Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-2016
Publication Title
Antarctic Science
Abstract
An experiment applying controlled meteorological (CMET) balloons near the coast of Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, in January 2013 is described. Two balloons were airborne for 60 and 106 hours with trajectory lengths of 885.8 km and 2367.4 km, respectively. The balloons carried out multiple controlled soundings on the atmospheric pressure, temperature and humidity up to 3.3 km. Wind speed and direction were derived from the balloon drift. Observations were compared with radiosonde sounding profiles from the Halley Research Station, and applied in evaluating simulations carried out with the weather research and forecasting (WRF) mesoscale atmospheric model. The most interesting feature detected by the CMET balloons was a mesoscale anticyclone over the Weddell Sea and the coastal zone, which was reproduced by the WRF model with reduced intensity. The modelled wind speed was up to 10 m s-1 slower and the relative humidity was 20-40% higher than the observed values. However, over the study period the WRF results generally agreed with the observations. The results suggest that CMET balloons could be an interesting supplement to Antarctic atmospheric observations, particularly in the free troposphere.
Keywords
Key words Dronning Maud Land, observations, troposphere, WRF
Volume
28
Issue
5
First Page
387
Last Page
394
DOI
10.1017/S0954102016000213
ISSN
09541020
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
© Antarctic Science Ltd 2016
Recommended Citation
Hole, Lars R.; Bello, Alexis Pérez; Roberts, Tjarda J.; Voss, Paul B.; and Vihma, Timo, "Measurements by Controlled Meteorological Balloons in Coastal Areas of Antarctica" (2016). Engineering: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/egr_facpubs/60
Comments
Archived as published. Open access article.