Wednesday, September 30. 2009

GPS in the Snow

Recall that one of the errors in GPS is called "mulitipath error" - that's when the signal from the GPS satellite bounces off something before it gets to the receiver, making its path artificially "longer." Its noise for most applications, but in fact is valuable in ... wait for it... measuring snow depth. Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, looking to learn about the impact of soil moisture on the echoes found their experiment in the middle of a snow storm. That lead to a startling realization: "The snow slowed the reflected GPS signals, and the delay corresponded to the snow's depth..." That in turn led to a method to accurately measure snow fall in real time. The team's paper, in Geophysical Research Letters appeared this month.

- ScienceNow

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in GPS, Remote Sensing at 07:24 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

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So when can I configure my GPS so that Bob Dylan's voice announces that the snow is outrageous?
http://www.slate.com/id/2230818?nav=wp

#1 Kirk Kuykendall (Link) on 2009-09-30 09:07 (Reply)

Fascinating. Look forward to the many geo-technology discoveries that are yet to come. Thanks for sharing!

#2 Ed Gillespie on 2009-10-01 13:11 (Reply)

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In reply to	[ Top level ]#1: Kirk Kuykendall on 2009-09-30 09:07 #2: Ed Gillespie on 2009-10-01 13:11
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