IBM’s new Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting
System, or GRAF for short, is a global weather forecasting
system that uses IBM supercomputers and taps into millions of
previously untapped crowdsourced data to more accurately
forecast weather around the world, by what IBM claims represents
a nearly 200 percent improvement.
IBM owns The Weather
Company. By relying on cell phone data from the Weather Channel
app, in addition to traditional forms of weather data from
balloons and weather station observations around the world, GRAF
also draws on atmospheric data collected by planes and also
ground pressure data from millions of cell phones that have the
Weather Channel app.
Most smartphones have a
barometer inside, which is used to help your phone’s fitness
tracker figure out how many stairs you climbed. It has been
useful for meteorologists for years, because pressure provides
clues about storms. Using this additional phone data as a
network of tiny pressure sensors opens up a world of forecast
improvements. Some of this barometric work has been going on for
a few years. LINK