
5G Is Likely to Put Weather Forecasting at Risk - szczys
https://hackaday.com/2019/04/16/5g-buildout-likely-to-put-weather-forecasting-at-risk/
======
autocorr
While 5G Will be a great boon, especially the beam-forming satellite version,
another unintended consequence besides weather remote sensing is nuking the
extremely important 24 GHz range (K Band) for radio astronomy. There are a few
narrow protected windows for absolutely critical spectral lines, but the truth
is that nature doesn't play by the spectrum allocations rules, and there are
hundreds if not thousands of lines that are observed routinely outside of the
protected bands. It is also remarkably free and clear of radio frequency
interference (RFI), in part because industry has chosen other frequencies not
attenuated by atmospheric water vapor. This isn't to say we should halt global
human progress to save a local river bait fish, but that threat to forecasting
is only one of the serious consequences major spectrum reallocation can have.
This is especially true for _passive use_ in the sciences, which has a weaker
lobby than the private sector.

~~~
N_trglctc_joe
> While 5G Will be a great boon

This is something I've been having trouble with.

Lately I've become more aware of the secondary effects of 5G- on weather
forecasting, on the radio spectrum, possibly on bees- and it's got me
wondering why we need it for telecom. I just don't see the value added. I can
already communicate with anyone in the world, access any information, and find
my way anywhere with 4G. A significantly higher rate of data transfer just
doesn't seem to add any new functionality to my phone. Can anyone give me a
good rationale for 5G? Entertainment doesn't count.

I'll grant right-off-the-bat that it'll have some fantastic industrial
applications; my issue is with personal telecom. It just feels like a new
planned obsolescence vector.

~~~
matchagaucho
Parkinson's Law. Increase in 5G bandwidth will be filled with next-gen media.

Cable boxes will be replaced by subsidized free smartphones in exchange for
"always on" subscriptions. No more home WiFi for low-end market.

Personally, the industrial 5G IoT applications are far more interesting.

~~~
md224
> next-gen media

What does this mean? Something beyond video? VR?

~~~
cjsawyer
If the bandwidth is available then people will find a way to fill it.
Streaming games, higher res video, remote terminals replacing low end PC
hardware, who knows?

~~~
md224
Good point, though I'll note that streaming games, high-res video, and remote
terminals are already available (at least via high-speed ethernet
connections), so the "next generation" would be higher quality or wider
availability rather than genuinely new forms of media.

My instinct is that there are diminishing returns past a certain point. We're
certainly not there yet, but once cellular networks allow you to stream high-
definition VR content and upload data at the same rate, it seems like there's
nothing more that additional bandwidth could add.

I see it as a philosophical issue... bandwidth is for the transmission of
information, and there's only so much information that a human being can
receive and provide at a given moment. At some point you're running up against
the maximum bandwidth of the human user.

~~~
vel0city
So here's an example of "next gen" media streaming in action. I was recently
at a MotoGP race. MotoGP has a streaming media app that allows for you to
stream cams from your favorite racers on your mobile device in very high
quality. This would be really cool to use for the many hours of racing
throughout the day at the race track, but while its technically possible with
current technology for me to do it the cost is prohibitive. With significantly
higher throughput per tower, the cost of data _should_ significantly be
reduced, making it really cheap to have a crowd of people at the race track
have a few 1080p each.

~~~
paulmd
On-demand streaming of identical content to hundreds of users at the same time
is not an efficient use of bandwidth.

It's like Netflix versus cable television - you can push the equivalent of
hundreds of 1080p streams through a broadcast cable television, but attempting
to push on-demand IP packets to an equivalent number of subscribers would bog
down horrifically if they even attempted to stream a single show (let alone
how you have cable tuners that can tune multiple shows at once).

What you need there is something much more akin to broadcast television -
either a digital OTA video broadcast (good ol' digital television), or a
microcell using multicast to broadcast a stream to any interested party.

(of course your phone probably doesn't have a DTV tuner, but when a RTL-SDR
dongle is like $20, you should probably be asking why your phone isn't
integrating that functionality. These days they don't even have FM tuners on
phones anymore... despite the fact that in virtually all cases those are
already built into the cellular chipset. IP-based singlecast is not a good
paradigm for a lot of the use-cases that people come up with, it's just that
it's the most profitable one for carriers, so it's the only one they'll
support.)

