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Satellites to use GPS signal to gather weather data

The same signal that gives you directions on smart phone, help improve hurricane forecasts

BOULDER, Colo. — A group of six new weather satellites was successfully launched into orbit, and will eventually start gathering new data about tropical cyclones.

Known as COSMIC-2 or Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate-2, they will measure GPS signals already being sent from deeper in space, as they bend through the earth's atmosphere.

"It's called Radio Occultation," said Bill Kuo, the director of Community Programs at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder (UCAR). "By measuring the bending in GPS signals, we actually get information about the air density and how it changes with height."

From that air density data, scientists will get detailed measurements about the temperature and water vapor content of the tropical atmosphere all the way from top to bottom.

Kuo said water vapor is the key ingredient to study when it comes to the development, intensification, and tracking of tropical cyclones. 

Improving tropical storm forecasting is something that hits home for Kuo, who is the project director for COSMIC-2.

“I remember when I was a young kid maybe six years old, I woke up, I lived on a farm, and all the farm was gone because of so much flooding that came from the typhoon.”

His native Taiwan is hit with an average of nearly four hurricanes a year, storms that are called typhoons in Asia. And it’s Taiwan that’s funding 50 percent of this project.

Taiwan’s National Space Organization teamed up with the UCAR where Kuo works in Boulder, to create these satellites. 

COSMIC-2 will replace the aging COSMIC-1 suite that Kuo said contributed to recent advancements in tropical cyclone forecasting. He said the new constellation of satellites will provide 10 times better vertical resolution than its predecessor. 

Every day the satellites will take 6,000 measurements of the atmosphere at nearly 30 miles deep. Kuo is confident that this new vertical resolution will improve hurricane forecasting.

Additional benefits

COSMIC-2 also has two space weather instruments on each satellite to help understand the impacts the Sun has on our atmosphere. An Ion Velocity Meter measuring ion velocity, concentration and composition, while measuring upper atmosphere electron density, and a Radio Frequency Beacon that will measure electron content in the upper atmosphere

Climate data will be improved with measurements over the equator. By the end of its mission, combined with the COSMIC-1 data, there should be close to 30 years of climate measurements available over the earth's oceans. An area with insufficient data due to the difficulty of measuring it directly.

Kuo said these satellites also have the ability to correct short-term forecast errors in numerical modeling by improving the data being inputted from other weather satellites. He said other satellites develop bias due to atmospheric disturbances like cloud cover and precipitation. Something that does not affect the GPS signals.

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