From Scripps Institute New Airborne GPS Technology for Weather Conditions Takes Flight
First-time demonstration led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography captures key meteorological data from aircraft, along with the potential to improve hurricane forecasting
A new GPS system aboard airplanes tracks key atmospheric conditions.
GPS technology has broadly advanced science and society’s ability to pinpoint precise information, from driving directions to tracking ground motions during earthquakes. A new technique led by a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego stands to improve weather models and hurricane forecasting by detecting precise conditions in the atmosphere through a new GPS system aboard airplanes.
The first demonstration of the technique, detailed in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), is pushing the project’s leaders toward a goal of broadly implementing the technology in the near future on commercial aircraft.
Current measurement systems that use GPS satellite signals as a source to probe the atmosphere rely on GPS receivers that are fixed to ground and can’t measure over the ocean, or they rely on GPS receivers that are also on satellites that are expensive to launch and only occasionally measure in regions near storms. The new system, led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography geophysicist Jennifer Haase and her colleagues, captures detailed meteorological readings at different elevations at targeted areas of interest, such as over the Atlantic Ocean in regions where hurricanes might develop.
“This field campaign demonstrated the potential for creating an entirely new operational atmospheric observing system for precise moisture profiling from commercial aircraft,” said Haase, an associate researcher with the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Physics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at Scripps. “Having dense, detailed information about the vertical moisture distribution close to the storms is an important advancement, so if you put this information into a weather model it will actually have an impact and improve the forecast.”
“These are exciting results, especially given the complications involved in working from an airplane,” says Eric DeWeaver, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funded the research. “Satellite-based measurements are now regularly used for weather forecasting and have a big impact, but airplanes can go beyond satellites in making observations that are targeted right where you want them.”
The GRL paper details a 2010 flight campaign aboard NSF aircraft and subsequent data analysis that demonstrated for the first time that atmospheric information could be captured by an airborne GPS device. The instrumentation, which the scientists labeled “GISMOS” (GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System] Instrument System for Multistatic and Occultation Sensing), increased the number of atmospheric profiles for studying the evolution of tropical storms by more than 50 percent.
“We’re looking at how moisture evolves so when we see tropical waves moving across the Atlantic, we can learn more about which one is going to turn into a hurricane,” said Haase. “So being able to look at what happens in these events at the early stages will give us a lot longer lead time for hurricane warnings.”
“This is another case where the effective use of GPS has the potential to improve the forecast and therefore save lives,” said Richard Anthes, president emeritus of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which currently runs the satellite based GPS measurements system called COSMIC (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate).
While the current GISMOS design occupies a refrigerator’s worth of space, Haase and her colleagues are working to miniaturize the technology to shoe box size. From there, the system can more feasibly fit onto commercial aircraft, with hundreds of daily flights and a potential flood of new atmospheric data to greatly improve hurricane forecasting and weather models.
The technology also could improve interpretation of long-term climate models by advancing scientists’ understanding of factors such as the moisture conditions that are favorable for hurricane development.
Paytsar Muradyan, who recently received a Ph.D. from Purdue University in atmospheric sciences, started working with Haase in 2007 as a graduate student during the formative stages of GISMOS’s design and development. She eventually flew with the group in the 2010 campaign and took away a wealth of experience from the demands of the project.
“It was a lot of responsibility but certainly rewarding to work with a group of world-known scientists in an interdisciplinary project,” said Muradyan.
In addition to Haase and Muradyan, coauthors of the project include students Brian Murphy and Kuo-Nung Wang, and Professor James Garrison of Purdue University; F. Felipe Nievinski of Universidade Estadual Paulista, Presidente Prudente (Brazil); and Professor Kristine Larson of the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Funding for the project was provided by NSF, NASA, the Ross Fellowship, the Schlumberger Faculty for the Future Fellowship, the Capes/Fulbright Graduate Student Fellowship, and a NASA Earth System Science Research Fellowship.
Not sure that this is news. Qantas and other Australian airline aircraft have had a weather reporting system onboard for years, used in conjunction with radiosonde data to plot upper air charts. The main issue with present technology is making humidity sensors robust enough to withstand the rigors of aircraft usage, especially vibration, so the main data gathered is temperature and wind speed/direction.
I like it….
Sorry, a bit O/T:
It is a serious pity (even after 9/11) that persons on board a civilian airliner are able to disengage the flight identification transponders, and the ACARS system. How much would it cost, seriously, to install a proper GPS locator for all commercial aircraft, which could NOT be disabled by a person or persons unknown? Minuscule, compared to the value of the airliner, let alone its pax!
The lawyers for the families will have a field-day with MH-370.
