He used manned balloons to collect his data

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Today's pilots benefit from detailed information on what weather conditions they can expect before embarking on a flight.

But that was not always the case. Back in the early days of aviation, there was not a lot of data on meteorological conditions high in the atmosphere or air pressures at those levels. But that knowledge took a major jump in the 1920s, thanks to the research with manned weather balloons carried out by Clarence Meisinger, a First World War veteran and early pioneer in aeronautical meteorology.

Born in Plattsmouth, Nebraska in 1895, Meisinger graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1917 with a Bachelor of Science degree and later earned Master of Science and PhD degrees from George Washington University.

He served in the army in the First World War. By the end of the war, he was a lieutenant in the meteorological section of the Signal Corps and had already gained a reputation as a balloonist. He had received free-balloon training and was a licensed pilot for this craft.

After the war, he worked in aeronautical meteorology for the Weather Bureau. In manned balloon flights, Meisinger made various observations from the balloon, such as the collection of dust samples at various elevations and the measurement of sky brightness and visibility. The major objective of his flights was to obtain information regarding the path of air at high levels in the atmosphere with respect to the ground.

He observed that the balloon's movement subject to the wind creates an index of the movement of the air at the same elevation. Hence, this created an accurate chart and method for computing pressures at certain heights above the ground.

Meisinger presented these and other findings in 1923 to the American Meteorological Society in Cincinnati. It was entitled: Free Air Pressure Reductions in the Plateau Regions of the Western United States. The paper laid the groundwork for much of the aeronautic meteorological information so readily available for today's pilots. Meisinger recommended more manned balloon flights to expand this information, which he arranged through the Army Air Service. He wanted to trace the path of air currents and observe the amount of dust in the air, sky brightness, the size of cloud droplets and other variables.

Nine such flights were completed during which he made some "extraordinary observations," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But the 10th manned balloon flight, made in the summer of 1924, ended in tragedy. He was not aware a strong line of thunderstorms was in the area. Believed to have been struck by lightning, the balloon burst into flames and exploded, killing Meisinger and his pilot.

* Charles Perry's Weather appears daily.