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Application Notes from April 2025 Radiosonde and Ground Station/Tracker Intercomparison Study

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Abstract

Weather ballooning with radiosonde payloads can provide field-based, observational meteorological data for operational weather forecasts and research on the atmosphere and the climate. Despite the relatively low initial capital costs when comparing to aircraft/satellite methods, the costs of ground stations/trackers (GSTs) receiving and decoding the radiosonde telemetry may pose a significant financial challenge to institutions with limited resources and to flight missions with high temporal resolution (launch intervals of less than 3 hours). We conducted a Radiosonde and Ground Station/Tracker Intercomparison (RGSTI) study in April 2025 to evaluate some of the current low-cost GSTs options and the Sondehub (SH) multi-receiver radiosonde tracking network. Although yielding varied data based on radiosonde models, SH demonstrated less dependence on antenna alignment, longer radiosonde tracking and data telemetry, and the capacity of tracking multiple radiosondes with minimal hardware requirements and financial barriers. Our results provide a comprehensive review on the data matrix of different radiosonde/GST combinations and recommendations that may benefit the planning of future high temporal resolution radiosonde campaigns by the high altitude ballooning community.

Keywords: radiosonde field campaign, high temporal resolution, multi-receiver radiosonde tracking network, radiosonde intercomparison, ground station and receiver intercomparison, atmospheric dynamics

How to Cite:

Teall, G., Neumann, K., Halloran, A., Ibrahim, T., Zhang, X., Bouajjaj, J., Seifert, N. & QIU, C., (2025) “Application Notes from April 2025 Radiosonde and Ground Station/Tracker Intercomparison Study”, Academic High Altitude Conference 2025(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/ahac.20103