MeteoPhone: accurate weather information

Probably each of us was dissatisfied with the weather forecast. Not because the forecast promises to troubles such as unbearable heat, wind chill or prolonged rain. But because the promises of meteorologists do not coincide with reality. And this happens very often. Well, if the weather turns out better than predicted. And if the opposite? For most people in their daily lives, this is usually nothing more than an annoying nuisance. But to someone, the wrong weather forecast can bring big losses, and even worse. For example, accurate weather forecasting is of great importance in the field of aviation, transport, during sowing and harvesting, in the formulation of energy consumption plans, ensuring uninterrupted main power supply, and in many other areas of production and business.

Accurate weather forecast is impossible without at least accurate information about the current state of the atmosphere. The denser the weather stations, the more often you can get information from them, the more accurate the forecast can be made.

Unfortunately, Russia still cannot boast of a high level of accuracy of weather forecasts. For a number of reasons, we are far behind other countries in the number of weather stations and their technological level. For comparison, there are about 15,000 weather stations in China, about 11,000 in the United States, and 4,500 in our country. However, many Russian weather stations still do not have remote monitoring and control capabilities, and the data from the observations continue to be manually removed from them per day.
At the same time, in Russia there is already a ready communication infrastructure, on the basis of which you can create a very dense network of high-precision modern weather stations. Based on MegaFon's own cellular network in support of federal projects, Roshydromet began developing a weather monitoring system, which was called MeteoFon. The essence of the project is as follows: automatic weatherproof meteorological stations are installed on the operator’s cellular communication towers, which around the clock monitor the external environment with high accuracy by various parameters - air temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, pressure, precipitation. Ideally, this solution saves a lot of money on the creation of network infrastructure and build an extremely dense network of weather stations that can provide a minute-by-minute collection of information about the state of the environment and the environment.
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All on the mast!

The weather stations used in the framework of the MeteoFon project are licensed by Roshydromet and form a departmental meteorological network, which is successfully implemented by MegaFon together with Gismeteo. They are mounted on the supporting structures of cellular communication stations - on their masts. The standard equipment of such weather stations includes the following devices and sensors:
• Thermometer.
• Barometer.
• Hygrometer with dew point measurement function.
• Two anemometers located at different heights, on average, at a distance of 2 m. They are designed to measure wind speed and its gradient.
• Instrument for measuring wind direction.
• Sediment meter recording the intensity of precipitation.







The frequency of information collection by each of the sensors is set in a very wide range. Additionally, such a station can be equipped with a dosimeter, a video camera, a gas analyzer for measuring the level of carbon dioxide (CO2), an ultrasonic sensor for measuring the depth of the surrounding snow cover.

To support the Roshydromet project on meteorological control of the territory of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, MegaFon connected 8 meteorological complexes installed by investors and developers at various sports facilities of the Mountain Olympic Cluster. MegaFon also deployed a data network for the MeteoFon project, consisting of 21 professional weather stations WXT510 from VAISALA, which are located on the company's own cellular communication towers. All weather data is transmitted online via MegaFon’s fixed and mobile network to weather forecasters at the Roshydromet Monitoring Center, which ensures high efficiency in preparing weather forecasts for informing both organizers of competitions and athletes and the services of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the Ministry of Internal Affairs responsible for the safety of the Olympic Games.

Weather stations are controlled remotely through the MegaFon mobile phone infrastructure. The collected information can be used:
• to assess current weather conditions in a specific area;
• to generate short-term (minutes, hours) and long-term (days, weeks) weather forecasts.

Project development

To date, MegaFon is the only mobile operator in Russia that is licensed by Roshydromet, and the data collected by MeteoFon stations is used in the formation of official weather forecasts. The first meteorological stations were installed on the territory of Big Sochi and its mountainous part - Krasnaya Polyana, where all the ski resorts of the resort are located back in 2011. Their work was successfully tested at the pre-Olympic test competitions. Today, thanks to the collected information about the weather in the city and its surroundings, the organizers of sports competitions at the Olympics have repeatedly made the necessary adjustments to the daily sports schedule. The complex mountain landscape of the Black Sea coast is characterized by a wide variety of weather conditions at a specific point in time. Therefore, the operational and accurate information collected by Roshydromet with the assistance of MegaFon’s mobile network allows quick decisions to be made by the organizers of such an important international sporting event.

In addition to Sochi, at the moment, the work of 8 meteorological stations in Kazan and more than 120 along the Amur highway is being tested. The future plans of MegaFon include the creation of an all-Russian network of weather stations, which will allow us to provide data on the current weather condition with high accuracy and frequency. In particular, at the second stage of network deployment, it is planned to establish about 300 meteorological stations for every 100 km of federal highways. At the same time, the total length of roads, which will be covered by the “MeteoFon” network, is 28,685 km.

Another function of “MeteoFon” is the detection of various natural disasters, for example, forest fires. In fact, the network of weather stations will not only passively collect information about the weather, but also create a weather forecast and alert service in the future, depending on whether the subscriber device is currently connected to a specific base station.