AWARE: High-Resolution Atmospheric Water Vapour Retrieval with Low-Cost GNSS and Machine Learning

Atmospheric water vapour plays a crucial role in weather systems and is the most abundant greenhouse gas. It is essential for cloud formation and precipitation but varies significantly over time and space. Accurate knowledge of its distribution is important for weather forecasting, especially for severe weather events. However, existing methods for observing water vapour are limited, resulting in data gaps that hinder accurate weather forecasting.

The SNSF Starting Grant AWARE aims to address this gap by using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), including GPS and Galileo, to monitor atmospheric water vapour at high resolution. GNSS signals are sensitive to water vapour, and recent technological advancements have made affordable GNSS receivers accurate enough for scientific purposes.

AWARE will install 200 low-cost GNSS monitoring stations in and around Zurich, Switzerland, involving citizen scientists to distribute the devices. By utilizing off-the-shelf components, these stations can provide high-quality data at a fraction of the cost of traditional equipment, enabling much denser sampling of atmospheric water vapour. Additionally, the project will explore the use of drones equipped with GNSS to collect measurements across different altitudes.

The collected data will be analyzed using machine learning to create a three-dimensional model of atmospheric water vapour. Machine learning will also help to detect and predict severe weather events.

Accurate weather predictions are critically important, with far-reaching scientific and economic impacts on sectors such as transportation, agriculture, and disaster management, as well as influencing daily life. The innovative approaches introduced by AWARE have the potential to transform weather forecasting and deepen our understanding of atmospheric dynamics.

Contact:
Benedikt Soja, ETH Zurich,