UNH ozone instrument on balloon ride across globe

By David Sims, EOS

A 10-foot, spherical, unmanned NOAA “smart balloon” launched Aug. 3 from Long Island, N.Y., and carrying a one-of-a-kind, miniaturized ozone detector built by UNH, has ended its atmospheric research mission after a 12-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

Randy Johnson (NOAA, right) and Steven Businger (University of Hawaii, left) look on as a smart balloon rises above Long Island.

The transatlantic flight marks the first time a low-level balloon has drifted in air masses from one continent to another, while continuously measuring ozone and meteorological conditions. The balloon’s ability to adjust its buoyancy to maintain its vertical position, come rain or shine, is what makes the balloon “smart.”

The smart balloon technology is the culmination of five generations of smart balloon development since 1991 at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Air Resources Laboratory in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Randy Johnson, of NOAA, the smart balloon developer, says “There have been many changes and improvements to the balloon design and instrument package over the past 13 years that have given us our present success. For example, the recent addition of a low-power, light-weight satellite phone allows us to communicate with the smart balloon anywhere in the world and has proven to be invaluable for this research.”

The six-ounce, $1,000 ozone instrument was designed and built at UNH’s Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space. The ozone detector provides research-grade measurement capabilities, and in combination with the smart balloon provides an inexpensive, semi-autonomous means of measuring the evolution of pollution plumes as they move from place to place.

“These balloon flights indicate that the ozone concentrations over the North Atlantic can be much higher than previously observed – levels approaching 200 parts per billion that greatly exceed U.S. air quality standards,” says Robert Talbot of EOS, principal investigator for the UNH-NOAA Targeted Wind Sensing program under which four balloon launches were carried out. “What we don’t know is how persistent these high levels of ozone are, and it will take more flights over the Atlantic in the next few years to determine this.”

Smart balloon fights lasted from one to two days to nearly two weeks and, added Talbot, “were more successful than we ever imagined several months ago during the initial planning stages.”

The balloons traveled over different paths after leaving North America, and confirmed the anticipated complexity of atmospheric circulation. The first balloons launched were carried north to Maine and Prince Edward Island. The third and most long-lasting balloon traveled just south of Nova Scotia, past the Azores Islands, the Canary Islands, and toward the Mediterranean region.