~~~
vel0city
In this instance its not all identical content though. In this example, each
bike has three cameras, along with a dozen or so camera angles around the
track. Users can pick and choose a lot of those different views and combine a
hybrid view of their own personal choosing.

Of course, this could also be accomplished with DTV tuners, but there's a much
higher probability of users having a 5G chipset on their phone than having a
DTV tuner capable of tuning to multiple channels and an antenna.

~~~
paulmd
So essentially you want you want an app that lets you pick a couple multicast
groups to add yourself to, and then displays them in this "hybrid view of
their choosing".

It's the same as what the app is currently doing, just with multicast groups
instead of singlecast. And by doing so, you reduce the network load by N/M,
where N is the number of users and M is the number of streams each user runs
on average.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that this probably isn't currently
implemented, but that's the kind of thing we should be looking at, before we
decide to screw up weather forecasting and radioastronomy so that you can see
your NAAAYYSSSCARR.

Even 5G is going to get eaten up under certain types of load, so it makes much
more sense to look at ways to reduce traffic, the easiest of which is
broadcasting rather than singlecast.

~~~
cjsawyer
"...before we decide to screw up weather forecasting and radioastronomy so
that you can see your NAAAYYSSSCARR."

This isn't the place for cheap comments like that.

Even if you have a point ideologically speaking we live in the real world
where consumer money talks louder than forum comments. 5G is coming whether we
like it or not because of people wanting to stream data for entertainment.

~~~
mirimir
I guess that we can revisit that if weather forecasting does become
substantially less reliable. And with global climate change, maybe we'll need
reliable weather forecasting. But me, I'll be dead before it gets too bad, dog
willing.

------
pkghost
Has anyone done a deep dive on 5g health concerns? E.g., 240-some scientists
and 40 doctors signed a letter of discouragement (or something), claims
research indicates 5g interacts with human biology in poorly understood ways:
[https://ehtrust.org/key-issues/cell-
phoneswireless/5g-networ...](https://ehtrust.org/key-issues/cell-
phoneswireless/5g-networks-iot-scientific-overview-human-health-risks/)

~~~
xxpor
It's all nonsense. The higher frequencies are non-ionizing and in common use
today. See all of those microwave antennas on buildings and towers? A lot of
them transmit around there.

Your neighbor can blast 24 ghz right at your house with a free licence:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.2-centimeter_band](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.2-centimeter_band)

The reason microwaves (like from a microwave oven) are dangerous are because
of their power levels. Like, they'd cook you if they leaked out. Not because
of ionizing radiation.

~~~
macawfish
Why is it that you can just dismiss the hesitancy of more than a hundred
researchers with PhD's in a wide range of relevant disciplines who have made
careers out of studying this kind of thing by simply posting a comment saying
"it's all nonsense"?

[https://emfscientist.org/index.php/emf-scientist-
appeal](https://emfscientist.org/index.php/emf-scientist-appeal)

ctrl-f for "PhD" shows 126 results on the page.

Electromagnetic radiation is used as a signaling medium for countless
lifeforms on earth, including the cells and microbes in our own bodies.

Imagine if some alien creature decided they wanted to flash relatively bright
blue light across the entire surface planet, day and night at frequencies that
known to induce epileptic seizures. It'd affect your quality of life and mine.
For some people, it'd be devastating.

Just because we can't _see it_ , doesn't mean it's not there.

I fail to see how a blanket dismissal of peoples concerns, however uninformed
many of them may be, counts as "rational"!

~~~
cloakandswagger
I can find 100 crackpot scientists as easily as I can find 100 crackpot
doctors or mathematicians.

