"Raymond Arritt" wrote in message
news:A8nLe.23189$084.1324@attbi_s22...
charliew2 wrote:

Based on the story that I read, balloon temperature readings were taken
twice per day. One reading was taken at noon and the other reading was
taken at midnight.

Conventional twice-daily radiosonde measurements are taken around 00 and
12 UTC, not local noon and midnight. 00 and 12 UTC correspond to noon
and midnight only near longitudes of 0 and 180 degrees (e.g., western
Europe or New Zealand).

The thermometers (or thermocouples) used in the
measurement apparently had no radiation shields on them.

The older thermistors were shielded from radiation, but one of the main
ponts of the article is that the older models had less effective
shielding than at present.

It also
strongly implies that the thermometers radiated energy to outer space too
rapidly at night, registering an abnormally cool temperature at night.

That's very unlikely given the way that a radiosonde is constructed.

Thanks for answering this, Raymond, but probably we can go so far as to say
that what charliew2 suggests is more a violation of the laws of physics than
just unlikely. If the thermometers are radiating energy to "outer space"
(assuming that the surrounding atmosphere is what was really meant here),
they would be warmer than their surroundings and thus unable to register a
temperature cooler than their surroundings.