Good news for weather forecasters. Getting live rainfall information can get cheaper! The solution is cell phone mast. To get an accurate picture of rainfall over an area, just monitor the way rain interferes with the signals routinely sent between phone masts, Israeli researchers say. They further hope that this very concept could one day also help to measure pollution.
To manage calls effectively and efficiently, the masts of a cell phone send microwave radio messages constantly to each other. But, rainy weather can disrupt these messages as water molecules absorb this microwave energy.
The phone masts produced results very similar to rain gauges, according to the researchers. True, the rain gauges are currently the most accurate way of measuring rainfall, but the masts appeared to be more accurate than these weather radar instruments!
Via: New Scientist