Instead of appeals to authority, why can't we work with the facts and evidence
that we have already (those overwhelmingly disproving the health hazards of
5G)?

"Peoples concerns" equate to the desire to halt all human progress out of some
bizarre mix of paranoia and Neo-Luddism.

~~~
throwaway995669
That's an ad hominem attack.

It's an inconvenient possibility (not going to call it truth) that our
technology might be hurting us. We're addicted to technology the same way
smokers are addicted to nicotine.

Smoking was at one time considered healthy and promoted by doctors, and now
where are we?

~~~
neuronic
Technology is a religion to this forum, so good luck convincing others that
electromagnetic radiation might have an impact on human biology that is not
well understood.

If it doesn't cook you like microwaves or causes radiation sickness 3 hours
after exposure it is immediately declared universally safe.

Of course that's negligent at best. Looks like we will live through in vivo
testing for those questions, I suppose.

~~~
throwaway995669
Yep, totally get it. That's why I'm using a throwaway, I'm a heretic to the
highest, on the level of an anti-vaxxer.

------
derekp7
I was wondering, what exactly 5G will bring us. For the most part, all the
tasks I need to do on a phone (pocket computer / communicator) can be done
even with 3G (video, streaming music, and any website's loading time is more
than acceptable at 3G speeds).

The only thing I can think of is 5G will allow for more overall network
bandwidth, so the data caps on "unlimited" plans wouldn't be needed. But
compared to how we use our phones today, what new items will be be able to do
with 5G that we can't do with current 4G/LTE?

~~~
tomschlick
> I was wondering, what exactly 5G will bring us.

WISP internet service to the home.

~~~
wl
WISP is very useful in rural areas. It's less compelling as an alternative to
wired services in the dense urban environments where we'll see 5G deployments.
You're going to have to run all that fiber, anyway.

~~~
twothamendment
That all depends on how rural it is. Rural enough that a tower can cover
enough houses to make it worth it or so rural enough you have almost as many
towers as houses?

I spent a decade on various WISPs, even had one of their towers on my house
(free connection + cash = very yes). It was a city with a mix of single family
homes on small lots and townhomes/condos. Cable doesn't exist there, so WISP
was the way to go. It was pretty good until Netfix got popular. It was bad in
the evenings when everyone would sit down and turn on a show.

Now I'm in a very rural place, lots of hills, thick trees. Luckily there is a
telephone/internet co-op who put in fiber. I think they realized with the
distances they have to cover that WISP and copper were out. I've never seen
fiber to such remote locations.

We only have one cell tower that covers us now, so I won't hold my breath for
5G.

------
woliveirajr
> Does this also mean that 5G will suck, when it’s raining? [from a comment
> below the article]

If 5G uses almost the same frequency where microwaves detect water vapour
(around 24 GHz), won't the weather have a great impact on it?

Also, I always thought that such small waves would have problems with
obstacles, with good signal just when your phone is in line-of-sight with
antennas.

~~~
penagwin
That's all correct, the higher frequency suffers from worse object
penetration. Solutions I've heard was that 5G would likely involve
neighborhood or even building repeaters.

IMO 5G is massively overhyped. My iPhone 7+ isn't limited by 4G LTE, it's
limited by Verizon deciding to only allow it 10mbps down (with great signal).
5G won't matter one bit if the current bottleneck isn't 4G LTE in the first
place.

~~~
SkyPuncher
> My iPhone 7+ isn't limited by 4G LTE, it's limited by Verizon deciding to
> only allow it 10mbps down (with great signal)

This is in fact a limitation of 4G.

A single device is fine, but there is only so much bandwidth available. When
you get lots of devices in the same area, something has to be limited.

~~~
dzhiurgis
That seems to be american thing. Most countries I’ve lived easily get 100mbps.

