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Full Story (via weather.com)…

IBM and its subsidiary The Weather Company continue to be the overall most accurate weather forecast providers worldwide, according to a new study.

The Weather Company includes weather.com and other digital properties of The Weather Channel.

Company officials cited investments in artificial intelligence technology and advanced forecasting as key to helping people and businesses make more informed weather decisions.

“A forecast is most helpful when it comes from a recognized, trusted source, and the pursuit of accuracy is at the foundation of what we seek to provide to help customers, consumers and marketers to make important decisions every day,” said Sheri Bachstein, chief executive officer of The Weather Company and general manager of IBM Watson Advertising. “The study is evidence of how IBM is helping advance the science of weather forecasting through continued innovations in AI, data and cloud computing.”

The report, released Thursday, was conducted by weather forecast monitoring and assessment company ForecastWatch and commissioned by IBM.

The study looked at about 140 million forecasts from 17 different weather providers from 2017 to 2021 in more than 1,400 locations around the globe. The forecasts were analyzed and ranked based on 84 different accuracy metrics covering precipitation, temperature, cloud cover and wind forecast variables.

The report noted that “The Weather Channel recorded the most first-place finishes globally for every year and every time period.”

The Weather Company forecasts are created by IBM and distributed via the IBM Cloud across The Weather Channel app and weather.com, Weather Underground app and wunderground.com, as well as weather products for IBM enterprise clients.

Overall, the ForecastWatch analysis determined The Weather Company was the provider whose forecasts were the most accurate globally when aggregated across all geographic regions compared and time periods covered.

The results also showed that The Weather Company was 3.5 times more likely to be the most accurate of any other provider studied, and the gap widened between The Weather Company and the next best overall provider during every year of the study.

The report pointed out the importance of weather forecasts for planning purposes, safety and financial reasons in an era of record-setting billion-dollar disasters.

“This causes people and businesses to look to weather forecasts – and their accuracy – more than ever to try to mitigate losses by preparing for what is coming,” the authors wrote.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.