Scientists from the South African Weather Service (SAWS) and the German Research Centre Juelich are working together near Beaufort West, Western Cape, on launching high-altitude balloons to measure the chemistry of the atmosphere, including pollutants.
These balloons can carry small measuring instruments up to an altitude of approximately 35 km, well above the range of aircraft, to investigate the atmosphere from the ground up to those otherwise inaccessible altitudes.
The challenges of such balloon launches are multifold such as sudden wind gusts that can break the balloon before it can take off, and recovering the sensors after a particularly hard landing during a thunderstorm.
Despite this, the first four launches have already provided valuable and precise information on the vertical distribution of the concentrations of water vapour, ozone, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and many other trace gases.
The purpose of this project is to collect data about important pollutants and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which are extremely scarce in the southern hemisphere, especially at higher altitudes.
This is a new and exciting collaboration between the South African Weather Service and the German Research Centre Juelich.
Some of the benefits of this collaboration include furthering our understanding of atmospheric processes; improving satellite products by providing an independent point of comparison; and, in the longer term, to help improve long-term weather forecasts as well as projections of future climate change.
