How do weather services get sky conditions above the surface?

On Jul 23, 10:53*am, Gig 601Xl Builder
wrote:
buttman wrote:

oh god shut up. I've been frankly answering his questions for a while
now and I've yet to see him respond to me in that manner, or to other
people in that manner either.

If this is an example of your skills when it observational skills then I
really am concerned about your ability to act as a CFI.

Uh huh. How about providing me with one of these seemingly ubiquitous
examples of him
telling me, or anyone else that they are "wrong" and that he has
"studied the issue in
depth"? The burden of proof is on the one making the claim. I just
went through the last 5 or so post I've made to his threads and I
haven't noticed any rudeness.

Mxsmanic wrote:
It's easy enough to establish measurement stations on the surface to measure
wind, temperature, visibility, etc., but what is the normal way for
meteorologists to measure these things aloft? Do they depend on PIREPs, or
expendable/recoverable probes and balloons, or satellites, or what?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorology

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/gu...fcst/home.rxml

http://www.physics.uwo.ca/~whocking/p103/instrum.html


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

buttman wrote in news:0b760b6d-456d-43dc-85c8-
:

On Jul 23, 10:53*am, Gig 601Xl Builder
wrote:
buttman wrote:

oh god shut up. I've been frankly answering his questions for a while
now and I've yet to see him respond to me in that manner, or to other
people in that manner either.

If this is an example of your skills when it observational skills then I
really am concerned about your ability to act as a CFI.

Uh huh. How about providing me with one of these seemingly ubiquitous
examples of him
telling me, or anyone else that they are "wrong" and that he has
"studied the issue in
depth"? The burden of proof is on the one making the claim. I just
went through the last 5 or so post I've made to his threads and I
haven't noticed any rudeness.


It's because you're stupid.


This is someting it would behoove you to accept sooner rather than later.
It would keep you from having any sort of expectations about your life.


Bertie

On Jul 23, 12:12 pm, "Morgans" wrote:
"Rocky Stevens" wrote

It would also be a useful forum if people actually answered the
questions posed, regardless of *who* is asking it. The OP's question
is perefectly valid, and x number of years from now when somebody
Google's for the answer and gets this thread, all they will see for an
answer are insults. There is nothing more frustrating than
Googling for an anwer to something only to find the response was "why
don't you Google for it". If you have the time to post such a
response, you have the time to answer the question.

You must not have kids, or if you do, they are brats.

All kids occasionally need to be ignored when they exibit undesirable
behavior, and rewarded for correct behavior. That is MX. He never exibits
desireable behavior, when the big picture has been taken into account. What
he has done is drive off posters by the droves.

I still do not understand how anyone with a brain can think that his
presence here is desireable, or why they would answer any post of his for
any reason.
--
Jim in NC

Jim, he amuses us. It's understandable if he does not amuse you, but
if that's the case, simply don't read threads he originates. This
topic is an especially bad troll attempt for someone whose world view
is via google.

buttman wrote:
On Jul 23, 10:53 am, Gig 601Xl Builder
wrote:
buttman wrote:

oh god shut up. I've been frankly answering his questions for a while
now and I've yet to see him respond to me in that manner, or to other
people in that manner either.
If this is an example of your skills when it observational skills then I
really am concerned about your ability to act as a CFI.

Uh huh. How about providing me with one of these seemingly ubiquitous
examples of him
telling me, or anyone else that they are "wrong" and that he has
"studied the issue in
depth"? The burden of proof is on the one making the claim. I just
went through the last 5 or so post I've made to his threads and I
haven't noticed any rudeness.


Well seeing has Anthony has posted to R.A.P. over 7000 times since
August of 2006 as I wouldn't say that the last 5 or
so posts are a legitimate sample size. Just wait, I'll point it out to
you next time it happens.

In article ,
Gig 601Xl Builder wrote:

buttman wrote:
On Jul 23, 10:53 am, Gig 601Xl Builder
wrote:
buttman wrote:

oh god shut up. I've been frankly answering his questions for a while
now and I've yet to see him respond to me in that manner, or to other
people in that manner either.
If this is an example of your skills when it observational skills then I
really am concerned about your ability to act as a CFI.

Uh huh. How about providing me with one of these seemingly ubiquitous
examples of him
telling me, or anyone else that they are "wrong" and that he has
"studied the issue in
depth"? The burden of proof is on the one making the claim. I just
went through the last 5 or so post I've made to his threads and I
haven't noticed any rudeness.


Well seeing has Anthony has posted to R.A.P. over 7000 times since
August of 2006 as I wouldn't say that the last 5 or
so posts are a legitimate sample size. Just wait, I'll point it out to
you next time it happens.




try in the Take off and landing advice thread begun Jun 2002

You haven't been here long enough. Many times Mx or Le Chaud
Lapin will ask a question, get the right answer in a polite manner,
and then argue endlessly against that answer, belittling the teacher.

That's not true, at least in my case (I haven't audited all the threads in
which Le Chaud Lapin participates).

Many times, I get an answer that the poster believes to be correct, but it
conflicts with other sources I've consulted, so naturally I question it. Or I
get an answer that sounds intriguing, but when I ask for an explanation, the
person who gave me the answer has none--he learned it from someone and simply
accepted it, without caring about or looking up the supporting theory (if
any). Or I get multiple conflicting answers from several people, who then
start arguing with each other and trading insults--they cannot all be
simultaneously right.

I don't belittle anyone, but some people here are so incredibly insecure that
anything other than total, unconditional acceptance of anything they say is an
intolerable blow to their fragile egos, and they become defensive, resorting
to personal attacks, when confronted with anything less than total acceptance.
They are so sensitive, in fact, that they interpret every request for
clarification as a personal affront. People like this are hard to deal with
because they are so hypersensitive and emotional; however, they often don't
know much about anything, so dealing with them isn't always necessary.
Unfortunately, they are often among the first to respond. Once they learn
that their responses may not be instantly and totally accepted, their
subsequent responses consist of nothing more than personal attacks.

