On the prediction of stratospheric balloon trajectories: Improving winds with mesoscale simulations

Trajectory forecasts are typically computed from weather forecasts produced by an operational center, for example, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This study uses past experiments to investigate strategies for improving these forecasts.

Trajectories for open stratospheric balloon (OSB) short-term flights are computed using mesoscale simulations with the Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) Model initialized with ECMWF operational forecasts and are assimilated with radio soundings using the Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART) ensemble Kalman filter, for three case studies during the Strapolete 2009 campaign in Sweden. The results are very variable: in one case, the error in the final simulated position is reduced by 90% relative to the forecast using the ECMWF winds, while in another case the forecast is hardly improved.