Using Cars To Help Forecast Weather

Automobiles are already equipped with useful temperature and pressure sensors; simple rain and wind sensors could be readily added.

I’m not sure how I got on the mailing list to receive “Imaging Notes,” but I did. It’s a glossy magazine dedicated to “Earth Remote Sensing for Security, Energy and the Environment.”

It is geek porn as companies and suppliers show off their ability to sense and photograph the Earth from satellites. Spectacular images are the norm.

I was thumbing through my copy yesterday when I came across a small inset on the editorial page: “Sensing severe weather from automobiles.”

auto info on radar.jpgThe Doppler radar map on the left shows a typical display augmented by data from cars! How simple. How amazingly powerful!

“A distinct change in wind direction is observed by the automobile as it approaches the storm center, indicating inflows at ground level characteristic of tornado formation. This information is not available from either the fixed weather stations or the Doppler radar. Automobiles are already equipped with useful temperature and pressure sensors; simple rain and wind sensors could be readily added. Drawing data from the community of millions of vehicles on the road would complement our centralized satellite and ground-based weather data sources, enabling us to forecast development of severe weather and micro-weather with unprecedented accuracy.

Google’s new traffic data is already integrating realtime data from moving vehicles to enhance the utility of its product. Why not do the same to help initialize our weather models?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked with meteorologist friends about data initialization being a weak link in weather prediction. We just have too few observations to use. It would seem for short term predictions a dense carpet of additional observations might greatly increase our accuracy.

This still doesn’t put more sensors in the oceans or other inhospitable places, so the global and extended range implications seem minor. For thunderstorms, tornadoes and even the development of winter storms this could make a huge difference.

It’s the first I’ve heard of this at all.

Feeling The Weather

This is a step beyond being able to say rain/no rain.

As you might imagine I am a radar watcher. I looked at it today while on the sofa and said to myself, “That’s ugly.”

Obviously, it’s going to rain tonight–though that’s not a particularly blogworthy note.

What’s become more important to me is a recent increase in my own ability to look at remote sensing (like a radar or satellite loop) or computer models and understand at a very basic level just how that day will look and feel. This is a step beyond being able to say rain/no rain.

There’s a limit to how much of this detail I can actually impart in a forecast. Too much detail and the viewers will take away less! In some cases I’m not sure there are ways to quantify these physical feelings.

It’s frustrating to know more than you can say.

When It Comes To Men In Space, I’m Not Alone

I have written, more than a few times, about the U.S. manned space program. It’s a good idea on paper, or maybe it was thirty years ago. There’s little reason anymore to send men into space as explorers in the 21st Century.

Advances in remote sensing and robotics in general (and for these purposes I consider vehicles like the Mars rovers to be robotic) now allow machines to do more than humans, in harsh environments, without the life support costs and without the devastating downside of failure that humans bring.

More than once, on the news set, after a story about the space program has run, my colleagues have turned to me and said, “I bet you’d really like to do that.” It would make sense. I’m a science kind of guy. My answer is always, no. It always has been.

I just finished an article from the New York Review of Books by Dr. Steven Weinberg, the University of Texas/Austin Nobel Prize winning physicist and am amazed that he and I agree so fully about sending men to space. We both say, “no.”

His well documented essay goes point by point to show that we send men into space because of our emotion – not for the sake of science. He points out, as I did earlier, that the tragic Columbia disaster was a mission with minimal science, in a program with little purpose or hope of ever fulfilling its original reason for existing.

I found Dr. Weinberg’s email address and sent him a note – as if a Nobel laureate needs my reassurance that his ideas are sound. Maybe the note really wasn’t meant to benefit him. Looking back, it was reassurance to me that I’m not a Luddite… at least as far as space is concerned.

Blogger’s addendum – After writing to Dr. Weinberg and telling him “It is good to see I’m not some lone Luddite fruitcake sniping at the manned space program (or, if I am, that there are two Luddite fruitcakes out there),” he responded “One good thing about fruitcakes – they stick together. SW.”

He deserves another Nobel for that line alone!.