If you’re walking by Burt Hall at just the right time, you might see a big red balloon zooming up into the stratosphere on its way to record weather data as part of a nationwide research project.
The Coordinated University Sounding Program for Atmospheric River Reconnaissance is led by the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Scripps has partnered with 16 universities in the U.S. and Canada to expand its data collection sites, and Oregon State is the only participating institution in Oregon.
OSU’s portion of the work is led by Andrea Jenney, assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Jenney volunteered to join CUSP-ARR after her external startup purchased the data-receiving system needed to pair with the weather balloon sensors called “radiosondes.”
The radiosondes attached to the red latex balloons transmit data back to Jenney’s receiving system, measuring air pressure, temperature and humidity while recording windspeed based on the balloon’s position.
“We send our data to the Global Telecommunications System and we’ve confirmed that it has indeed been used to inform the weather forecasts that were made in the last few weeks globally, which is very exciting for us,” Jenney said.
Jenney has trained multiple faculty and students to do the balloon launches, which happen three times per day on days indicated by mission directors at Scripps. Two undergraduate climate science students earning experiential learning credit also start each day by listening in on an 8 a.m. weather briefing where they hear from scientists around the country about the latest forecasts and flight plans.
CUSP-ARR is under the umbrella of the larger Atmospheric River Reconnaissance (AR-Recon) project led by Scripps, NOAA and the U.S. Air Force, which studies atmospheric rivers across both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans via specially equipped aircraft.
The more detailed data meteorologists can collect, the better they can predict and warn the public about extreme weather events like atmospheric rivers, which bring intense rainfall and lead to dangerous floods.
“Future weather is very, very sensitive to what’s happening in the atmosphere right now. The butterfly effect actually comes from this property of weather,” Jenney said, referring to the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a tornado on the opposite side of the world.
“The atmosphere is chaotic and its dynamics are complex. If we can better observe the state of the atmosphere at a high resolution and with less bias, then we can make better forecasts. And forecasts made at advanced lead times, especially when there’s public trust in the reliability of advanced forecasts, enable better decision-making and more effective mobilization of resources ahead of potential emergencies,” Jenney said.
Junior Paige Heinemann said joining the official daily weather briefings offers an inside peek never thought she’d get as a student.
“It’s all the stuff we’ve learned in classes and from the launches put into practice. These are real professionals doing their job, and we get to sit in on it,” Heinemann said. “It’s cool because they’ll tell us when the data from our balloon launches is in the forecast models, so we helped create the data people are using to help forecast country-wide weather.”
Heinemann heard about the experiential learning opportunity from her Kappa Delta sorority roommate, fellow climate science major Mia Frolich. The pair are also both working on geography minors in CEOAS and plan to take Jenney’s class on weather forecasting in spring term.
During the briefings, “They talk about some things that we don’t quite know, so we’ve had to look it up and then we learn something new,” Frolich said. “Getting to learn about all this in meteorology class and then putting it into real-life data, instead of just looking at random lines on papers from scenarios — it’s really cool to see it come together.”
Launching the balloon themselves was a bit nerve-wracking at first, but now that they’ve done about a dozen launches it’s become second nature. Frolich and Heinemann go up to the roof, check that the sensor on the radiosonde is connected to the receiver on the roof and transmitting data, then fill the red balloon with helium while taking care to keep it away from their faces, as the oils in skin and hair can cause the material to pop at a low altitude.
During inflation, the balloon is attached to a weight, which the students place on a scale to measure its lift so they can add exactly 660 grams of helium A parachute hangs off the bottom of the balloon, followed by a de-reeler: a piece of cardboard with about 90 feet of string that unspools as the balloon rises, keeping the sensor at the end of the string far away from the balloon so the data it collects is not contaminated by the balloon.
The balloons are made of natural rubber latex, which breaks down over time, and several of the components are biodegradable. Jenney has put stickers on the plastic sensor packages asking people to contact her if they find them; so far, three have been discovered around the Portland area and another near the California border. Jenney sends the discoverers pre-paid boxes to ship the sensors back so they can be refurbished and reused.
“I think the students are having a lot of fun,” Jenney said. “There are not that many opportunities for hands-on meteorological work during the school year, so being able to get out there and actually take field measurements is really beneficial for the students.”
