US: Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, have found that new airborne technology holds promise to improve weather models and hurricane forecasting by detecting precise conditions in the atmosphere through a new GPS system aboard airplanes.
Current measurement systems that use GPS satellite signals as a source to probe the atmosphere rely on GPS receivers that are fixed to ground and can not measure over the ocean. The instrumentation, which the scientists labeled GISMOS (GNSS Global Navigation Satellite System Instrument System for Multistatic and Occultation Sensing), increased the number of atmospheric profiles for studying the evolution of tropical storms by more than 50 percent.
The university currently runs the satellite-based GPS measurements system called COSMIC (Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate). The research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Source: Scripps News
