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Drivers on a rainy day regulate the speed of their
windshield wipers according to rain intensity: faster in heavy rain and slower
in light rain. This simple observation has inspired researchers from the
University of Hanover in Germany to come up with ‘RainCars’, an initiative that
aims to use GPS-equipped moving cars as devices to measure rainfall. The most
recent results of the project are now published in Hydrology and Earth System
Sciences, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).