Keeping track of rainfall is important, and needs more than us amateurs
Posted by David Brooks | Monday, July 2, 2012
A shortage of precipitation-measuring stations around the world is alarming weather folks, who depend on good data to figure out what's going on. The NY Times has a blog post about the issue, which is particularly a problem outside the U.S.
The post gives a nod to CoCoRaHS, the volunteer program that I'm part of, but notes the limitation of such citizen-science initiatives:
Despite the potential for dense networks of grass-roots monitoring, the measurements that these volunteers can perform are relatively basic and provide only a crutch, being limited to geographies where people choose to live. Quality control is an ongoing challenge, as is attrition: CoCoRaHS must recruit an average of 10 volunteers a day to counter its losses.
Here's the whole piece. (Sorry to have two NY Times items in a row, but it's good stuff!)
