Tools to decode extreme weather

It’s been dubbed climate whiplash – the rise of wild swings between extreme weather events. Predicting these ahead of time is a Melbourne software company's mission.

As communities lurch from one extreme weather event to another and back again, it looks like flooding rains, heatwaves, cyclones and extreme fire conditions are our new normal.

This latest summer was no exception. Victoria and Tasmania battled bushfires, floods hit Queensland with some areas receiving 1.5m of rain in three days, and the nation recorded its second hottest January since records began in 1910, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

This weather instability is being fuelled by climate change, according to the Climate Council, so the patterns of the past no longer provide a reliable guide to the future. By altering the climate, the organisation says, we are changing key drivers like El Niño and the conditions under which all weather forms.

"Our weather is now more chaotic, unpredictable and dangerous due to climate change, which presents challenges for us all," the Climate Council stated last year in its report Climate Whiplash: Wild Swings Between Weather Extremes.

"The need to invest in our climate science and information services, to boost our emergency response capabilities, and above all to be investing proactively in climate change preparation and response and the resilience of our communities, is urgent and growing."

Funding resilience

Twilio.org, the social impact arm of US cloud communications company Twilio, had this mission in mind with the launch of its Climate Tech Prize which aims to advance climate resilience solutions.

"The climate crisis is a defining challenge of our time, and frontline communities feel its effects most acutely," Twilio.org said. "We recognise the urgent need for scalable solutions to address these challenges. That’s why we launched the Climate Tech Prize."

"These changemakers are showing what a climate-resilient future can look like – leveraging technology to address some of the biggest challenges facing frontline communities"

The prize attracted over 500 applications from 55 countries, with US$1 million distributed among five winners last month.

One of these was Melbourne-based ClimaSens, an AI-driven physical climate risk intelligence software developer. The company, which works with Google and global tech giant Nvidia, has developed a high-resolution climate change risk analysis platform to predict extreme weather events based on climate models, satellite data, and real-time weather informatics.

“ClimaSens's work is at the cutting edge of climate science, where the fusion of AI with weather and climate models paves the way for a new era of climate risk intelligence,” the company says.

“AI-enhanced climate models can sift through and learn from historical climate data, satellite imagery, local landscape data, and other environmental inputs to learn how the large-scale patterns of future climate correspond to local climatic conditions, considering even complex urban morphologies and geometries.

“This is crucial for understanding the potential impacts of climate change, such as extremes in flooding, heat, drought, fire, and other challenges, guiding policy decisions, and planning for mitigation and adaptation strategies on a global scale.”

It’s not the company’s first global gong – last year, ClimaSens won the Google.org Climate Change Innovation Challenge, securing US$5 million and a partnership with New York’s Urban Systems Lab (USL) to scale its AI-based climate risk evaluation tool.

ClimaSens's clients include the City of Melbourne, the City of Yarra, the Australian Red Cross, and KPMG, and it says the recent funding will help expand its forecasting capabilities across Australia and beyond, aiding communities in building long-term climate resilience.

The other four winners of the Climate Tech Prize are:

• One Acre Fund: Supports smallholder farmers in Africa with digital tools, climate-smart practices, and affordable financing.
• Gravity Water: Provides safe drinking water to at-risk communities by converting rainwater into potable water using sustainable technology.
• Blue Marble: Offers insurance protection to underserved communities, ensuring timely assistance in the face of climate risks.
• NAXA: Develops digital and spatial technologies to drive climate resilience and sustainable development.

"These changemakers are showing what a climate-resilient future can look like – leveraging technology to address some of the biggest challenges facing frontline communities," Twilio’s Chief Impact Officer Erin Reilly said.