A Japanese climate information company that wants to track just about every cloud in the sky in its own data cloud is handing out atmospheric sensors for smartphones that could improve forecasting.

Weathernews is distributing the sensors to users of its Weathernews Touch, a crowdsourced weather info app that has been downloaded more than 13 million times.

The hexagonal, palm-sized WxBeacon sensors can detect changes in temperature, barometric pressure and humidity and automatically upload them to the Weathernews cloud.

The aim is to improve weather forecasting with more granular, local information and to encourage more people to contribute to crowdsourced weather data, a Weathernews spokeswoman said. The company, which calls itself the world’s largest private weather data firm, believes the data gathered by the beacons could be particularly useful when typhoons strike Japan.

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