3107: Weather Balloons

Weather Balloons

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Title text: Once you add the balloons into the model, it makes forecasting easier overall--the forecast is always 'cold and dark, with minimal solar-driven convection.'

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Explanation

This explanation is incomplete: This page was created by a METEOROLOGIST BOT WITH A FEAR OF PRE-COPULATORY SEXUAL CANNIBALISM. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

A weather balloon is a balloon that carries meteorological instruments into the high atmosphere and sends readings back to scientists, who use the information to make weather and climate predictions. Typically it will rise up until the difference between the pressure inside the balloon and that outside gets too great, and the membrane breaks and the fragments of balloon fall back down. This is why the graph plots the number of balloons launched each day, rather than overall, since most balloons launched on one day would be gone from the sky the next day.

The chart in the comic claims that weather forecasting accuracy correlates with the number of weather balloons launched each day, with accuracy increasing fast at first, followed by diminishing returns as the number of launches increases. However, it forecasts that if the rate of balloon launches is sufficiently high, it could provide so many balloons that they actually impact the weather by blocking out sunlight. If the balloons are not included in the weather model, the accuracy of the model based on the readings provided by the many balloons decreases. This starts to happen somewhere between 100 billion to 1 trillion weather balloons launched each day. The accuracy of the model drops completely towards zero for around 10 trillion launched each day, where it even falls below the accuracy for just a single balloon (which may or may not be augmented by non-balloon information) at the start of the graph.

While the number of weather balloon launches impacts weather model accuracy, it's not the only factor. Ground stations have been collecting and collating useful surface data for centuries. Scientific understanding of the physical processes in the atmosphere has also improved, only in part due to balloons, and the speed of computers used in analyses and simulations has increased by many orders of magnitude. The existence of weather and geophysical satellites also significantly improves forecasts, as they can continuously gain information about clouds and temperatures over huge areas, while weather balloons capture information as they rise through only a single air-column for a limited duration.

The surface area of the Earth is around 510 (short-scale) trillion square meters, and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6 m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30 m², within a just marginally larger 'air surface area' at height. This makes it entirely possible to blanket the whole Earth with around 18 trillion standard weather balloons - or possibly even fewer, given the current availability of larger balloon models each more than twice the width, or four times the area. This isn't far off the implications given by the graph. On the other hand, the inherent translucency of the balloon material, the tendency of the balloons to jostle vertically (the illustration implying that it's not just a single layer of close-packed balloons), and the need to synchronize launches and ascents to try to form an optimal single layer, might make complete coverage difficult to accomplish without a slightly greater number of launches. Alternatively, roughly doubling this coverage could be achieved by launching when the balloons will end up in the sunlit hemisphere at any given time.

The joke in the title text is that when there are so many balloons that sunlight is entirely blocked, weather will always be the same - dark and cold - so we won't need complex models to forecast it. Also, when there is no heating of the Earth's surface, the solar-driven convection that drives storms and weather patterns would stop. Of course, plants and algae would start to die out, followed shortly by humans and most other life on Earth. However, assuming that the balloons are being launched by humans, the number of them that it would be possible to launch would fall as the population and social structures began to collapse, mitigating the impact on the weather. The pollution from the trillions of balloons would last for longer, but wouldn't prevent sunlight from reaching the Earth's surface.

Transcript

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[A graph.]

[X axis has 14 divisions/ticks upon it, a selection of them labeled logarithmically with progressive values of ten:]

1 [First tick]

10

100

1,000

1 Million

1 Billion

1 Trillion [Penultimate tick]

[Rightwards arrow and label:] Number of weather balloon launches per day

[Y axis is unmarked and unquantified:]

[Upwards arrow and label:] Weather model accuracy

[The plot starts above the first mark for 1 balloon, at about 40% of the eventual maximum value of the curve. It starts rising quickly before levelling off, effectively plateaus between 100 million and 10 billion, then reduces even more rapidly down to perhaps 15% of the maximum above the final 10 trillion mark.]

[A point on the line at about 4000 launches per day and 85% of the maximum is indicated by an arrow and label:] Current rate

[The graph is decorated (behind the plot-line) with a number of drawn features, mostly of weather balloons dotted around the space between the 'ground'/X-axis and the upper limit of the plot.]

[The upper balloons are visibly more expanded than those closer to the ground, one of which seems to have just been released by a Cueball standing half way between the "1" and "10" tickmarks, as apparently linked by some 'movement dots'.]

[Most balloons are at or around the upper limit of their range, and the number of balloons around a general horizontal position increases from left to right.]

[A single high-altitude ballon is found in the area above the plot-line to the left.]

[In the top right, balloons become heavily clustered and an arrow points at this overlapping mass (once more above the plot-line) leading from a text label:] Layer of weather balloons, not accounted for in models, blocks sunlight from reaching Earth

[A stylistic 'Sun' is drawn above the top-right cluster of balloons, various light-to-mid-shade halftones are used to roughly indicate shadows cast below the in reasingly densely packed balloons leading up to this section of the scene. The lightest tones start to 'reach the ground' at slightly above the "1 Billion" mark, the darkest tones starting in the 1 Trillion to (unlabeled) 10 Trillion division.]

