A Boston startup is using ocean salinity to forecast rainfall totals at a time when drought is hurting food supplies.
(Bloomberg) — There’s a new indicator that forecasters are using to predict how much rain inland farms like the US Corn Belt will get: Salt.
Brinier water on the surface of the ocean can predict heavier rainfall that will fall far from the coasts, according to Boston-based Salient Predictions. The company, whose clients include seed and crop chemical giant BASF SE, is using the technique to forecast precipitation totals and help farmers at a time when drought is hurting food supplies. World food prices hit record highs earlier this year, partially as dryness and extreme heat damaged plants in important growing regions from the European Union to Brazil.
“Evaporation from the ocean is the main source of all rainfall, and if some patch of ocean gets saltier than normal, it’s because more water has evaporated,” Ray Schmitt, an oceanographer and co-founder of Salient Predictions, said in an interview. “It’s bound to rain more somewhere else.”
That means that if salt content in the Atlantic Ocean along the US East Coast is low, it could be a dry season in the top US corn-growing state of Iowa, and farmers there may decide to plant less or use a more drought-tolerant seed. For China’s Yangtze River Valley, a key farming region in the world’s most populous country, salinity levels in the South China Sea have been correlated with flooding and current drought conditions.
Salient, which raised $5.4 million in a funding round earlier this year, said on Thursday that it’s marketing a new suite of weather metrics including ocean salinity to larger agricultural businesses.
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