Environment Canada testing radar software to combat wind farm clutter

Wind turbines are shown in this file photo. (The Canadian Press/Dave Chidley)

Clare Clancy, The Canadian Press Published Sunday, August 10, 2014 9:20AM EDT

TORONTO -- Environment Canada is preparing to roll out new radar technology in order to combat wind farm clutter, which clouds weather forecasts, misleads meteorologists and can even block radar signals.

Jim Young, who works at the agency's national radar program, said new software will be incorporated into Canada's radar system this fall in an effort to address the "contamination" caused by wind turbines.

"I certainly have very high hopes," he said, adding that Environment Canada has been concerned about wind farm clutter for years.

The agency uses Doppler radar to predict storms, but the movement of wind turbine propellers can mimic weather.

White Alice Communications System on Anvil Mt in Nome, AK

Thanks to DEW, which scattered 58 different early detection systems across northern Canada, it became necessary to develop a reliable way to communicate with each site. This was White Alice, a communications network that used tropospheric scatter and microwave relay to link the far north.

New invisibility cloak makes objects undetectable to radar

Researchers claim that a new invisibility cloak can make certain objects undetectable even to radar.

George Eleftheriades, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Toronto, along with his graduate student, Michael Selvanayagam, said that they can hide a metal cylinder from radar detection, or even make a metal cylinder appear bigger, smaller or look like plastic.

"We came up with a different way of cloaking," said Eleftheriades "We can make things invisible or we can camouflage them. Let me explain."

Eleftheriades says that to understand how cloaking works someone should first know how a radar works. The professor explains that when light hits any object it bounces back and makes the object visible to the eyes. Similarly, when radio waves hit an object it bounces back to the radar detector, which in turn reveals the object. The concept is very similar to noise-canceling feature in headphones.

DYE 4 - Distant early warning radar station, in Greenland, Kulusuk 1962

DYE 4 is one of nearly 60 radar sites set up during the Cold War as part of an early-warning detection system that stretched across the far north of Canada. Build in cooperation between the US and Canada, the project was a hugely expensive undertaking, and DYE-4 was one of its most vital links. System was abandoned in the late 1980s when satellites made its 200-foot-tall radar domes obsolete, but the structures are still standing-according to recent visitors, snow drifts fill most of the rooms now. DYE 4 was decommissioned 24 Sept 1991.

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Radar tower and radome

Radar Tower (formerly FPS-107) - Alsask, Saskatchewan Canada. All other Admin structures and Height Finder towers have been razed.

Photo: Northern Pike

GL MARK III C-band Radar and APF trailer

The photograph shows the equipment during testing in 1941.

The parabolic antennas of the GL MARK III C-type radar are amounted on a trailer known as an Accurate Position Finder (APF). The purpose of this type of system, also known as a Ground Coastal Radar, developed at the National Research Council of Canada, was to detect enemy aircraft. The Canadian army finally selected it for installation along the St Lawrence River in 1943.

Reproduced with the authorization of the National Research Council of Canada