The Design and Performance of Meteorological Sensors for WindBorne Global Sounding Balloons

TL;DR

This paper details the design, calibration, and validation of meteorological sensors used on WindBorne's global sounding balloons, demonstrating their accuracy and reliability through extensive field and external dataset comparisons.

Contribution

It introduces a robust sensor package with optimized calibration and validation procedures, enabling reliable atmospheric data collection from long-duration balloons.

Findings

Sensors achieve high accuracy across diverse conditions.

Validation shows agreement within expected uncertainty limits.

Data processing methods effectively reduce bias and noise.

Abstract

WindBorne Systems has developed a constellation of long-duration atmospheric balloons to collect meteorological data across the globe, filling gaps in current in-situ data collection methods. Each Global Sounding Balloon (GSB) is capable of flying for weeks or months and performing dozens of soundings while measuring pressure, temperature, humidity, and GNSS-derived position, altitude, and wind velocity. This data is transmitted to ground via satellite, processed, and made available within minutes of being collected. The current meteorological sensor package has remained largely unchanged since mid-2024 and has flown on thousands of GSBs totaling over one million hours of flight time. Here we present the design and performance of this sensor package. The custom readout architecture and housing allow for data collection across nearly all in-flight conditions while minimizing sources of bias and noise. Uncertainty is characterized via sounding reproducibility studies and in-house calibration of pressure, humidity, and temperature sensors. The calibration and data processing procedures have been optimized and validated by comparison with external datasets. We present external validation in the form of 1) side-by-side radiosonde launches performed in collaboration with the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which show agreement within expected uncertainty limits, and 2) intercomparison studies with European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis v5, which show an aggregate root mean square difference of: Geopotential height -- 14 m; Pressure -- 0.36 hPa; Temperature -- 0.91 K; Wind speed u -- 2.45 m/s; Wind speed v -- 2.50 m/s; Relative humidity -- 13%.