By Sid Perkins
Twice each day at more than 1,100 sites around the world, scientists simultaneously loft weather balloons to collect data about Earth’s atmosphere. During each balloon’s ascent, which lasts a couple of hours or so, instruments garner information about air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind speed, and wind direction. Meteorologists feed all of these data into their computer models to forecast rain for next Tuesday or predict the weather for next year.
Oceanographers have long envied this wealth of data about the massive sea of air above them. If they could collect millions of daily measurements of currents, salinity, water temperature, chemical composition, plankton populations, and other features of the oceans, which cover 70 percent of Earth’s surface, scientists could begin to model the vast, underwater world with finesse.