New Technology Uses Cellular Towers For Super-Accurate Weather Measurements 42
Iddo Genuth (903542) writes "Israeli scientists from the Tel Aviv University perfected a method for using cell phone service towers' microwave emitters to measure rain and snow and even (for the first time ) detect fog with great accuracy over vast areas in real time. The research team members have analyzed endless amounts of raw cellular data and developed more accurate ways to measure meteorological information and added more parameters that they can now measure using their growing database. When combined with existing meteorological monitoring technologies such as radars and local ground based weather stations, the results show unprecedented level of accuracy that can give better and further weather forecast as well as special warnings about upcoming floods, fog and hail which can affect both people and crop production."
We live in the future (Score:3, Funny)
Too bad the post office isn't as efficient as the weather service.
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Fedex depends on USPS for last mile delivery in a lot of places. USPS handles orders of magnitude more deliveries than Fedex.
Based on that, they are much MORE efficient than Fedex.
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Awwww, did I make someone feel like a braying ass?
Who's a braying ass? YOU're a braying ass, yes you ARE!
Learn to speak like a grownup and I'll stop with the baby talk.
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I do a reference to Back to the Future III, and you guys go on to debate about the USPS.
Re:We live in the future (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the post office is remarkably efficient, given the volumes of mail they carry. USPS alone, in one day carries more than FedEx annually, and in 3, more than UPS. (Take that, late Christmas 2013 presents).
They have to be efficient otherwise the whole system breaks down in short order. And by law of big numbers, of course, they'll run into problems. It ain't nice when it happens via the mail, but FedEx and UPS can be completely hopeless when it's their package. (You'd think with all that tracking information they could easily find a missing or lost package, but no. If a package gets scanned out but not scanned in, you're SOL).
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Actually, the post office is remarkably efficient, given the volumes of mail they carry.
But their bad reputation also works well for providing excuses.
"What do you mean you didn't get that check? I mailed it a week ago! Damn post office..."
NSA - National Storm Agency (Score:2, Funny)
More measurements! (Score:1)
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The military application is that it is rumoured to be able to detect stealth aircraft.
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The military application is that it is rumoured to be able to detect stealth aircraft.
No rumor that. Dunno about cell towers, but it was shown pretty conclusively in the '90s that the "hole in the sky" caused when a stealth aircraft blocks FM radio signals can be seen. Depends of course on having a good FM sensor and a solid transmitter or two in the area.
Sounds like radar to me. (Score:2)
The only differences being that with cell towers, the receivers and transmitters are controlled by two independent parties and the signal itself was not intended for that particular purpose.
You know exactly where the tower is, you can easily reconstruct the RF signal as-transmitted by receiving the bitstream yourself and calculating the original signal as-sent. All that is left to do is compute the correlation between measured signals across your receiver network and weather along the receiver-transmitter p
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If you want to use sonar to map the ocean, you measure multi-path delays, phase shift, attenuation, etc. using a receiver array too.
Radar does much of the same as well: you need the delay to calculate the distance, phase/doppler shift to calculate the speed and heading, signal strength to estimate the cross-section, etc.
You can go way beyond just measuring drift from nominal values. With a distributed receiver array, they could probably use multi-path delays, reflection, attenuation, etc. from thermals, air
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Your statements are either out of ignorance or hate/bigotry.
Hundreds of rockets were fired at Israel in the past month alone. Israel didn't respond. Finally Israel said if you don't stop, we will respond. And what happened? The rocket fire rate increase. Even now, as Israel makes half attempts to stop the rocket fire with limited strikes, they have offered Gaza a ceasefire if they stop the rocket attacks. Gaza refused, saying they want to fight this war to the bitter end. The Gazans only have themselves to
Weather Rules (Score:5, Funny)
Turns out that it's easy to measure the weather with a cell phone tower.
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You're missing a few. A more extensive list here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_rock
Ditto GPS (Score:2)
Could this be used for detecting rockets/mortars? (Score:2)
I wonder if they could extend and improve their "iron dome" with this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
Would be great if they could knock all the Palestinian missiles out of the air instead of bombing the sh*t out of the lauch sites (which the launchers tend to put in urban areas).