Weather Source’s COVID-19 dataset is now available on the Snowflake Data Exchange. Weather Source CEO Mark Gibbas announced the new dataset in a joint interview with Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman April 15 hosted by NASDAQ Trade Talks.
In March, Weather Source began offering complimentary weather and climate data via its API for academic and public sector researchers working to understand the potential connections between weather and COVID-19. In a March blog post, Weather Source explained the relevance of opening a weather API for this purpose. The Weather Source team visualized weather’s possible impacts on COVID-19 citing several academic studies:
“As correlations between weather and the virus begin to emerge, many experts believe colder temperatures and lower humidity levels could lead to greater COVID-19 viability and weakened immune systems. Therefore, the powerful combination of cold, dry conditions and diminished immune response has the potential to accelerate virus transmission.”
Now, Snowflake users can access a specific COVID-19 weather dataset, which includes Weather Source’s global historical weather data dating back to October 2019, present data, and forecast data out to 15 days. The Snowflake data share supports temperature and humidity, both specific and relative, at the daily level.
Snowflake has already proven to be a powerful platform for data scientists around the world to collaborate in the fight against COVID-19. In March, Snowflake launched a detailed COVID-19 epidemiological dataset in partnership with data provider Starschema.
“There was just an overwhelming demand for it,” Slootman told Trade Talks host Jill Malandrino. “But it’s not just the interest in COVID data by itself, it’s the ability to augment it with weather data—as we’re discussing here, with flight arrival data, with supply chain data, with internal operating data. The more the data scientists can combine and augment data the more descriptive their models become.”
Weather Source data scientists accessed Starschema data via Snowflake to combine with our OnPoint Weather data—which is also on Snowflake—to further validate research findings.
“Weather does have a substantial relationship to the transmission rate, and in particular it looks like the transmission increases during cooler and drier conditions,” Gibbas said during the Trade Talks interview. “To be clear, there are many factors that affect the transmission rate. The best way to think about this is there’s always going to be this normal baseline transmission rate, but during cooler and drier conditions, this normal transition rate gets a boost from the weather.”
Next, Weather Source is looking to incorporate flight pattern data from the Airline Reporting Corporation (ARC), a provider of air travel data and distribution solutions, into its research.
“By taking that into account, we think we can tighten up our analysis and understand how and when the virus was brought to cities around the world,” Gibbas continued.
“The ability to combine and augment data is what creates these explosive insights,” Slootman added.
Regarding the decision for Weather Source to add its own COVID-19 related dataset to the Snowflake Data Exchange, Gibbas concluded: “We’re hoping that by making this available for free, researchers will continue to find links between weather and transmission rates, which would benefit people and economies around the world.”
