Global Science Project Links Android Phones With Satellites To Improve Weather Forecasts (theverge.com) 10
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Collecting satellite data for research is a group effort thanks to this app developed for Android users. Camaliot is a campaign funded by the European Space Agency, and its first project focuses on making smartphone owners around the world part of a project that can help improve weather forecasts by using your phone's GPS receiver. The Camaliot app works on devices running Android version 7.0 or later that support satellite navigation. Researchers think that they can use satellite signals to get more information about the atmosphere. For example, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can affect how a satellite signal travels through the air to something like a phone.
The app gathers information to track signal strength, the distance between the satellite and the phone being used, and the satellite's carrier phase, according to Camaliot's FAQs. With enough data collected from around the world, researchers can theoretically combine that with existing weather readings to measure long-term water vapor trends. They hope to use that data to inform weather forecasting models with machine learning. They can also track changes in Earth's ionosphere -- the part of the atmosphere near space. Creating better ionospheric forecasts could be relevant in tracking space weather and could eventually make Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) more accurate by accounting for events like geomagnetic storms. Camaliot could eventually expand to include more attempts at collecting data on a massive scale using sensors present in "Internet of Things" connected home devices. According to The Verge, these are the steps to take to begin using the Camaliot app on your Android phone:
1. Select "start logging" and place your phone in an area with a clear sky view to begin logging the data
2. Once you have measured to your liking, select "stop logging"
3. Then, upload your session to the server and repeat the process over time to collect more data. You can also delete your locally-stored log files at this step.
"In addition to being able to view your own measurements against others accumulated over time, you can also see a leaderboard showing logging sessions done by other participants," adds The Verge. "Eventually, the information collected for the study will be available in a separate portal."
The app gathers information to track signal strength, the distance between the satellite and the phone being used, and the satellite's carrier phase, according to Camaliot's FAQs. With enough data collected from around the world, researchers can theoretically combine that with existing weather readings to measure long-term water vapor trends. They hope to use that data to inform weather forecasting models with machine learning. They can also track changes in Earth's ionosphere -- the part of the atmosphere near space. Creating better ionospheric forecasts could be relevant in tracking space weather and could eventually make Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) more accurate by accounting for events like geomagnetic storms. Camaliot could eventually expand to include more attempts at collecting data on a massive scale using sensors present in "Internet of Things" connected home devices. According to The Verge, these are the steps to take to begin using the Camaliot app on your Android phone:
1. Select "start logging" and place your phone in an area with a clear sky view to begin logging the data
2. Once you have measured to your liking, select "stop logging"
3. Then, upload your session to the server and repeat the process over time to collect more data. You can also delete your locally-stored log files at this step.
"In addition to being able to view your own measurements against others accumulated over time, you can also see a leaderboard showing logging sessions done by other participants," adds The Verge. "Eventually, the information collected for the study will be available in a separate portal."
While 5G Interferes with Doppler Weather Radar (Score:2)
5G *MIGHT* need cooperation with old uses (Score:2)
Personally, I think Camaliot is a great continuation of citizen science along the likes of the SETI project, folding@HOME, and other projects mentioned in the article. The program is Opt-in, users decide when and what data to send, and they can delete the program when they decide not to participate anymore. The program is being run by the European Space Agency, not a cellphone company. Trying to tie this to the 5G rollout seems more like an attempt to promote your agenda of "5G is bad" rather than a comm
Make it automatic and crunch the heck out of it! (Score:2)
Seems interesting. Japan's Weathernews has a for-pay feature to get news on "guerrilla rainstorms" which are sudden downpours in summer that are impossible to track with normal predictive tools. They have a network of people/sensors to find out if it is raining in a given location. Seems it would be better to make the app test for signal attenuation every 5 minutes or so, which would give you I suppose an idea that the signal is going through precipitation somewhere along the vector between satellite and gr
Re: Make it automatic and crunch the heck out of i (Score:2)
AFAIK, LTE sends periodic beacons that include tower ID, transmission power, and possibly azimuth if they're transmitting in a specific direction.
In theory, the beacons aren't encrypted, because their purpose is to advertise the tower's existence. So... RIL permitting, a phone could monitor them, even from other companies.
Some of the frequencies used are more affected by rain than others.
If the phone knows it isn't moving & the reported strength of those beacons, a sudden observed drop in RSSI in vapor/
Neat, but... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's NASA, not Nasa. People tend to leave three letter agencies like FBI, CIA, or EPA as all caps, but want to mix the case for NASA, NOAA, and FEMA. Or perhaps it's a spellchecker doing this to us.
Re: (Score:2)
This isn't specifically about the visible weather. This is measuring the amount of water vapor in the air, something that isn't always visible as clouds. You could have a nicesunny day and still have large differences in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
researchers can theoretically combine that with existing weather readings to measure long-term water vapor trends. They hope to use that data to inform weather forecasting models with machine learning. They can also track changes in Earth’s ionosphere — the part of the atmosphere near space.