Slightly unrelated but I have no idea how wind speed predictions are made up high in the altitudes, is it just interpolation of data that are get from various radiosonoids across various timestamps and finding a regular or seasonal pattern?

▲

wood_spirit 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Generally at altitude the wind goes from west to east. During the Cold War the US would launch spy balloons to overfly Russia whilst the wind was blowing against the Russians reciprocating. This is generally true in the current Ukraine war too.

Some interesting links:

https://www.hisutton.com/US-Navy-CIA-Submarine-Launched-Spy-...

https://www.hisutton.com/Chinese-Navy-High-Altitude-Spy-Ball...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iD6XaaO9bEo

▲

jxf 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As I understand it, it's a combination of things: aircraft reports, atmospheric motion vectors (e.g. a cloud doesn't have any propulsion, so if a cloud moves 30 km in an hour, you have learned something about the wind), Doppler wind lidar, and satellite measurements.

The numerical predictions of weather models often have many vertical components as well, so solving it for ground level also requires extending the forecast to the air, depending on the model.

	▲	lgeorget 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To predict anything on the ground, you have to predict air temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction etc. for the entire troposphere. The output of the models in altitude are as relevant to the meteorologists as the output on the ground for manual expert analysis.