SkyTel presents this to show the value of

Meteor Burst Communications (“MBC”) for wide-scale ocean monitoring

including for Tsunami Warning Systems.

With MBC on coastlines and offshore islands, all the World’s oceans can be monitoring
very inexpensively and reliably using MBC.

Item 1

Marine Geodesy, Volume 14, pp. 285-2

Positioning Requirements for the Tsunami Warning System[*]

F. E. STEPHENSON
T. S. MURTY
Institute of Ocean Sciences
Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Sidney, B.C.
V8L 4B2, Canada
Abstract Canada has increased the number of tsunami warning stations on the
Pacific Coast from two to three. The last gauge was installed at the north end of
Vancouver Island, thereby filling a large gap previously existing and providing full
coverage along the coast. The record of gauges at two of the three locations is
accessible either by telephone or by means of meteor burst communication,
                                                        
[*]  Fair‐use excerpt for nonprofit purposes.  Also, except for application to Tsunami warning 

systems—the purposes of these excerpts‐‐ the rest of this information is contained in many public 
domain publications. Emphasis added. 
alleviating the difficulties experienced during the tsunami threat of May 6, 1986,
when telephone communications were disrupted by heavy use. * * * *

Keywords Tsunami warning, positioning requirement, meteor burst system,

tsunami inundation, tide-tsunami interaction.
****

Meteor Burst System

In 1983 the Tides and Currents Section of the Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) initiated
a program, in conjunction with Meteor Communications (Canada) Ltd., to design and
build two (distinct) data acquisition units capable of measuring water levels and tsunamis
and transmitting the data collected in near real time (Stephenson and Gregson, 1985;
Sierra-Misco Environment Lts., 1988).

Meteor-burst communication is a reliable, long-range, low-cost data and message

communication system. It is based on the predictable reflection of radio waves by the
billions of meteors entering the earth's atmosphere each day.

The Master Station transmits a continuous coded signal, usually in the 40- to 50-
MHz region. These signals or "probes" are reflected off the ionized trails left by the
billions of micrometeors entering the earth's atmosphere each day. Most of the probes do
not arrive at a Remote Station when they return to earth; however, when a meteor
appears in the proper location, the signal is reflected to a receiving Remote Station. The
Remote Station decodes the signal, turns on its transmitter, and reflects a signal back
along the same path to the Master Station. Information can be sent in either direction
until diffusion reduces the electron density in the trail to a value too low to sustain
refection.

The maximum length of a single-hop link is about 2000 km, a distance deter-
mined by the height of the meteor burn-up region and the curvature of the earth (Fig. 2).
The typical meteor trail has a useful duration of a few hundred milliseconds, while wait
times between suitably located trails can range from a few seconds to tens of minutes
depending on the time of day, time of year, and system design factors. Hence the trans-
mission consists of "bursts" of high-data-rate transmissions of tens to hundreds of
characters, separated by a period of silence. One important by-product of the burst
characteristic is the ability of many links to share a common transmission frequency, a
feature important in data collection systems.
 the data will still be available (by visiting the site and downloading the data) for research
purposes.
Although Winter Harbour is a small permanent community and Rennell Sound is
uninhabited, both have one feature in common—neither location has a source of 110-V

Figure 2. Meteor-bust communication relies on the phenomenon of reflecting radio waves off the
ionized trails left by micrometeors as they enter the atmosphere and burn up.

The information collected showed that meteor-

burst communication links were capable of satisfying the requirements for tsunami
warning at ranges of 600-1200 km. The Port Hardy installation was used to verify that
this communication technique could also be used at short ranges and in locations
having severely restricted radio horizons, e.g., long, narrow inlets in mountainous
regions.
****

References
****
Sierra-Misco Environment Ltd. 1988. Feasibility of using meteor burst communications for tidal
and tsunami data telemetry at short range. Report prepared for Department of Fisheries and

Stephenson, F. E., and D. J. Gregson. 1985. Meteor burst communication systems. Proc. Int.
Tsunami Symp., Int. Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, August 6-9, 1985, pp. 134-139.

****
Item 2 (by the same authors as Item 1 above)

Following is from:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/asia_earthquake/warning.html

INDEPTH: DISASTER IN ASIA

Tsunami warning
CBC News Online | January 19, 2005

From The National, January 12, 2005

Reporter: Eve Savory
Producer: Jay Bertagnolli

It took a colossal disaster, but the Indian Ocean is finally getting a tsunami
warning system, with help from a Canadian scientist.

The world watched the tsunami disaster unfold in horror. As the days went by,
incomprehension turned to grief, turned to a collective need to help. But in the
scientific community, the reaction was different. There, the apocalyptic destruction
caused wasn't a shock. They knew this could happen and they knew the human
suffering could be minimized. But with no warning system in place in the region,
there was no way to do it. Now one Canadian scientist has a mission, to make sure it
never happens again.

In October of 2003, the bare bones of a deep ocean tsunami early warning system
went into operation in the Pacific basin. The six buoys and sensors are the latest
addition to a sophisticated network of seismic stations, tidal gauges, satellites and
scientific centres that will warn Pacific Ocean countries a tsunami is on its way. The
Indian Ocean has no warning system.

