“It’s become increasingly clear that the wireless industry is trying to push the idea of speedy 5G wireless networks before the technology is actually ready,” Sean Hollister reports for The Verge. “But until today, we hadn’t realized that people’s lives might also be at stake.”
“As reported by The Washington Post and CNET, the heads of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warn the issue could set back the world’s weather forecasting abilities by 40 years — reducing our ability to predict the path of deadly hurricanes and the amount of time available to evacuate,” Hollister reports.
“It’s because one of the key wireless frequencies earmarked for speedy 5G millimeter wave networks — the 24 GHz band — happens to be very close to the frequencies used by microwave satellites to observe water vapor and detect those changes in the weather,” Hollister reports. “They have the potential to interfere. And according to NASA and NOAA testimony, they could interfere to the point that it delays preparation for extreme weather events.”
Read more in the full article here.
“On Thursday, NOAA’s acting chief Neil Jacobs testified on Capitol Hill that the interference from new 5G wireless radios could reduce the accuracy of weather forecasting by as much as 30 percent,” Marguerite Reardon reports for CNET. He told the House Subcommittee on the Environment this would result in coastal residents getting at least two to three fewer days to prepare for a hurricane and could lead to less accurate predictions about where these major storms will make landfall.””
“The FCC began auctioning off the 24 GHz spectrum in March to wireless carriers who plan to use it for new 5G networks,” Reardon reports. “Turning down the power emitted by 5G wireless radios could help prevent some of this interference. But Jacobs pointed out that the current proposal from the FCC would result in a 77 percent loss in data from the NOAA satellite sensors.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Uh, sounds bacd, but Jacobs also testified that experts from the FCC and NOAA are collaborating to come up with a solution and that he was optimistic a solution will be found.
Seriously?… 5G distance is EXTREMELY short-range. There will need to be repeaters built out all over the pickin’ place. Now, the last thing I knew about hurricanes is they start over the OCEAN!… Ugh… Nothing 5G will be interfering with anything more than half-a-mile off-shore…
Not really buying NOAA and NASA’s arguments here… How about some large scale testing…
Whoa! Glad you cleared that up for us Bobby. Good thing we have atmospheric scientists on the board like you, that could’ve been bad.
I agree with Bobby. I thought the same thing. I’m now expert either but I do have a good understanding of radio waves and super short wave microwave frequencies don’t travel far at all.
It is like sounds. Higher frequencies travel shorter distance than base. It is simple physics. Two frequencies with an equal power output enough to produce x number of waves, the one with the longer wavelength will travel further before it uses up x number of waves. It’s why treble at the same power output at the source as base, uses up it’s energy over a shorter distance.
Bobby’s point about microwave holds true. If satellite are bouncing radio waves from the upper atmosphere, down to the surface of the water to calculate wind speed and density, I am not sure how a microwave from the shore can travel that far before it fades out.
If they are tracking hurricanes close to land, then maybe there would be interference, but the whole point of hurricane warning is you should already have gotten your warning when it was out at sea so I like Bobby don’t completely buy that story either. Sorry. Bobby has a well thought out point grounded in Physics and Radio electronics. There must be some other motivation.
Quite apart from the issue of radios on ships and planes, disrupting water vapor imagery over land would (as the scientists suggest) eliminate critical data going into the atmospheric models that allow predicting severe weather of all types more than hours in advance. A low that is over Seattle today may determine whether a tropical storm hits Miami next week. Besides which, more Americans die due to flooding and other mainland events than due to hurricanes. Chopping two-thirds of the data out of the models will affect early warning for those disasters, too.
Good point. I may have underestimated the value of overland analysis. Thanks for the insight. However I don’t believe Bobby deserved the flaming he did get. He also had a good point.
If this were a debate, I’d call you the winner.
Thanks.
It was attitude more than point. I didnt downvote him, but I almost sent a snarky reply.
I’m not a weatherman, but I do believe that the land air interface sets an important boundary condition for a chaotic system.
In other words… it probably matters.
NOAA and NASA!? What the heck do they know? Thanks, Bobby.
What you know about hurricane forecasting technology and the relationship to frequencies in or adjacent to the 5G range could fit on the head of an atom with plenty of room leftover.
Your post is the most ignorant I have seen on the internet today. Given what shows up on the internet, I think you should be quite proud of that acomplishment
Bobby illustrates one of the greatest current threats to American leadership in science and engineering. He doesn’t grasp that even a short-range 5G radio (such as those in phones carried by plane and ship passengers) generates a signal that is several orders of magnitude stronger than the microwave echo from water molecules reflected back to a satellite in orbit. Yet people like him are making policy decisions on the state and federal level. If their gut feeling about a scientific issue (particularly a gut feeling that aligns with their own self-interest) is utterly unsupported by the scientific community, then they attribute the difference to a conspiracy of elitists.
We could all point to other examples of this, so I won’t bother. Isaac Asimov long ago pointed to the peculiar way that Americans reject the very notion of expertise, and one could cite De Tocqueville for much the same observation. Yet a society cannot reject scientists and still embrace science. A nation that hobbles science is well on its way to becoming second-rate.
So I did some investigating. I think this article holds the key: https://weather.com/news/news/2019-04-30-5g-networks-interfere-with-weather-forecasts. This sentence helps with the explanation: “Meteorologists say a 5G station transmitting close to that same frequency could be mistaken for water vapor, and, they warn, that could make forecasts less accurate.” And if you consider that the satellites scan the globe and make model of the weather system, if there is 5G broadcasting below the clouds from the land, it can throw off the water vapor measurements. If/when the US is blanketed in 5G then the data from the US cannot be included in the global model and it will throw off the simulation and its accuracy.
But, but… won’t we need 6G to stream content to our transparent screen 12K TVs?
Oh I’m sure we’ll all be dead before 5G is completely rolled out by the same weather that it is going to hide.
Don’t you people know 5G is just a Christian cult plan to hide Manmade Global Warming??
How is it possible to set back weather predicting 40 years? My bunion is more accurate.
You can set back weather prediction by forty years if you negate satellite technology which has been widely used for the last forty years.
How many times have you been told…chance of rain, while looking out the window into a monsoon? Just saying….
I’m more concerned about the warning in the Matrix film (1999) about ‘scorching the sky’; … the very mention of weather and water vapor in particular leads me to believe that the insiders who put the Matrix film(s) together KNEW in advance about the plans to expand the cellular network; microwaves are well known to be able to COOK FOOD and evaporate WATER IN PARTICULAR which is how they work … ever since the testing of the 5G network began, STRANGE WEATHER EVENTS (not talking about weather forecasts here but weather EVENTS!) have been happening at least all across America … “the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not” (Jesus, Daniel in the Bible) … is the 5G network going to ‘scorch the sky’ by evaporating all of the water in the atmosphere and creating HIGH WINDS like we have been suddenly experiencing both in California and here in Arizona (which has been experiencing strange, sudden storms when it would usually be sunny outside … storms that include HAILSTONES in them … right in the middle of the day? We may have to all file suit against QUALCOMM (et al.) in conjuction with a complaint to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) ….
Uh….not all microwaves freqs can cook food.
Actually that’s pretty limited.
-Dude who worked with p-t-p xmitters in the 5925-6425 Mhz range for 20 years (also the 3.5 Ghz satellite feeds).