~~~
AnssiH
Yeah, in especially good conditions you can get over 800Mbps on a Galaxy S10
over here (e.g. [https://bbs.io-tech.fi/threads/nettiliittymaesi-
taemaenhetki...](https://bbs.io-tech.fi/threads/nettiliittymaesi-
taemaenhetkinen-nopeus-keskustelua.2994/page-40#post-4773590)), and over
100Mbps is normal.

------
roomey
I think the main point of 5g keeps getting missed when people are asking about
cell phones and their broadband speed vs capacity etc etc. The only reason
telcos are going to put in 5g is for IOT coverage. Low powered trickle data
from billions of devices.

Stuff for your personal cellular use would never come close to covering the
costs involved. And 4g will still be used for many years to come for that.

~~~
yaantc
The focus today for 5G is fixed wireless access and smartphones, not IoT.

5G covers 3 variants: 1) massive broadband (with mmWave in particular); 2)
URLLC - Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications; 3) massive IoT. The
current focus is on (1). Lot's of talk on (2), but nothing much concrete yet.
(3) is moving along, but it's actually based on... LTE.

Strictly speaking, 5G is a set of requirements defined by the ITU-T, not a
technology. The actual technologies are developed by another organization,
3GPP. And there are 2 technologies to cover 5G: 1) NR, or "New Radio". This is
what most people mean by 5G. It's for massive broadband and URLLC; 2) LTE
(release 15 and later) for massive IoT!

Yes, the IoT variant of LTE (LTE-M and NB-IoT) will be the 5G implementations
for a while. Eventually there will be new NR versions for IoT, but nobody is
in a hurry there. LTE-M and NB-IoT evolutions will be just fine for a long
time, as far as massive IoT is concerned.

When you hear about 5G deployment today, it really mean "NR" and not LTE based
IoT. The concern for smartphone is really capacity during peak time in the
busiest cells.

I work in the field BTW, as you may have guessed ;)

~~~
bdamm
I work in the mesh network IoT space, primarily Wi-SUN. Since we view NB-IoT
and LTE-M as competition, I encourage you cellular guys to really take your
time :) we're happy for the head start while we keep deploying our networks in
the millions.

------
oceliker
I’m somewhat confused. I’ll admit that I’m not very familiar with super high
frequency radio, but isn’t the difference at least 200 MHz, approximately 10
times larger than the entire FM radio spectrum? Doesn’t out-of-band emission
stop being a problem at that much separation? Or should we look at it relative
to the base frequency?

edit: For what it's worth, I found this paragraph from the FCC last year:
[https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2018-14806/p-20](https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2018-14806/p-20)
It sounds like they're saying "we don't know if this will be a problem yet,
but be prepared to limit emissions in 23.6-24ghz range because we might
require it at some point".

Also, paragraph 9 of the same document has the actual band limits (with a
special requirement) if anybody is interested:

> The 24 GHz band consists of two band segments: The lower segment, from
> 24.25-24.45 GHz, and the upper segment, from 24.75-25.25 GHz

> any mobile or transportable equipment capable of operating in any portion of
> the 24 GHz band must be capable of operating at all frequencies within the
> 24 GHz band, in both band segments

~~~
borkt
"At the high end of the electromagnetic spectrum, signals travel over a band
of 10 million trillion Hz (that is, 10^22Hz). This end of the spectrum has
phenomenal bandwidth, but it has its own set of problems. The wave forms are
so miniscule that they're highly distorted by any type of interference,
particularly environmental interference such as precipitation. Furthermore,
higher-frequency wave forms such as x-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays are
not very good to human physiology and therefore aren't available for us to use
for communication at this point."

Not the best analysis but I'm working. Basically like any other metric, as the
frequency increases the space between peaks and valleys decreases and it
becomes harder to determine/separate from others 30hz to 230hz is much easier
to tell the difference than 15khz to 15.2khz if you want to listen to audio
tones. Once you get to microwaves this becomes of course much more difficult.

[http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=24687&seqNum...](http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=24687&seqNum=4)

~~~
oceliker
To me, this analysis sounds more about the interference with physical objects
(like how 2.4ghz can pass through walls easier than 5ghz). It doesn't seem to
be about interference with other radio emissions?

