Terry Hock, NCAR, Lead Engineer for AVAPS: Loading sondes into AVAPS in preparation for Jan 29 range flight. (Pic: D.Fratello)
AVAPS — Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System developed by NCAR, deploys dozens of dropsondes at altitudes up to 65,000 ft from the unmanned Global Hawk aircraft collecting high vertical resolution measurements of the temperature, pressure, relative humidity, and wind speed and direction in the atmosphere.