Oral Presentation AMOS Annual Meeting and International Conference on Tropical Meteorology and Oceanography

Weather Together – Building the weather forecasts farmers want. (#110)

Jaclyn N Brown 1 , Simon Allen 1 , Andrew Schepen 2 , David Robertson 2 , Chris Sharman 3 , Chris Nunn 1 , Alister Hawksford 4 , Michael Bange 1
  1. Agriculture and Food, CSIRO, Sandy Bay, Tas, Australia
  2. Land and Water, CSIRO, Brisbane, QLD
  3. Data61, CSIRO, Sandy Bay, Tas, Australia
  4. Bureau of Meteorology, Canberra, ACT

Accurate and meaningful weather forecasts are crucial to on-farm daily decision making. Engagements with Farmers and AgTech Companies have revealed  further imperatives for easy to access on-farm weather forecasts and forecasts of other agrometeorological variables. We have established a team to build an API service to deliver downscaled, focussed weather and agrometeorological forecasts for AgTech companies to add to their own products which are tailored for the farming community. Here we describe the downscaling techniques and their skill, the agrometeorological variables developed, and the business model for delivering the service. As part of this process we are collecting extant on-farm weather observations for use in other applications (for example in other Bureau of Meteorology products). This has the potential to densify the observation network and increase the relevance and accuracy of the returned forecasts.