Using smartphone data to predict weather

The Atlantic : The more weather sensors there are on the ground, the more accurate the weather forecast. With the recent explosion of smartphones all over the world, weather forecasters hope to take advantage of the barometric pressure sensors included by many manufacturers. Although intended for location tracking, the sensors could provide useful data on local weather conditions. Because of privacy issues, use of such sensor data has so far been limited, but a few apps are beginning to allow users to share with researchers the data from their phone’s sensors. One such researcher is Cliff Mass (University of Washington), who uses the 5000–10 000 readings per hour he receives from users of the WeatherSignal app to fine-tune the weather-pattern algorithms he’s developing. Such data harvesting works well in highly and even moderately populated areas, Mass says, but he’d like to see at least one sensor per square mile in more rural areas.