> 30hz to 230hz is much easier to tell the difference than 15khz to 15.2khz if
> you want to listen to audio tones

That's definitely true for humans, but I don't think it necessarily applies to
radio signals in general (though it does make sense at first glance).

------
cdaringe
Rejecting on the grounds of no technical basis? I'd like to see more on that.
I would hope when NASA raises a flag with the FCC it's taken with sincerity.

~~~
ghostly_s
There are a lot of things one would hope the FCC would do that have not been
happening under Ajit Pai. He's an industry shill, plain and simple.

------
NicoJuicy
Human fallacy, we all want it faster and more.

Bur for 99% of the cases, why would we need it?

IoT doesn't need 5G, it needs LiRa.

Streaming applications, I can stream with 4G.

50 ms latency with 4G, so what. Except for competitive multiplayer gaming
perhaps, I don't see the issue. But I think they want everything wired ;)

Industrial applications, outside of IoT? Give me a valid example that needs
countrywide coverage.

I hardly notice difference with 4G and my WiFi. Increase coverage for 4G,
before implementing 5G.

Fyi: 4G offers maximum real-world download speeds up to 60Mbps. Currently,
that is more than enough.

~~~
newusertoday
you still need more capacity, as the population grows more number of devices
will compete for same 4g bandwidth and unlike optical fibre you cannot
increase the bandwidth by adding new wire.

~~~
pas
Well, the FCC could coordinate a move to a new standard that uses smaller
cells for the same 4G frequencies, after all big parts of 5G is about handling
increased density.

------
codelitt
Pilot here - they used the example of a hurricane, however, I think it would
have a daily impact on thousands of flights (general aviation and commercial)
which all rely on on accurate weather forecasting. Weather is no joke in
aviation; even if you're flying a 747.

------
Reelin
> ... a letter from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Secretary of
> Commerce Wilbur Ross requesting that it be delayed. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai
> rejected the request ...

Ajit Pai strikes again!

------
hutzlibu
I also do not really see the benefits of 5G.

I would be much more happy to have reliable 4G or 3G at least, first.

I suppose quite some support comes from people who have connection issues with
weak 4G and assumes 5G will solve them.

But since 5G will consume apparently 3G towers and has much less range, quite
the opposite could happen. Even less connection for people not in the city.

------
ryanmarsh
Slightly OT or meta. I keep bumping up against these nutty conspiracy theories
about 5G being dangerous in various forums. Has anyone done a study of the
effects of certain frequencies and energy levels on the human body that I can
use to refute these fools? Also, what is the canonical source on 5g spectrum
and power levels?

~~~
pas
[https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1503/1503.05944.pdf](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1503/1503.05944.pdf)
this basically found that 90% of the energy is absorbed on/at/around the skin.

if neurons were directly exposed they would heat up and their firing rate
would be altered significantly [look at fig2 / D ] (
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4233276/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4233276/)
)

this study did a direct exposure testing on a human's arm (and on rats and
monkeys) at 94GHz for 3s at 1W/cm^2:
[https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a628296.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a628296.pdf)

this did 24h low power 1mW/cm^2 exposure of human eye like cells and detected
no significant difference in micronucleus expression, DNA strand breaks, and
heat stress protein expression:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997488/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997488/)

this used 42GHz on rats for 30min/day for 3 days, and tried to look for
tumors/cancer and found no significant difference:
[https://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.1667/RR3121](https://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.1667/RR3121)

so. it seems there's no immediate and known adverse effect (other than the
heating and maybe some interference with the electro-biochemistry of cells,
particularly with neurons).

and luckily people usually don't use phones near their heads anymore (when
doing large data transfers), so we don't really have to worry about
concentrated absorption on the head due to being at best a centimeter from the
emitter.

