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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Cellular networks could map rainfall patterns - environmentalresearchweb
  • Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 16:25:48 -0500

Cellular networks could map rainfall patterns - environmentalresearchweb
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/52322

"Reasons for rain reporting

Measurements of precipitation rates are essential for agriculture, weather
forecasting and the management of water resources and, in the long run, for
climate-based studies. Also, rapid rain reporting can be vital in
minimizing the loss of life in flood-prone regions. The researchers point
out that their new technique is based on measurements that
telecommunication companies often already take to monitor the stability of
the microwave links in their networks. The team suggested that this
approach – using pre-existing resources – could thus help to ease the
reliance on the rapidly falling number of rain gauges worldwide.

It is estimated that the total number of rain gauges in Europe, Africa and
South America has fallen by around 50% in the last 17 years. In contrast,
the spread of mobile networks continues to increase and, while they are
more comprehensive in urban areas, it was estimated that in 2007 they
covered around 20% of the land-based surface of the earth.
Scarcity of measurements

"More than 25 years ago it was estimated that if you put all the world's
rain gauges together in a single place they would barely fill a football
pitch," explained Dominic Kniveton, a professor of climate science at the
University of Sussex. He went on to say that globally, the area covered by
surface-based rainfall radar measurements would only be approximately 4%.
"I can confidently state that little has changed since in this scarcity of
measurements: this remains one of the major challenges to providing
high-quality climate services."

Kniveton told *physicsworld.com* that "the technique shown by Overeem *et al
*. presents an exciting addition to efforts to measure rainfall. By virtue
of coming from the cellular-phone networks these measurements potentially
can be harnessed using fast hydrological models. With such techniques, and
the rise of mobile networks, this opens a range of possibilities to help
build the resilience of many to increasing climatic hazards with climate
change".

In addition, weather radar readings are often fine-tuned using local
readings from gauges. This is especially useful at greater distances from
the radar. In countries where radar is frequently used, communications
network data thus have the potential to be combined with radar measurements
for increased accuracy.

The team is to continue its research, Overeem reported. Future work aims to
improve on the algorithms used to calculate the rainfall distribution by
looking at communications network data over longer periods, such as across
one whole year.

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of
Sciences<http://www.pnas.org/gca?submit=Go&gca=pnas%3B1217961110v1&allch=>
."



  • [permaculture] Cellular networks could map rainfall patterns - environmentalresearchweb, Lawrence London, 02/13/2013

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