1,000 weather balloons take to the skies daily, UN agency says amid US-China ‘spy balloon’ row

Name: China says US balloons flew over Xinjiang, Tibet as diplomatic row deepens
Uploaded: 2023-02-20T12:41:16.000Z
Duration: 3 min 30 s
Description: China says US balloons flew over Xinjiang, Tibet as diplomatic row deepens

Weather balloons released every day from 900 locations worldwide to help global real-time data gathering exercise, World Meteorological Organization says

Report comes as US-China ‘spy balloon’ spat continues, with top Chinese diplomat calling the US reaction ‘absurd and hysterical’

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The US says the Chinese balloon it shot down was part of a global surveillance programme, while China insists it was a civilian research vehicle that had been blown off course. Photo: Shutterstock

Kawala Xie

Published: 8:41pm, 20 Feb 2023Updated: 9:45pm, 20 Feb 2023

Around 1,000 weather balloons are released every day from 900 locations worldwide to provide crucial real-time data, the UN climate cooperation agency has said, as the “spy balloon” row roils US-China relations.

“Free-rising latex balloons” are a key component of a vast global climate observation system, with their “valuable input” aiding the formulation of computer models to forecast weather and research climate processes, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

However, the devices still provided just a tiny fraction of the “millions of observations gathered worldwide daily” by other devices under the Global Observing System, the WMO said in its report on Friday.

The report came as Beijing and Washington continued to spar over the shooting down of a Chinese balloon off the US east coast earlier this month, with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi labelling the US reaction as “absurd and hysterical”.

The US claims the balloon was a Chinese high-altitude surveillance vehicle while China insists it was a civilian meteorological research craft that had been blown off course, and has accused the US of sending balloons into Chinese airspace more than 10 times since last year.

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China says US balloons flew over Xinjiang, Tibet as diplomatic row deepens

The WMO said weather balloons were fitted with battery-powered instruments to transmit data to ground receivers, and were released simultaneously every day from different places around the globe.

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