Jul 29 2015
Weathernews Inc. Japan, the global weather company, today announced it has partnered with Moji Co. Ltd. in China, to leverage and incorporate data from Moji's MoWeather app, the largest social weather app in China. With this significant additional weather dataset, Weathernews becomes the largest crowdsourced weather service in the world.
Weathernews now has access to over 100 million weather observations, 420M users and over 100M active monthly users across 175 countries. This announcement comes on the heels of Weathernews' recent acquisition of U.S.-based social weather app Weathermob and Weathernews' partnership with Netatmo, the world's largest home sensor weather network.
"The weather industry is ripe for disruption and as crowdsourced information becomes more available and mobile infrastructure improves around the world, so does our ability to build on our mission to accurately predict the weather around us," said Tomohiro Ishibashi, Director of Weathernews Inc. "At Weathernews, we have a core belief that more weather data is better. So having access to the additional datasets from MoWeather's vast user community allows us to provide more accurate and safer weather forecasting for all. Our advanced algorithms analyze these new datasets and put them in our existing computer forecasting models. We use this to deliver the most accurate forecasts to smartphones, the web and TV."
The MoWeather app gathers visual sky and precipitation information as well as anecdotal comments about the weather from their user base who report from approximately 700,000 locations. Since its launch, Moji has used MoWeather's crowdsourced data to better understand consumer behaviors to inform advertising decisions, rather than forecasting the weather. As a professional weather company, now with MoWeather's user information, Weathernews will take the millions of sky reports and analyze the sky photos to provide crowdsourced insights and accurate alerts about air pollution levels, pollen count and precipitation.
Through this partnership with its 100M monthly active users on the ground as well as its other data sensors and with the rise of grid-connected devices, Weathernews is poised to lead a massive improvement in weather forecasting. The company gains access to weather information from locations that aren't near traditional weather stations within China. This information fills in gaps across the globe and continues to help build more accurate predictive models and forecasts.
"With our network now in Asia, the US and Europe, Weathernews will have the largest ever weather database," said Ishibashi. "We are continuously creating new solutions and services that provide safer, more complete scientific and human weather information. We are pioneers -- for our consumers and our planet. Our new 'weather network' is our latest offering."