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Discussion

If you could make weather balloons out of plastic grocery bags you could address global warming and plastic bag pollution at the same time. 47.248.235.170 21:35, 25 June 2025 (UTC)Pat

You'd only delay those problems as weather balloons do have a life expectancy, just look at the problems the Myth Busters had with them when tackling Lawnchair Larry. 2001:1C02:1A9D:9700:391C:7C6C:4E0A:AD94 23:21, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

It wouldn't be a plastic recycling method so much as a plastic distribution method. RegularSizedGuy (talk) 00:26, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

The current description is useful -- but the phrase "over time" is in error. The graph shows the relationship between the number of weather balloons and the accuracy of modelling: "time" is not a component. 165.225.115.132 23:56, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

I would say time is a component because the x axis is labeled number of weather balloons launched _per day_, therefore distributed through time, therefore time is part of the graph. 179.217.229.235 06:54, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

The original complaint was neutered fairly soon after the observation was made, anyway, so no longer applies. Clearly you could progress through "number of balloons per day". Testing a given number one day, a larger number the next is an easy method (for as long as you wish to sustain that, and are able to). Or even just test for a few releases, one day, then immediately launch more (and test), then yet more (test again), all before the initial ones start to 'decay' out of the current count faster than you can add to them (any eventual backsliding, aside, that makes a timeward correlation to numbers currently aloft).

But, truly, you could scattergun the effect. Today, launch 1. Tomorrow launch 1 trillion. The day after, try 4000. The day after that, try 4000 again (just because), or 1 or 400 or 1 trillion or 18 trillion or 42 (or none) — whatever is you desire and within your capability (including maybe preventing other potential launchings from others, to ensure a sufficiently supressed daily figure).

Anyway, though time 'features', insofar as daily counts (and, as a hidden variable, the matter of balloon longevity, which could change things drastically if prior ones did not actually vanish between one day and the next but actually permanently accumulated), "over time" is no longer mentioned (whoever rewrote that bit). 82.132.245.112 09:58, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Global helium reserves are currently estimated to be around 40 billion cubic meters (source Google), so you run out of helium well before the balloons have a significant effect. Since the majority of it gets used for cooling cryogenic systems in hospitals that is going to become a serious health issue - it's already happened a couple of times as old reserves were depleted, the industry found some new sources but they are running out of places to look. MarcusRowland (talk) 10:07, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

If we were launching massive quantities of balloons we could use hydrogen instead which is very abundant (yes, it is dangerous, but on the plus side has more lift). Or even argon (18 atomic weight, so it should have some lift) or methane (16 molecular weight) Rps (talk) 11:37, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Hydrogen's teeny molecules would leak out of the balloons much faster than helium - when I was an educational lab technician we always had to fill hydrogen balloons just before using them because they deflated very quickly. It's also an indirect greenhouse gas so releasing vast quantities into the atmosphere may not be a good idea. Incidentally, has anyone done the sums on how many weather balloons would actually fit into the volume of the earth's atmosphere? --MarcusRowland (talk) 14:56, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Oops, 18 is argon's atomic number, the mass of (terrestrial) argon is ~40, so it sinks in air. Neon (isotopes 20 and 22) would work somewhat, but is not abundant like argon, so probably not a good idea.Rps (talk)

Yes, Argon is a classic gas (with others - an extreme example is tungsten hexafluoride!) for filling a balloon that's unusually heavy. Also escapes from the balloon much less, if you find that useful. 82.132.244.48 19:00, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

I only remembered later that argon is used by deep divers to inflate dry suits, precisely because it is heavy and so it has less thermal conductivity than the heliox which deep divers use to breath. Rps (talk) 16:19, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Honestly I feel like this one is a thinly veiled joke about LLMs: As they grow bigger with more data to work with, they tend to get better, but the improvements require exponential data, so benefits wear off, until the internet gets so polluted with AI slop (like the atmosphere gets covered in balloons), that the quality of results of any future AI venture plummets, and training new models becomes impossible. mlerp (talk)

How many weather balloons are launched per day? Seems relevant. --Mushrooms (talk) 10:10, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Okay, a lot easier number to find than I thought. Estimates range from 900-1300, which matches the comic pretty well. --Mushrooms (talk) 10:12, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Now establish how accurate current weather predictions are, to tie down the other axis. ;) 82.132.245.173 13:12, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article says "Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily", which would give something roughly around 2,500 - 4,000. 82.13.184.33 15:23, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

The wikipedia article indeed cites a maximum of approximately 5200 balloons daily. The other top Google hit I get on this topic is an ABC article from 2023 claiming only 1800 daily "How many weather balloons are out there? Hundreds, it turns out" Yet the chart seems to place the "Current Rate" dot closer to the unmarked 10000 line than the 1000, maybe 3/4 of the way there... If my math is right that should be about 10000^(15/16) or ~5623.4 so, pretty close to that maximum wikipedia estimate. Maybe this should be explained in the main article because I sure got a bit confused and I had to refresh my math memory of how log graphs work... 38.175.130.234 00:14, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

I checked the graph. The 2x image has an x axis scale of very very close to 60px / cycle (going from 1 to 1 trillion (12 cycles) I have at 721px.) Going from 1 to the middle of the dot for "current rate" is 217px. This yields 3.61667 cycles. 10**3.61667 is 4136. Thus, the graph shown is indicating 4136 balloons/day is the current launch rate. More accurately(?), 10**(217/(721/12)), which yields 4089 balloons/day. So, somewhere in the range of 4089-4136 balloons/day. Esp666 (talk) 02:24, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

Making a vast number of assumptions about the y axis (linear, low end marks 0% accurate, peak accuracy is very close to 100% accurate), based on the graph as presented, I calculate the current weather model accuracy at about 86.4%. Esp666 (talk) 02:32, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

The transcript doesn't mention the Cueball at the bottom left who is launching the first weather balloon. 93.41.50.123 10:36, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't mention any of the 'decoration' to the plot (balloons, Sun, shadows, etc). Though I was hoping to just rewrite it not as a monolithic clump, as it was, if nobody else had a good go at it before I got around to it myself. (I probably would have added the missing decor-description, at that time.) 82.132.244.245 13:30, 28 June 2025 (UTC)
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