“The technology also could improve interpretation of long-term climate models“. I doubt it. If the climate models are wrong, no amount of interpretation of them will help. I suspect they meant that interpretation of the data from the technology could help improve the models. I doubt that, too, until some other major changes have been made to the models.
One thought I had a few years ago during a public/private weather agency included replacing some weather balloon observations with autonomous gliders launched from FedEx’s air fleet. They would be released near FedEx sorting facilities and glide (with GPS guidance) to a rooftop landing. They be picked up, data sent to the weather guys, and repacked for a trip back to the airport with the next truck and installed on the next plane out.
I bet this could provide much more data than the weather balloon program does for much less money. Weather ballon data reports data higher than flight levels, we could either live without it or work on providing a VAP – Vertical Assistance Package.
This abstract is misleading. It does not describe a system which reports meteorological conditions using GPS positions. That does exist; see here for one such system:
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/09/critical-aircraft-weather-data-unused.html
The key phrase in this abstract is “systems that use GPS satellite signals as a source to probe the atmosphere”. The atmospheric conditions that affect the accuracy of a GPS signal, such as moisture in the signal path, could be studied by examining the timing anomalies of the signals over the paths they travel.
On the topic of new data, climate.data.gov has launched.
“Here you can find data related to climate change that can help inform and prepare America’s communities, businesses, and citizens. Initially, in this pilot phase, you can find data and resources related to coastal flooding, sea level rise, and their impacts. Over time, you will be able to find additional data and tools relevant to other important climate-related impacts, including risks to human health, the food supply, and energy infrastructure. Please share your feedback.”
Until it gets turned off.
Incidentally, SPDRDR, there are valid reasons why things like automatic comms might be turned off: in the event that they are giving misleading positional information etc.
I realise this is terribly prosaic, but bright idea = more kit = longer turn-round time + increased weight = higher fuel consumption = extra cost to the carrier. Who pays?
And after they manage to get the device down to shoebox size, they’ll have to sell the idea to the commercial airlines. What benefit would airlines get from installing it? If there’s none, the device would just be dead weight.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Qantas have had weather data recording and transmitting devices fitted for quite some time.Qantas was and remains supportive, on the simple basis that the data provides better data for flight forecasts.
Maybe, but Quantas is a commercial basket case. Other carriers may view things differently and want paying for providing the service.
Qantas (no “U”) has made a loss due to pure local reasons- the other carriers allowed to operate here have foreign capital to work with. Qantas is barred from substantial foreign investment. Qantas remains one of the safest airlines to fly with. Hardly a “basket-case”.
OMG the contrail nutters will go ape over this. Just one more piece of “weather war technology” or some such bulldust. I would go a step further and use some surplus UAV’s (Post Afghanistan of course) . Look at it this way. No pilot on-board, can stay in the air for hours without any supervision, can fly above normal air traffic heights and can be tasked away from their assigned area if needed. Just need the right packages on-board, already has the military standard GPS packages installed, could be used to Cyclone/Typhoon/Hurricane/Tornado chase or could be used in a weather emergency to bring back real time weather information.
Oddly enough, I am pretty certain I suggested this same sort of idea here myself some time ago.
Look what happened to the thermometer data we had. As soon as we start getting ‘adjustments’ to this aircraft data because it is not what is expected, we’re right back to square one.
More data in the wrong hands is more wrong data.
Oh no ! A Gizmo with occult sensing ! Proof of global wierding !
Aircraft fly at a pressure height based on 1013.2mb which enables the correct flight separation between aircraft. GPS can give real altitude (sometimes) so the difference between the two will give an indication of surface air pressure at the aircraft’s position, known from the GPS. Other bits of useful information like local lapse rate, surface temperature etc are more of a problem.
RMF says:
March 18, 2014 at 10:00 pm
> On the topic of new data, climate.data.gov has launched.
And crashed? I get a long delay and then:
Error
Data.gov is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for this inconvenience and assure you that work is underway to correct this problem. Please check back in 15 minutes and thank you for using Data.gov.
[Oops – didn’t save the edit buffer ignore the above comment.]
RMF says:
March 18, 2014 at 10:00 pm
> On the topic of new data, climate.data.gov has launched.
