Weather as a factor in Operations

[AdamG]

Considering how this leads the briefing, I'm surprised we haven't opened a Catch-all thread.

The idea for ClimaCell was born out of the founders' experiences in the military. (Goffer and Elkabetz served in the Israeli Air Force, while Zlotnik served in an elite commando unit of the Israeli Defense Forces.)
"Weather-related near-death experiences are a common occurrence in the military," says Elkabetz. "In the air and on the ground, you often encounter unexpected fog or rain, which hamper visibility and can even cancel a mission. We knew there must be a better way to track and forecast weather and so the three of us started to look for solutions."
Zlotnik had previously worked with Prof. Hagit Messer-Yaron at Tel Aviv University, researching the possibility of using cellular networks to monitor weather patterns. The group set out to develop and license the technology into a viable commercial product, recruiting three PhDs to the mission.
Zlotnik is an MBA candidate at MIT Sloan School of Management; Goffer is a dual MBA/MPA candidate at MIT Sloan and Harvard Kennedy School of Government; and Elkabetz attends Harvard Business School.
"The education provides helpful frameworks," says Goffer.

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/p.../04/05/DC54669

'We are transforming meteorology:' ClimaCell, a startup with MIT Sloan roots, launches new technology using wireless communication networks as weather sensors to help organizations make better business decisions
Ratan Tata, former chairman of Mumbai-based Tata Group, is an early investor
Apr 5, 2017, 4:00pm EDT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 5, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Every day, companies and organizations all over the world make multi-billion dollar business decisions based on the weather. But their decisions are only as good as a forecast, and most of today's weather forecasting models rely on data from 20th century radar tracking systems and/or expensive satellite technology.

[AdamG]

Back at the beginning of the hurricane season, I was noodling out loud to my woman about how much the Chinese could be involved in pitching storms at us from their footholds in Africa. She looked askance at me. Now I'm laughing like Max Cady.

CHINA is launching a bizarre bid to control Earth’s weather so it can shift rain clouds thousands of miles from its soaking south to its parched north. Six satellites will form a ring to spot water-laden clouds and create an atmospheric corridor to allow them to move to the arid regions, state media said.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/768256...an-satellites/

[AdamG]

Could be nothing. Could be Hank Scorpio. I'll just leave this here while you guys go get another beer.

Just before 9.30am on Sunday 11 November, a series of unusual seismic pulses rippled around the world almost undetected.

The waves rang for over 20 minutes, emanating about 15 miles off the shores of Mayotte - a tiny island in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Africa.

From here, they reverberated across Africa, setting off geological sensors in Zambia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

They crossed the Atlantic, and were picked up in Chile, New Zealand, Canada, and even Hawaii nearly 11,000 miles away, the National Geographic reports.

Despite their huge range, the waves were apparently not felt by anybody. However, one person monitoring the US Geological Survey’s live stream of seismogram displays did notice the unusual waveform and posted it to Twitter, sparking the interest of other geologists and earthquake enthusiasts.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8659236.html

[AdamG]

Planet Earth is alive. Deep beneath its skin, its life blood — rivers of molten iron — pulse around its core. And this mobile iron is what generates the magnetic field that causes auroras — and keeps us alive. But, according to the science journal Nature, something strange is going on deep down below. It’s causing the magnetic North Pole to ‘skitter’ away from Canada, towards Siberia.

“The magnetic pole is moving so quickly that it has forced the world’s geomagnetism experts into a rare move,” Nature reports.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/s...38836c6097be9d

[AdamG]

In the next breath,

The polar vortex is making big changes for the new year. Around January 1, this whirling blob of cold air, which sits 10 to 30 miles above the surface of the North Pole, broke apart into at least two “sister” vortices. Disruptions like this can cause a ripple effect leading to chilly weather further south, and meteorologists say there’s potential for a spell of wintry weather to hit the northeastern U.S. and western Europe toward the end of the month.

https://www.popsci.com/polar-vortex-fractured

[AdamG]

Now imagine some devious little Hank Scorpio timing an EMP burst for a less-than-anticipated Solar storm, that leaves everyone scratching their collective heads while picking up the pieces.

It's happened before, and it could happen again.

Roughly 2,700 years ago, an unusually powerful solar storm swept past the Earth, scientists announced in a new study. Though it had little to no impact on people in that long ago, pre-industrial and pre-technological world, such an event today would cause widespread power outages along with potentially disastrous communication and navigation failures.

The solar storm in 660 B.C. was about 10 times stronger than any known event in the past 70 years, study lead author Raimund Muscheler said.

A solar storm of that strength would be "a threat to modern society in terms of communication and navigation systems, space technologies and commercial aircraft operations,” the study says.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...go/3140290002/