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Upper-air soundingsEvery sounding launched, received and shared.
Upper-air soundings tell forecasters how the atmosphere is layered, and global models depend on them. A station must launch on schedule, receive the full profile, check it and send it to the world within the hour. Ground equipment, consumables and crews are run as one service.
Plan a deploymentHow it worksStation Builder- Industry
- Government
- Measurements
- 4
- Sources cited
- 3
Government · Upper-air soundings
Global models start here
Every global forecast model leans on upper-air soundings: temperature, humidity and wind through the depth of the atmosphere, launched at fixed hours around the world. A missed launch at a remote station leaves a hole the models feel. Stations need receivers, references, consumables and crews that keep the schedule.
What is measured
A profile on every ascent
The radiosonde measures temperature, humidity and pressure as it rises and reports its satellite position, from which upper winds are derived. A ground receiver follows it to burst, and a reference station beside the launch area checks its surface values before release.
- Instruments
- Radiosonde ground receiver · Surface reference station · Antenna
The base node
Checked and encoded at the station
The station node takes the profile from the receiver, compares surface values with the reference, applies the checks, encodes the standard report and keeps the full-resolution profile for climate and research users. It also counts sondes, balloons and gas so stock never stops a launch.
Radio and links
Sent within the hour
Stations near towns send each profile over public cellular as soon as the ascent ends. Remote and island stations send by satellite so their soundings never miss a model cycle. Reports reach the national system and global centres through the WMO Information System.
- Links
- Public cellular · Satellite
How it works
From a balloon to a global model
At the scheduled hour the observer checks the surface reference and launches. The receiver follows the sonde to burst, the node checks and encodes the profile, and the report is in the exchange before the model cut-off. Global centres assimilate it in their next forecast cycle.
From order to operation · Order
Scope the schedule and the stations
The scope reads the station list, the launch schedule the service commits to, consumables use, gas supply and the reports that missed model cycles. Nexus Observatory Inc. returns the ground equipment, the reporting design, a consumables and gas plan, training and a price per station and per year.
Plan a deploymentFrom order to operation · Survey
Survey the launch site
Crews visit each station: launch area clear of obstructions and power lines, the receiver antenna’s view of the sky, gas storage and its separation from buildings, the surface reference exposure and the backhaul. Findings and photographs go into the station record.
From order to operation · Permits
Gas, airspace and safety
Gas storage and handling follow the national safety rules, launches are notified to the air navigation service as required, and radio use for the sonde frequencies is licensed. Every approval and safety procedure is kept with the station record. Approvals are tracked site by site, so nothing waits unseen.
From order to operation · Build
Build and test the ground station
Receivers, antennas, reference sensors and nodes are assembled, tested together with sondes on the bench and enrolled with their identities. The encoding and exchange chain is tested end to end with the national system before anything ships. Test results travel with the kit to the site.
Open the Station BuilderFrom order to operation · Install
Install receiver and reference
Crews mount the receiver antenna with a clear view of the sky, install the surface reference station beside the launch area, fit the shelter and power, and connect the backhaul. Every part is photographed and the station record is updated.
From order to operation · Commission
Commission with dual launches
Each node proves its identity. Trial launches check reception through the whole ascent, surface reference agreement and the time from burst to exchange. The station enters service when its soundings pass the checks and arrive on time. Results are signed and kept with the site record.
From order to operation · Operate
Launch on schedule
The service sees every station’s launches, missed soundings, consumables in stock and report times. Forecasters receive profiles within the hour, global centres receive them through the exchange, and stock alerts reorder sondes and balloons before a launch is missed. Reports for owners and funders come from the same record.
From order to operation · Maintain
Keep the receivers running
Receivers, antennas and reference sensors are checked on visits, references are calibrated on the agreed plan, software updates roll out in rings, and observers are trained and refreshed. Every change and missed launch is kept with the station record. Spares and procedures travel with the crews.
Book field servicesData products
For forecasters and model centres
Forecasters and global model centres receive temperature, humidity and wind profiles; service managers receive missed-launch and timeliness reports; climate and research users receive full-resolution profiles; station managers and procurement receive consumables and gas stock, each tied to its station and launch time.
See the data productsEvidence
Every sounding accounted for
Soundings follow the WMO instrument guide, stations meet the upper-air commitments of the global observing system and reports move through the WMO Information System. Every launch, missed sounding and report time is kept, so the service can show its record to users and funders.
