Weather Balloons & Radiosondes: "Weather - Friend or Foe" ~ 1955 US Army; The Big Picture TV-363

more at http://quickfound.net/

'When -- where -- why -- and how the weather works is "THE BIG PICTURE" story -- Although technical in subject matter, THE BIG PICTURE examines in detail and in layman's language the design and development of new weather equipment. THE BIG PICTURE goes behind barbed wire, protected by maximum security precautions, to visit the Evans Lab, which is a subdivision of the U.S. Army Signal Engineering Laboratory in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Of 500 scientists working here, over 100 are in the Meteorology Department. Through the eyes of THE BIG PICTURE camera we see one of the Army's largest research center -- a multi-million dollar plant -- which is required for the meteorology program. The Army's need to know more and more about weather that surrounds this planet is a vital part of the expanded research program of atomic weapons. We all talk about the weather. In this film documentary, THE BIG PICTURE shows the Army doing something about the weather.'

Originally a public domain film, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A weather or sounding balloon is a balloon (specifically a type of high-altitude balloon) that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde. To obtain wind data, they can be tracked by radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems (such as the satellite-based Global Positioning System, GPS). Balloons meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time are known as transosondes. Weather balloons that do not carry an instrument pack are used to determine upper-level winds and the height of cloud layers. For such balloons, a theodolite or total station is used to track the balloon's azimuth and elevation, which are then converted to estimated wind speed and direction and/or cloud height, as applicable...

One of the first person to use weather balloons was Léon Teisserenc de Bort, the French meteorologist. Starting in 1896 he launched hundreds of weather balloons from his observatory in Trappes, France. These experiments led to his discovery of the tropopause and stratosphere. Transosondes, weather balloons with instrumentation meant to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time to help diagnose radioactive debris from atomic fallout, were experimented with in 1958...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosonde

A radiosonde is a battery-powered telemetry instrument carried into the atmosphere usually by a weather balloon that measures various atmospheric parameters and transmits them by radio to a ground receiver. Modern radiosondes measure or calculate the following variables: altitude, pressure, temperature, relative humidity, wind (both wind speed and wind direction), cosmic ray readings at high altitude and geographical position (latitude/longitude). Radiosondes measuring ozone concentration are known as ozonesondes.

Radiosondes may operate at a radio frequency of 403 MHz or 1680 MHz. A radiosonde whose position is tracked as it ascends to give wind speed and direction information is called a rawinsonde ("radar wind -sonde"). Most radiosondes have radar reflectors and are technically rawinsondes. A radiosonde that is dropped from an airplane and falls, rather than being carried by a balloon is called a dropsonde. Radiosondes are an essential source of meteorological data, and hundreds are launched all over the world daily...