Weather Ballooning

Today, my co-worker Marc and I deployed a weather balloon. The weather team deploys these twice a day in McMurdo (at 11:30am and 11:30pm every day year round). There are over 3,000 teams around the world doing the same launches and data takes. This data goes into a big database that people across the world use.



Data from the sensor transmits every second. There’s info about air temperature, humidity, wind speed, etc. The white item is the sensor.



The weather balloons have to be kept warm so they don’t become brittle. They are in a warmer in this picture below.




Helium is used to inflate the balloon. 











I’m holding the sensor carefully as Marc holds the balloon. We did a countdown and released. The balloon flew up fast!


Here’s the sensor readings from it.


Unfortunately, neither the sensor nor the balloon is recovered, and they are not biodegradable.


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