Speaker
Description
This work is part of the EU-I-CHANGE Living-Labs project in Jerusalem-Israel, including citizens-science data along with cellular providers. Cellular network data enables high spatial resolution humidity monitoring, compared to low-spatial resolution observations from surface stations. Contrary to stations, commercial microwave link (CML) is with high spatial resolution. Humidity is an important variable in atmospheric processes and closely linked to clouds and rain. Humidity above ground is highly influenced by surface characteristics and measuring the near-surface humidity, where most of the sinks and sources of humidity are, can be done via a novel approach of using CMLs, a large part of the cellular networks backhaul. The data used includes Absolute Humidity (AH) measured at four links at and around the Israeli Meteorological Service (IMS) stations. Plots show AH values for each link against IMS stations and ICON model AH values. Correlations, Mean and RMSE values were calculated for the comparisons between the two AH values. Averaged results show the accuracy of CML against the IMS and ICON model. Results for summer 2021 indicate that CML-derived AH closely matches IMS and ICON model AH. For example, for Generali IMS station, Correlation values reached 0.75 (CML–IMS) and 0.74 (CML–ICON), with average RMSE ~4 g m^(-3). Mean AH for CML, IMS, and ICON; are 13.0, 11.1, 11.2 g m^(-3) ,correspondingly. This is the first study in a city with such a unique climate such as in Jerusalem, with Mediterranean climate in the west vs. arid climate in the east. Results show that high resolution CML data is comparable to measurements and model urban data, in spite of Jerusalem’s special topography and climate.