Transforming Climate Event Predictions for a Safer Future with Celest Science
Altering Climate Risk Management with Intelligent Models
Arthur Bessieres, Clémence Pfister, Camilla Rizzi and Salim Laouiti
Revolutionizing Climate Risk Assessment with Advanced AI
Celest Science provides a climate risk prediction service that combines advanced artificial intelligence with physical models to deliver highly accurate forecasts. Their product focuses on sub-seasonal to multi-annual high-resolution predictions of water-related climate risks, such as droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires, and groundwater depletion.
They combine cutting-edge climate science with advanced machine learning to transform how extreme climate events are understood and anticipated. Its proprietary models:
- Reveal the physical drivers behind extreme events
- Correlate multiple risk factors for compound risk assessment
- Dynamically adjust frequency curves in light of climate change
- Provide real-time forecasts from two weeks to six months ahead
By bridging the gap between short-term weather forecasts and long-term climate scenarios, Celest delivers unprecedented value to clients seeking to quantify and manage risk effectively, such as insurers, investors, and public institutions seeking to quantify and manage climate risk.
Unlike traditional risk assessment models based solely on historical statistics, Celest models the complex interactions between atmospheric, oceanic, and land systems.
Why Is This Problem Significant, & How Large Is Its Impact?
Traditional risk prediction methods, which rely on historical weather data, are proving inadequate in the face of increasingly frequent, severe, and unpredictable weather events driven by climate change. These models struggle to capture the complexity of climate-related interactions and lack the responsiveness needed for effective risk management.
As a result, businesses face growing financial exposure: Insurance companies are burdened with rising claims, while energy and infrastructure-dependent firms suffer costly disruptions and damage. In 2023 alone, global natural disasters caused an estimated $380 billion in economic losses, following $313 billion in weather-related impacts the previous year. Alarmingly, 66% of global firms have at least one physical asset at high risk from climate change, highlighting the urgent need for more adaptive and forward-looking risk assessment tools.
Meet the Team Behind Celest Science
The team combines the best expertise in the field with decades of research in climate risk data, along with previous successful entrepreneurship experience:
- Léo Lemordant, CEO, is a PhD from Columbia University in Hydrology. He previously successfully founded and exited Enerfip, a crowdfunding platform for renewable energy projects. The company is still active and profitable today, with $4M in annual revenue and 40 employees.
- Pierre Gentine, CTO, is a PhD from MIT and is a professor of data science and climate science at Columbia University.
Gentine has been at the forefront of research on using machine learning for hydrology for 10+ years, with 200 publications cited 20K times. He founded and is the director of Columbia University’s Center for Learning the Earth with Artificial Intelligence and Physics (LEAP), a $25M center of AI and physics for climate modeling, partnering with big corporate names like Google and Nvidia. Gentine’s pioneering work on machine learning for climate science has even earned recognition from the Nobel Prize committee.
Co-Founder & CEO, Celest Science
“Welcoming Plug and Play as an investor marks a key milestone for Celest. Their global footprint and outstanding network of corporate partners will help us accelerate our international expansion and connect our technology with the strategic players most exposed to climate risk. Together, we can reshape the standards of risk modeling on a global scale.”
Why We’re Excited to Invest
Celest Science quickly secured a pilot deal with Zurich Insurance just weeks after launch and successfully converted them into a paying customer. They are also engaging in early discussions with major insurance firms and oil and gas companies both in France and internationally. This traction comes at a time when climate-related regulations in the insurance industry, such as ISO 14090 and Solvency II, are pushing insurers to adopt advanced technologies for risk forecasting.
At the same time, the global weather forecasting services market is experiencing strong growth, driven by increasing climate variability, technological advancements, and rising demand across industries like agriculture, aviation, energy, transportation, and disaster management. Accurate weather forecasts are becoming essential for risk mitigation, operational efficiency, and informed decision-making. Notably, the last decade (2015–2024) has been the warmest on record, with 2024 marking the hottest year yet, reaching approximately 1.55°C above pre-industrial levels.
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