10 October 2025

 

In an era when climate volatility is rewriting risk models across industries, the ability to see weeks or even months into the future has become one of the most valuable — and elusive — assets in business. From insurers recalibrating exposure to traders betting on commodity prices, many of the world’s most consequential decisions hinge on a single variable: the weather.

Yet despite vast improvements in short-term weather prediction, the world still lacks precision in long-range forecasting — the crucial middle ground between the two-week forecasts on your phone and the decades-long climate models shaping policy. That’s the space where Planette, a Seattle-based startup has staked its claim.

Now, the company is taking its expertise to the next level with the launch of Joro, a high-resolution forecasting platform built specifically for financial institutions, insurers, and data-driven professionals who need detailed probability-based weather insights months in advance.

From DARPA to Data-Driven Forecasting

“Planette grew out of work my co-founder and I were leading for DARPA,” Planette CEO and co-founder Hansi Singh recalls in an exclusive interview with MoveTheNeedle.news. “While there, we realized that the tools scientists like us were using — models that connect the atmosphere with the ocean, land, and ice — offered real predictability weeks to months ahead. But outside of a narrow circle of researchers, energy traders, and hedge funds, that capability wasn’t reaching the people who needed it most.”

That realization led to the founding of Planette — a company designed to bridge the gap between advanced Earth system modeling and real-world decision-making.

Singh explains: “I’m an Earth system scientist, and my co-founder is an AI scientist. Together, we built a platform that merges physics-based Earth system models with AI. That approach lets us forecast further out than traditional weather models, which lose accuracy after about 10–14 days.”

Since its inception, Planette’s mission has been twofold: enhancing the accuracy of long-range forecasts and translating those insights into actionable intelligence for industries most affected by weather risk.

“By combining multiple global models with our own AI, we’ve consistently outperformed benchmark agencies like NOAA and ECMWF,” Singh says. “At the same time, we’ve made those insights accessible through tools and APIs that decision-makers can actually act on. That combination of scientific rigor, technical innovation, and real-world deployment is what has positioned Planette at the forefront of long-range forecasting.”

Filling the Forecasting Gap

For decades, weather prediction has been divided between two extremes: short-term forecasts that are highly precise but fleeting in scope, and climate projections that stretch decades ahead but are too coarse for immediate operational use. What’s been missing is the mid-range forecast — the next few weeks to months that matter most to insurers, traders, and utilities.

“Traditional weather models are often only useful in the very short term (up to 14 days, max), given their focus on the atmosphere," says Singh. "On the other end, climate projections look decades into the future, offering broad scenarios but little practical guidance for the kinds of near-term decisions businesses actually face.”

This “in-between horizon,” as Singh calls it, is where Planette’s new platform Joro is designed to excel.

“This is where insurers are pricing risk, utilities are projecting power demand, and manufacturers are planning their supply chains,” he says. “Scientists have long known that the ocean, land, and even ice provide signals that can extend predictability well beyond two weeks. But until recently, those insights stayed in the research world or in the hands of a few hedge funds and energy traders. We launched Joro to bring that science into practice, delivering reliable, probabilistic forecasts weeks to months ahead so organizations aren’t blindsided by risks that can tank their bottom line.”

Beyond a Single Number

To understand what makes Joro different, Singh suggests thinking about how most people experience weather forecasts today.

“Most forecasts give you a single number: for instance, ‘the high will be 80 degrees,’” he says. “That works if you’re deciding whether to have a picnic, but it’s not enough for an insurer or a trader. What they need to know is the full range of possible outcomes — whether there’s also a chance of 95 degrees, and how likely that is. Joro provides those probability distributions so decision-makers can see both the expected outcome and the low-probability, high-impact risks that traditional forecasts miss.”

That probabilistic framing — showing not just what’s most likely to happen, but also what could happen — is crucial for high-stakes industries. Joro aggregates and weights multiple global models, including those from major forecasting agencies, using AI-driven optimization techniques that favor sources with stronger track records for a given region or season.

“The result is forecasts that are consistently more accurate and more usable than what you’d get from any one system on its own," says Singh.

Forecasting Risk and Opportunity

Weather volatility has become an inescapable business variable. For sectors like finance, insurance, and energy, Singh argues, long-range forecasting isn’t just about risk avoidance — it’s about finding hidden opportunities.

“In these industries, the rare but extreme events are often the ones that drive the biggest losses — or the biggest opportunities,” Singh notes. “For a utility, that might mean storing excess energy in batteries for later use before a heatwave pushes the grid to its limits. For an insurer, it could mean adjusting exposure in a region facing elevated wildfire risk. For a trader, it might be a matter of positioning ahead of a likely spike in natural gas demand. Knowing those odds early is what allows these organizations to act with foresight instead of reacting after the fact.”

A Trader’s Advantage

The advantages become especially tangible when applied to commodities. Singh offers a straightforward example:

“Let's take a commodity trader focused on cocoa,” he says. “If Joro forecasts a 70% probability of deluge conditions in West Africa's cocoa-growing regions two months out, that trader can hedge their position well before prices spike. Traditional forecasts might only give a week's notice, but by then, the market has already moved. With Joro, you have time to act strategically rather than reactively.”

That kind of lead time — weeks rather than days — is where Joro aims to redefine how businesses price and manage weather risk.

A Platform Approach to Forecasting

While Joro is Planette’s flagship for financial and insurance markets, the company’s broader suite of products serves a wide spectrum of weather-sensitive industries.

“Joro is specifically designed for industries where the extremes drive the most significant financial impact, which is why it's optimized for finance, insurance, and commodity trading,” Singh says. “These sectors need the full probability distribution because they're specifically looking for those low-probability, high-impact scenarios.”

Planette’s Sura product, by contrast, serves clients who care less about tail-risk extremes and more about seasonal planning.

“Our Sura product, for example, provides county-level forecasts that are ideal for agriculture, travel, construction, and retail industries where understanding general seasonal trends and planning around average conditions is more valuable than modeling extreme tail risks,” Singh explains. “For instance, a travel company planning destination marketing or a construction manager scheduling a large project benefits most from knowing whether the next few months will be warmer or wetter than usual — not necessarily the probability of hitting record-breaking extremes. That's where Sura excels.”

This tiered approach — offering both detailed risk analysis and broader seasonal insights — reflects Planette’s ambition to become a foundational data partner across weather-exposed sectors.

Forecasting in the Age of Volatility

With climate patterns becoming less predictable, Singh sees long-range forecasting as a cornerstone of resilience planning in the years ahead.

“Weather extremes are hitting harder and more often, so the cost of being unprepared is rising,” he says. “Over the next few years, long-range forecasting is likely to become a standard input for how businesses and governments plan, whether that involves setting insurance rates, stabilizing power grids, or determining when to move goods. It will be treated less as an optional tool and more as basic infrastructure for managing risk.”

That shift — from weather as a passive factor to weather as an actionable data layer — could transform how companies model everything from logistics to investments.

Redefining Success

Asked what success looks like for Joro’s first year on the market, Singh’s answer is less about market share and more about measurable impact.

“Success for us isn’t just about adoption — it’s about impact,” he says. “We want insurers, asset managers, and utilities to treat Joro as part of their daily decision-making, not as an experiment on the side. If a portfolio manager feels confident shifting exposure earlier than they could before, or a utility avoids a blackout because they planned for a heatwave weeks in advance, that’s the real measure. When customers can point to decisions that saved money, protected assets, or reduced risk because of Joro, that’s when we’ll know it’s working.”