Episode 65
Using Stats to Crowdsource the Weather
The weather affects all our lives, and many of us are interested in weather forecasts. However, weather observations and forecasts are mostly done using weather stations that are geographically spread out.
What about the areas in between those points? What if we could tap into the power of citizen science to fill in the gaps between weather stations – especially when it comes to severe weather events?
Dr Kate Saunders (ACEMS/QUT) and Dr Kirien Whan (Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute) have teamed up on a project that sets out to develop new statistical methods to quality control wind data captured by amateur scientists, and integrate that data with wind observations from official weather stations.
The project just won the Harry Otten Prize for innovation in meteorology, awarded by the European Meteorological Society. In this episode, we explore how they plan to use stats to bring credibility to crowdsourced weather data.
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