Posted by admin in What do you expect mobile phone towers to do? The answer, in all probability, would be: they facilitate communication among people all over the world. It is correct, but only partially so. They have another very important use indeed: they can predict how severe the next flood in your neighboring state is going to be.
A team of researchers from Israel’s Tel Aviv University led by Prof. Pinhas Alpert has revealed that it is possible to predict the intensity of an oncoming flood by monitoring the specific and fluctuating atmospheric moisture around mobile phone towers. Their model, which is based on the analysis of mobile phone signals, is likely to open up new vistas for the science of weather forecasting.
According to Prof Alpert, moisture monitoring around these towers provide a more reliable ‘critical moisture distribution’ level for fine-tuning model predictions of big floods.
The team, which also included Prof. Hagit Messer Yaron and doctoral fellow Noam David, reported on their research in the April 2009 issue of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
The quantity of moisture in the air directly affects the radio or micro waves emitted from mobile phone towers. Because of this effect of moisture on the strength of signals, an accurate measurement of the humidity around a tower is possible by analyzing trends in signal strength.
If the signal is relayed back to researchers when there is a possibility of flood-causing storm, they can try to forecast the intensity of the flood in particular geographic areas. It also enables researchers to gather weather data on remote areas which were not accessible earlier.
As there are numerous mobile phone towers spread all over the world, this flood intensity detection method needs no more than conveying the data to researchers. If anyone was looking for proof, here is a piece of information: two case studies in the flash flood-prone Judean Desert in Israel have proved the method right. Long live mobile phones!
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