Atmospheric scientists to launch high altitude balloon in Dunn Meadow
At about 9:50am the balloon was successfully lunched!
The instrument package attached collected profiles of temperature, pressure and humidity through a mixed-phased cloud (one that contains ice crystals and super-cooled water droplets) that was generating frozen precipitation at the time of the launch. The temperature in Bloomington was a full 15 deg F below the climate normal’s but this gave us a great opportunity to take measurements through these really interesting clouds! This balloon reached heights of 200,000 feet above Earth’s surface and thus provides profiles of the atmosphere all the way through the troposphere and well into the stratosphere to much greater heights than standard radiosonde balloons.
Professor Barthelmie’s G304 Physical Meteorology and Climatology class (and a cluster of interested on-lookers) were present for the launch. Data from the launch will be presented at a public lecture later today in MSBII Gill conference room at 4pm.
Click on Play button to play the video of the launch.
