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The Orbiter: Climate Sensing
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Night Sky Dream

Why the Weathermen Lied and the Penguins Moved South

By Louis Zacharilla, Director of Innovation
Louis Zacharilla

I’ve spent the last two months making the connection between satellites and penguins as well as weathermen and snake oil salesman. I also was talking with a VERY cool astronaut who knows what it feels like to wake up to the shriek of a cabin alarm in space with death inches away and somehow beautifully relate it to a refreshing view of how we can work together to sort through the biggest challenge we face. I also discovered a guy in our industry who has planted 30,000 Giant Sequoia trees.

It’s been a wild seven weeks!

I learned the role satellites and the people inside our industry play as our planet tries to put out our global fire. The seven-part podcast series, This Planet’s on Fire, was underwritten by SatSure. It is a chronicle of what is being done – and undone – thanks to the presence of space and the tool called “satellites.”

The Climate Challenge may be insurmountable. BUT, I learned how hope has taken root because of people who just want to figure out the problem. industrial methane leaks are soon to become a polluting source that we identify from space and then remove from Earth (see Episode 2). In California, where regulations sprout like cauliflower, satellites help farmers, enforcement agencies and specialized companies who rely on them to manage the consequences of drought. The co-founder of Land IQ told us (in Episode 6) that satellite data has helped the state identify water usage during droughts and enforce usage laws. The state hopes this will stabilize agriculture and restore the ecosystems that gives you those cauliflower, tasty almonds, avocados – not to mention drinking water. When you produce 12.5% of the USA’s agricultural goods, as California does, there is a lot on the line because there is so much in the ground. Satellites are key there.

About Those Weather Charlatans!

Fallen Umbrella

Well, not really. I like people who are into meteorology. My dad did not. He suspected that they were like pro athletes, except they made “nice money for being wrong half the time instead of striking out.” Turns out, according to PlanetiQ’s CEO Chris McCormick, it wasn’t their fault. What did they know about RO (radio occultation) anyway? Chris, who had raised $23.9 million after a Series B round led by New Science Ventures and AV8 Ventures in Summer 2019, knew plenty about RO. He knew it could be a meteorological tsunami, so to speak, since the technique determines the attributes of weather (including water vapor and pressure) at all altitudes above the Earth’s surface. This, I learned in the podcast (Episode 7), dramatically increased the accuracy of weather forecasting for those “overpaid” weathermen! With instruments and technology that enable observations every 100 meters through the atmosphere, the company can, like Superman, see through the clouds and storms penetrating all the way to Earth’s surface. It is on the surface where, as Chris likes to say, “weather matters to you most, doesn’t it?”

PlanetiQ experimental missions proved that this will have impact for industries from transportation to renewable energy. And like everyone else these days, PlanetiQ is planning a satellite constellation of its own.

About Those Penguins

If you wrote the best term paper of the year, would you be a cheerleader for satellites and follow penguins to the end of the Earth? I wondered (and asked in Episode 7) how Professor Heather Lynch of Stony Brook University got her mojo for this. She got her degree from Princeton in Physics where her undergraduate thesis was so damn good she received the American Physical Society’s Apker Award for the BEST undergrad thesis in the nation! She decided to apply her expertise ultimately to the analysis of complex ecological data, including the study of survivorship in mammals. Her breeding bird survey program, called the Antarctic Site Inventory, is essential to understanding climate change. Her work led her on a first-of-a-kind ON FOOT expedition to Antarctica where she surveyed, also for the first time, areas where penguin colonies had been spotted by satellite. Importantly, they had been seen moving further and further south due to rising temperatures. Her data did not lie. And we know that satellites, unlike those weathermen of old, would never guess wrong. Or guess at all! Ultimately the 12 million penguins in Antarctica were determined to be “not enough.”

Penguins Chirping

“The penguins that we study on the (Antarctic) peninsula give us an unbelievably good case study in how climate change can impact organisms,’ she said in our podcast.

But the news wasn’t all bad. According to USA Today, which reported about her work on World Penguin Day, the gentoo penguin population has actually increased, as have penguin populations on the rest of the continent where dramatic warming has not occurred.

The report aggregated data for Professor Lynch from 660 sites across Antarctica and relied heavily on satellite photo analyses. And Professor Heather Lynch, whose work has led to the warning that penguins losing habitat could be decimated by 2099, could not be a bigger fan of the work you do as a satellite industry professional.

Even from the Ground, Satellite Professionals Tackle the Issue

The industry’s commitment to improving our “climate sense” does not begin or end with our podcast series, of course. The consciousness has spread everywhere.

Back from her mission to the ISS (and in time to appear in a Super Bowl ad a few years ago!) popular USA astronaut Nicole Stott published a terrific new book (featured in Episode 5) titled Back to Earth: What Life in Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – and Our Mission to Protect It. The power of space combined with the soul of this astronaut-artist led to one of the most profound interviews of a series that every professional in this industry can take pride in.

Many thanks to SatSure (www.satsure.co) for their support!

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