Leveraging commercial & non-profit satellites for Earth system observation continuity
Daniel Limonadi All right, thanks everybody for showing up today on a Friday. I know it's a little challenging time. This was kind of the best time, at least bad time that worked for everybody on the presentation sites. So we appreciate you taking time out of your Friday I know some folks on the East Coast it's kind of the last thing you do on Friday afternoon, folks on the West Coast, especially it's a regular day off. So for JPLers, thanks for taking time from your kind of normal vacation day or whatever and again, just welcome to everybody that's online. I know we have folks from morning
time zones all the way to late evening.You know, Betsy is in Europe and Rashmi is in Indonesia and so folks all over the place. So, welcome to our mini symposium on leveraging commercial and nonprofit satellite capabilities, plans, and opportunities for growth system. Observation continuity a little bit of a mouthful, but as we were just talking about. We think it's a pretty timely topic and wanted to spend we think we're going to have a great 3 hour conversation today or up to 3 hours might not take the whole time.
Conversation today on this, um, this virtual mini symposium is cosponsored by the center for climate sciences, and by the Keck Institute, for Space Studies in conjunction with, uh, 2022 study, developing continuity framework for satellite observations. framework for satellite observations of climate, I'm going to talk about that a little bit more as part of the intro section to make sure everybody kind of understands the context for today's set of talks and discussions. The Mini symposium is being recorded. In case. You haven't noticed. And the 2 websites below both KISS, and the climate science center at JPL will have host information, both slides. And the recordings, so if you want to reference the material afterwards, you can go there and I'll show you a timeline in a minute. There are some past talks that you can go to if you want to look at the past talks kind of in this series, you can go to those websites and catch the recordings, so.
Um, let's see for the topic today we've got 5. good. Yep. Duane Waliser Can make 1. interrupt. Sorry. Yeah, I'd just like to say, on behalf of the climate center. Um, do you want to share, uh, say, thanks to Joao and Graeme for helping host this. Um, was 1 of those predefined commitments, personal commitment so he couldn't be here. Today. Graeme did write me and say that he's
going to join halfway through the summer or the symposium. And they also wanted to call out the support by Wing Sze and Margaret and Michelle Juddand Janet Seid, who really help put a lot of this stuff behind the scenes. And Daniel will knows that and I just wanted to call that out. Thanks Daniel. Right?
Daniel Limonadi Yeah, no, thank you. Thanks for jumping in with that. Okay, so this is a rich and dynamic topic right? We understand that. Our virtual mini symposium consists of a short intro that I'm going to hit. We've got 3 invited presentations
that will have a substantial amount of kind of back and forth conversation as part of each of them we think and then we're going to close with a dedicated moderated discussion, right so kind of just walk them through these in order. As I indicated, I'm Daniel Limonadi, I'm the Chief System Engineer for earth science at JPL. Duane, who you just heard is the Directorate Scientist for the Earth's, uh, Science and Technology directorate at JPL. And Betsy Weatherhead is also kind of helping co-organize this mini symposium. She's retired senior scientist at University of Colorado now at Jupiter intelligence, and has lots of other side activities with WMO and other things kind of going on. So, we'll hit this intro after that Asal Naseri
and Pat Paterson from the Space Dynamics Lab will talk about the historical evolution, current landscapes and future plans of birth observations by NGO and we use the term NGO here to mean commercial and nonprofit, right so truly non governmental entities of all kinds. Both those that are trying to make a buck and You know, the nonprofit variety, which are starting to spring up. So, Asal is the Branch Head of Satellite Technologies at Space Dynamics Lab, Pat help put the material together, but I don't think I think he's got conflicts today. He may be able to make it. We'll see, is the Director Advanced Concepts at the Space Dynamics Lab. So we really appreciate that. I'm being here to give nice introductory talk kind of sets the foundation for most of the conversation today. And then we're going to jump into discussing
strengths and challenges of NGO data, relative to the continuity objective kind of variable variable observations. And That'll be Betsy we're introduced already. And Jeff, Jeff is the Deputy Chief of the National Center of Environmental Information at the climate at NOAA's climate science and services division, and we're really privileged and happy that he's joining our study team and able to talk today on this topic, and then, uh, topic number 4, Jeff will lead with Betsy and Chris Ruf supporting that's going to be focusing on time of monitoring research topics that we think are addressable with NGO datasets give some context of that looking at and other kind of other angles of how you assess, you know, climate observations um, Chris Ruf, who haven't introduced yet is the Frederick Bartman Collegiate Professor of Climate and Space Sciences at the University of Michigan. He's an advisor to new (inaudible) space one of these new space entities and he's the PI of the NASA CYGNSS mission, which is a smallsat. Um, small constellation mission. And then to wrap, we'll have a moderated discussion with Rashmi Shaw and myself, helping run that, uh, the focus of that moderated discussion, we'll be kind of talking about Civil space, how, how can insured civil space agencies respond to and take advantage of these NGO capabilities that you will have heard about in sections 2,3,4. With their strengths and weaknesses, et cetera. So Rashmi is also at JPL in the Earth science directorate, she's the associate technologist and she's also the project lead for the (Inaudible) technology demonstration. So, that's kind of the broad brush of what
we'll be hitting today. Um, you know, we have roughly half an hour time slots for each of these and up to an hour or more at the end. You know, as you see, it's a 3 hour slot today. But we're because the topic is so dynamic, we're going to allow. A decent amount of back
and forth conversation, both during each of the presentations, and obviously at the end of the moderated conversation. So we're going to be flexible on time and just kind of play it by ear on, you know, what, if the topics are starting to (inaudible) out and we need to make sure we got a little time for the next topic so. That's how the flow is going to go. So next I just wanted to go into context like, how does this mini symposium fit into some other activities that are going on.
