Greetings from the Shackleton Ice Shelf! Today I get to tell you about my favorite activity on the voyage — launching weather balloons! Every day, we launch at least two balloons per day — one in the morning and one in the evening in order to get a “look” at the profile of the atmosphere. The balloons carry a small device called a radiosonde that collects data on temperature, relative humidity, pressure, as well as wind speed and direction. We then use the data to make a sketch of the atmosphere, from the surface to the upper troposphere (the balloon makes it roughly 15 to 20 km up out here)! The sketches, known as “Skew-Ts” because of the way we draw the temperature lines, help us to “see” the atmosphere. This allows us to understand important dynamics of the atmosphere necessary for cloud formation and other meteorological phenomena.
I cannot mention the balloon launches without giving credit to our balloon launcher extraordinaire, Kelsey Barber. Returning classrooms might remember Kelsey from last year’s Reach the World, in which she was the host from the MISO cruise. Kelsey is a researcher from the University of Utah and manages the radiosonde launches in addition to some of the radars on board.