- Drawn against
- WMO-No. 8 · WMO-No. 1160 · WMO-No. 1060
What you get
National observing network programmes
Build-operate-transfer of national observing infrastructure as digital public infrastructure, with transfer of skills and records. Delivered as build-operate-transfer and professional services, for governments, development lenders financing them. Scale: National. Service levels are written as numbers you can measure on your own dashboard.
Talk to salesNext step
Plan upper-air soundings with us
Tell us the site, the measurements and the rules it answers to. We reply with a survey proposal, a design and a scope for upper-air soundings. An engineer replies with a survey proposal and a scope, and the plan grows from one site to the network you need, at your pace.
Plan a deploymentOpen the Station BuilderOpen the Studio
01The place and its hazards
Where it runs, and what can go wrong.
Operating contextNational services launch radiosondes at fixed hours from upper-air stations, often remote, and the soundings feed every global forecast model. Countries commit to upper-air observations in the global observing network, and stations need reliable ground receivers, surface references, safe gas handling and trained crews to keep the schedule.
Hazards
- Missed launches when consumables or gas run short
- Ground receivers failing at remote stations
- Surface reference values that disagree with the sonde
- Lighter-than-air gas that must be handled safely
- Soundings that arrive too late for model cycles
02What must be measured
What, where, how often, and under which rules.
Each measurement names where it is taken, how often, and the public standard or regulation behind it. Numbers in the sources column open the cited source below.
| Measurement | Where | Cadence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature, humidity and pressure profiles | From the surface through the troposphere and into the stratosphere | At the scheduled hours each day | 12 |
| Upper winds | From the sonde’s satellite positions during ascent | Every sounding | 1 |
| Surface reference before launch | A reference weather station beside the launch site | At each launch | 1 |
| Timeliness of each report | From launch to exchange through the WMO Information System | Every sounding | 3 |
03The observation stack
From one base unit to a network.
The same blocks at every scale: instruments and a base node, a site with its radio, a fleet run as one, and a network federated on the open protocol.
- 01
Base unit
A ground station: the receiver and its antenna, a surface reference station and a node that checks and encodes each profile.
Build a station → - 02
Site
An upper-air station: the ground station, launch area, gas storage and a backhaul that is never shared with nothing else in a storm.
Plan a site → - 03
Fleet
The national upper-air fleet run with one schedule, one consumables plan and one console.
Managed offers → - 04
Network
Soundings are exchanged with every WMO member through the WMO Information System in standard formats.
The open protocol →
- 01Radiosonde ground station
- 02Automatic weather station (WMO class)
- 03Sensor and instrument gateway
- 04Edge node (Wedge)
- 05Cellular modem/router
- 06LEO flat-panel terminal
- 07Solar array
- 08Shelter
Radio and links
Public cellular
Stations near towns send profiles over cellular within minutes of the end of the ascent.
Radio and links
Satellite
Remote and island stations send profiles by satellite so reports never miss a model cycle.
Edge computeThe node receives the profile from the ground receiver, compares the surface values with the reference station, applies the checks, encodes the report and keeps the full-resolution profile for the climate record.
PowerMains where available with batteries to finish an ascent through an outage; remote stations run on solar and batteries with a generator for gas production equipment where used.
04How it works
From the instrument to the product.
One observation’s path, tier by tier, with the interface on every link and a bill of materials below; then how the one node grows to a site, a fleet and federated networks.
