Current Events > 5G is gonna make weather forecasts worse

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/5g-is-going-to-screw-up-weather-forecasts-meteorologists?bftwnews&utm_term=4ldqpgc#4ldqpgc

Deciding whether to pack an umbrella for a weekend away is going to get a lot more difficult in the near future. Next-generation 5G wireless signals promising faster, stronger cellphone service are going to disrupt weather satellite forecasts, according to warnings by meteorologists, lawmakers, and federal science agencies.

5G has so far rolled out in about 40 countries worldwide, most notably South Korea and China, but also in dozens of US cities such as Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, which Verizon added Monday.

We are deeply concerned about the potential for degradation of our nations weather forecasts, said a bipartisan Dec. 10 letter from the House Science Committee, calling for an investigation of a yearlong dispute between the Federal Communications Commission, charged with overseeing cellular signals, and the federal science agencies proclaiming a threat to US weather satellites. Earth observing satellites are critically important for protecting the lives and property of the American people from severe weather.

At the heart of the fight are scientific findings that a massive federal auction of airwaves to cellular providers will interfere with weather satellite measurements, wrecking the reliability of the forecasts needed to plant crops, ship goods globally, or simply plan ahead for a trip. Against that, the cellphone industry promises that 5G will be a $565 billion industry by 2034, making its adoption a priority of the Trump administration.

This year the FCC auctioned off 24-gigahertz radio frequencies for 5G transmissions, perilously close to the 23.8-gigahertz frequency at which water vapor molecules vibrate in the atmosphere. Weather satellites continuously monitor that subtle signal of humidity, which is an essential ingredient for accurate weather forecasts. Cellphone antennas transmitting 5G signals near that frequency could cause confusion for weather satellites, essentially pouring a firehose of misinformation into the supercomputer models of Earths atmosphere running around the clock at weather centers worldwide.

Its just physics, meteorologist Jordan Gerth of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told BuzzFeed News. You cant just tell water molecules to change the channel, or use another frequency.

Those weather models create the daily and 3- to 10-day forecasts that you see on the local news, while also predicting floods, storms, and hurricanes. More than 90% of their information comes from weather satellites. As 5G rolls out and spreads, weather forecasts will steadily become less reliable.

The FCC did not reply to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News. In an April letter, FCC chair Ajit Pai said that NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which had asked that the auction of frequency bands be delayed, were making exaggerated and unverified last-minute assertions. He noted that the agencys auction of the frequencies to wireless providers garnered the US Treasury almost $2 billion.

In response, NOAAs acting administrator, Neil Jacobs, told Congress that the interference would set US weather forecasts back to somewhere around 1980, reducing current three-day hurricane warnings to two-day ones.

Meteorologists are concerned the FCCs rush to sell off frequencies will also open the door to selling other ones essential to weather satellites to detect rain, snow, temperature, clouds, and ice, Gerth said. We need this data for climate science too, he added.

Because the interference will be essentially random, built off cellphone traffic in constantly building and changing networks, theres little chance that satellite operators will be able to screen the interference from their measurements in a systematic way. A system of switching off 5G signals over cities while weather satellites pass overhead could conceivably remove the noise if every wireless firm cooperated, Gerth suggested, but not without delivering a 5G blackout in a region while that happens.

Weather firms are nearly powerless in the fight against the wireless providers, AccuWeather forecasting manager Dan DePodwin told BuzzFeed News.

We are significantly concerned about interference with weather forecasts or warnings, said DePodwin, noting that the interference from 5G could disrupt snow, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, all kinds of severe weather warnings.

The weather forecasting firm is also worried about a different set of frequencies under consideration for FCC auction: signals from streams, oceans, and seismic monitors on Earth that NOAA satellites transmit to emergency services, enabling warnings about tsunamis, floods, and earthquakes. Seconds matter to our customers, DePodwin said.

At a November International Telecommunication Union conference in Egypt, nations from around the world agreed on standards for how much of a buffer water vapor measures should have from 5G signal interference. The agreement set a limit on interference between the FCCs suggestion and what NOAA said was safe. That means there will still be significant disruption, said experts. The ITU agreement included continuing monitoring of interference, to be reevaluated when the conference reconvenes in 2023.

Despite the compromise, many weather experts warn that significant disruption will still occur.

