Variations in weather and climate can have serious consequences for a company’s bottom line. As a result, weather sensitive companies are continually seeking better weather and climate information in order to improve their operations. They are also turning their attention to a growing number of new weather-related financial instruments to hedge bottom line results. Critical to an informed assessment of weather risk and various hedging strategies is the availability of high quality weather data and forecasts.

AIR has responded to the growing demand for accurate and timely weather information with the launch of AIRWeather™, AIR's premier weather risk management service devoted to providing decision makers, traders and operations managers with all the weather and climate information they need. 

AIRWeather Data Products

Our online weather data products enable users to:

• Draw on databases of raw, cleaned and reconstructed historical weather data
• Access real-time clean data updates
• Customize your options to allow you to select and receive only the data of greatest value to you
• Create charts and graphs to your own specifications right on screen, or download data files for in-house processing
• Gain distinctive competitive advantage in evaluating and pricing your weather contracts by using the best weather data and forecast products available to assess your weather risk

Currently, AIRWeather offers daily maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation data products for primary weather stations in the U.S., Japan, and Australia. These products will soon be expanded to include databases of other key atmospheric variables for primary weather stations in the U.S., as well as weather stations from other regions in the world.

Following are descriptions of currently available weather data products, which provide users critical insight into how stations have performed and changed over time:

Reconstructed Data
AIRWeather meteorologists have developed an advanced data reconstruction methodology to provide clients with a consistent and temporally homogenized temperature time series for stations in the U.S., Japan and Australia. AIR's data reconstruction methodology involves de-shifting and de-trending the cleaned daily minimum and maximum temperature time-series to remove data inconsistencies due to factors unrelated to weather, such as station location changes and station environment changes. The reconstructed time series behaves as if the station observed its entire history from its current location and configuration.

Cleaned Data
Cleaned temperature data are currently available only for the U.S. The historical raw data obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) have been cleaned by filling in missing values and replacing erroneous values with high quality estimates.

Raw Data
Currently, AIRWeather provides historical raw temperature and precipitation data for the U.S. These are the complete historical databases obtained from NCDC, which have been reformatted for easy access.

CleanDataRT™
A first in the industry, AIRWeather recently launched the CleanDataRT system, which employs a comprehensive data cleaning methodology in real-time. While some weather data providers offer access to raw data in real-time, or to cleaned data with some lag time, only AIRWeather offers both real-time cleaned and raw daily maximum and minimum temperature data.

AIRWeather ClimateCast™ 

ClimateCast provides a comprehensive suite of climate forecasts covering days to seasons.

AIRWeather’s ClimateCast online forecast products include probabilistic medium-range weather and short-term climate forecasts. ClimateCast forecasts are developed using AIRWeather's advanced weather and climate modeling system developed in-house by our team of highly skilled climate scientists and meteorologists.

Key features of ClimateCast products include forecast maps, station-specific full probability distributions, model uncertainty information, forecast skill assessment, a ClimateCast Guide and Forecast Description. These features enable the user to correctly interpret the forecasts for various business decisions. ClimateCast forecasts are updated daily and weekly.

AIR's weather data and ClimateCast forecasts provide you with the most accurate data and forecasts available, giving you a critical advantage over the weather and your competition.