NOAA SBIR award supports improvement of water availability predictions with Salient's advanced weather forecasting technology to aid communities with better resource management

BOSTON, Sept. 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Salient Predictions, a leading pioneer in weather forecasting analytics, has been awarded a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to advance water availability forecasting that spans an unprecedented two to 52 weeks ahead. Focused in the vast agricultural region of Central Valley, California, the Phase I project will concentrate on improving predictions of subseasonal to seasonal (S2S) water availability, enabling communities to more effectively manage resources amid increasing and erratic natural disasters like floods and droughts.

"Global warming has led to an intensification of the water cycle with longer droughts and more intense rainfall events, threatening agricultural production and hydropower generation," said Ray Schmitt, President and co-founder of Salient. "Salient produces more accurate temperature and rainfall predictions at longer lead times than traditional government sources. This grant will enable us to integrate Salient's forecasts with a high-resolution hydrologic model that estimates soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and stream flow to provide farmers and hydropower operators with long range estimates of water availability for crops and reservoirs. It will also enable better preparedness for coping with the growing unpredictability and volatility of weather."

Current hydrological models face challenges related to data inputs, as climate change has been presenting weather patterns atypical from historical data, and government forecast models are only accurate for about two weeks. Salient's AI-powered S2S forecast technology uses machine learning and various oceanic, atmospheric, and land-based variables to deliver breakthrough levels of reliability and predictability of weather up to a year in advance. The technology has evolved from decades of research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"NOAA recognizes the critical need for advancing predictive capabilities related to water availability," said Dr. Genevieve Lind, SBIR Program Manager at NOAA. "Salient's proposed technology for enhancing water forecasts aligns with NOAA's mission to improve our knowledge and management of water resources in a changing climate."

NOAA's SBIR program is a highly competitive merit-based grant program that encourages small businesses in the U.S. to engage in research and development (R&D) with the goal of developing innovative and commercially-viable products or services.

For more information on Salient's revolutionary S2S forecasting solution, go to: https://www.salientpredictions.com/forecasts

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