https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/frozen-researchers-will-greatly-improve-arctic-weather-prediction/

With a deep breath, Sandro Dahlke releases a white weather balloon nearly as tall as himself from our ship’s deck and toward the Arctic sky. The helium-filled orb shoots upward while the radiosonde—an instrument package attached to the balloon’s tail that will monitor the weather—whips wildly in the wind. We are far north in the Arctic Ocean, onboard the German icebreaker Polarstern, and the wind immediately sweeps the balloon toward the starboard side as it rises—a worrying prospect for Dahlke. Typically, there would be few obstacles to encounter on the icy ocean. But today we are tethered to a Russian icebreaker, the Akademik Fedorov, which looms over our smaller one, and he is concerned the balloon might hit the neighboring ship.

The inflatable makes a close call, passing within centimeters of the ship’s towering crane. Once it passes freely into the air above, Dahlke, an atmospheric scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, walks lightheartedly across the helicopter pad (which also serves as his launchpad) and heads back toward his office. There, he will monitor the data captured by the balloon’s radiosonde—which measures temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed, air pressure and position every second as it climbs higher into the sky—until the data abruptly come to a halt: the moment the balloon bursts and falls back toward the ocean.