High Altitude Gas Balloon Trajectory Prediction - a Monte Carlo Model

Abstract

The high altitude gas balloon is an indispensable tool in atmospheric science, meteorology and other applications requiring stratospheric observations. A pre-requisite of
the effectiveness of many types of balloon operations is an accurate trajectory forecasting capability. In particular, targeted flights, sample return missions or
flights of expensive instruments (whose recovery is essential) rely on such models. In this paper we describe
a new balloon flight simulation model, which takes into account a range of environmental, physical and operational uncertainties to generate a predicted trajectory equipped with landing site location error estimates. A key source of error in such models is our incomplete understanding of the drag opposing the rise of balloons in the free atmosphere - here we propose a new, stochastic drag model based on empirical data derived from thousands of radiosonde
flights. We also examine other sources of prediction error affecting the accuracy of the flight path forecast, such as uncertainties in the wind profile and balloon envelope manufacturing variability. We show how integrating these elements into a process that generates Monte Carlo ensembles of simulated trajectories has yielded a practically useful flight planning tool, which we have made available to the ballooning community as a free online service.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Andras Sobester: orcid.org/0000-0002-8997-4375

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