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Weather Forecasting
Humankind has always been trying to forecast the weather conditions. Early man used to forecast the weather based on observations such as colour of the sky, sailor’s warning, visibility of rainbow and many more. But with the advancement in science invention of different measuring devices could be made. But still weather forecasting is an imperfect act with available technologies. Now researchers have come out with conclusion that with the help of GPS better weather prediction is possible.
The distribution of water vapours is the most important factor to produce more accurate and timely weather forecast. The signals of GPS satellites installed in space travel the atmosphere to reach the receiver on the earth. The atoms, molecules including water vapours affect the signals from the GPS satellite to reach slightly later. If the parameters affecting GPS measurements such as satellite and receiver coordinates are well known, it is possible to estimate delay imparted by atmosphere. Now with this measured delay imparted by atmosphere it is possible to isolate the effect of water vapours from that of gases like oxygen, carbon dioxide which in turn would provide measure of atmosphere’s moisture content. But one practical problem comes in the way of estimation that this moisture content value thus measured represents integrated measure of moisture above receiver. A profile of how moisture is distributed with height is supposed to be more useful and might lead to better weather forecast.
However researchers have developed an idea that with a network of GPS receiver deployed over a region it is possible to determine the three dimensional structure of humidity in atmosphere which can be used to determine the distribution of water vapours in space. Needless to say, in coming few days weather forecasting would be easier and more perfect using GPS.