So, as you heard, this mini symposium is 1 of a few activities related to this case study, the Keck Institute for Space Studies. As a study focused on developing continuity framework for satellite observations of climate. And I'll hit on the goal, expand on the goal of that study in a minute but that study consists of a full week in mid-August or the study team of roughly 25 people will be gathering and spending, you know, literally 40 hours together in the same room. Uh, working through activities associated with the study goal. There'll be a follow up and KISS study another week, long activity at Caltech later in the summer, early fall, then that activity will kind of write a report and submit a report by roughly at the end of the calendar here and leading up to this case, study are a few different mini symposium, right? And these are intended to both provide boundary conditions and inputs for the study to kind of get some of the business taking care of ahead of time, you know, on relevant topics that you'll hear about in a 2nd, and also provide an opportunity for the study team to actually get to know each other right, a lot of us haven't worked together before and so this, you know, organizing these symposia kind of forces us to coordinate, get together and get to know each other a little bit. So that, um.
a little bit of an ice breaker ahead of being stuck in a room together for 40 hours. And, uh. In August and later, so the 1st topic that was covered that was directly related to the study was a mini symposium back at the end of June that Stacey Boland ran and that covered the international national satellite program of record and plans on continuity and this focus really? On civil space agencies. Right?
What are the most European and, um, US, but also a little bit of agencies, you know, Japan. Civil space agencies, where are they planning in the realm of climate observations? So, to compliment that we felt it was important to also talk about the commercial sector. So that's today's mini symposium, right? What are the commercial capabilities plans and opportunities. That impact the program of record and plans on continuity again with the, for climate observations in particular, right? That's, That's the context so we'll be spending time on that. Today. There's a bunch of other activities
that we're tracking. Right? There was another climate center talk earlier in April on the central role of long term satellite observations, focused on climate, radiation monitoring. You see, coming up here in September, There'll be another uh, climate center longterm, satellite record discussion on ocean and climate. Um, that's also going to be relevant to our, our, overall case, study activity many of you may be aware. I just wanted to highlight right? And Mason study on leveraging commercial space for earth and ocean remote sensing came out in March Chris and Pat and others, you know, were on that report and Chris is going to highlight a couple of the key takeaways. In section, 4 of the conversation today. So you, you know, W, we're aware of those other activities and
we're gonna try to tell you a little about them in the context of the conversations we're having today and then you know, the other thing you see at the bottom here is obviously we've got the big table survey related activities, both the mid term review for the 2017 to decadal survey for science and the upcoming 2027 activity and so we're kind of hoping the report output will will feed into those activities a little bit. It'd be useful and that's what just hits a little bit. So, um again, the goal of the broader study, right that the Mini symposium is part of is to help accelerate discussions and plans for a greater and more impactful US contribution to the global climate of system. Right so we know NOAA has contributions here
and NASA has contributions there. You know, maybe things that can be improved across the board a little bit for some of the variables and we're hoping to facilitate that conversation, and you can kind of see the context again below relative to the midterm assessment velocity cable and the planning activities for the next decadal. So we're trying to be feeding into those activities with the report output and Duane and Betsey, is there anything else that you want to add here, but I might have missed. Elizabeth Weatherhead I think you did that beautifully. I like the framing this in terms of there's an entire long set of conversations going on. And this
is an important contribution to part of that. Daniel Limonadi Yeah, yeah, thanks. That's it again. Yeah big picture there's definitely a lot of things I'll hit that again in a 2nd. Okay, so a little bit of the framing and thanks to Jeff and Chris for helping kind of think about this this way. Right? So the presentations you're going to hear today, are are trying to hit
a few different angles right of this topic. Right? The, there's kind of a could element right. Can, Could our NGOs contributing or could they contribute to national international climate observing goals? Should they give them the strengths and weaknesses and want to have a dialogue with, you know, with the audience on on that topic? And if so kind of what's the best way to incorporate them. And so that's all of the presentations and trying to hit help us kind of cover these points today. So Just make sure that's kept in mind and then and sorry for the background noise here. I'm on vacation. Like a lot of the people the times are not perfect. I'm like in a cottage with 15 people. So we have to be some slack a little bit on
the background noise. Um, so the conduct for the day, right? As I think we mentioned multiple times. You know, this topic of NGO contributions to climate observations is rapidly evolving. You know, it's been kind of on the uptick in the last 5 years or so. And as Betsy said, you know, before we started 11. Everybody
expects it to change probably dramatically in the next 5 years and beyond and so we recognize this is a dynamically evolving topic. So, today's keep that in mind, right? Today's presentations are just capturing kind of a snapshot of where we think things stand and where things might be. And we expect significant dialog during each presentation and of the Mini symposium, and, um, you know, again at the end, right uh, uh, moderated conversation. So that's all I had kind of for introduction material. That is a little bit on ground rules. So, a little bit, if you're not familiar with Webex, you know, everybody kind of has their favorite tools, whether it's zoom or Microsoft teams or Webex. You're obviously using Webex today. So, it's just a little bit of etiquette and
how to, like, what buttons to push in case you're not familiar with that. Thanks to Rashmi by the way for putting this together. So you should most of you should your user interfaces for kind of show this. Participant button on the lower right hand. So if you click that button, you see this participant panel. Should pop up and if you want to raise your hand