Upper-air soundings: data path
– of 07
01 Instruments Measurement with sensor identity andcalibration 02 Gateway 03 Node – Wrap in an observation envelope with timequality– Measure quality and uncertainty, attachquality flags– Buffer locally (store-and-forward when thelink drops) 04 Backhaul Commit with transactional outbox andpublish, delivered at least once 05 Site Consumer inbox deduplicates and applieseach record once into governed data 06 Data store Governed product through API, map orexport, correction-aware 07 Products WMO WIS 2.0WMO BUFROGC SensorThings API 08 Power and structure Supplies 12 V DC, 24 V DC, 48 V DC to thefield equipment 01 Radiosonde ground station SDI-12 · RS-485 · Ethernet 02 Automatic weather station (WMOclass) SDI-12 · RS-485 · Ethernet 03 Sensor and instrument gateway SDI-12 · RS-485 · Analogue I/O ·Ethernet · USB 04 Edge node (Wedge) Ethernet · Fibre · USB · RS-485 ·BMC 05 Cellular modem/router Ethernet · USB · RS-232 06 LEO flat-panel terminal Ethernet Site MQTT 5 with Sparkplug B Governed data store Versioned, correction-aware Temperature, humidity and windprofiles Missed-launch and timeliness reports Full-resolution profiles Consumables and gas stock 07 Solar array RS-485 08 Shelter RS-485 · Modbus SDI-12 · SDI-12 Ethernet · MQTT 5 Ethernet · MQTT 5 Ethernet Ethernet LTE/NR Satellite IP| Item | Equipment | Data ports | Protocols | Power in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Radiosonde ground stationGround receiver and launch station for balloon-borne radiosondes reporting upper-air profiles. | SDI-12RS-485Ethernet | SDI-12, Modbus, MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API | AC mains |
| 02 | Automatic weather station (WMO class)Automatic weather station built and sited to WMO-No. 8 instrument and siting classes, reporting WIGOS metadata. | SDI-12RS-485Ethernet | SDI-12, Modbus, MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API | 12 V DC |
| 03 | Sensor and instrument gatewayData logger and gateway that reads instruments on SDI-12, RS-485, analogue and Ethernet ports and publishes observations with calibration and time. | SDI-12RS-485Analogue I/OEthernetUSB | SDI-12, Modbus, MQTT 5, OGC SensorThings API, OGC API Connected Systems, OMA LwM2M | 12 V DC, PoE |
| 04 | Edge node (Wedge)Rugged edge node that boots from signed media, attests itself and establishes a site cell from little or no infrastructure. | EthernetFibreUSBRS-485BMC | MQTT 5, DMTF Redfish, IEEE 1588 PTP, NTP with NTS, OPC UA | 12 V DC, 24 V DC, 48 V DC, AC mains |
| 05 | Cellular modem/routerLTE or NR modem or router that uses a public carrier or private network as backhaul. | EthernetUSBRS-232 | 3GPP E-UTRA air interface, 3GPP NR air interface, OMA LwM2M | 12 V DC, PoE |
| 06 | LEO flat-panel terminalElectronically steered flat-panel user terminal for low-Earth-orbit broadband constellations. | Ethernet | — | PoE, 48 V DC, AC mains |
| 07 | Solar arrayPV modules with charge controller sized to the site’s load and climate. | RS-485 | Modbus | — |
| 08 | ShelterWalk-in shelter or container with HVAC, fire detection and power distribution. | — | — | — |
How it scales
01 Instruments Arbitrary qualified sensors and instruments whosemeasurements are ingested with calibration, units,geometry, time, custody and uncertainty. ×n 02 Node The minimum useful deployable unit: server, ruggedappliance, radio node, sensor gateway, satelliteterminal, AI, scientific, vehicle or virtual node. Node Node agent 03 Site The minimum independently operable localgovernance and failure domain: one or more nodesplus local network, identity, policy, evidence,storage, products and operator surfaces.SITE
Node Node Node ×n 04 Cluster An optional scale or specialisation domain forscheduling, shared storage, accelerators or datalocality.CLUSTER
×n 05 Fleet Coordinates plans, acknowledgements,convergence evidence, update campaigns andcorrection propagation across nodes and sites.FLEET
Fleet controller ×n 06 Federation An exchange of products, capabilities, events orwork across approved, independently administeredtrust domains, using explicit trust, policy,data-locality, version and correction contracts.TRUST DOMAIN
TRUST DOMAIN
TRUST DOMAIN
×n Verifier Applications Data in the field Telemetry Control Data upstream Control Data upstream Control Exchange Evidence Events Exchange- Data in the field
- MQTT 5 with Sparkplug B; connectors for LoRaWAN, OPC UA and instrument buses.
- Telemetry
- OpenTelemetry OTLP.
- Control
- TLS 1.3 with mutual authentication; protobuf messages over gRPC or HTTP/2.
- Data upstream
- At-least-once publication with repeat-safe keys over the control channel or NATS JetStream; QUIC MAY be used on lossy links.
- Evidence
- DSSE-signed in-toto statements; SLSA provenance; SCITT transparency receipts.
- Events
- Event envelopes mapped to CloudEvents 1.0; channels described in AsyncAPI 3.
- Exchange
- OpenAPI 3.1; the OGC API family; SensorThings; STAC; WIS 2.0.
05From order to operation
Every step, from the first call to a running site.
The same crew and the same record carry the work from scope to maintenance.
- 01 Order
Scope the schedule and the stations
The scope reads the station list, the launch schedule the service commits to, consumables use, gas supply and the reports that missed model cycles. Nexus Observatory Inc. returns the ground equipment, the reporting design, a consumables and gas plan, training and a price per station and per year. 2
- 02 Survey
Survey the launch site
Crews visit each station: launch area clear of obstructions and power lines, the receiver antenna’s view of the sky, gas storage and its separation from buildings, the surface reference exposure and the backhaul. Findings and photographs go into the station record. 1
- 03 Permits
Gas, airspace and safety
Gas storage and handling follow the national safety rules, launches are notified to the air navigation service as required, and radio use for the sonde frequencies is licensed. Every approval and safety procedure is kept with the station record. Approvals are tracked site by site, so nothing waits unseen.
