Crowdsourcing Marine Observations with mPING

Over the past five years, the Meteorological Identification Near the Ground (mPING) project has been collecting crowdsourcing surface precipitation type observations tagged with GPS location and time. It is possible to expand mPING to include marine observations of sea state and other uniquely marine conditions away from land-based weather observations. However, precisely what should be reported and how it should be reported remains unclear. This paper discusses the overall philosophy and limitations of such observations and, within those constraints, seeks input on how best to generate useful marine mPING observations.