The weather influences our most everyday actions, from how we dress to how we choose to travel.
Nearly 25% of the GDP in France would be impacted by the weather.
A recent Médiamétrie analysis note sheds some light on this widely practiced digital usage.
According to Médiamétrie, in May 2019, 28 million individuals consulted weather sites and apps, or 44.7% of French people aged 2 and over. That's 1.6 million more than in May 2018.
- On any given day, nearly a quarter of these monthly visitors (23.4%) visited at least one weather brand in May 2019.
- 73% of monthly visitors prefer mobile for this activity.
- More than half of the visitors (52.0%) even use this screen exclusively.
- To check the weather on their smartphones, Internet users prefer apps: of the total time spent on mobile devices consulting weather brands, apps account for 65% of this time, compared to 35% for mobile sites.
Participatory collection of weather observations
Until recently, weather forecasting was based on readings from a limited number of fixed stations, weather balloons and satellites. Many initiatives now aim at exploiting other sources of information than the classical weather stations. Crowdsourcing takes advantage of the widespread use of smartphones, allows for more observations and measurements, and provides more refined and potentially more reliable information and forecasts.Since 2017, on its mobile application, Météo France has been offering mobile users to post "participatory" observations. During the national conference Sensors and Participatory Sciences(CASPA ), which was held last April, Gwénaëlle Le Bloa (Météo France) presented the results of this initiative. Météo France collects on average 15,000 observations per day, with peaks that can reach 45,000 observations in a single day.
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