- 04 Build
Build and test the ground station
Receivers, antennas, reference sensors and nodes are assembled, tested together with sondes on the bench and enrolled with their identities. The encoding and exchange chain is tested end to end with the national system before anything ships. Test results travel with the kit to the site.
- 05 Install
Install receiver and reference
Crews mount the receiver antenna with a clear view of the sky, install the surface reference station beside the launch area, fit the shelter and power, and connect the backhaul. Every part is photographed and the station record is updated.
- 06 Commission
Commission with dual launches
Each node proves its identity. Trial launches check reception through the whole ascent, surface reference agreement and the time from burst to exchange. The station enters service when its soundings pass the checks and arrive on time. Results are signed and kept with the site record. 3
- 07 Operate
Launch on schedule
The service sees every station’s launches, missed soundings, consumables in stock and report times. Forecasters receive profiles within the hour, global centres receive them through the exchange, and stock alerts reorder sondes and balloons before a launch is missed. Reports for owners and funders come from the same record. 2
- 08 Maintain
Keep the receivers running
Receivers, antennas and reference sensors are checked on visits, references are calibrated on the agreed plan, software updates roll out in rings, and observers are trained and refreshed. Every change and missed launch is kept with the station record. Spares and procedures travel with the crews.
06Data products and integration
What it delivers, to whom, and into which systems.
Data products
- Temperature, humidity and wind profilesForecasters and global model centres
- Missed-launch and timeliness reportsService management
- Full-resolution profilesClimate and research users
- Consumables and gas stockStation managers and procurement
Integration
- National forecasting systemProfiles arrive in the service’s own systems in the formats it uses.
- WMO Information SystemSoundings are published through the national node for global exchange.
- ProcurementStock levels raise orders for sondes, balloons and gas before they run short.
Exchanged through WMO WIS 2.0, WMO BUFR, OGC SensorThings API.
07Questions buyers ask
Before you scope it.
Do you supply sondes?
Consumables are planned and ordered with the service; sonde types follow its own procurement.
Can it run with one observer?
Yes. Receiving, checking and sending are automatic once the sonde is launched.
How fast is the report?
The report is encoded and sent as soon as the ascent ends.
Is the gas handling safe?
Storage and filling follow the national safety rules, and crews are trained.
08Resources
The sources behind this page.
Public standards, regulations and guidance, cited where they apply. Each applies only where its jurisdiction or scope does.
- 1WMO-No. 8: Guide to Instruments and Methods of ObservationWorld Meteorological Organization
- 2WMO-No. 1160: Manual on the WMO Integrated Global Observing SystemWorld Meteorological Organization
- 3WMO-No. 1060: Manual on the WMO Information SystemWorld Meteorological Organization
09Related
Use cases and solutions.
Use caseGBON gap-filler station
A WMO-grade surface station, optional upper-air ground station and a WIS 2.0 node, built to report reliably where the global basic observing network has gaps.The full use case →SolutionNational observing network programmes
Build-operate-transfer of national observing infrastructure as digital public infrastructure, with transfer of skills and records.Solutions for government →SolutionObservation data products and evidence bundles
Licensed feeds and archives with metadata, quality flags and provenance on every value; evidence bundles for audits and claims processes.Solutions for government →SolutionOperator and technician training on delivered systems
Hands-on courses for customer staff on the systems they run; no public credentials are issued by the group.Solutions for government →10Government: specialized fields
Other fields of this industry.
Specialized fieldNational weather and hydrology networks
Automatic weather stations, rain gauges and river gauges run as one national network, sited, calibrated and reported to WMO rules so every ministry and neighbour can use the data.The full field →Specialized fieldGeodetic reference and national timing
Continuously operating GNSS reference stations and time references that hold a country’s coordinates and clocks to the global frames every map, survey and network depends on.The full field →Specialized fieldEnvironmental radiation monitoring
Gamma dose-rate stations across the country, reporting continuously to the national authority and its neighbours so that a release anywhere is seen at once.The full field →Specialized fieldSpace weather monitoring
Magnetometers and ionospheric receivers that measure geomagnetic storms and their effects on power grids, satellite navigation and radio, feeding national space weather services.The full field →Bring us the site.
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