And crashed? I get a long delay and then:
BTW, it’s not a .gov site:
$ host climate.data.gov
climate.data.gov is an alias for http://www.data.gov.edgekey.net.
http://www.data.gov.edgekey.net is an alias for e4605.dscb.akamaiedge.net.
e4605.dscb.akamaiedge.net has address 23.48.30.173
e4605.dscb.akamaiedge.net has IPv6 address 2001:559:11:197::11fd
e4605.dscb.akamaiedge.net has IPv6 address 2001:559:11:189::11fd
e4605.dscb.akamaiedge.net has IPv6 address 2001:559:11:190::11fd
It is a serious pity (even after 9/11) that persons on board a civilian airliner are able to disengage the flight identification transponders, and the ACARS system. How much would it cost, seriously, to install a proper GPS locator for all commercial aircraft, which could NOT be disabled by a person or persons unknown? Minuscule, compared to the value of the airliner, let alone its pax!
The problem isn’t installing a proper GPS locator, it is building an infrastructure to receive these position reports in sparsely populated areas, such as the area in where Air France 447 was lost. The only practical means is to launch a new series of low orbit satellites that are equipped to receive and relay the volume of data that would be generated by the thousands of aircraft airborne worldwide at any given time.
There are thoughts of putting “cloud-based black boxes” on commercial aircraft, which would essentially be your idea. Perhaps MH370 will be the catalyst to make this a reality, and a local weather reporting system could be incorporated at little additional cost.
‘“This is another case where the effective use of GPS has the potential to improve the forecast and therefore save lives,” said Richard Anthes’
Grant fishing BS.
“with hundreds of daily flights and a potential flood of new atmospheric data to greatly improve hurricane forecasting and weather models.”
More grant fishing BS.
Also note that these people are working to produce more data. No one is working on doing anything with the data. This is “build it, and they will come” BS.
A nation $17,000,000,000,000 in debt, and it’s got money for this. Our decadence will be our death.
I haven’t looked at the actual report – do they address the issue that the airspace covered by commercial airliners typically follows well-traveled routes across the Atlantic, which would give an abundance of samples in areas that may have little bearing on predicting the formation and course of tropical storms?
Or perhaps obtaining a large quantity of observations is not the goal, inasmuch as any observations whatsoever over the area of interest would provide data where otherwise there is none.
BTW, as noted above, a lot of the commenters seem not have grasped the concept of the GPS satellite signals themselves being used to probe atmospheric conditions, as opposed to merely being used to give the location of readings taken by more conventional weather measurements.
Ric Werme–it is a .gov site.
Here’s what the about page says about climate.data.gov
“Data.gov is the home of the US government’s open data.
You can find Federal, state and local data, tools, and resources to conduct research, build apps, design data visualizations, and more.
The Data.gov team works at the U.S. General Services Administration, but the site itself is open source, and we’d love your help making it even better.”
There’s a story about it today in the NYT and other places.
Check it out.
“As part of its effort to make the public see global warming as a tangible, immediate and urgent problem, the White House on Wednesday will inaugurate a website aimed at turning scientific data about projected droughts and wildfires and the rise in sea levels into eye-catching digital presentations that can be mapped using an app.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/us/politics/white-house-to-introduce-climate-data-website.html
Regarding GPS locators: General aviation already has the gear and infrastructure, using the Iridium satellite-phone network, generally costing under $200/month to track aircraft position at one-minute intervals. For example http://us.spidertracks.com/
I’m sure commercial airliners could install something similar.
on the surface, I think the basic idea is valid as more data is always more better….until someone ‘adjusts it’.
A weakness is the falacy that it really adds that much over what we already have. Sure it would give us tons of data from all the flights, but in reality most of those follow exactly the same course. More redundant data is not really more useful data.
Why not do an ARGO project for the atmosphere? In fact, why not extend ARGO above sea level so that each buoy performs a sounding while on the surface? Why not install a network of fully automated sounding sites all over the planet at randomly determined fixed locations, and actually measure atmospheric conditions on a gradually improving grid that isn’t shaped by the accident of where humans live in large numbers and corrupt local measurements with UHI? Why not install automated sounding devices all over the world’s deserts, where one in principle might be able to directly measure the CO_2-connected GHE change over a decade (at least, if it is as large as it is purported to be, it should be easy to measure there)?
After all, if this were done with random site selection, it would by construction not require a UHI correction at all (and indeed, would give us the data needed to increasingly precisely determine the UHI effect and the mean contribution of LOCAL warming to current estimates of GLOBAL warming).
ARGO itself is flawed because far too many of the buoys are not moored and are not located at randomly selected sites. It’s like nobody has ever heard of Monte Carlo and the importance of random sampling when constructing unbiased estimates, just as people have apparently never heard of rescalable icosahedral tessellations of the sphere and the problems with kridging and extrema on a sparse grid, or using a kridge or any other interpolating polynomial to do a quadrature as a step towards evaluating an estimate of the mean, especially on a coarse grained spherical polar coordinate decomposition of a spherical surface with its polar singularities.
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