There will still likely be considerable interference once 5G networks become denser, Rene Leduc of Narayan Strategy, a former NOAA official, told BuzzFeed News. I would be extremely concerned for the future of weather models.

The way that buffers have been allocated around frequencies in past international agreements doesnt work well for weather satellites, which are passive detectors of very weak signals from molecules in clouds. The current system for allocating frequencies treats those molecules as FM radio station transmitters, rather than passive natural phenomena being blasted by 5G noise. Atmospheric scientists who understood this difference werent part of the FCCs early discussions, which were primarily designed for collecting frequency auction money while keeping radio stations from bleeding into each others song lists.

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Well this sucks

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Waddlez posted...

Well this sucks

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Inaccurate weather reports are scared of being inaccurate.

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Why was 5G even necessary

4GLTE is already fast as fuck

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What happens when we go 10G

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Tired-Insomniac posted...

Why was 5G even necessary

4GLTE is already fast as fuck

Because

https://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/thumb/d/d0/360Wynaut.png/1200px-360Wynaut.png

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This year the FCC auctioned off 24-gigahertz radio frequencies for 5G transmissions, perilously close to the 23.8-gigahertz frequency at which water vapor molecules vibrate in the atmosphere. Weather satellites continuously monitor that subtle signal of humidity, which is an essential ingredient for accurate weather forecasts. Cellphone antennas transmitting 5G signals near that frequency could cause confusion for weather satellites, essentially pouring a firehose of misinformation into the supercomputer models of Earths atmosphere running around the clock at weather centers worldwide.

So uhh... a frequency "perilously close" to the frequency that water vapor molecules vibrate at isn't the same as it being a frequency that will interfere with the frequency that water vapor molecules vibrate at.

Let's use 2.4GHz wi-fi as an example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#2.4_GHz_(802.11b/g/n/ax)

The channels are 22 Mhz wide, but centered 5 Mhz apart. There are overlapping frequencies that will interfere with each other (1 interferes with 2, 3, and 4, but not 6.

Channel 1:

• Centered at 2.412 GHz
• Channel width is from 2.401 GHz to 2.403 GHz

Channel 6:

• Centered at 2437 GHz
• Channel width is from 2.426 GHz to 2.448 GHz

In the US, it is advised to only use channels 1, 6, and 11 because they don't interfere with each other at all and that is the most optimal channel arrangement in use in enterprise networks that have multiple APs broadcasting for a single network.

Channels 1 and 5 are very close to each other, but they won't interfere with each other. So unless the 5G frequency width actually overlaps with the frequency that water vapor molecules vibrate at, it wouldn't interfere with the equipment unless the equipment we use also looks at frequencies outside of the frequency of water vapor molecules.

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Not unexpected,most readings are currently wrong which is why my Dad and I record our own temps and rainfall.
Like the time it was 124 degrees in northwest Phoenix and some guy on here didnt believe me.
The noise traffic is going to be a bigger problem for many other things too.

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So essentially, if water vapor vibrates at 23.8 GHz and the FCC auctioned off 24GHz frequencies for 5G, the frequency width of one or both would have to be very wide in order for them to interfere with one another.

If, at the closest, the two frequencies are centered a whole 0.2 Ghz apart, I doubt any interference is going to happen. I'm having trouble finding confirmation of the frequency width of water vapor, though.

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Tired-Insomniac posted...

Why was 5G even necessary

4GLTE is already fast as fuck

https://twitter.com/markpopham/status/1210226973978583041

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Guys they're not worried about 5G interfering with actual water vapour, they're worried about satellites not being accurate enough to always differentiate between the two because the "signal" from water vapour is extremely weak and there's enough variation in the signals that they wouldn't be able to tell with 100% certainty that a 5G signal isn't actually natural.
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5G is dangerous and should be banned.
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Bio1590 posted...

Guys they're not worried about 5G interfering with actual water vapour, they're worried about satellites not being accurate enough to always differentiate between the two because the "signal" from water vapour is extremely weak and there's enough variation in the signals that they wouldn't be able to tell with 100% certainty that a 5G signal isn't actually natural.

