Radiosounding

The national radiosounding network is composed of 3 stations, installed in Lisbon, Funchal and Lajes, where meteorological balloons with RS92-SGP radiosonde are launched daily, usually at 00 and 12 UTC. This enables to measure the values of atmospheric pressure, air temperature and relative humidity and wind from the surface to balloon burst height (generally above 30 km) approximately every 10 metros.

Those data are received at a DigiCORA system installed at the surface and, after the end of the message (nearly 2 hours duration), they are transmitted in meteorological code form to the headquarters of IM for its own use and for international dissemination. This kind of data is essential for the efficiency of numerical weather prediction models (synoptic scale) and is also used in altitude climatology, in monitoring weather conditions of atmospheric pollutant dispersion and in assessing the height of mixture layer and classes of stability of the atmosphere.