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The legacy of 15 years of Dr. Michael Connolly's weather balloon research: Proof that our current paradigms on the Earth's atmosphere are wrong

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As we reported recently, CERES co-founder, Dr. Michael Connolly, tragically passed away on August 25th, 2025. For a brief overview of this amazing scientist's life, see our recent obituary here.


In this post, we want to provide a compilation of one of his main research interests of the last 15 years: using weather balloons to study the Earth's atmosphere, weather and climate.


In 2014, with his son, Dr. Ronan Connolly (also a CERES co-founder), Michael published a series of three working papers that provided brand new techniques for analysing weather balloons that are relatively simple to implement and revealed surprising insights and unexpected results about how the physics of the Earth's atmosphere works:


  1. Michael Connolly and Ronan Connolly (2014). The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere I. Phase change associated with tropopause. Open Peer Review Journal, 19 http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/19. Available on ResearchGate at https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.34432.76809.

  2. Michael Connolly and Ronan Connolly (2014). The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere II. Multimerization of atmospheric gases above the troposphere. Open Peer Review Journal, 22 http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/22. Available on ResearchGate at https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.26044.16003.

  3. Michael Connolly and Ronan Connolly (2014). The physics of the Earth’s atmosphere III. Pervective power. Open Peer Review Journal, 25 http://oprj.net/articles/climate-science/25. Available on ResearchGate at https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.15977.83042.


In these papers, the Connollys developed the simple concept of using the simultaneous temperature (T) and pressure (P) measurements of a weather balloon to calculate the corresponding molar density (D) from the ideal gas law. [Specifically, they showed that you could easily calculate the changes in D by applying the equation, D=P÷RT, where R is the universal gas constant].


Michael and Ronan were both shocked to discover that when this equation is applied to more than 90% of the weather balloon soundings launched since the mid-20th century, a universal phenomenon is found. Plotting pressure against molar density yields a straight line for the lower part of the atmosphere (the so-called "troposphere") and a straight line for the upper part of the atmosphere (the so-called "tropopause" and "stratosphere"). But, the slopes of these two lines are different.


In those first three papers, the Connollys presented these results and calculations, and explored possible explanations for this amazing but easily confirmed phenomenon.


In 2019, they gave a 1 hour presentation at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness annual meeting (Tucson, AZ, USA) in which they summarised their findings and answered questions:



Since then, the CERES team have published several papers building on the original techniques and insights from those 2014 working papers:


  1. Michael Connolly, Ronan Connolly, Willie Soon, Víctor M. Velasco Herrera, Rodolfo Gustavo Cionco and Nancy E. Quaranta (2021). Analyzing atmospheric circulation patterns using mass fluxes calculated from weather balloon measurements: North Atlantic region as a case study. Atmosphere 12(11), 1439; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12111439.

  2. Orla Dingley, Michael Connolly, Ronan Connolly and Willie Soon (2022). A comparison of different metrics for analyzing the troposphere/stratosphere transitions using high-resolution ozonesondes. Environmental Science Proceedings, 19, 14. Proceedings of The 5th International Electronic Conference on Atmospheric Sciences. https://doi.org/10.3390/ecas2022-12807.

  3. Michael Connolly, Orla Dingley, Ronan Connolly, Willie Soon (2024). “Comparing different tropopause estimates from high-resolution ozonesondes”. Earth and Space Science. 11 (5), e2024EA003584. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EA003584.


In the last two years, Michael gave several presentations to summarise the published results of his revolutionary approach to analysing the virtually untapped archive of more than 20 million weather balloons (1950s-present) that are publicly available through datasets such as NOAA's Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA).


  1. "Using Weather Balloon Data to Test Assumptions of Computer Climate Models". 1 hour presentation at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness annual meeting (July 5, 2024, El Paso, TX, USA):


  1. “20 million weather balloons: How the data debunks the climate models”. May 13, 2025, Washington D.C., USA. 15 minute presentation at The Heritage Foundation's “Is the Sky Falling? Reconsidering the Endangerment Finding”.


  1. "20 million weather balloons". 1 hour presentation at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness annual meeting (July 5, 2025, Tucson, AZ, USA):


  1. "Using weather balloons to study the Earth's atmosphere: the new concept of molar density". A 40 minute lecture/presentation during the 1st episode of the CERES podcast on March 3, 2025:



Although Michael has passed away, he left behind a huge volume of unpublished results and notes, building even further on this new approach to studying the weather balloon data. The CERES team is currently preparing some of this unpublished work for submission for peer review. We will keep you posted when this is published.


In the meantime, we think it is safe to say that the legacy of 15 years of Dr. Michael Connolly's weather balloon research already collectively proves that our current paradigms on the Earth's atmosphere are wrong.



 
 
 
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