to speak, right we'll be kind of monitoring for raised hands. Rashmi and I, and we'll ask you to speak if you raise your hand and that's where the hand shows up. If you want to check the chat, right? There is a chat that you can share with everybody. You can click this little kind of comment, window, chat button and it'll open up another box. I didn't show it here. That's the chat box. And so if you want to ask questions. Um, you
know, you can also just type in there and then we can kind of read those out loud. And get them asked and kick off a conversation that way. If you're more comfortable doing that. And then we did want to make sure everybody's muted on the audio side. So, unless you're actively speaking, make sure that you're muted. That's the button here. If you are presenting
usually the buttons up here. On the screen, right? That looks a little bit different. If you're presenting. Um. and I think that's basically it so any questions on the intro before you move on to the 1st topic. Okay, if not then I will stop sharing, I will meet myself and we'll hand it over to Asal. Asal Naseri Okay, uh, I hope everyone can see the Powerpoint slides in presentation mode. Great. Thanks Wing Sze. Hi, everyone my name is Asal Naseri. As Daniel mentioned, Pat Patterson and I are both at Space Dynamics Lab , Pat was the one who puts most of the slides together but unfortunately he had other engagements and he's also the chairman of the small satellite conference, which is only 3 weeks away from us and he has been really busy with that. But, uh, what we wanted to talk to you about, uh, is to
bring everyone on the same page as where we are when it comes to, um, non government, uh, operators when it comes to, uh, remote sensing and observations environmental observations. So we will give you quick. Um, background on the historical evolution, and then at the current landscape and future plans. So, space has been becoming more global since 1966 where, when we had the 1st commercial satellite operator, we had only 6 countries with satellites on orbits to 2020, where we have more than 70 countries with small, mostly small satellite, satellite capabilities, and satellites in space space has been becoming more commercial, so, as I mentioned in 1966, AT& T was the 1st and only commercial satellite operated whereas in 2020, we had more than 130 commercial operators. Some of them you see, here, these
are the ones that have at least 5, small satellites on orbit and we know when it comes to commercial companies, new space companies. There's always a chance that they may not make it or may go out of business. But usually, if they have more than 5 satellites on orbit, they know what they're doing. So you see that. if they have more than five sites on orbit they know what they're doing so you see that here in this case space, X, planets, fire, 1 with, and they were the major players, but there are all those other companies out there as well and this growth in not just the number of countries becoming the space industry, becoming global, but also commercial companies, the number of commercial companies increasing is. Because of, uh, the small satellites so, as you see
here in the past 11 years or so, this is what this chart is showing, uh, the number of small satellites and everyone we have different definitions for small cycles sometimes it's less than 500. sometimes it's less than 1000 or 2200 kilograms for the sake of this chart and the rest of the charts. Let's assume that when we talk about small satellites, it's anything less than 600 kilograms. And you see, uh, from, uh, 2011, uh, where we had maybe 10, uh, small satellites on orbit out of the about 1800 total satellites launched in 2021. 94% were small satellites and here is, uh, the, you see from the 19th, basically, uh, 50, uh 7, if I'm not mistaken, and it was launched, uh, to all the way to 2020 and, uh, later on, uh, what we have has been launched before, and what's going to be launched in the next decade or so. So, over the next decade, nearly as many small satellites are expected to be launched as all the satellites since the beginning of the space. And, um. space
and um so this rapid growth, and in small satellites are mainly because of those commercial operators where they have, uh, now they are planning or have already put constellation of, uh, operational satellites in space. So, let's talk about what's happening right now here you see the estimated number of operating commercial, remote sensing satellites both U. S. and non U. S. international company's from 1995 to 2023. As you see here. Um. two thousand and twenty three as you see here um in early 2020, there were about 225 commercial, remote sensing satellites on orbit compared to about 25 in 2010 and this tremendous increase remarkable increase in the number of satellites with a decade is mostly because of all those um Small sat companies, constellations and a planets. Labs constellation is a big contributor where they started, um, the launches in 2014 and the estimation that you see here, the forecast also includes those companies that have not flown all their, um, constellations satellites yet, like black sky and (inaudible). And then here, um I want to talk about the
new commercial companies or constellations so the new entrance to the commercial space based remote sensing market has has been driving a change in capabilities. You see in this chart, the revisit trade basically temporal resolution and spatial resolution, and the fundamental economic technologies for these current commercial, remote sensing capabilities and constellations. Up top on the charts in the overview of all are those, uh, new constellations with initial launch in 2014 or later. That as you see, um, they have varied, uh, spatial resolution and the spatial resolution can be course, because these are mainly smaller satellites, maybe less capable uh, but, um, the technology is still improving and the, even the spatial resolution is going to improve in time. But when it comes to revisit trade
or the temporal resolution, and the increased rate is because these are larger constellations of smaller satellites. And as you see, um, we have, um coming from multi, multi, straight, strong images as well as radar soar and hyperspace drawer phenomenon phenomenology and these were up until recently rare, soar and hyper spectral very rare in the commercial market. But now we see more growth with companies like, um, that is developing X. Ray radar and other companies. We, we are seeing these capabilities in the market too, but the 1 thing that I want to note here, is that the all their, let's say or established commercial companies like Maxar, um that's acquired, um, a global digital so the, and world view are being operated by and these are larger spacecraft.
