Can Crowdsourcing Increase the Durability of an Urban Meteorological Network?

Dense networks of weather stations in urban areas are now becoming an increasingly common, but expensive way of monitoring the urban climate. The expense is not only related to the initial deployment of the network, but also the ongoing maintenance which can be increasingly problematic if monitoring is needed for extended periods of time. Crowdsourcing weather data provides an alternative, effectively free, option to acquire hyperlocal weather data but is not yet fully accepted by the user community due to data quality concerns. This paper explores an approach between these two options to assess whether a more durable means of monitoring can be achieved by using a controlled deployment of ‘low-cost’ Netatmo devices maintained by citizens. The results show that expert input at the deployment stage in terms of device modification and siting improves data quality, but the length and completeness of the record of unsupported devices is highly variable. Better durability, albeit at the expense of data quality, was exhibited by pre-existing Netatmo devices procured by the public in the study area with many units producing useable data throughout and beyond the measurement campaign