Weather station visit

The SC 130 Physical Science class visited the weather station to learn about their services and to observe a weather balloon launch.


The balloon was prepped for launch. Students present included Sidney, Bernie, Sru, LaPrincia, and Etwet. Loyeesha arrived just ahead of the balloon launch.

Hydrogen is used to provide the balloon with buoyancy. Hydrogen is less dense than air. The weather station has equipment that produces hydrogen. As a backup, tanks of helium are available. 

The radiosonde is a newer, smaller unit. In the past the radiosonde had to be manually tracked, now the radiosonde reports its GPS coordinates based on satellite data. No tracking required. The large on site dome is no longer used - that contained a tracking antenna. 

Balloon release.
Ascent

Inside the radiosonde data is displayed on a computer. 


On the left is a dew point (blue), temperature (red), and relative humidity (green) profile. On the right is the track of the balloon. 


Temperature falls steadily with increasing altitude, at least up until the stratosphere is reached.


The radiosonde is reporting a dewpoint of -63.08℃, a temperature of -51.51℃, and a relative humidity of 24.25% - exceptionally dry air aloft.


The GPS provides coordinates down to a tenth of a second, roughly 0.002 arcminutes. The balloon has traveled 10.2 kilometers downrange and is at a height 12,179 meters (almost 40,000 feet). The balloon moved to the west-northwest until up around 10,000 meters and then the balloon doubled back on a east-southeast track. The winds aloft are not the same as the low level winds. 

Kenely Andon explained the work done and services provided by the weather service office. Etwet watches the weather balloon data coming in on the computer off screen to the left. 


Etwet, LaPrincia, Sidney, and Loyeesha listening to the presentation.


The class had been prepped for the field trip the day before with a lecture presentations on weather terminology and services, El Niño Southern Oscillation, and on typhoons. 

The SC 130 Physical Science class thanks the Pohnpei weather service office for hosting the students. A special thanks to NOAA Affiliate Skilling for welcoming the class to the weather office. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Plotting polar coordinates in Desmos and a vector addition demonstrator

Image
In an earlier post I noted that Desmos did not directly plot polar coordinates. Not only was I incorrect, but Desmos responded to my blog to correct me! Although I had at some point seen that one could define a function f(x)=3x+5 and then have Desmos calculate f(6), I had not absorbed how this might be used to plot polar coordinates. The above works beautifully . Realizing that I could effectively program Desmos, I applied this thinking to demonstrating how to add two vectors when given the magnitudes m and the direction angles theta. The graph calculates the i and j components for the two vectors and then adds the vectors, graphically displaying the result while also providing information on the magnitude and direction of the vector sum. m1 and theta1 are the magnitude and direction angle for one of the two vectors, m2 and theta2 are the magnitude and direction for the other vector. All four are dynamically interactive and can be changed. The diagram purports to illustra...
Read more

Traditional food dishes of Micronesia

Image
Clara, Jennette, and Joanie presented ground hard taro cooked in an umw, effectively a hot rock oven. Pohnpeian: rotama. Pingelapese: sero. Mwoakillese: rodma. Mortlockese: Amahd. Kosrae: rodoma. After cooking in an umw the rotama is pounded with the petiole of a palm frond. Rotama is made from hard or swamp taro, known as mwahng on Pohnpei, mweian on Pingalap, pula in Mortlockese, and pahsruhk on Kosrae. In traditional times on the outer islands the women had primary responsibility for tending the taro while the men handled fishing and climbing tasks. Joesen and Noeleen presented fermented breadfruit from the outer islands of Yap such as Woleai and Eauripik. The raw ingredients were actually brought in from Yap, Noeleen prepared the maare.  The leaf wrap is ti leaf - Cordyline fruticosa. Pauleen, Barnson, Trisha, Verginia, Con-ray, and Maylanda from Kitti, Pohnpei brought in mahi umw, koahpnoair koakihr, and uht sukusuk. Above is breadfruit umw, mahi umw, o...
Read more

Setting up a boxplot chart in Google Sheets with multiple boxplots on a single chart

Image
The  Google Statistics  add-on for Google Sheets can display multiple boxplots in a single chart. The key is the layout of the data. One column should be the variable by which the data is to be grouped, the other column should be the data to be box plotted. Set up the Statistics add-on with the data to be plotted as the variable, and the grouping column as the "by" variable. In this image I had deselected all but the boxplot option, the result was the appearance of the Moment, Standard errors, and Confidence intervals options. The default is apparently a 95% confidence interval for the mean. The result is multiple boxplots on a single chart with a common scale. The new tab that is created also quotes 95% confidence intervals for the mean. Note that as of 2018 the Google Statistics add-on cannot be found by search in the add-ons. In addition, as of May 2018 the add-on no longer verifies, possibly due to the add-on not having been updated since August 2017. One may ha...
Read more