In geo platforms, I have the capability for tasking queuing pointing, but most of the other constellations, the small side constellations don't have those capabilities. Here is just a summary of, uh, some, uh, US based, uh, commercial providers and planets, or 2 of the more established ones Maxar right now has, uh, 3 large satellites a part of its world view constellation on orbit. Originally there were 4, but the world view for failed, already in 2019 but you see here that they have a minimum revisited time of 1 day and you can see the phenomenology and the special, a resolution capabilities and the Maxar is planning on launching a 6 spacecraft as part of its world view legion constellation, um, that have been the launch now has been delayed actually, 2, September of 2022 you'll see if they will actually get launched in or not. But they are planning then with these 6 to have basically 15 visits per day. And then we have planet or planet labs that was founded
in 2010 they are now operating two fully operational constellations or planet's scope and sky sat. to fully operational constellations or planet's scope and sky sat and then the newer companies we have, Capella, the BlackSky, Hawkeye and HySpecIQ, as I mentioned, uh, Capella has, um, is, uh, the radar capability and it actually, right now these are all these charts uh, we got them from the analysis report. That is a couple of years old. Uh, so a couple actually has now 7 satellites on orbits and then, uh, Blacksky currently has 14 operational satellites and planning to launch the rest on a frequent space basis. Basically and Hawkeye is the 1st or if, um constellation commercial constellation, or with that has right now 3 clusters of 3 satellites and plan to launch more and then hysSpecIQ they are planning their 1st launch in 2024 for hybrid spectral imaging and as you see, here, you have the, uh, phenomenology, the spatial resolution, and the temporal resolution information for those companies. When it comes to an environmental monitoring the commercial market hasn't grown as much as remote sensing observations, mainly because of the uncertainties in the market in the sense that the other than NOAA and DoD, they haven't been able to establish a customer base and which makes it harder for them to have a foothold, uh, in the market. So, um, the major, um the biggest
developments have been in GNSS-RO companies, and you see here inspire global and geo optics have already established, uh, constellations, operational constellations and orbits. Uh, whereas a planetIQ currently has only 1 satellite on orbit planning to, um launch the about 19 other spacecraft by 2020 for the 2022 is also out of date because of the date. This report came out nut, um, as you see, so, NOAA set a goal of have a warning 20,000 radio profiles a day and, um twenty thousand radio profiles a day and um this is the current capability for 5,000 per day for Spire, but with, uh, they are actually, uh, have or have plans to increase, uh, the those soundings to 20,000 or more planet IQ to 15,000 providers per day. providers per day now, the 1st, 7 slides, which I'm not going to go into too much detail are on the different. Satellite small satellites, larger satellites, like the world we want and constellations information on the bands as well as their orbits, and the number of spacecraft that are currently on orbit or if they have any plans launches in the future. And most of the information comes from these 2 websites, Apollo mapping and asset imaging Corp. And, uh, you see here that the, uh, and these are both US and international
companies like (inaudible) is, uh, from China you have, uh, different, uh, smaller 1. Um basically satellite, uh, versus constellations and you can find information on these uh, this is the amount of information you actually found because it's, uh, commercial companies don't give out too much detail. But and as you see, there are fairly good, a number of companies that give information. But some starting to talk about here as you see in this, um, chart and the next, uh, don't really give out information on the bands or what they plan to do. Um, but, uh, we're hoping that as time passes and they actually establish more capability or a foothold in the market. They will actually provide more information to us. And then finally, we wanted to end this for now with some things to consider
that when it comes to these, uh, commercial or non government, uh, systems, uh, operators. You have to remember that the way. They do. Calibration is very different from what the science community is used to saying if they have to actually perform any calibration, and then there is the lack of cross calibration between constellations there is no information. And there is no way to do that and then the last 1 is a long term stability of the data and the quality of data that's being gathered. So most of these operational constantly, uh, channel constellations are small satellites, which means that they have a limited lifetime on orbit and as they operator and puts or launches more spacecraft to replace the ones that have the orbited, or have failed on orbit. Um, the, um quality of sensors on the spacecraft may change, which actually, the new, uh, generation will probably have more capability, but also as time passes these, um, and, uh, there will be degradation in the, uh, quality in the performance of the sensors. But we really don't know if those companies have can actually
give more detail or have more detail on, um, the, uh, the, for how the performance degradation over time. So, the long term stability is another thing to consider and but still, there is valuable information here that we think should be used to arguments what are those large government programs and satellites that are currently on orbit or are planned to go on or it's not replace those. But actually use these constellations for augmentation of information. And, um um, accessibility to more data. So these were
the slides that we uh, provided I can stop sharing to see if there are any questions. Daniel Limonadi I think that was great. Thank you very much. That's all. Asal, that was a great presentation. Duane had a question when do you want to ask
yours. Duane Waliser oh, sure . Asal, thank you for that. I just noticed in 1 of your commercial companies. They're their seemingly purpose was RF detection
and I, I just I wasn't sure what the commercial purpose or sponsorship, and Daniel, I think probably gave a good answer, but it's kind of curious on what yours should be. Asal Naseri So these are, uh, the commercial companies, some of them only have customers in, uh, DoD. Duane Waliser Okay Asal Naseri I can see actually. Yep, you're right. Daniel answered the perfect perfectly their customers are on the side, rather than civil or commercial site. So, the charts I showed that you will also have access to the ones, especially on
the (inaudible) analysis are mostly focused on what is needed, or the interest of the intelligence community, rather than the science, uh, community. Duane Waliser Thank you Daniel Limonadi okay, before we move on, does anybody else have any other questions for Asal? Dallas Masters This is Dallas Masters from Muon Space. Can you hear me? Yep, I just have a comment about the slide 20 with the assertions that, uh, commercial data from satellite commercial sites. Our's are different than say governance highlights, or don't have cross calibration or have issues with longterm stability. I think that a commercial satellite companies follow typically the same types of development processes that I'd like to do.
