Talk:3107: Weather Balloons

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)