Surface Pressure Observations from Smartphones: Current Status and Future Promise

Distributed worldwide, over 300 million smartphones are now capable of measuring atmospheric pressure, providing a potential surface observing network of unprecedented density and coverage. This talk will begin by describing the current situation regarding the availability and collection of smartphone pressures for use in meteorological applications, including numerical weather prediction.   Next, some initial data assimilation experiments using smartphone pressures will be briefly described.  Finally, to test potential approaches for collection and calibrating smartphone pressures, we will describe a new smartphone pressure app (uWx) that has been developed at the University of Washington. In this app, observational uncertainty is quantified and quality control is performed within the app itself.  The performance of the app in evaluating observational uncertainty and sensor bias is examined during a month-long WRF-EnKF experiment over the Pacific Northwest.