54
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by xkcdbot@lemmy.world to c/xkcd@lemmy.world

xkcd #3107: Weather Balloons

Title text:

Once you add the balloons into the model, it makes forecasting easier overall--the forecast is always 'cold and dark, with minimal solar-driven convection.'

Transcript:

[A graph is shown. The X axis is labeled Number of Weather Balloon Launches Per Day. It's logarithmic, with ticks in powers of 10, and values shown at 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 1 million, 1 billion, and 1 trillion. The Y axis is labeled Weather Model Accuracy, no values are shown. The plot starts above the mark for 1 balloon, at about 40% of the maximum value of the curve, it quickly rises through a point labelled "Current Rate", at about 4000 launches per day and 85% of the maximum. The maximum value is reached at 100 million, plateaus until 10 billion, and then reduces even more rapidly down to perhaps 15% maximum accuracy above the 10 trillion mark.]

Source: https://xkcd.com/3107/

explainxkcd for #3107

top 8 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] Steve@communick.news 6 points 1 week ago

Seems like a climate change proposal to me 👍

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I'm going to need someone to adjust the model for instances in which an F-22 starts shooting them down.

[-] ValiantDust@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

"Dabei war'n dort am Horizont
Nur 99 Luftballons."

[-] tate@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 week ago

All the fighter jets in the world couldn't make a tiny dent in one trillion balloons.

[-] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

What about this?

[-] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 week ago

I'd just shoot doem down with FLAC cannons

[-] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Good idea using the Free Lossless Audio Codec that will sound way better than mp3 when the balloons all pop.

[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

My first thought was “who’s launching all these leather balloons?”.

this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
54 points (95.0% liked)

xkcd

11934 readers
9 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS