You may not know it, but Mars Chocolate, the maker of candy brands like M&M, Snickers, and Dove, employs a small team of meteorologists who are dedicated to analyzing the impacts of the weather on the chocolate business. Many other commodity-based companies as well as financial firms do the same thing to keep abreast of weather and climate events which may impact the future value of crops that are traded on commodity markets.
An article in Business Insider describes many of the things these company meteorologists do to keep track of all of the different ingredients that go into their products. Now they are also starting to consider longer-term climate trends like the impacts of El Niño and La Niña on regional weather patterns, and are also looking at patterns in future changes in climate that may affect availability of things like vanilla and cacao in coming decades. You can read the article at https://www.businessinsider.com/mars-chocolate-hires-meteorologists-to-deal-with-climate-change-2016-9.
