David
I believe the Cu Sonde was imported from Canada and I rather suspect
that the device is a long way behind what is capable given today's
technology in terms of size/weight, but I am not aware of any more
recent alternatives.
One of the problems with the Cu Sonde is that it is fairly expensive to
use as it has to be attached to an aircraft and flown up to whatever
altitude is required. As the sounding is taken fairly early in the
morning, this can give an inaccurate picture if the air mass is moving.
At the recent Qld state comps, no atmospheric sounding was taken, but
NOAA predicted soundings were used. These gave excellent results,
accurately predicting for example the late convection starts on days 6
and 7. DDSC has been using this data extensively for some time and with
growing confidence.
What occurs is that NOAA takes all the soundings across the world and
then allows you to input a lat/long (and time) and it will provide a
sounding interpolated from the available data and predicted by its model.
Based on our experience, I think that the expense of taking a sounding
is probably no longer necessary. The predictive capability of the on
line sounding from NOAA seems just as good as the predictions based on
the data from the Cu Sonde itself.
It would be interesting however to see a comparison of the two. If the
Cu Sonde is to be used at comps this summer, maybe it would be possible
to arrange this?
--
Robert Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
+61 (0)438 385 533 http://www.hart.wattle.id.au
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