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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

But that approach, at best, only tells you about the weather near the ground. That can be useful, but is woefully incomplete. You also need to be able to see weather high in the atmosphere.

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And radar data and satellite fills some of that need. We generally have a lot better idea what's happening in the middle atmosphere than we do close to the ground.

Well, signal strength yes - it does have those limits. But pressure data from the barometers can describe some higher altitude conditions (if you can map pressure at the surface over a large geography with decent density, you can infer metrics about the higher atmosphere).

And I do agree that other instruments are required for a complete picture of the weather, not just phones! But a remarkable amount can be done from phones. GPS attenuation for example, can also be read from some Android phones and can inform about high-altitude conditions.

But surely you miss the anomalies that might exist high in the atmosphere and which are actually responsible for the violent meteorological events (such as temperature inversions).

Definitely phones can't replace all weather satellites and things - not yet anyway! But for many severe weather events that actively harm property and life, such as severe thunderstorms, can be aided with smartphone sensors. For example, barometers in phones can detect initiation of rapid convection that may lead to severe thunderstorms. In many places this rapid convection may start where there are no weather stations, and cannot (yet?) be detected by satellite.

I see. It's definitely complementary, indeed.

>! But for many severe weather events that actively harm property and life,

Fuck planes amirite?

No? I am not saying those weather events don't exist - I am saying that there is a very large class of weather events that happen with high frequency, and affect life on the ground significantly, and those include severe thunderstorms that could have early detection through smartphones.

Planes and aviation could have major assistance in planning and adjusting to weather events if a phone network were actively in use as well.

Last second info re: waiting for planes to take off due to weather delays is one of my primary frustrations. It hurts a lot of people and companies to have last-second changes to forecasts and I would like to reduce that pain point by providing further advance notice of likelihood of severe weather in an area. This can be done (partially) with phone sensors.

And these speculations lead you to be confident that these techniques will end _better_ than current satellite-based techniques?

Truly we live in the best of all possible worlds.

I think you misunderstand me - I do not intend to express any confidence that phones will end up better than satellites if used exclusively! I am saying that working in tandem, all technology to measure and study the atmosphere should be used to better understand the weather.

Phones together with satellites and radars and weather stations will produce a better weather forecast experience than we have today, without using phones.

Thanks for the Candide reference, that is one of my favourite books, but I do not think it really applies to my optimism about weather forecasting technology into the future. We currently live in the worst of worlds when it comes to stability of plans for improvements into our weather infrastructure (at least in the US).

> Phones together with satellites and radars and weather stations will produce a better weather forecast experience than we have today, without using phones.

That will surely depend on how much the satellites sensing ability is degraded, no? What makes you so sure, other than a commitment to optimism?

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