The data that they're generating are also calibrated against other sensors, usually larger governance sensors that are higher quality and I think that as well, the stability of a sensor in some senses, depending on the type of sensor that we're that you're flying in the case of those sensors actually don't have stability problems because of the nature of and as well, the companies are trying to put out enough information and supply low level data, such that you can your user of those data sets can judge the quality I do. I do think that there are issues with. communicating the changes that happen over time. But, you know, if the company changes its, um, sensors, but I think that my experience has been the companies are trying their best to uh, give out that type of information to users, like NASA and no and others. So I just want to make that comment. Asal Naseri It was a really good point. Thank you. Daniel Limonadi And I think we're going to delve into that a little bit more in the next couple of sections as well. So I'm sure we're going to talk more
about that. Anybody else have any other questions or comments in this section before we move on. Elizabeth Weatherhead Daniel, are you watching the raised hands? Because I have my hand raised and Eric had his hand raise.
Eric DeWeaver Oh, thank you. And I pretty much raised my hand, but I'm I have a question. Daniel Limonadi Okay. Yeah, so see, I didn't catch who went first. So, maybe Eric, why don't you go first.
Eric DeWeaver Thanks so I, you know. This is a great presentation. I'm really learning, um, one of the things that that's on your slide is, you know, you mentioned Commercial satellites as augmentation. Uh, but I think we have to be a little bit careful about the word augmentation because know is operating under the weather act and whether act more or less mandates, NOAA, to purchase data, rather than launching its own satellite. So I think we've gone beyond documentation in this case. And I think, you know, 1 of the things that,
uh, you know, we've never really worried about before is requirements for, um, climate observing you know, when people launch satellite, they do the best they can, and they, you know, try to make an all purpose satellite. Whereas NOAA purchases data, they they go buy a list of requirements, which, I believe is more or less entirely determined, according by the, by the value of that data for 5 day weather forecasts. So, you worry about things, like latency, you worry about to some extent signal to noise in this, that but there are no requirements that specifically speak to the use of that data for climate observing. And I think there could be I mean, you could make a requirement,
for instance, if the data has to be shared the way it would be, if this were a government launch satellite, you could make requirements about quality control, things like that so, I wonder if you've given that kind of consideration that, you know, this isn't just about augmentation. But how do we kind of you know, think about the requirements and needs of climate observing when we purchase data. Asal Naseri Those are excellent point and I just have to say something a pattern I put that slide together. To generate discussion and conversation, and I think we succeeded. Um, so, uh, one thing, we were that augmentation we were thinking of where the, uh, based on the existing, small sat constellations and you are correct. So, if NOAA, actually goes and buys data that
satisfy their requirements that's perfectly great. And that that is what we want, but we are, we wanted to put a note of caution there that, um, we, not most of these, uh, may not satisfy the requirements. That's why augmentation rather than replacement and, uh, they will, uh, at least the existing companies. Um, mm. Hmm, they were not, um, um well, let's let's stop right there but, yeah, those are really great points. Duane Waliser Okay, thanks. Can I just interject a little bit if these questions are great and it looks like a great, you know, sort of participant list the first time anybody enters a question, if you don't mind, sort of telling introducing yourself so folks know the varied backgrounds that we have. I know Eric, for example, you're
from National Science Foundation. Thanks for joining and anyone else. If you could just let people know where you're from. It'd be great. Thank you. Dallas Masters I can this is Dallas masters I am at Muon space right now and I was formally the head of earth observations at spire global.
Duane Waliser Daniel, you there? Daniel Limonadi Great. Yep, I'm here. Thank you. Okay and I think if you had your hand raised, so I'm going to give this another couple minutes I think. So far the questions substantially land on topics, 3 and 4 on the agenda and so. Let's see if they keep going that way, I'm going to then kind of cut things off, um, if, if they keep going in that direction and then we can wait to have those, like, have more detailed conversation when we let. That's Betsy and Jeff and company through their stuff, but go ahead. Betsy. Elizabeth Weatherhead See, Betsy, you're muted. I don't know if
your hand's still up or not. So sorry. Um, Dallas, Dallas covered. My point is pretty darn well, so I'm happy to take my hand down. Daniel Limonadi Okay, thanks. And then in the chat, um. let's see so, Tim stryker makes a point in the chat. May not be up to date, Tim why don't you just
raise your point if you think it's still relevant here? Timothy Stryker Thank you, uh, this is Tim stryker. I'm, uh, Geological Survey, involved earlier in the licensing and commercial licensing satellites, managing that program at NOAA. Some years ago, and I do recall at the time, most sensing policy, I specifically prohibited the commercialization of weather satellites and unless has been repealed, I think that's still stands, although that certainly does not rule out. Um, you know, the ability, uh, up there to be a mix of, um, public sector and private sector weather observations to contribute to notice ensemble modeling, forecasting services and so certainly there's more and more commercial data available and where, you know, that was purchasing and use of of these data. Um, but I would be a little cautious I think there's still is a
lot of room for foundational public, good earth observing systems operated by NASA and USGS that will be augmented by tremendous. Commercial capabilities, especially once those capabilities are more closely, inner calibrated and the data become more accessible and usable in in the models. And, uh you know, products and forecast, thank you. Daniel Limonadi Great thanks for that point. So I'm going
to go ahead and ask Anthony and Charlie to maybe hold your questions since we are about 30 minutes into this talk now. And why don't you see how the next 2 sections? Um. And then raise your points there if that's okay, so let's transition. anthony davis Okay. But it is kind of technical and about this particular talk. Daniel Limonadi Okay, that's fine. Go ahead Anthony davis I don't see the speaker on, but anyway yeah, it's a question and a comment.
