If we had everyone gathering data about our climate, what would it be?

[carlburger]

If climate change is really a serious thing, then the biggest barrier is making it clear to people how series it is.

 

I was reading up on the raspberry pi and learnt that it can record temperatures, so then i thought if we had every person recording the temperature with just a raspberry pi, surely thatd be useful for research or something?

 

maybe temperature is not really that usefull... but, if you could get a good few million people recording some sort of data on our climate, what would be most useful for research? if any?

 

thanks

[CharonY]

The problem with crowdsourced data is that without supervision it is hard to be certain that data is consistent and useful. If you have junk data added to the pile it may skew the results.

Also climate change is a very slow process, if you do measurement every day for a few years there would not be much of a trend, so people will actually not notice anything. But if you look at long time frames, a trend emerges, but many people cannot wrap their head around that time frame.

[John Cuthber]

You need a pretty good thermometer to make the sort of measurements that are used in climate science. it has to be accurate and to stay that way (or be recalibrated) for years or decades.

Not many people would want to take the trouble to do that.

Also, imagine that your grandfather left you a hundred year old thermometer in his will, would you still be using it, or would you have found a better way of measuring temperature?

How good will a Pi look in ten years, never mind a hundred.

 

On the other hand, it would be an interesting project and it would get people talking about actually measuring things- that might be very useful.

[md65536]

You need a pretty good thermometer to make the sort of measurements that are used in climate science. it has to be accurate and to stay that way (or be recalibrated) for years or decades.

I don't think that's true. Most historical temperature data does not have good thermometers everywhere they need to be. They don't throw out poor data, they use the best data they have, adjusted for uncertainty (ie. bigger error bars) and biases, etc. Often multiple data sources are combined, with accurate and inaccurate data combined in some intelligent manner.

[StringJunky]

...

On the other hand, it would be an interesting project and it would get people talking about actually measuring things- that might be very useful.

Yes, anything that gets people feeling they are contributing to finding the solution.

[md65536]

I was reading up on the raspberry pi and learnt that it can record temperatures, so then i thought if we had every person recording the temperature with just a raspberry pi, surely thatd be useful for research or something?

Even cheaper solutions are probably out there. I doubt that temperature readings from the average person (and location) would be useful. It would be a nightmare to deal with and would concentrate in densely populated areas, etc. However I think it's likely that there are still places on Earth where additional measuring would be useful to scientists, but maybe not necessary enough that anyone has a budget for it. I'm sure that if some amateurs gathered data in the right places, and did it properly, it could be a useful addition to existing data sources.

[StringJunky]

Even cheaper solutions are probably out there. I doubt that temperature readings from the average person (and location) would be useful. It would be a nightmare to deal with and would concentrate in densely populated areas, etc. However I think it's likely that there are still places on Earth where additional measuring would be useful to scientists, but maybe not necessary enough that anyone has a budget for it. I'm sure that if some amateurs gathered data in the right places, and did it properly, it could be a useful addition to existing data sources.

If those individual devices and their readings were geographically pinpointed on a google map so that the owners of those devices could zoom in on their device's readings in realtime in the map, and surrounding devices, they'll likely feel an active part of a global project. People would be able to study urban micro-climates as well as national and global..

[pzkpfw]

Most Raspberry Pi's will be indoors. Homes (I'd assume, at least those that have these devices) are generally heated and insulated. We'd maybe get some good data, but it may not be about climate change.

 

(

If all cellphones recorded temperature and position (e.g. so they'd know they were outdoors), reporting to a central location, that might be good. But all the caveats about data quality would apply. You'd even need to guard against malicious data.

)

Edited May 20, 2015 by pzkpfw

[StringJunky]

...(

If all cellphones recorded temperature and position (e.g. so they'd know they were outdoors), reporting to a central location, that might be good. But all the caveats about data quality would apply. You'd even need to guard against malicious data.

)

If you've got dozens of sensors in a small locality, it should be relatively easy to see anomalous readings and discard them or even take interest in them if they persist. No system's perfect, it's just a case of finding the error bars and working within them. Time would tighten them I'm sure.

Edited May 20, 2015 by StringJunky

[pzkpfw]

If you've got dozens of sensors in a small locality, it should be relatively easy to see anomalous readings and discard them or even take interest in them if they persist. No system's perfect, it's just a case of finding the error bars and working within them. Time would tighten them I'm sure.

Yep. An example I was thinking of when I wrote that, was that readings "near" each other would tend to show two levels, for people indoors and people outdoors (with variations of course). Kind of like how Lidar readings can show the lowest trimmed level of a forest.