Better decisions with real-time weather data

The insights help individuals and projects mitigate extreme weather events

Spotted: As part of the continued global focus on reducing deforestation, the UK and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has created the five-year AIM4Forests programme. The goal of the programme is to use technology to better track and analyse the health, quantity, and quality of the world’s forests.

Germany’s Ecosia, a renewable-powered internet browser and search engine, has demonstrated how the tech sector can be used to facilitate reforestation efforts. The company – which was first featured by Springwise back in 2013 – plants trees around the world, using income from sponsored links to support climate projects in more than 35 countries. Now, the company has partnered with AccuWeather to provide its users with access to detailed, accurate forecasts that include up-to-the-minute alerts for severe weather events. This, in turn, helps users to prepare for events like heatwaves and adapt accordingly.

AccuWeather’s API allows Ecosia users to search by location for hourly, daily, and weekly forecasts and includes AccuWeather’s proprietary air quality scale so that individuals can make more informed decisions regarding their exposure to air pollution. The air quality forecasts, enabled by AccuWeather’s subsidiary Plume Labs, are available at a resolution of 0.2-2 kilometres, with some urban areas in North America and Europe covered by street-level data.

As well as helping individuals, the integration will also help to support Ecosia’s own tree-planting projects, by identifying particularly hot urban areas that would benefit from additional tree cover and shade. Ecosia also plans to use AccuWeather’s data to help it monitor and optimise the progress of existing projects, including those positioned around UK hospitals.

Written By: Keely Khoury