Daniel Limonadi So, Anthony, can you introduce yourself? Anthony davis Well, I work at JPL and okay. The question for the speaker is, or to comment, I guess, kind of comment is reconciling of the very high spatial resolution and the revisit time in NASA and normal climate monitoring. It's just a matter of swift you know, the smaller, your pixels, the smaller swift and that determines how long it takes to come back. Yours. Your numbers don't work that way because yours
satellites are tasked to look back at something. From a note, usually from an oblique view, right? Am I correct? Asal Naseri Hmm. So, Anthony, I'm not sure if I understand your question about when you say Your satellites anthony davis I'll rephrase you. You you stated systematically the size of the pixels, but never the size of the swift. Because that was all the information that was available to us. Okay. Okay. Well, the reason the reason, okay, they, they look at the same meter scale and they look at a few kilometers. But if they're always just
looking straight down, that has to be doing at NASA satellites typically, then there's no way you can come back every day. Asal Naseri Typically, the other thing now, I understand. Sorry. Um, um, we are talking to these, um, depends on whether you have 1 spacecraft or
a constellation. That's true. Okay, that's true. And most of these, uh, so that we're in the slides, uh, especially constellations are in (inaudible) orbits. So, they are covering the whole globe if, depending on the sending node and yeah, depending on the, especially the revisit times the temporal resolution is based on the number of space, crafting the constellation. anthony davis Okay, so you're saying they are typically maybe you're looking.Yes, that brings me my other questions is angular portability. Tasking.
Can they can they can these satellites be tasked to swift over and look at things from another side? Asal Naseri So, I want to say, I'm sure of these, all of these constellations, they have the capability, but the information at least wasn't available to us, or in the random analysis they are not readily available information. For the, and we are talking about again, those small satellite constellations. anthony davis Yes, yes, yes, because that would be very interesting for us to see things from different angles for a whole bunch of reasons I won't go into or, except maybe later.
Daniel Limonadi Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thanks. Thanks everybody. Okay. I think we need to move on. So if that's it I think you're up next you and Jeff so I think when you say you were going to share your screen here for Betsy. So Wing Sze you going to sharing.
Elizabeth Weatherhead Great thanks. So, Jeff, and I are trying to tee up this conversation in terms of strengths and challenges for NGO data. Next slide. Please. And this is roughly what we're going to cover the scientific challenges. I think we have
to keep that in mind. I think it might have been Eric mentioned that we didn't yet have clearly stated requirements for climate data. I think we might, but, um, let's set that aside for the moment, then we're gonna just summarize the challenges as we saw the current, the strengths, the challenges and then a little bit on the current activities. Our intention
here is for everyone else to augment what we've um, written down so that we can, as a community, be more clear on what we feel those strengths and the challenges are next slide. Please. Oh, shoot, we're gonna have to just keep clicking. Sorry about this. I probably should have sent you the app. So this is, this is a plot of the time series of surface temperature data for each of the main continents and then the dark, solid 1 is for the oceans, showing that what we've been seeing over the past is a lot of increase in in climate, the trends. And that has been the focus for climate science. Quite a bit, is documenting the trends. And the accuracy needed in order to document very small trends of often. Roughly point 2 degrees Centigrade for decades is challenging
in and of itself on a global level. Next slide. Please. But previously, therefore, our motivation has really been documenting the, the change in many parameters in many locations as well as examining the impacts. But as we go forward in climate science, it's not just all about trends. I think what we're going to be looking forward to is documenting changes to change
meaning changes in the trends that we have observed, which is a whole new set of challenges for us. There's also a lot of climate science has focused on predicting extreme events and being prepared for those we continue to examine impacts. And then there's also, I believe evaluating mitigation efforts, particularly nature based mitigation efforts as well as estimating economic impacts. So the number of needs that we're gonna be addressing with our climate data is changing from what it has been in the past.
And because of this, I think that we have to evaluate the strengths and challenges of private satellites within that context. Next slide. So, in terms of documenting changes, I showed you this just already. Can you go ahead and hit space bar on that one, and so we have been looking at just documenting the increase in trends, but we might, as some of the climate models are showing us, we might see an increase in in projected temperatures.
And if that's the case, based on some of our models, we want to be able to know that we're on 1 of that expedited trajectories next slide. We can also if 1 wants to be optimistic, um, being, not just looking at continued warming next. Go ahead and hit the space bar. If you would, we might be seeing a decrease. If our mitigation efforts are strong enough and aggressive enough, and being able to detect that is also going to be 1 of the responsibilities of us in the atmospheric science community. So these are incredibly rigorous requirements that we have backing up eric's point. In in the question section for the last talk next slide,
please. So, I want to just identify these some of the strengths that we've already pulled together here. There are multiple funding sources. If we embrace the satellite observations there, a lot of satellites that are addressing issues, for instance, the radio occultation satellites that are addressing weather issues, or their satellites addressing communication issues or surveillance issues, that could also be abused to us in the climate community. So there are a lot of funding sources that may not be directly applied to climate and yet the data can be useful to us. So, to me, that's a strength. I think our previous presenter really did a great job of showing how they're growing capabilities and activities going on in the sector for satellite observations. And, and it's really our responsibility to scientist to make the most out of all possible capabilities and activities as they go forward.
