How to turn £1 into £6,427

Who knew betting on the weather could make a billion dollars?

The Climate Corp. has to simulate the weather, and that means getting even more granular. For each point on a grid, it has come up with 10,000 scenarios that could affect a grower two years out, Khaliq said. Eventually, that figure will seem like peanuts and is likely to reach 100,000. This represents The Climate Corp.'s biggest data set -- 20 to 30 terabytes of data generated monthly.

As Kedrosky says, things are still very early in the "feed the world" cycle. But these food jocks might just be what the business world needs. The general population could certainly use a few dream makers that don't issue from the banking world. Technology was once viewed as an undeveloped Wild West. Now, a group of teenagers heading off to 4H club in Iowa could be the next Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Twenty years from now, they may even have a ticket to be on a national magazine cover.

This column is just a starting point for discussions that examine weather, sensors, data, networks, and their combined influence on commerce, with particular focus on the effects these technologies will have on energy consumption. Over the last couple of years, there has been a heightened interest in this area from the applied research side, evidenced by new topics and sessions presented at the annual conferences of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, and others. Investors, too, have been backing companies in the weather data space, including recently Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures and NEA’s support of weather insurance company WeatherBill.

David Greaves, director of the RSA insurance company said: "Bad weather in the run up to Christmas will have a major impact on the UK's economy and could lead to significant losses for already struggling businesses.

"The increasing frequency of extreme weather events has only made it more difficult for businesses of all sizes to predict and manage their financial results," said David Friedberg, chief executive officer of WeatherBill and a former founding member of Google's corporate development team. "According to government statistics, extreme weather costs the U.S. agriculture industry tens of billions of dollars each year. Similar estimates for the energy, travel, outdoor entertainment, and construction industries underscores how business managers, now more than ever, need a way to protect their bottom line from the effects of climate change. That's what WeatherBill does - it gives businesses a simple and affordable way to lock in profits and offset the economic impact of bad weather."