A plan to provide mobile phone users a rainfall forecast service through their carriers is in the works, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said.
Bureau director Shin Tzay-chyn (辛在勤) said the CWB, the Water Resources Agency and the Council of Agriculture’s Soil and Water Conservation Bureau have spent seven years jointly developing a system of quantitative precipitation estimation and segregation using multiple sensors (QPESUMS).
The QPESUMS system is capable of providing rainfall forecast an hour before the precipitation falls and it is done mainly using radar and satellite systems, he said.
“Through the observations, we are able to monitor convections and rain belts that are developing and estimate the potential location and amount of rainfall,” Shin said.
Shin said that in the past, the CWB could give rainfall forecasts based on the reports from its observation centers. However, it could only provide a rough estimate for areas outside the observation ranges.
The bureau can now give a more accurate forecast because it can detect rain falling on a grid in a satellite map, which represents a 1km² area, he said.
Shin said the complete statistics collected from QPESUMS are used by emergency rescue agencies so they can quickly take the necessary measures to prevent disasters if extremely heavy rain continues for an hour.
Shin said that part of the information was available at the bureau’s Web site and some mountain climbers have begun to use it to plan trips. The bureau is planning to allow the public to access the information by working with telecoms carriers.
“Say we have seen rain clouds moving from [Taipei County’s] Tucheng (土城) to [Taipei City’s] Muzha (木柵), the telecoms carriers can send text messages to their customers in Muzha if there is going to be heavy rainfall,” Shin said.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS