Personal Weather Stations Helping With Weather Forecasting
Date : 2008 01 20 Category : Technology Slashdot
Weather Storm writes "Weather information from thousands of personal weather stations are being used for weather forecasting by several private and government agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Department of Homeland Security (DOH). The Citizens Weather Observation Program (CWOP) was created by a few amateur radio operators experimenting with transmitting weather data with packet radios, but it has expanded to include internet-only weather stations as well . As of September 2007, nearly 5,000 stations world-wide reported weather data regularly to CWOP's FindU database. The weather data is forwarded every 15 minutes to NOAA's Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS), checked for temporary and spatial consistency, than utilized by computer forecast models and internal forecast verification programs. In a Febuary 2007 report (pdf) DOH listed CWOP as a national assets to the 'BioWatch' Network, stating that data from personal weather station could be useful in weather forecasts for hazardous releases. In 2007, the FindU server received 422,262,687 weather reports which is a 29.5% increase over 2006." They certainly come in stylish shapes.
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