> Also, what is the canonical source on 5g spectrum and power levels?

maximum permissible exposure is defined as 10W/m^2 power density (for 6GHz
between 100GHz) by the FCC.

------
mattrp
While most of the promise of 5g feels like overhype, this article has a bit of
flat earth feel to it. For example, we’ve been trying to convert obsolete UHF
frequencies to usable bandwidth for years only to find all sorts of reasons
why it can’t be killed off. If 5g really threatened weather forecasting and
radio astronomy I would think at minimum there would some sort of initiative
to address it prior to a cutover - and yet, this article doesn’t seem to
acknowledge such a thing exists so I’m left to conclude maybe the article is
nothing more than a hypothetical what if that likely won’t have much impact in
the real world. This is just my gut feel...

------
mholt
Can someone help me understand this better? What is "very close" to 23.8-GHz
frequencies? I don't know which bands 5G operates on, but it seems [1] that
the closest they get, at least in the US, is ~27 GHz. If the FCC is auctioning
3000 licenses for the 24 GHz space, is that the space that can potentially
interfere more? Can 5G operate on just any frequencies, then?

[1]:
[https://www.cablefree.net/wirelesstechnology/4glte/5g-freque...](https://www.cablefree.net/wirelesstechnology/4glte/5g-frequency-
bands-lte/)

~~~
TrueDuality
The carrier signal of a new technology could potentially use any frequency
that isn't already in use. A lot of the frequency spectrum is already
accounted for and generally parts of the spectrum that are important to
scientific research are internationally protected (Such as the resonant
frequency of hydrogen which is used extensively in radio astronomy).

That being said it is more technically difficult to go "up" in frequency.
Lower frequencies have less bandwidth, but are easier to generate, can go
through physical objects better and for longer distances.

This fight to me looks like the industry wants to use a cheaper frequency that
meets their minimum technical goals (in terms of development costs not
necessarily licensing costs) science and other applications be damned.

------
Jeff_Brown
So how hard is it to limit the 5G signal to bandwidths that don't interfere
with weather forecasting, and how hard is it to detect and enforce laws
against such bandwidth spillover?

~~~
wyldfire
> detect and enforce laws against such bandwidth spillover?

This phenomenon is called adjacent-channel interference and violations can and
would be enforced by the FCC. The challenge isn't detection or enforcement,
it's the challenge of the different government agencies to balance the
people's needs properly.

FCC wants to auction off the spectrum to benefit telcos and their customers.
NOAA wants to protect people with accurate predictions of hazardous weather.
Your question presumes that the weather prediction function is more valuable,
but the government may not reach that same conclusion.

------
Causality1
This seems like a failure on the FCC's part. If it was going to be a problem
these frequencies should never have been licensed out to cell companies.

------
cm2187
Stupid question. I was under the impression that one of the limits of 5g was
that it was a short-distance signal, easily blocked by a wall or any obstacle.
Is it really going to create interferences all the way to space? I thought
satellites measured the temperature of the top of the atmosphere, not of stuff
on the ground.

~~~
lgeorget
They actually measure a lot of parameters, not only temperatures, and in all
the layers of the atmosphere. And they're _very_ sensitive. For some forecast
needs (short term forecast, storms, etc.), the conditions under the
atmospheric boundary layer
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundary_layer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundary_layer))
is what matters most, so the microwave noise near the ground is definitely an
issue.

------
ReptileMan
Why do we actually need 5g? Wired with last meter wifi is a lot better option
imo for high bandwidth transfer

------
keepmesmall
Any assurances that this won't seriously disturb the earth's ecology and human
health, or do we no longer bother with that when manipulating the whole
planet?

~~~
joncrane
Given the whole thing with Global Warming, I think this question already has
an answer.

------
jak92
They are putting up "DAS" nodes all over my city. Nearly every block. Wonder
if these will be hooked up with UHF 5G and what the ramifications may be.

------
seeker_
Equally important but often overlooked concern is the risks it will pose to
our health given 5G relies on much higher energy radio signals than 4G.

