Millions of people carry around smartphones equipped with pressure sensors that help pinpoint their gadget’s location. Atmospheric scientists have built an app to collect the pressure data in an effort to improve short-term weather forecasts.

“The big horizon in weather forecasting is high resolution; getting small-scale features like thunderstorms right,” Cliff Mass, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, explained to NBC News. “And what cripples us is we don’t have enough data to describe what is happening.”

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