The Future of Forecasting: Announcing Our Investment in ClimaCell, the Next Generation Weather Prediction Provider
In a previous blog post, we discussed how AI and Machine Learning could help with rescheduling flights and reassigning passengers during a weather disruption. Today, we’re excited to announce a new JTV investment that aims to tackle this problem in another way.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, NOAA, about $3 trillion of the US economy is made up of weather-sensitive industries. Every day companies from industries such as aviation, financial services, insurance, retail and agriculture, make critical business decisions based on the weather. These decisions are only as good as a forecast itself. Surprisingly, most of today’s weather forecasting models rely on technology from the 20th century, and when applied at the local level, may only have accuracy rates of about 50%.
Take for example, a July 2017 3-hour rain delay in a Washington Nationals home game against the Atlanta Braves where the storm never arrived or at the other end of the spectrum, Hurricane Sandy, where the impact of the storm was much stronger than forecasted and many cities were not fully prepared to cope with the damage. Making weather related decisions to ensure safety is incredibly tough and it impacts each of us daily, in many different and often unthought-of ways.
Having more accurate data and a better understanding of real-time weather predictions is especially important in the aviation industry, where weather can have a significant impact on operations. Historically, making weather-related decisions has been challenging and imprecise, primarily due to a lack of both instant real-time and localized data. However, with advancements in high-power computing, data processing and artificial intelligence, industries can now leverage new solutions to improve weather related operational decisions and harness weather data in entirely new ways.
That’s why we’re excited to announce our investment in ClimaCell, as part of its Series A financing. The Boston-based weather technology company aims to help the aviation industry and other verticals make better business decisions by more accurately predicting the weather. ClimaCell provides high-definition weather forecasting tools to businesses and governments worldwide and is the first to offer instant access to actionable, street-level weather data in real-time.
By tapping into a widely available and primarily unused data source — wireless network — ClimaCell is able to build real-time and hyper-localized weather predictions, updated by the minute. The concept behind the technology is that weather conditions, such as rain, sleet or snow, cause electromagnetic signals to weaken and change shape. Mobile phone networks use microwaves to communicate amongst other towers on the network. A decrease in strength of microwave communication signals reveals the type and intensity of precipitation on a hyper local basis. ClimaCell can predict freezing rain to fall on one city street, while snow falls on another, and just three blocks away, no precipitation at all. Imagine how valuable this information would be for autonomous cars, construction site managers, outdoor professional sports teams and yes even airports. Learn more about how ClimaCell generates minute-by-minute, short-term predictions here.
ClimaCell is not only changing how industries make important weather-related decisions, the company is also bringing improved forecasting to parts of the developing world that do not currently have them. For example, in parts of Africa such as Sierra Leone or the Ivory Coast, weather-related natural disasters such as mudslides take the lives of thousands of people every year. These numbers could go down, with more accurate alerts and longer-lead times as a result of improved technology.
We’re thrilled to be an investor in ClimaCell, a company that could help to enhance safety and increase operational efficiency for the aviation industry, and others. We first met CEO Shimon Elkabetz and team in the winter of 2016 and it’s been amazing to watch the company grow and succeed. ClimaCell’s continued technological advancements and customer momentum lead us to believe that when it comes to predicting the weather of the future, there will be nothing but blue skies ahead.
