BRING THAT UMBRELLA

IBM is expanding its side job as the world’s meteorologist.

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty used a keynote address Tuesday to unveil a new global forecasting system that promises more accurate local weather reports in places that never had them before.

The computing giant owns The Weather Company, which runs popular weather services including weather.com and the Weather Channel and Weather Underground apps (though not the Weather Channel television network). Those apps provide precise and constantly updating forecasts in places like the U.S. and parts of Europe and Japan, but not in most of the world.

IBM says its new forecasting model relies in part on “crowd-sourced” data — barometric pressure readings from millions of smartphones and sensor readings from passing airplanes.

Weather Company CEO Cameron Clayton says the new system is intended to aid IBM’s business providing critical weather data to airlines, energy firms and other industries. But he says it will also have societal benefits, such as helping small farmers in India or parts of Africa yield better crops.

IBM may have trouble persuading some users to agree to transmit atmospheric data to IBM after the city of Los Angeles sued last week to stop the Weather Channel’s data-collection practices. The lawsuit alleges that the company uses location information not just to personalize weather but also to track users’ every step and profit off that information. The company has denied any impropriety with sharing location data collected from users, saying it does disclose what it does.