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>Why do you want to a horde of “non-professional[s] with a pair of eyes and a smartphone” to contribute if literally hundreds of professionals with high-end equ

>Why do you want to a horde of “non-professional[s] with a pair of eyes and a smartphone” to contribute if literally hundreds of professionals with high-end equipment, meteorological observation satellites, and oodles of computational firepower are already on the task? Because the Earth is huge, data collection is expensive, and funds are limited. There is a lot of [literal] ground to cover and it's perfectly feasible to augment professional work with amateur data, now that pressure, temperature, and location sensors are relatively cheap and ubiquitous.

qubex 7y ago
Satellites view half the globe at once. But you know that just as well as I do.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Not true. How much is seen depends on the focal length and lens
  - qubex 7y ago
    I suppose that’s true, abstractly speaking. But does it make sense to assume that the world’s meteorological community would put satellites into geosynchronous orbit that are not suited for the purpose of observing the Earth’s atmosphere from geosynchronous orbit? I think we can safely discount that assumption.
    - majewsky 7y ago
      You're assuming that "observing the Earth's atmosphere" is a yes/no question when it's actually a spectrum. I'm not familiar with the matter, but I can imagine a scenario like "We need to record a very particular part of the EM spectrum and all those existing satellites happen not to have suitable equipment for that."
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    And distance. A satellite in polar orbit at 850km above the surface will only see a small part of the globe at once, even with a wide lens.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  > Satellites view half the globe at once. But you know that just as well as I do. They don't, because of perspective. Even satellites in Geosynchronous orbits don't see half the globe. They are above the equator but they can never see both poles at once. Satellites closer than that only see a small part of the globe. A satellite would have to be infinitely far away to see an entire hemisphere at once. A GPS satellite at 20000 km of altitude only sees 38% of the Earth. https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/05/10/since-one-satellite-can-see-half-of-the-earth-why-do-we-need-more-than-two-satellites-in-a-given-network/ https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/05/10/since-one-satell...

qubex 7y ago

Satellites view half the globe at once. But you know that just as well as I do.

colejohnson66 7y ago
Not true. How much is seen depends on the focal length and lens
- qubex 7y ago
  I suppose that’s true, abstractly speaking. But does it make sense to assume that the world’s meteorological community would put satellites into geosynchronous orbit that are not suited for the purpose of observing the Earth’s atmosphere from geosynchronous orbit? I think we can safely discount that assumption.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    You're assuming that "observing the Earth's atmosphere" is a yes/no question when it's actually a spectrum. I'm not familiar with the matter, but I can imagine a scenario like "We need to record a very particular part of the EM spectrum and all those existing satellites happen not to have suitable equipment for that."
- jobigoud 7y ago
  And distance. A satellite in polar orbit at 850km above the surface will only see a small part of the globe at once, even with a wide lens.
jobigoud 7y ago
> Satellites view half the globe at once. But you know that just as well as I do. They don't, because of perspective. Even satellites in Geosynchronous orbits don't see half the globe. They are above the equator but they can never see both poles at once. Satellites closer than that only see a small part of the globe. A satellite would have to be infinitely far away to see an entire hemisphere at once. A GPS satellite at 20000 km of altitude only sees 38% of the Earth. https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/05/10/since-one-satellite-can-see-half-of-the-earth-why-do-we-need-more-than-two-satellites-in-a-given-network/ https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/05/10/since-one-satell...