POINT MUGU : Lasers Tested to Aid Weather Forecasting

Seen from the ground, the pulsing fluorescent-green beam that scientists this week are shooting into the skies above the Point Mugu Navy base appears to be bending overhead.

No matter which way an observer may walk, the laser, which reaches as high as the eye can see, appears to lean toward the onlooker.

“It’s just like an illusion at Disneyland,” Point Mugu spokesman Alan Alpers said.

But it’s no game.

The laser is part of a device that scientists and Navy officials say will become the next generation of weather-forecasting equipment in the United States, replacing the weather balloons that meteorologists have used the past 50 years.

Beginning this week and continuing off and on through October, scientists from Penn State University will test the laser by shooting it into the sky above Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

The Navy has paid Penn State $2.7 million to help refine the laser forecasting device, called LIDAR, for light detection and ranging.

Navy officials said they want to use the device to forecast atmospheric conditions, such as temperature and humidity, that may affect military radar or radio equipment.

“The Navy has taken the lead in developing this,” said Russell Philbrick, the Penn State scientist running the tests at Point Mugu.

Conducted on base from a white trailer about a mile from the ocean, the experiments are designed to refine the laser devices enough to put them onto Navy ships by the end of next year, Philbrick said.

Lasers are faster and cheaper at measuring atmospheric conditions than weather balloons, he said.

Weather balloons haul a small box carrying a thermometer, barometer and other weather-measuring devices into the sky, with a transmitter that relays the information back to meteorologists.

It takes scientists three to four hours to get forecasts from weather balloons, compared to the 5- to 10-minute readings available from lasers.

In addition, each laser forecast costs about a nickel, Philbrick said, compared to $150 for a single weather balloon.

Weather balloons are released from more than 100 weather stations, military bases and other sites throughout the United States every day, he said. Most of them eventually float back to earth but are rarely reused.

Although the lasers are powerful, they don’t pose any harm to the environment, Philbrick said.

And the bright green trail that each laser makes in night skies are fun to look at.

“It’s a pretty thing,” Philbrick said as admired the laser shot above Point Mugu on Wednesday.