3107: Weather Balloons - Revision history

82.140.51.133 at 11:52, 18 November 2025

2025-11-18T11:52:47Z

MinersHavenM43 at 02:24, 21 September 2025

2025-09-21T02:24:51Z

BobcatInABox: /* Transcript */

2025-09-09T13:12:54Z

‎Transcript

92.17.62.87: Undo revision 386100 by 2001:4450:813D:C800:7D64:758:9810:CB82 (talk) Not obvious. And given 2001:4450:..'s recent edits, is vandalism?

2025-09-07T12:28:55Z

Undo revision 386100 by 2001:4450:813D:C800:7D64:758:9810:CB82 (talk) Not obvious. And given 2001:4450:..'s recent edits, is vandalism?

2001:4450:813D:C800:7D64:758:9810:CB82: /* Transcript */

2025-09-07T05:36:41Z

‎Transcript

FaviFake: /* Explanation */ complete

2025-07-24T13:07:30Z

‎Explanation: complete

FaviFake: /* Explanation */

2025-07-24T13:07:19Z

‎Explanation

82.132.236.42: /* Transcript */ Nobody improved it, whilst I was gone, so doing it myself.

2025-07-10T13:31:07Z

‎Transcript: Nobody improved it, whilst I was gone, so doing it myself.

Whoop whoop pull up: /* Explanation */

2025-06-29T15:30:50Z

‎Explanation

DKMell: clarification

2025-06-27T16:57:20Z

clarification

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 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 {{w|Trillion|short-scale trillion}} square meters (5.1&times;10<sup>13</sup>&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>), and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6&nbsp;m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>, 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 surface area of the Earth is around 510 {{w|Trillion|short-scale trillion}} square meters (5.1&times;10<sup>14</sup>&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>), and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6&nbsp;m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>, 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.

@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 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 {{w|Trillion|short-scale trillion}} square meters (51<sup>13</sup>&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>), and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6&nbsp;m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>, 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 surface area of the Earth is around 510 {{w|Trillion|short-scale trillion}} square meters (5.1&times;10<sup>13</sup>&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>), and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6&nbsp;m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30&nbsp;m<sup>2</sup>, 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.

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:12, 9 September 2025
Line 21:		Line 21:

	==Transcript==		==Transcript==
−	~~{{incomplete transcript\|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}~~

	:[A graph.]		:[A graph.]

@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 :[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 Beret Guy standing half way between the "1" and "10" tickmarks, as apparently linked by some 'movement dots'.]
+::[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.]
@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 [[Category:Line graphs]]
-[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
+[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 [[Category:Weather]]

@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 :[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'.]
+::[The upper balloons are visibly more expanded than those closer to the ground, one of which seems to have just been released by a Beret Guy 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.]
@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 [[Category:Line graphs]]
-[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
+[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
 [[Category:Weather]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:07, 24 July 2025
Line 10:		Line 10:

	==Explanation==		==Explanation==
−	~~{{incomplete\|This page was created by a METEOROLOGIST BOT WITH A FEAR OF PRE-COPULATORY SEXUAL CANNIBALISM. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}~~
	A {{w\|weather balloon}} is a balloon that carries {{w\|meteorology\|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.		A {{w\|weather balloon}} is a balloon that carries {{w\|meteorology\|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.

@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 {{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
-[A graph is shown. The X axis is labeled Number of Weather Balloon Launches Per Day. It's logarithmic, with ticks in powers of 10, and values shown at 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 1 million, 1 billion, and 1 trillion. The Y axis is labeled Weather Model Accuracy, no values are shown. The plot starts above the mark for 1 balloon, at about 40% of the maximum value of the curve<!--(!!)-->, it quickly rises through a point labelled "Current Rate", at about 4000 launches per day and 85% of the maximum. The maximum value is reached at 100 million, plateaus until 10 billion, and then reduces even more rapidly down to perhaps 15% maximum accuracy above the 10 trillion mark.]
+:[A graph.]
 {{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

@@ Line 19: / Line 19: @@
 The surface area of the Earth is around 510 {{w|Trillion|(short-scale) trillion}} square meters, and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6&nbsp;m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30&nbsp;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 of 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.
+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==

@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 ==Explanation==
 {{incomplete|This page was created by a METEOROLOGIST BOT WITH A FEAR OF PRE-COPULATORY SEXUAL CANNIBALISM. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
-A {{w|weather balloon}} is a balloon that carries {{w|meteorology|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. 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 fragments of balloon falling back down).
+A {{w|weather balloon}} is a balloon that carries {{w|meteorology|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 being 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.
+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 there's correlation between number of weather balloon launches and weather model accuracy, they're 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 only capture information as they rise through a single air-column for a limited duration.
+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 {{w|Trillion|(short-scale) trillion}} square metres, and a typical weather balloon (whilst smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6&nbsp;m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30m², within a just marginally larger 'air surface area' at height. This makes it entirely possible for not far from 18 trillion standard weather balloons to potentially blanket the whole Earth; or even fewer, given the current availability of larger models each reaching more than twice the width, or four times the coverage of area. This isn't far off the implications given by the graph. On the other hand, because of the inherent translucency of the balloon material, the tendency 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 any optimal single layer in one go might make it difficult to accomplish without a slightly greater magnitude of launches. (Or perhaps roughly doubling up the effect by only ever bothering to launch at local times that concentrate the coverage across the whole sunlit hemisphere at any given time.)
+The surface area of the Earth is around 510 {{w|Trillion|(short-scale) trillion}} square meters, and a typical weather balloon (while smaller at launch) will expand to approximately 6&nbsp;m diameter at altitude; this covers an area slightly under 30&nbsp;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: "cold and dark", so we won't need complex models to forecast it. Also, when there is not heating of the Earth's surface the solar driven convection that drives storms and weather patterns would stop. Of course, humans and most life of Earth would start to die out. 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 not prevent the Sun from reaching the Earth's surface.
+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 of 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==