Many of the physics and other things in aviation are not
intuitive; that is, they don't make sense to the uninitiated, and
without well-rounded groundschooling and flight instruction they never
will make sense.

It's worse than that. I've discovered that many pilots just don't understand
those concepts, and asking about them only irritates them as they realize how
little they understand. The reality is that many of these concepts don't have
to be understood just to fly an airplane, and of those that might be useful to
understand, few are mandatory for safe flight.

Pilots are instructed by rote, just as most people are instructed by rote in
most things. The threshold of aptitude required to absorbe rote learning is
much lower than that required to understand theory, which is why it is usually
used. And rote learning accomplishes the purpose, as long as experience is
limited to situations covered by that learning. It only fails in situations
where inferences must be made for unforeseen situations based on theory, and
these are thankfully rare.

Flight simulators don't teach these things.

Nobody teaches them, apparently, or at least nobody in flight instruction.

At one time I believed that flight instruction was far more comprehensive. I
now know, from what I see here and from my own investigations of the training
materials, that it is much simpler than I believed it to be. This shouldn't
surprise me (because almost all training is like this), but it does.

No amount of insult, personal attacks, or trolling intimidates me, so I don't
know why people bother. It actually seems to bother them far more than it
does me, when they discover that I don't care.

I'd be content to discuss aviation, but some people turn every discussion into
a discussion of personalities instead.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

On Jul 23, 8:37*am, Mxsmanic wrote:
It's easy enough to establish measurement stations on the surface to measure
wind, temperature, visibility, etc., but what is the normal way for
meteorologists to measure these things aloft? *Do they depend on PIREPs, or
expendable/recoverable probes and balloons, or satellites, or what?

Anthony, this may have already been suggested to you in the past.
Why don't you start taking flying lessons?
You will enjoy the real thing so much more than your simulator and you
will learn the answer to all these questions quickly.
The best & most economical way to learn is to enroll in a part 141
college with aviation or go the LSA or recreational pilot route.
That's how I did it when I was in my late 20s (college), and I got my
commercial/Instrument in 2 semesters. All I did was fly, I didn't take
any college academics.
We used a simulator extensively for instrument instruction, which I
found to be more challenging than the real airplane.
All kinds of financing is available, from federal grants & loans to
thousands of other financing options.
There really is little reason why one who wants to fly cannot learn.
You can do it...

Ricky

buttman writes:

Theres a little "eye" that looks up at the sky at various points. It
detects if there is cloud, or sky. The sensor is prone to errors,
though. Sometimes if it's broken, it'll say its overcast because some
of the sensors are pointing diagonally and are sensing the side of the
cloud. I had an ATC college-style text book that had a very
informative diagram of how they worked, but that book is long gone.

http://www.cyanogen.com/products/cloud_main.htm

here is an example of one.

Cool--I wouldn't mind having one (useful for photography as well as astronomy
and aviation). However, it's still a ground-based sensor, so it would only
see the first level of clouds. Conversely, a satellite would only see the top
layer of clouds. If there are three or four layers of clouds, how do weather
services discover them?

The same is true for temperature, humidity, and pressure. Pressure you can
probably infer from surface pressure, and temperature you can guess at in a
similar way. Humidity is more vague. I'm curious as to how all of these get
measured aloft.

And what about winds? Weather services seem to have awareness of winds aloft,
but where are they getting the measurements? Winds aloft may have no
correlation with surface winds and can change a lot over short distances. You
could set up probes, but that's a lot of probes to launch and recover even to
cover small areas. You could rely on PIREPs, but that seems kind of hit and
miss. So how is it really done?

How are the paths and speeds of jet streams determined?

"Bob Noel" wrote in message
...

His Wikipedia 'bio' is even more telling:

I like to engage people in discussions when I detect that they cling to
opinions that they are unable to defend (opinions based on emotion, opinions
adopted wholesale from others, etc.), in order to try to compel them to
think for themselves. I have been involved in online debates along these
lines for several decades, usually under various pseudonyms (mainly to guard
against spam). I'm an extremely strong supporter of freedom of speech in all
public venues, as well as civil liberties in general.

[edit] Contacts

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

buttman writes:

Theres a little "eye" that looks up at the sky at various points. It
detects if there is cloud, or sky. The sensor is prone to errors,
though. Sometimes if it's broken, it'll say its overcast because some
of the sensors are pointing diagonally and are sensing the side of
the cloud. I had an ATC college-style text book that had a very
informative diagram of how they worked, but that book is long gone.

http://www.cyanogen.com/products/cloud_main.htm

here is an example of one.

Cool--I wouldn't mind having one (useful for photography as well as
astronomy and aviation). However, it's still a ground-based sensor,
so it would only see the first level of clouds. Conversely, a
satellite would only see the top layer of clouds. If there are three
or four layers of clouds, how do weather services discover them?

The same is true for temperature, humidity, and pressure. Pressure
you can probably infer from surface pressure, and temperature you can
guess at in a similar way. Humidity is more vague. I'm curious as to
how all of these get measured aloft.

And what about winds? Weather services seem to have awareness of
winds aloft, but where are they getting the measurements? Winds aloft
may have no correlation with surface winds and can change a lot over
short distances. You could set up probes, but that's a lot of probes
to launch and recover even to cover small areas. You could rely on
PIREPs, but that seems kind of hit and miss. So how is it really
done?

Send me $300 and I'll tell you.


Bertie