20
BAMOS
Dec 2018
WeatheX
Contacts:
Joshua Soderholm [email protected]
Christian Jakob [email protected]
Citizen scientists play a role of growing importance in many
scientific endeavours. With so many keen weather watchers
and stormchasers in Australia it was only a matter of time before
Australian researchers would engage with this community.
On October 17, 2018, a partnership consisting of the Bureau
of Meteorology, Monash University and the ARC Centre of
Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) launched the mobile app
WeatheX. The release of WeatheX allows citizens fascinated by
storms to help climate researchers and operational forecasters
gain a better understanding of extreme events.
Monash University researchers Dr Joshua Soderholm and Prof
Christian Jakob coordinated the app development. Its aim,
according to Prof Jakob is simply to fill in the observational
space between our current networks.
“Extreme rainfall events often happen in very localised
areas—you can have a downpour in one area and five minutes
drive away it is still bone dry—so it’s very hard to get useful
observations when recording stations are so far apart,” said Prof
Jakob.
“If citizen scientists can help us fill these gaps, then we can get
more detail of these extreme events and potentially improve
our understanding of how they develop, which could improve
our prediction of severe weather events and their likely impacts.”
The WeatheX takes crowd sourced observations are focussed on
wind, hail, flooding and tornadoes. The information gathered
from these citizen scientists then goes through a manual quality
control process and is stored in a database. This database of
observations will then be made available to researchers from
the Bureau of Meteorology and other research institutions.
Screenshot of
WeatheX.
Image: CLEX
Infographic—how to use WeatheX. Image: CLEX
The app is disarmingly simple in its approach. Once it has
been downloaded to a mobile device it takes users of the app
through a series of short multiple-choice options to quantify
the severity of the weather. The process concludes by allowing
users to make a comment and add a photo. It follows the time-
honored principle of making something as easy as possible to
encourage timely engagement.
The observational data collected is defined by location down to
street, but not specific address, level. The app does not access
identifying data of the person making the observations, so all
submissions are completely anonymous. Identifying features
such as number plates and faces are also removed from photos.
Already, the first crowd-sourced observations of storm events
have come in. You can find animations combining Bureau Radar
with crowd-sourced reports for the Brisbane storms on Sunday,
October 21, (https://climateextremes.org.au/weathex-reports-
brisbane-storms-sunday-october-21/) and the Melbourne hail
storm on Wednesday, November 7, (https://climateextremes.
org.au/weathex-captures-cold-snap-hail-reports-across-
melbourne/) on the CLEX website.
According to Dr Soderholm, this simple app could be a genuine
boon for researchers of extreme rainfall.
“If enough people download the app and start sending in their
observations, then this project could provide a quantum leap
forward in documenting and understanding extreme events in
Australia,” Dr Soderholm said.
You can view the most recent reports from the WeatheX app and
download it from the CLEX website at https://climateextremes.
org.au/weathex/.