![]() ![]() "The moister the ground, the less energy it radiates. That's where ESA's Earth observation satellite SMOS measures ground moisture and humidity. Take, for example, the range of 1.4 GHz in the L band. Meteorologists are already having to deal with intrusions in frequency ranges that have been reserved for them. "We'll get these same interferences all over the world."Īnd it's nothing new. "5G will most certainly get implemented on ships and airplanes," says Simmer. But as there are plans to use 5G to support autonomous driving, the problem could soon also affect long-distance routes and freeways. To begin with, that could be a big problem for urban centers and residential areas. That means that a cell tower or mobile devices that stray into a weather satellite's frequency range could disrupt its readings for a larger area. Today's weather satellites have a surface range-resolution of between 10 and 30 kilometers (6.2 and 18 miles). "So, we need very low thresholds for transmitters that emit signals below the 24 GHz." "They are very low changes in the levels of energy of the water molecules and that's what makes this so difficult, because the smallest interference can wreck the signal," Simmer adds. There will be interference."Īdd to that the fact that the emissions from water vapor are very weak. "The emissions don't just stop at 24 GHz because every transmitting device has a certain range," says Simmer. ![]() It's almost inevitable that 5G - its send-and-receive masts and our mobile devices - will disrupt the flow of weather data to meteorologists. That leaves a slim 0.25 GHz of separation between 5G mobile telecommunications and that all-important water vapor range that meteorologists need to predict storms. The problem is that the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) decided at its 2019 world conference (WRC-19) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, that the new 5G mobile network should operate in the range of 24.25 and 27.5 GHz. Simmer is concerned that some weather satellites could become blind in certain areas The emission is nothing more than heat radiation, the same as in a kitchen stove - except we're measuring it in a different spectral range." ![]() So, we're only measuring the water vapor. "And we measure water vapor at 22.235 GHz, where other gases and even clouds have practically no effect. Clemens Simmer, a professor of meteorology at the University of Bonn, Germany. "The radiation is caused by the smallest changes in the speed at which water molecules rotate," says Dr. Those sensors can detect very weak, microwave signals in a spectral band between 23.6 and 24 gigahertz (GHz). Weather satellites measure atmospheric steam, or water vapor, using passive sensors. The intrinsic radiation of steam molecules But if they don't have good data, those predictions can be wrong by hundreds of kilometers. The better the data, the better meteorologists can forecast storms, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones and when and where those weather events will make landfall. And that's extremely important for meteorologists. Satellites run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and its American counterpart, NASA, monitor such developments. When that steam (a gas) cools, we get clouds. One of those data is the level of water vapor in the atmosphere - that's water that evaporates and turns into steam, making it practically invisible. That data then gets fed into computer models to generate weather reports. ![]() That's thanks in large part to Earth observation satellites, which record and deliver a variety of exact weather data. Weather forecasting has never been as precise as it is today. ![]()
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