Weather Whys; Weather Balloons

This is weather-wise, weather balloons are an important part of meteorology's worldwide observation system, and they've proven to be a relatively inexpensive method of carrying instrument packages high into the atmosphere. The most common type of weather balloon is called a radio-sund, and those are released twice a day at stations around the world. They carry instrument packages as far up as they can, taking readings of temperature, moisture, and pressure at various levels of the atmosphere, and transmitting those data to receiving stations at the surface. Finally, the outside pressure decreases to the point that the balloon bursts, causing the instrument package to fall to Earth. But there's another type of balloon called a constant-level balloon, which is specially designed to rise to a certain level in the atmosphere and stay there. Those balloons can be programmed to stay aloft for up to several days, traveling thousands of miles in the swift upper-level winds.

They were first developed by the Japanese during World War II for long-distance bomb delivery, much as cruise missiles are used today. But later the United States Navy used similar balloons for extensive studies of the wind patterns at upper levels of the atmosphere. The naval versions were called transassand balloon systems. They were huge balloons developed to carry several hundred pounds of control equipment, sensing instruments, and transmitting devices. And they proved to be very useful in unlocking the secrets of the upper-level wind flow. Weather-wise is made possible with the assistance of the National Weather Service Forecast Office, and the National Severe Storms Laboratory, both in Norman, Oklahoma, and the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, the Oklahoma Climateological Survey, and the School of Meteorology, all at the University of Oklahoma. For Weather-wise, I'm Drew Barlow.