Um, private sector will be often quick to point out that they are willing sometimes to absorb the risk and then only do a data selling agreement. So, that that might actually be very advantageous. Whereas the U. S, government or other funding sources won't have to put all the money at risk for particularly new developments in instrumentation and observing approaches. We can specify the criteria that we need the essential climate variables. I'll have stability requirements and spatial. They have temporal so we can specify the criteria and allow the private sector component or components who can come up with the, the most effective solution. As long as they meet the requirements, let them step forward and and offer the data in that sense. So there are a number of ways in which this can be cost
effective. Private sector is very good at doing things in cost effective ways. Getting things out the door as quickly as possible while still meeting requirements, because their income is dependent on meeting those requirements their acquisition costs speed, agility, flexibility of space architecture as well as leveraging a lot of resources. And my current position. I do also want to say that I worked for Jupiter intelligence and we have no interest in observation. So, please, there's, there's nothing in that self serving for Jupiter here but I am now aware of all of the, the NGO resources who were interested in getting into the climate community, particularly philanthropic organizations, and when it comes to getting into the climate community, many of them are really interested in observations in funding observations, they feel like, that's a legacy gift to the world so, um, if we can embrace appropriate ways to do this, I think it's more appropriate for philanthropists to give money to a private sector entity to put up some satellites that give us critical information is more appropriate than them, giving it to the federal government, or even trying to do that. Next slide please, Jeff,
do you want to cover the challenges? This was more fully developed by you. Jeff Privette Sure. Um, can you hear me? Yep. Okay. Thanks much. Um, yeah thanks, Betsy and, uh, appreciate you going through all that. Um yeah, so some
of the challenges and these are sort of just off the top of my head, not necessarily coming from any sort of research or great reading on this. Um, but as NOAA has been looking at, um, increasingly doing buys and, uh, not sort of building, planned out buses to do sequential buses, which would provide some continuity and, uh, instrument design and so on. I've been increasingly sort of concerned about this 1, which is, um, the requirements would have to be adjusted to what the real need is simply stating things like a temporal resolution spatial resolution latency and so on will not be good enough um, because you could have very different designs, you know, signal noise issues. Um. Um in a lot of digital convergence and so on, which are going to give you things that create discontinuity and every time there's some sort of a technology discontinuity. In the space, um, even if you
are coming down with data that looks like it's meeting the same set of requirements. The downstream users, whether you're trying to construct a climate data record, whether you're putting that into weather, a climate model. Um, many of those that depend on, um, consistency tightly defined consistency the only way to achieve that will be to make adjustments and, you know, you'll be constantly tuning the models tuning the climate data records tuning what other applications are to be able to deal with that technology change. So, you can't always take the lowest best, bidder, bidder, every 5 years. Um, and expect that the cost for that downstream application are going to remain the same. Um, there's
that that tuning. Tuning cost, and there's a, a loss of continuity loss in the sense of, um consistency of the data that those interruptions and disruptions. So that's I've used a lot of words to describe this 1st points, but that's really what it is. Uh, Pre launch instrument, uh, test data must be contractually guaranteed, I think, to the community or to the government here. Um, we've seen this as we know I tried to put together its initial climate data records program. Um starting around year, 2007, uh, we had going back and trying to really draw more accuracy out of the weather instruments than they originally designed to do and to do that you had to go back and say, you know, what was happening in the test chambers, thermal back and so on can we see that test data? Some cases? It was available in some cases. It was not. So if we start to think um, about how to use
commercial data. All of that Pre launch test data. Um, we want to make sure is number one collected. There's a cost to it certainly, but also, uh, preserved. It becomes available to people who are trying to really tease out. Better performance in even post mission use
of the data then maybe it was originally expected to be used to be used for, um, I got a little bit concerned about, on order on orbit configuration. Um, uh, what if I higher payer comes along, you know is this a data buy or is this sort of no, uh, investing in, uh, of nowhere assets. Some federal agency investing in a, um, in a satellite. If it's a data by, you know, there has to be certain consistencies going along with that there can be a higher bidder, or U. S military or some other, you know, buyer who comes along and says, well, actually we need that Satellite to be doing something else, um, that would not be acceptable, obviously for, uh, for climate and consistency and so on jump down there to the bottom. Um, I think
sometimes, you know, as I talk to the different modeling groups, and recently, particularly with the greenhouse gas, modeling and carbon modeling groups, um, some of the hardest things they have to deal with are, in fact, advances in technology. And that's a little bit of a head scratcher at 1st, like, my goodness, we're giving you much better resolution or a much better signal noise. But it's a, again that disruption inconsistency, uh, in in many cases stability of the configuration, or the technology, even if it's poor quality, poor performance and what could be achieved as to say to the art stuff that's actually desirable for some of the climate continuity climate monitoring applications. Does that mean you
don't jump to the new technologies? Not necessarily, but you, you, it's not a 1 or the other. So, the point here is that you want sort of parallel tracks. Some things are doing the best stuff, particularly for, uh, process studies, that kind of thing but but that consistency continuity of even a so called technology can be very useful to some groups. Um, I think that's it. That's it. Thanks so much. Elizabeth Weatherhead Yeah, thanks. Thanks Jeff next slide and Jeff and I think both want to encourage folks to fill in the gaps if we've missed, um, positives and negatives here. Um, let's identify them. I want to just put this symposium here this
mini symposium in in context of what's going on in a broader perspective, and that there are currently activities going on in this direction. In terms of public, private partnerships with NASA, some people might have seen this announcement of 279Million going to 6 private platforms. Duane, Daniel, and I spoke with Kevin Murphy and feel free to hall from NASA's private satellite effort and they shared quite a few of their thoughts with us in terms of related to the issue that we've already discussed about. Whether or not what we're talking about is augmentation, or whether it's going to be the absolute fundamental part of our observing system they pointed out the value of the ingenuity in the private sector collectively and individually, but they also express what Jeff was talking about with, in terms of viability. And that sort of ability for us to count on these particular partners going forward. I think that's one of the things we're learning about in time as we go forward. time as we
