Polar temperatures and heavy snowfall. “‘Elpida’ wreaked chaos across a large part of the country. But were farmers prepared? And what was the role of NEUROPUBLIC’s gaiasense system?

For many, the heavy snowfall at the end of January was an idyllic break from everyday life. For others, an inconvenience without end. For farmers, however, the ” Elpida ” weather was another reminder that proper preparation saves… crops.

Despite adverse conditions across almost the entire country, there were some who received timely information and took action to protect their crops. Specifically, NEUROPUBLIC’s gaiasense smart farming system had informed its partner producers about the weather through personalized alerts (SMS). In fact, the alerts from the system were made on a daily basis so that farmers could have continuous precision forecasting and be able to act accordingly.

Notifications that make a difference

With smart farming, “approximate” weather information is a thing of the past. This is because in the case of the innovative gaiasense system developed by the Greek company NEUROPUBLIC, specialized meteorological data is provided. What does this mean in reality? Gaiasense gives a three-day weather forecast, specifically for the area where each farm is located and not generally for the whole prefecture. And the data it provides is accurate and real-time, so the farmer has an almost “live” picture of the weather conditions in his field without having to monitor different websites or weather reports to see roughly what the weather will be like the next day.

In addition, gaiasense warns of extreme weather events such as hail, frost, heavy rainfall, heatwave, etc. 48 hours before they happen. Even if this probability is in the order of 10%, the system sends an SMS alert with the probable time of occurrence of the event. This gives the farmer time to take appropriate measures to protect his crop.

The science behind the weather

We asked atmospheric physicist-meteorologist Dr. Konstantinos Tsarpalis to explain how accurate the forecasts received from gaiasense are and why a farmer should choose it over the competition.

“The gaiasense system’s forecasts are highly accurate as they are performed at high spatial resolutions, unlike inferior spatial resolution forecasts that are freely available on the internet. Also, the forecasts are probabilistic, i.e. multiple scenarios are run in order to derive the probability of any given severe/extreme weather event occurring. Finally, data from the agro-meteorological stations of gaiasense are also used (which is extremely important), so that the forecast is more responsive to the needs of the producers. For example, frosts, which are particularly damaging to crops, are much better predicted compared to other forecasts freely available on the internet,” he explains.

As for how gaiasense can provide such detailed and accurate forecasts, the answer is simple. The gaiasense system has the most extensive network of agro-meteorological stations in rural areas of the country, with more than 300 stations and a forecast to increase significantly in the coming period. Moreover, in addition to the data from the stations, gaiasense also utilizes satellite data so that the weather forecasting models provide farmers with highly accurate forecasts.

Forecasts that take into account both the microclimate of each region and the needs of each crop. Thus, with the ally of smart farming and, in particular, gaiasense, the farmer has peace of mind and weather forecasting ceases to be a chore.