Filters may lead to more accurate weather forecasting

More accurate global weather forecasts and a better understanding of climate change are in prospect following research by engineers at Queen’s University Belfast’s Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology.

The team has developed a high-performance electronic device - known as a dual polarised frequency selective surface filter - that is to be used in future European Space Agency missions.

The filters will be installed in instruments being developed by ESA for meteorological satellites it plans to launch between 2018 and 2020. The instruments are used to detect thermal emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The data measures temperature, humidity profiles and gas composition, which are in turn entered into operational systems and used to forecast weather and pollution.

ECIT engineer Raymond Dickie said: “Measuring 30 mm in diameter and 1/100 mm thick, the devices will help to provide a much more comprehensive analysis of conditions in the Earth’s atmosphere than has been possible previously.

“Up to now, spaceborne remote sensing instruments have only been capable of separating either the vertically or horizontally polarised components of naturally occurring thermal emissions from gases in the Earth’s atmosphere - but not both together at the same time.

"The invention of the new filter resolves this problem and will enable complex imaging of clouds to be undertaken for the first time at very short wavelengths.”

The filters are built by ECIT engineers and research staff at Queen’s University’s Northern Ireland Semiconductor Research Centre in Belfast and the filters have been developed as a result of a $2.4 million investment in Queen’s by EPSRC, EADS Astrium and ESA to develop the technology.

The research team is also working on versions that operate at much higher frequencies in a project funded by the British Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation, the European Space Agency and EADS Astrium Ltd.