------
xenonite
Wouldn't it be possible to reuse the 3G frequencies with an updated technology
in order to obtain higher bandwidths?

~~~
mrweasel
It is. Denmark is allowing the phone companies to use their existing 2G/3G and
4G frequencies for 5G. The 700MHz spectrum is also being opened up for use
with 5G.

I'm not sure if it will result in dramatically more bandwidth though.

------
ngcc_hk
Seems striking especially topic not touched like radio astronomy.

------
qwerty456127
A network of well-calibrated surface and marine weather stations and
atmospheric probes is probably enough to produce reliable and precise weather
forecasts in the today age of ML.

~~~
wyldfire
You can't calibrate away the RF noise introduced by transmitters that change
frequently in time and space.

That's not to suggest that you cannot find a way to discriminate between the
water vapor and the 5G transmissions, but you can't just take a sample on a
low-humidity day and subtract that from new samples. If the metrics are below
the new noise floor, merely throwing machine learning at the problem will not
solve it.

~~~
qwerty456127
I don't mean taking RF data in account at all. I mean just collecting
temperature, air pressure, humidity and wind speed data from many points in
time-space.

------
acchow
tl;dr

We get Water vapour readings (which feed into our weather forecasting models)
from the ~24ghz range which 5G is going to blast away.

------
spaceheretostay
That's interesting - I'm working on using cell signal strength as an indicator
for live weather features! There's a simple relationship between signal
strength and clearness of weather - light rain has a distortion signal,
heavier rain a heavier distortion, etc.

I'm betting that when all is said and done, the cell phones will help the
weather forecast more than hurt it - but this may take some years if the cell
companies are too greedy about it.

I'm working on detecting weather using all kinds of phone sensors like
barometers and cameras in All Clear if you're interested:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearweather.android)

and the open source sensor package:
[https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary](https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary)

~~~
JohnFen
But that approach, at best, only tells you about the weather near the ground.
That can be useful, but is woefully incomplete. You also need to be able to
see weather high in the atmosphere.

~~~
spaceheretostay
Well, signal strength yes - it does have those limits. But pressure data from
the barometers can describe some higher altitude conditions (if you can map
pressure at the surface over a large geography with decent density, you can
infer metrics about the higher atmosphere).

And I do agree that other instruments are required for a complete picture of
the weather, not just phones! But a remarkable amount can be done from phones.
GPS attenuation for example, can also be read from some Android phones and can
inform about high-altitude conditions.

~~~
lgeorget
But surely you miss the anomalies that might exist high in the atmosphere and
which are actually responsible for the violent meteorological events (such as
temperature inversions).

~~~
spaceheretostay
Definitely phones can't replace all weather satellites and things - not yet
anyway! But for many severe weather events that actively harm property and
life, such as severe thunderstorms, can be aided with smartphone sensors. For
example, barometers in phones can detect initiation of rapid convection that
may lead to severe thunderstorms. In many places this rapid convection may
start where there are no weather stations, and cannot (yet?) be detected by
satellite.

~~~
delfinom
>! But for many severe weather events that actively harm property and life,

Fuck planes amirite?

~~~
spaceheretostay
No? I am not saying those weather events don't exist - I am saying that there
is a very large class of weather events that happen with high frequency, and
affect life on the ground significantly, and those include severe
thunderstorms that could have early detection through smartphones.

Planes and aviation could have major assistance in planning and adjusting to
weather events if a phone network were actively in use as well.

Last second info re: waiting for planes to take off due to weather delays is
one of my primary frustrations. It hurts a lot of people and companies to have
last-second changes to forecasts and I would like to reduce that pain point by
providing further advance notice of likelihood of severe weather in an area.
This can be done (partially) with phone sensors.

------
macawfish
Ajit Pai makes me so angry.

------
nilskidoo
As if mainstreaming weaponized radiation poisoning weren't enough, let's
unemploy weather-girls in the same swing. It's like Rod Serling took the brown
acid.

