The LAMDA-S (Lagrangian Atmospheric Multisonde Dispersion Analysis – South) campaign set out to improve our understanding of atmospheric transport processes in the Southern Hemisphere. Operating from Ushuaia, Argentina, researchers studied how air masses, moisture, aerosols, and energy move through the atmosphere, with a particular focus on atmospheric rivers that transport heat and moisture toward Antarctica. The project is a cooperation between Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) and Argentina’s National Meteorological Service (SMN).
A central objective was to observe the atmosphere from a Lagrangian perspective—following the movement of air parcels as they travel with the wind rather than observing them only from fixed locations.
Why Windsond
To achieve this goal, the research team deployed clusters of Windsond radiosondes as Lagrangian tracers. By releasing multiple Windsond units simultaneously and tracking their movement through the atmosphere, researchers were able to directly observe dispersion, transport, and clustering processes over time.
It is noteworthy that the campaign was conducted using standard Windsond radiosondes. No custom hardware modifications or factory customization were required. The same product used worldwide for atmospheric soundings was successfully applied to advanced atmospheric transport research, demonstrating the flexibility of the Windsond platform beyond conventional weather observations.
The ability to deploy multiple low-cost radiosondes in coordinated clusters enabled researchers to collect observations that would be difficult or prohibitively expensive using traditional atmospheric measurement systems.
Field Measurement Results
During the campaign, the team carried out several successful cluster releases of up to ten sondes, including observations during atmospheric river events affecting southern South America.
The Windsond radiosondes drifted with the atmospheric flow, successfully measuring how air parcels separated and converged under real atmospheric conditions. The temperature and humidity measurements also helped to characterize the local atmospheric conditions. These measurements produced a unique dataset describing atmospheric transport in the sub-Antarctic region, one of the least observed areas of the world.
Future Work
Researchers are now analyzing the data to improve understanding of atmospheric transport and mixing processes across a wide range of scales. The Windsond observations will be combined with meteorological analyses and numerical models to investigate how moisture, aerosols, and other atmospheric constituents move through the atmosphere.
The success of LAMDA-S demonstrates that standard Windsond radiosondes can serve not only as atmospheric sounding instruments but also as effective Lagrangian tracers for cutting-edge research. As scientists continue to explore atmospheric transport processes, Windsond offers a practical and readily available platform for conducting multi-sonde experiments without the need for specialized hardware development.
See more information at the LAMDA-S web site.