[tash9]

It's not that much better than the normal network of AMS sensors. For one, it doesn't give you wind speeds at various levels (critical for predicting weather).

Second, it doesn't give you any additional readings over oceans, which is where the data is lacking in the current network of data.

It does give you more robust surface temperature readings in cloudy areas but that doesn't really help you predict the weather significantly better.

Source: degree in atmospheric sciences

[labster]

Yeah, but maybe Apple will take all of this private data, and then build their own GCM, and solve data assimilation for their new model … yeah right.

Let’s pretend that data from user portable devices isn’t garbage (it is): then what do you even do with it? In cities you’ll have thousands of readings per voxel none of which are more valuable. Then you have to clean your data, excluding data from inside or vehicles or hot pavement or heated patios and so on. Apple won’t go to the expense of running their own GCM, and I doubt even mesoscale models. All I could see is some sort of correlative AI, doing microscale adjustments to government sponsored models. So all of this work, and maybe you get one degree better at forecasts and a bit of nowcasting. And because it isn’t physics-based, you might occasionally get something very wrong happening.

The oceans are a data hole (technical term, really) as you mentioned, but the real missing data is above the surface. It’s too bad about Project Loon, because that would have been much more helpful to forecasting than a million monkeys wearing watches.

[dghlsakjg]

I glide quite a bit, so I'm VERY interested in low level micro climate.

Is there a really no use in having higher resolution for modeling the boundary layer?

It seems like having a mountain covered in tiny barometric and temp sensors could at least validate a lot of what we think we know about the boundary layer.

I personally would love to be able to see what the temperature at the bottom and top of a given topographic feature is, as well as how atmospheric pressure is deviating from pure altitude differences.

I build instruments for gliders so I know that the sensors in our phones are capable of incredibly fine resolution. Is there really no use for billions of high resolution data points in climate science?