NOAA Air Resources Laboratory

Manned Balloon Flight Forecasting Tools

HYSPLIT Trajectory Optimization

This program can be used to visualize all the potential flow combinations from up to three different starting heights. You will need to register for HYSPLIT before proceeding (see https://www.ready.noaa.gov/ready/register/. The user defines up to three starting heights and the time interval (hours) at which new trajectories will be started from the location of the previous endpoints. The total number of trajectories will grow by t^n to a maximum of 1024 trajectories, where t is the number of starting trajectories and n is the number of times the trajectories split (n = run duration in hours divided by splitting interval in hours). After all the splitting trajectories are completed and displayed on a map, the user can plot the optimized trajectory, ie., the trajectory that comes the closest to a location selected by the user. This location might be where the balloonist would like to be at some time in the future and hence this program can help define the vertical and horizontal flight path the balloonist needs to travel. Further information can be obtained from the Trajectory Optimization for Balloon Flights webpage. 		balloons
Select a meteorological forecast dataset: (requires a HYSPLIT account)
Information and grid domains of gridded datasets.

Current Meteorological Forecast Data Analysis