go forward but there's certainly interest in the added value that we can get from these NASA indicated their, their desire to not be the primary source of funding for many of these efforts, but to tack on and pull off information that's valuable. When the the activity is already being funded, but certainly seize potential for growth in the coming years. Next slide. There's ongoing efforts within NOAA, I think, NOAA, 1 is often the way in terms of public, private partnerships and the public private relationships have been extremely successful in the weather enterprise. Okay. We might want to acknowledge some of that got off to a rocky start, but there's not clarity of rules of what the private sector does and what what the public sector does but even those roles, and the relationship is evolving. some of that got codified into National Academy study. Some of that just gets classified by the relationships being
built. But I think that many of the benefits and challenges that we've discussed already, no has already addressed them and really to address those successfully when it comes to the weather enterprise. So, I think it makes great sense for us to take lessons learned there and and understand that there is the potential for great success. Next slide. Please. And there are also a lot of activities going on within I'm hearing Geneva now, and I had meetings today with WMO, Tatsuya Kimura who's head of the, the private sector engagement as well, as mainly met with Roberto and myself talking about how they could see private sector issues going forward and they absolutely believe in the growth of this sector, the growth of the potential here, the possibilities moving forward. They have multiple declarations that are now, including the private sector and then we've also got WMO resolution one, which for those who aren't aware yet it was passed last fall and it really replaces resolution WMO 40 and resolution 60 with respect to weather and climate data and the language for that agreement, that resolution absolutely has the private sector identified as partners and they hope that we can go forward for both weather and climate with private sector involvement. Next slide please so, within the international
context, we've got privately funded satellites that are rapidly growing as our previous speaker. So, so beautifully put forward. There are philanthropic of philanthropic organizations, interested in, getting involved in climate observations, and are already involved. Their activities are growing in number of size and complexity their benefits and challenges are apparent in all of these new activities. Next place. So, all I want to do is ask whether or not Jeff, and I are missing anything in terms of the benefits and challenges and whether anyone has thoughts on the roles for NGO observations. Who Evaluates the observations who pays for
them, what type of sharing agreements when we're talking about climate observations, we're really talking about something that's of importance and benefits and the entire world. So, how this goes forward is, is I feel an open question with that I really would love to see some raised hands. Daniel, are you going to moderate this? All right. Daniel Limonadi Okay, and I'm not seeing any way. We got first,
one so we got 1one raised hand Eric. Do you want to go ahead? Eric DeWeaver Yeah, thanks. Um, you know, I, I have heard some technical things that, you know, that I wonder if they might belong in this conversation.
Um, 1 of them is, you know, when you, when you use commercial satellites, you don't necessarily control the orbits and, you know, orbits that are exactly tied to this to the diurnal cycle. You know, equator crossing times fixed are good. Um Orbits that are completely random are actually really good for radio occultation. The cosmic 2 orbits are good for that. But if it's commercial launch, then you may find that, you know, these are launches of opportunity, and they have certain orbital configurations that are not optimal for observing things to make for climate. The critical issue is to make sure that you don't get confused between the diagonal cycle, and the long term trends, you know, which is the equator crossing time drift issue. So, that's something that I think would have to be looked at if you're really thinking about how you're going to use these observations, um and I guess another issue that I've heard as a thing is, you know, if a satellite company sells data to to know, or to another operational agency, they're going to try to sell they may choose to try and sell those soundings, which are most beneficial to increasing the skill score of that particular operating operational system and if they're selling a smallish number of the total observations that they've taken and quality control actually can. It can create spurious trends in a climate
record, you know, if you, if are peculiarities about that operational system, that don't match the real world if the operational system gets updated and then the selection criteria change all those things. I think you would probably want to know about if you're going to try and make a long term record out of that data so those are a couple of things I think there are a few more that I've heard of. Um, but I'm not sure I'd have to dig for them.
Elizabeth Weatherhead Yeah, I think that's a really great point Eric in particular, you know, so many of these challenges that I hear, I keep on wondering well, can that be addressed in a properly written contract? Can that be addressed in properly written specifications? But when we talk about sort of piggy backing on someone else's purchased observations, whether it's the, whether community as you were, just pointing out, could be preferentially asking for certain observations that are not in agreement with climate priorities, piggy backing out and causes his own set of problems so I'm wondering whether that's almost an argument for a climate science criteria to be involved in observations that have the potential of being important to climate, as opposed to saying oh, yeah you, whether people you pay for what you want, you buy what you want. We'll, we'll use it. How we can. Is that what you're saying? I mean, I guess there's a couple of things 1 of them is, you know, I don't really think we've had a conversation about level 0. Eric DeWeaver And that may be, because everybody at kind of knows that yeah, of course, you need the level. 0. um, but it may not be entirely clear
what you mean by level 0, and being being clear about that you know, the, I think experience is that you want multiple processing centers in multiple parts of the world. You know, the, and 1 in Europe, and because when you look at the way they do their processing change, you get really important information about structural uncertainties and that matters very much. You could see this in the most recent report. You know, uh, and, you know. Well, let me just, let me just stop there. I guess the, you know, the other thing is that, you know, when we talk about requirements, it's it's sort of you know, there could be various reports, but it seems to me as a, what matters is that the requirements that are used in the contract in the contract negotiations that the government is conducting. So, you know, we would need to sort of specify that this data is not just being purchased as an input to weather forecasting you know, and a
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