[kuya]

just curious, do you have references to smartphone sensors being utilized in numerical weather prediction?

i'd been browsing through some WMO reports and other associated NWP lit recently and i'd seen stuff on GPS-RO, but nothing on anyone assimilating "smart" devices.

[cryptoz]

Sure. I've been working on this problem for about 5 years now, starting with the collection of barometric pressure from Android devices. I'm currently working on this with iPhones at Sunshine [1], where we collect pressure data (along with other metrics), but pressure is the most valuable.

There are researchers who use this data - we have collected about 4 billion atmospheric pressure measurements that we have distributed for academic and government research. The primary researchers are Cliff Mass and his lab at the University of Washington. There are also groups in Canada and the US that are using the data. IBM is now also collecting and using smartphone pressure data through their mobile apps. [2]

Generally speaking, the current trend is to take the live data stream, run it through a quality-control algorithm and then use kalman filters in the WRF data assimilation package.

There are some papers published, but it is still early. I will find some links to papers if you'd like to read them. [3]

[1] https://thesunshine.co/

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/29/technology/ibm-to-acquire-...

[3] Utility of Dense Pressure Observations for Improving Mesoscale Analyses and Forecasts: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~hakim/papers/madaus_hakim_m...

[kuya]

ah, thanks, that's fascinating.

"It also learns every time you actively report to the community on sky conditions and hazards, translating this information into weather predictions."

does sunshine actively run a numerical weather prediction model like WRF?

it'd be great to assimilate all these extra sensors into the NWP centre's models, but i imagine things like cal/val and WMO agreements to share data might make things difficult for commercial companies?

[cryptoz]

Yes, Sunshine is running WRF!

And yes it would be great to have all these sensor readings available to NOAA, Environment Canada, ECMWF, and everywhere. I have made lots of progress in getting them to talk about it, but it's a long road before any government starts using this data in its own NWP models.

[kuya]

you're probably already aware of this, but there is some US legislation trying to open up commercial data to gov't entities:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1561...

there's some stuff being written this year as well for the side that i work (space). with all the upcoming sensor gaps, they're looking at alternative ways to cover.

[mnbbrown]

This is really interesting stuff. How are you guys managing that scale of streaming data? Some kind of Kafka based stack?

[cos2pi]

If you'd like to submit your own weather observations from anywhere on the globe, the National Severe Storms Laboratory has created an app[0] to report them.

[0] http://mping.nssl.noaa.gov

[colechristensen]

I don't know much about it, but I know some people doing a startup all about these sorts of things

https://senseai.io