■ OpenSense - COST Action CA20136
About
■ ABOUT
The idea
Despite advances in remote sensing, precipitation observations remain one of the weakest links in the description of Earth’s water cycle. This is especially critical in the face of climate change, human-induced hydrologic changes e.g. due to rapid urbanization, and consequent increase in frequency and magnitude of extreme events.
The existing available rainfall observations from weather radars and rain gauge networks are, however, not always sufficient, in particular in urban and/or mountainous areas. In developing countries the situation is way worse – weather radars are often not available at all and ground gauge networks are sparse.
One way how to overcome these deficits is the employment of available data from the wide range of opportunistic precipitation sensors- sensors from the field of citizen science (e.g. personal weather stations) or sensors from the telecommunication networks which are primarily not intended for precipitation monitoring such as commercial microwave links or broadband satellite terminals.
The number of opportunistic sensors (OS) has already now exceeded traditional in-situ observations by an order of magnitude, and it is increasing exponentially. Moreover, this data is often available in real time. Therefore, OS can greatly improve spatial and temporal resolution of standard precipitation monitoring networks on continental scale. Nevertheless, it is still unclear how to make this data operationally accessible, achieve robust quality control of these observations, and integrate them into standard observation systems.
■ ABOUT
Main Challenge and Objectives
OpenSense brings together scientists investigating different opportunistic sensors, experts from national weather services, owners of sensor networks, and end-users of rainfall products to build a worldwide reference opportunistic sensing community.
OpenSense aims to improve access to continental OS observations, establish OS as a widely acknowledged method capable of providing reliable operational precipitation observations, and facilitate their use in precipitation nowcasting and operational hydrological forecasts.
The challenges addressed by OpenSense include research questions related to the following aspects of opportunistic sensing:
- To overcome key barriers preventing data exchange and acceptance as hydrometeorological observations
- To define standards to allow for large-scale benchmarking of OS precipitation products developing new methods for precipitation retrieval
- To coordinate integration of the opportunistic observations into traditional monitoring networks,
- To identify potential new sources of precipitation observations.
These coordinated activities will boost uptake of OS as precipitation observation methods and enable generation of high-quality precipitation products with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution.
Detailed list of the Research Coordination and Capacity Building Objectives can be found here.