Researchers from Switzerland have discovered a way to detect severe weather earlier using GPS data. Because thunder and heavy rain affect signal quality, a team from ETH Zurich discovered. This finding could not only make weather forecasts more accurate, but also contribute to the early detection of extreme weather events, the report said.
The researchers encountered this after a heavy storm in Zurich in July 2021. There was a GPS evaluation error at the rooftop measuring stations of the Institute for Geodesy and Photogrammetry on the Hönggerberg campus. “At first we couldn’t explain why that was the case,” says lead author Matthias Aichinger-Rosenberger from the university. Analyzes of data from this storm and another in July 2021 showed that such storms affect the signal-to-noise ratio.
This indicates how strong the signals reaching Earth are. When the two storms passed over the monitoring station, this ratio decreased significantly, significantly deteriorating the quality of the signals. When the storms passed, the signal returned to normal, as the researchers explain in their study published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters.”
Until now, GPS was assumed to be a weather-independent system. GPS data has now been shown to be sensitive enough to detect atmospheric disturbances.
More measuring stations are needed
To build a good early detection system, there would need to be a denser network of monitoring stations, the researchers admit. This would then make it possible to determine exactly where a thunderstorm is moving and at what speed it is moving. According to the researchers, such information would be valuable for flight operations.
This is what the researchers want to do now: In addition to refining the method, the scientists plan to expand their research work throughout Switzerland and also at the European level and expand their network accordingly, as ETH said.
Source: Krone
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