Met Balloon Launch

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Every weather station taking part in the met balloons programme has to launch a balloon every single day of the year. All launches are coordinated world-wide, so that the balloons everywhere in the world reach an altitude corresponding to 100hPa of atmospheric pressure at 12:00 noon UTC. This requires each station to launch the balloon at different time (in case of Halley it's around 10:45 UTC). The balloons have a radiosonde attached, which measures temperature, pressure, humidity and wind direction and speed (the latter two using an onboard GPS receiver). All data is transmitted in real-time every second to the station for processing.