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Crowdsourced data are now seen as a potential source of high-resolution observations in the atmospheric sciences. In this paper we investigate a potential data source, wind observations obtained using anemometers connected to handheld smartphones. The aim of this paper is twofold: to assess the quality of raw and height-extrapolated wind measurements from the handheld anemometer against professional-grade surface synoptic observation (SYNOP) stations, and to use these data of opportunity to infer a more accurate estimation of terrain roughness lengths. Roughness lengths are essential in numerical weather prediction; however, they are often poorly determined. Roughness lengths are also necessary when correcting near-surface wind observations for height offsets. For the analysis we performed a series of field experiments measuring wind profiles using handheld anemometers at roughly 2 m above ground. These raw measurements were then extrapolated to 10-m height using roughness lengths from three different sources. The extrapolation enabled us to compare the quality of roughness lengths estimated from smartphone measurements with those from traditional sources, as well as to assess the quality of these wind measurements against the professional-grade stations. We find that the handheld wind measurements are comparable in quality to wind measurements from SYNOP stations at 10-m height and that for some cases the handheld measurements can be more representative than SYNOP stations only about a kilometer away. To determine the roughness lengths, we examine a method that is based on the turbulent intensity derived from the high-frequency signal of the smartphone wind measurements. Under certain circumstances, the roughness lengths obtained with the approach presented here are superior to traditional sources.

In numerical weather prediction, climate and hydrological modelling, the grid cell size is typically larger than the horizontal length scales of variations in aerodynamic roughness, surface temperature and surface humidity. These local land cover variations give rise to sub-grid scale surface flux differences. Especially the roughness variations can give a significantly different value between the equilibrium roughness in each of the patches as compared to the aggregated roughness value, the so-called effective roughness, for the grid cell. The effective roughness is a quantity that secures the physics to be well-described in any large-scale model. A method of aggregating the roughness step changes in arbitrary real terrain has been applied in flat terrain (Denmark) where sub-grid scale vegetation-driven roughness variations are a dominant characteristic of the landscape. The aggregation model is a physical two-dimensional atmospheric flow model in the horizontal domain based on a linearized version of the Navier Stoke equation. The equations are solved by the Fast Fourier Transformation technique, hence the code is very fast. The new effective roughness maps have been used in the HIgh Resolution Limited Area Model (HIRLAM) weather forecasting model and the weather prediction results are compared for a number of cases to synoptic and other observations with improved agreement above the predictions based on current standard input. Typical seasonal springtime bias on forecasted winds over land of +0.5 m s(-1) and -0.2 m s(-1) in coastal areas is reduced by use of the effective roughness maps.