AI Drives Weather Data Demand Surge for Europe’s Top Forecaster

Europe’s biggest weather forecaster is reporting record demand for its data, as energy traders, insurers, shipping lines and tech companies rush to improve the accuracy of their AI models.

In 2024, the number of commercial firms buying licenses to access data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts rose almost 20% to over 800. Nearly half of those are owned by energy companies, including traders and renewable power producers.

Scientists and officials at ECMWF say artificial intelligence is fueling the boom, as customers feed the data into new machine learning tools. Those AI models are providing more accurate forecasts, ...