Barometers in iPhones: Crowdsourcing weather forecasts

cryptoz writes: Apple is now adding barometers to its mobile devices: both new iPhones have valuable atmospheric pressure sensors being used for HealthKit (step counting). Since many Android devices have been carrying barometers for years, scientists like Cliff Mass have been using the sensor data to improve weather forecasts. Open source data collection projects like PressureNet on Android automatically collect and send the atmospheric sensor data to researchers.

Cell-phone pressure data isn't going to help

[Tom Pollard]

The lack of enough surface-level pressure measurements aren't what's holding back the quality of weather forecasts, to begin with, and so I'm skeptical that pressure measurements colllected from cell phones are going to do anything to improve those forecasts. The places where we might need more surface pressure data are probably all places where there are few people and no cell towers.