Weather
Temperature
Precipitation
Global
22%
chance
Tornadoes
Hurricanes
Earthquakes
22%
chance
6%
chance
Volcanoes
Pandemics
10%
chance
8%
chance
6%
chance
Weather
Temperature
Precipitation
Global
22%
chance
Tornadoes
Hurricanes
Earthquakes
22%
chance
6%
chance
Volcanoes
Pandemics
10%
chance
8%
chance
6%
chance
About Weather Predictions & Odds
Weather is one of the few subjects where almost everyone has an opinion and nature keeps an exact, public scorecard. Polymarket’s Weather category turns that scorecard into tradable markets, letting people put real money behind their read of the atmosphere, the oceans, and the planet beneath us. Each market asks one clear question, settles on official data, and pays $1 per winning share.
Markets span daily city temperatures, monthly precipitation totals, hurricane landfalls, tornado counts, earthquake magnitudes, volcanic eruptions, global temperature records, and pandemic risk. Prices update continuously as traders react to new forecasts, satellite data, and breaking developments. A share trading at 72¢ implies roughly a 72% probability that the stated outcome will occur.
Unlike traditional weather forecasts, which are point estimates from a single model or ensemble, prediction markets aggregate the views of many independent participants who are financially accountable for their positions. That structure can surface information that no single forecaster captures alone.
Temperature
Temperature markets cover daily high and low readings for major cities around the world. Traders price whether a city’s official high will reach a given threshold on a specific date, drawing on NWS forecasts, ensemble model output, and local pattern recognition. These markets settle on the reading reported by the designated official weather station, so there is no ambiguity about the result.
Because temperature markets resolve daily, they offer a fast feedback loop that rewards accuracy and punishes overconfidence. Traders who consistently read upper-air patterns, urban heat island effects, and model biases can build an edge over the crowd.
Precipitation
Precipitation markets ask whether a city or region will record a measurable amount of rain, snow, or mixed precipitation within a defined window. Settlement relies on official gauge readings from national weather services, ensuring a clear, verifiable outcome.
Pricing precipitation is notoriously difficult—small shifts in a storm’s track can mean the difference between a soaking and a miss. Prediction markets let traders express that uncertainty as a probability, blending radar nowcasts, convective-scale models, and ground-truth intuition into a single price.
Global
Global markets focus on large-scale climate benchmarks: whether a given month or year will rank as the hottest on record, whether global mean surface temperature will exceed a threshold, or whether key indices like El Niño Southern Oscillation will hit specified levels. These markets settle on data published by agencies like NOAA, NASA GISS, or the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Because global temperature data is released with a lag, these markets tend to have longer time horizons and attract traders who follow satellite reanalysis, ocean heat content, and radiative forcing trends. Prices provide a real-time consensus on where the planet’s climate is heading.
Tornadoes
Tornado markets price the likelihood of significant tornado activity within a defined region and time window. Settlement typically follows Storm Prediction Center reports, which log confirmed tornadoes by date, location, and EF-scale rating.
Tornado forecasting is one of the hardest problems in meteorology—even the best convective outlooks carry wide uncertainty beyond a few hours. Prediction market prices can aggregate signals from mesoscale models, observed instability parameters, and pattern-matching with historical analogs, offering a crowd-sourced probability that updates as storm environments evolve.
Hurricanes
Hurricane markets cover seasonal storm counts, individual storm landfalls, peak intensity, and landfall locations. Settlement sources include the National Hurricane Center’s official advisories and post-season best-track data.
These markets tend to see heavy trading during active hurricane seasons, especially when a named storm is approaching land. Traders weigh sea-surface temperatures, wind shear, steering-level flow, and model consensus to price landfall odds in real time—sometimes days before official forecasts converge.
Earthquakes
Earthquake markets ask whether a seismic event of a given magnitude will occur within a specified region and time frame. Settlement relies on authoritative catalogs such as the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program, which reports magnitude, depth, and location for every significant event worldwide.
Because earthquakes are inherently unpredictable on short time scales, these markets reflect base-rate seismicity, aftershock sequences, and swarm activity rather than deterministic forecasts. Prices express the market’s collective estimate of how likely a significant quake is, informed by historical recurrence intervals and current tectonic stress indicators.
Volcanoes
Volcano markets price the likelihood of eruptions, significant ash emissions, or aviation-alert-level changes at monitored volcanoes. Settlement is based on reports from volcano observatories and the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program.
Volcanic activity is episodic and often preceded by observable precursors—seismic swarms, ground deformation, gas emissions—that traders can track through public monitoring data. Markets let participants express probabilistic views on escalation timelines that traditional alert levels, which are categorical, cannot capture.
Pandemics
Pandemic markets cover the probability of novel pathogen outbreaks, WHO emergency declarations, case-count thresholds, and policy responses such as travel restrictions or vaccine approvals. Settlement follows official data from the WHO, national health agencies, or peer-reviewed surveillance networks.
These markets sit at the intersection of epidemiology, public policy, and crowd intelligence. Traders weigh wastewater surveillance data, genomic sequencing reports, zoonotic spillover risk, and institutional response capacity. Because pandemic risk is tail-heavy and politically sensitive, market prices can provide an unfiltered, real-time gauge of perceived outbreak severity that polls and expert panels may be slower to reflect.