"At this time in age of 21st century, we cannot allow five million people be displaced,
to see more than one million people injured, and 150,000 losing their lives," says
Arselin Mahargar, an earth scientist at the University of Toronto.

The technology exists. People were at risk. The combination outrages Mahargar.

"By the time the wave got to Sri Lanka and India, we had about 2½ hours to react
and send some warning," he says. "So it shows that our technology is in place, our
knowledge is sufficient, but we don't have the policy and procedure to disseminate
the information and send the information to the people at risk."

Tad Murty, an Ottawa oceanographer, has also been talking about the need for
an Indian Ocean warning system for decades.
Tad Murty

"Without a warning system, we are always wondering," he says.

Now the political will exists, and policies and procedures will follow. Murty was invited
to India to brainstorm with scientists and officials.

Before leaving, he went to Brandon University to consult with colleagues about his
presentation.

"The basic purpose of it is what are the steps, not vague ideas, not motherhood
statements. Now it is precise exactly what is step one, step two, step three, action
items so that the government of India would start. I have absolute confidence that
nobody is going to drag their feet now," Murty says.

In the Pacific Ocean, seismic stations note the earthquake location and magnitude.
Computer models predict if a tsunami is likely, its size, its energy, its direction, where
it might hit and how hard, and all along the coast, tidal gauges pick up the first wave
and instantly report it to the network.

Fred Stevenson

Fred Stevenson of Fisheries and Oceans is Canada's contact for the tsunami warning
system.
"It's sort of like a good neighbour policy where the stations closest to the epicentre
are the first ones to possibly record the wave and if they record anything, they pass
that information back so that it can be relayed on to all the other countries around
the world as to whether we have a threat or not," Stevenson says.

The weak link is getting the wave before it hits. That's the job of the new deep
ocean tsunameters, pressure sensors anchored to the ocean bottom as deep as six
kilometres record the wave, transmit the information to a surface buoy, and from
there to a satellite which instantaneously sends the information to warning centres
on land. They assess it and contact emergency organizations.

Warning buoy

"The system in the Pacific, which has existed for 40 years and has been refined and
developed over that 40 years, certainly provides a good blueprint for other areas to
adopt in their regional warning systems," Stevenson says. And that's Murty's hope,
to use the Pacific as a blueprint to tie together the warning centre, seismic station,
tidal gauges and the deep ocean sensors.

"Ultimately, what we need is to look at several dozen sensors at appropriate

locations, but we don't really have anything at this time in place in the Indian
Ocean," Murty says.

Murty's expertise is in using the computer to model every earthquake scenario and
subsequent tsunami. When the earth trembles beneath the ocean, the computer
spits out a tsunami's likely direction, speed, destination and height at impact.
Tsunami simulation
He did a computer simulation with Baird and Associates of Ottawa after the Indian
Ocean tsunami.

Murty will meet Prime Minister Paul Martin in India and suggest modelling be
Canada's contribution to the Indian Ocean system.

"We can contribute to the brain of the warning system, that is all the computer
models. Without that, the warning system doesn't work. That could be our
contribution," Murty says.

But there is more to saving lives than a warning system. In 1991, a cyclone
lurched towards Bangladesh. The cyclone warning system worked beautifully.

"People did not respond to the warning system," says Emdad Haque of the University
of Manitoba. "Why they didn't respond? Because of a number of reasons. They had a
fear, they didn't trust the information, and so on. So the assumption that we are
making that warning system, placing it will automatically save lives, is not
necessarily true particularly in the developing world."

False alarms are a big problem. In 1989, an earthquake was expected to trigger a
tsunami on Vancouver Island. Port Alberni was told to pack up and leave for higher
ground, but it was a dud.

And unless people are taught about earthquakes and tsunamis and what to do,
warnings are useless.

"I would say you should start from the schools, training children at the schools the
same way that you train them for fire during drill. You have to train them what to do
in the case of disaster," Mahargar says.

As for Canada, geologists have pieced together clues in the sediment and in the dead
trees that speak of recurring mega tsunamis bursting out of the ocean right on our
doorstep. It will happen again, and for many B.C. communities, the only warning will
be the shaking of the earth.

"Education is really critically important. If you feel the earth shaking a sustained
period of time, take that as a sign that a tsunami has been generated, or if the water
suddenly goes out abnormally far, that's another warning sign that people need to be
aware of and take appropriate action," Stevenson says.

Port Alberni, the only B.C. coastal city to have experienced a serious tsunami in
1964, is also the only community with a local warning system.

Alberni warning

The Atlantic, where tsunamis are almost but not completely unknown, and the
Caribbean and the Mediterranean are, like the Indian Ocean, without warning
systems. Now while the world is still paying attention is the moment to fix that. "We
need to move immediately on this. We have a lot of good will from all the public,
from all the governments. Everybody's focused," Murty says.

"In the Pacific, where we have 26 member states, we need a strong commitment
from all of those member states," Stevenson says. "The same challenge will be there
for the member states of the Indian Ocean. If it's important to them, they have to
support it and they have to be prepared to support it in the long term if it's going to
pay benefits down the road."

It is human nature to ignore something that might never happen in our lifetime. Now
that it has, the test is this: will the nations affected and those that might yet be have
the will to act?