Oral Presentation Only

The Thunderstorm Project—Iowa State University

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Abstract

The High Altitude Balloon Experiments in Technology (HABET) program is located out of Iowa State University within the Make to Innovate program. The Make to Innovate organization is a group of college level engineers and students of other majors doing assorted projects dealing with high altitude ballooning. This paper will discuss a new project that looks at obtaining meteorological information from a thunderstorm using high altitude balloons. The main information that we are looking for is readings of pressure, temperature, humidity and eventually heavy metal testing of precipitation at various altitudes. Storm fronts can grow to extreme heights and this causes the storm to pull heavy metal gas substances from lower atmosphere levels. The wanted information will be obtained using a mesh network compiled of many sensors attached to several different nodes, this will allow for the collection of data at several locations in the thunderstorm and to aid in moving this data to the ground station. The types of sensors we will be using will include ones for the basic material that was discussed above. The information that we are planning on gathering will be used to aid research and class based activities with the meteorology department here on the Iowa State campus. Recently members from the meteorology program have joined forces with us and this has allowed us to expand our horizon on what we are capable of doing within this experiment. This paper will also discuss what testing has been done this last year and the future work for this project.

How to Cite:

Calfee, D. & Nelson, M., (2017) “The Thunderstorm Project—Iowa State University”, Academic High Altitude Conference 2016(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/ahac.5562