Micro-climate predictions: Enabling hyper-local decisions for agriculture and renewables
It is springtime in Eastern Washington, USA, and the temperature is slightly above freezing. A farmer is preparing to fertilize his fields of wheat and lentils as winter runoff and frost are nearly finished. The plants are susceptible to fertilizer at freezing temperatures, so the farmer checks forecasts from the local weather station, which is about 50 miles away. The three-day outlook shows temperatures above freezing. The farmer rents equipment and starts fertilizing the farm. But at night, the temperature in parts of the fields drops below freezing and kills around 20% of the crops. This is unfortunately a common situation, since climatic parameters can vary over short distances and even between sections of the farm.
To address this problem and others, we developed DeepMC, a