In order to better understand the atmospheric river event that is dumping rain on Northern California, a team of scientists from Southern California recently traveled to the Bay Area to launch a number of weather balloons.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at UC San Diego is where they are. The goal of Adolfo Lopez and Subin Yoon’s trip in Bodega Bay is to gather meteorological information regarding the remarkable atmospheric river storm.
These weather balloons are inflated every three hours, and GPS radiosondes are attached before being launched directly into the storm.
They’ll give you a glimpse of the mood at that moment, as if they were capturing a momentary photograph. We will see the storm move through the region as we do this successively every three hours,” said Yoon, the field operations manager for the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes.
In addition to gathering vital meteorological data like temperature, pressure, wind, and relative humidity, researchers are determining the storm’s strength and trajectory.
Real-time weather data is provided every second by the weather balloons and GPS radiosondes, which are able to measure all atmospheric levels up to about 80,000 feet. The National Weather Service then uses this data to enhance and update the weather models that meteorologists use to predict the storm.
“It’s fantastic that I can be a part of this, but I’m also really happy to be a part of it because we’re doing this for a greater purpose, you know? Yoon added, “I feel like I’m doing something that’s really relevant.”
Lopez, a research and development engineer at the center, said, “It’s just changed my whole outlook, like you know you think the weather is, ‘Is it raining or sunny?’ and it’s so much more than that.”
Their work has greater significance because they are both aware that they are assisting in the forecasting and understanding of atmospheric rivers that affect everyone.
Weather balloons are being launched by researchers from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Marysville to examine the storm’s snow impact in the Sierra Mountains and in Tacoma, Washington, to observe the storm’s effects further north.
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