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GPS signal will measure wind speed over water

02.08.2013

Winds over oceans and lakes can be tracked by reflecting GPS signals. This will help meteorologists more accurately predict the weather and, in particular, catastrophic events such as tornadoes. On a global scale, NASA experts hope to better understand our planet's climate with a new method of measuring wind speeds.

Accurate weather prediction and climate modeling requires accurate knowledge of wind strength at various altitudes, or at least near the surface. On land, this task is more or less performed by simple weather stations, but over the oceans, over the "kitchen" of the world climate, it is more difficult to make measurements. Usually, disposable probes dropped from aircraft are used for this. However, these probes are not cheap: $750 each, and in fact, during a typical mission, a "hurricane hunter" consumes about 20 of these probes.

It is clear that to obtain a pattern of winds over a large area, dropped probes are not enough. To solve this problem, NASA has developed monitoring technology that measures wind speed by bouncing GPS satellite signals off sea waves. The accuracy of such a measurement is 10 times lower than that of drop probes, which are only 0,5 m/s wrong. At the same time, analysis of the reflection of GPS signals from waves makes it possible to monitor vast areas in real time, which is very important for forecasting hurricanes.

Thanks to GPS, you can now follow the winds without dropping sensors. Wind data can be collected from aircraft and satellites. Specifically, in 2016, NASA plans to launch a system of small satellites called CYGNSS that will measure GPS returns from low orbit. This will allow forecasting the movement of storm fronts. In the future, in addition to GPS signals, it will be possible to use TV broadcast signals from powerful satellite transmitters such as DirecTV and Sirius XM for monitoring.

Thus, extremely powerful satellites provide scientists with "free" monitoring of the oceans, which until now has been an extremely difficult task. All you need is a GPS receiver, some chips and some software. All this costs several hundred dollars.

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