RMS Adds Japanese, German Data to Weather Risk Management System

Risk Management Solutions announced that its Climetrix (TM) weather derivatives trading and risk management system now includes relevant temperature data from Germany and Japan, two expanding markets for weather derivative traders and end users of its forecasts.

RMS, in parntership with Earth Satellite Corp., “compiled and cleaned” 40 years of historical daily measurements for 47 of the Japan Meteorological Agency’s primary weather stations, and correlated 40 years of data from 14 weather stations operated by the Deutscher Wetterdienst, Germany’s meteorological service.

The new capabilities will be updated on a daily basis from now on, to assure that Climetrix users have the most recent data available. While weather data is widely available, and for the most part free, in the U.S., it’s been extremely hard to come by in other countries. Either it doesn’t exist, or the charges for providing it have been prohibitive. The problem has slowed the expansion of the weather derivatives market around the world.

Paul VanderMarck, RMS’ managing director of weather risk products, acknowledged the difficulty of “acquiring reliable, quality-controlled data,” and indicated that he hoped that the newly available temperature data would “facilitate continuing rapid growth of weather trading activity.”