What is the frequency width of water vapor's frequency? That's the concern here. Of course the concern is the equipment reading the frequencies, but again... If the frequency widths aren't wide enough to interfere with each other, then there is no cause for concern. It's not about the signal being "weak" or "strong." It's about whether the two frequencies will physically collide in any way.

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Not like weather forecasts are correct to begin with.
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Thats crazy. My friend one time was trying to tell me 5G was going to be like some crazy universal controlling infrastructure that would like turn our whole existence into a simulation and every single atom could be manipulated by the powers that be.

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For example, you can use a loudspeaker and project the human voice over a very great distance, but it would never interfere with wifi. Wi-fi vibrates at a much higher frequency than what humans can hear and the two frequencies don't collide.

This is all essentially wobbly air we're talking about.

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CableZL posted...

So essentially, if water vapor vibrates at 23.8 GHz and the FCC auctioned off 24GHz frequencies for 5G, the frequency width of one or both would have to be very wide in order for them to interfere with one another.

If, at the closest, the two frequencies are centered a whole 0.2 Ghz apart, I doubt any interference is going to happen. I'm having trouble finding confirmation of the frequency width of water vapor, though.

Yeah, there's always this kind of fearmongering with pretty much any technological advancement. It's basically never worth the concern.

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And kill the birbs :'(

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When I can stream live sports games in high-definition through my phone in 4G, I really can't think of any practical use I'd have on my phone for going any faster.

Touch posted...

What happens when we go 10G

Gamma phones?

ArchiePeck posted...

When I can stream live sports games in high-definition through my phone in 4G, I really can't think of any practical use I'd have on my phone for going any faster.

That's where I'm at...its like really why do we need to improve on this.What I did for Google making balloons for 3G internet access to places with no infrastructure like south America and Africa is more important than just speeding up what is already good.


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ArchiePeck posted...

When I can stream live sports games in high-definition through my phone in 4G, I really can't think of any practical use I'd have on my phone for going any faster.

From what I'm readying, the primary benefit will be in 5G's capacity to handle more people streaming lots of data at once. You're correct in that a single user will see a negligible benefit in going from 4G to 5G. However, think about environments where thousands and thousands of people are on their phones at the same time and trying to stream data and/or make calls. 4G slows to a crawl and can become unusable in that situation.

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ArchiePeck posted...

I really can't think of any practical use I'd have on my phone for going any faster.

Gotta get that marketing buzz so everyone buys news phones and a two-year contract all over again.

foreverzero212 posted...

And kill the birbs :'(

Birds have been dead for years, wake up sheeple.

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4G speeds in the US aren't even at the levels they are in places like South Korea or Canada.

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BillORileyReid posted...

Not like weather forecasts are correct to begin with.

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For example... My old job had a sales event going on at a national high school rodeo competition in Rock Springs, WY last year. We sent them up there with a Verizon hotspot like we did with all of the other pop-up sales events the company would do around the country.

When they got there and started trying to sell product during the event, they struggled to maintain a connection in order to conduct business. My job sent me out there to fix the problem. They opened the truck up for sales at 10am every day of the event. I got there at 8am to test things out and I was confused. The connection was working great for me. I did a bit of testing with bandwidth, connection stability, etc. and found no issues.

I came back at 10am and saw thousands and thousands of people at the event enjoying the festivities. I walked around to other vendors and asked them how their experience was. They were all using Verizon or AT&T and struggling.

The problem was that thousands and thousands of people had come to this event with Verizon/AT&T cell phone service or other providers that use Verizon/AT&T towers. People couldn't even make phone calls. There was only a single cell phone tower in the area and that thing was flooded with too much traffic.

I found another regional provider called Union Wireless and figured very few people would be using their service by comparison since they only service that region. I got a hotspot from them and switched all of our equipment over to their connection and sales ran like butter.

4G is great, but it doesn't have the capacity that a lot of events demand these days.

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Honestly weather forecasts further than 24 hous out have almost always been a crapshoot, and 5G isn't exactly going to be extending out into the ocean fo huricane predictions so that shouldn't be a huge problem either

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PatrickMahomes posted...

Honestly weather forecasts further than 24 hous out have almost always been a crapshoot, and 5G isn't exactly going to be extending out into the ocean fo huricane predictions so that shouldn't be a huge problem either

This is correct as well. The higher the frequency, the less range a particular signal has.

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