Cumulonimbus.ca PressureNet is a free app for Android devices that contain pressure sensors.
The next advance in weather forecasting may not come from a new satellite or supercomputer, but from a device in your pocket. University of Washington atmospheric scientists are using pressure sensors included in the newest smartphones to develop better weather forecasting techniques. "With this approach we could potentially have tens or hundreds of thousands of additional surface pressure observations, which could significantly improve short-term weather forecasts,” said Cliff Mass , a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. Owners of certain new Android smartphones and tablet computers can now download the PressureNet app, which measures atmospheric pressure and provides the data to UW researchers. When some smartphone manufacturers recently added pressure sensors, to estimate the phone's elevation and help pinpoint its location, Mass saw an opportunity to enhance weather prediction. In the autumn he approached Cumulonimbus , a Canadian app company that developed a barometer application for smartphones that collects all the data and shares it back with users. The PressureNet app this week collected about 4,000 observations per hour, with users clustered in the northeastern United States and around some major cities.
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