements into numerical model they actually put down position of balloon not position of where it is launched That is where they assume data point is being measured 2nd thing measure maximum wind is going to measure Look all the weather maps at a function of height try to figure what strongest wind is pressure of what it is and try to figure out what it is Try to look at all weather maps at different elevations and realize what those maps mean Jet streams usually higher than 500 mb Jet streams quite normally around 300 to 200 mb The jet stream is somewhere in there 250 mb 300 mb It takes about 30 minutes to get to 500 mb We will probably lose the balloon at 150 km Typically at that distance it is about 1 hour and a half into the sounding Erik would except that we will track it for a little more than 1 hour Surface is at 1000 mb and the balloon will get up