The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to sharply increase its purchases of commercial weather data, potentially committing billions of dollars over the next decade, a senior U.S. Commerce Department official said on Tuesday.
“We’re going to be looking at a high ceiling in billions of dollars over 10 years, which is going to show our commitment and our need for these data sources going forward,” said Taylor Jordan, assistant secretary for environmental observation and prediction at the Commerce Department and director of the Office of Space Commerce. Jordan made the remarks at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in Houston.
NOAA is developing a new commercial data strategy that would give private providers a longer-term view of the agency’s needs, moving beyond the current reliance on five-year indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts. “We need to expand that timeline from a few years up to 10 years,” Jordan said. “We’re looking at going as big as we can for as long as we can.”
As part of the strategy, NOAA plans to be more transparent with industry about the types of observations it will require in the future, providing longer lead times to allow companies to develop and deploy new capabilities. One near-term priority will be replacing data currently supplied by the COSMIC-2 constellation, launched in 2019, which provides radio occultation measurements for weather and space weather forecasting.
“COSMIC-2 is going to degrade over time as it reaches the end of its expected life,” Jordan said. “As we have no plans for a COSMIC-3, and we will not, we will continue to buy commercial data for that specific orbit.” NOAA expects to seek commercial radio occultation data from tropical and equatorial orbits in the coming years.
Beyond radio occultation, NOAA is evaluating data from commercial microwave sounders and global navigation satellite system reflectometers. The agency also plans to launch a pilot program in June to assess the value of commercial wildfire data. “The goal is to assess products like multispectral infrared imagery for wildfire decision making,” said Natalie Laudier, products and piloting branch chief at NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service. The pilot will examine fire detection, intensity monitoring and mapping, she said.
Jordan said the new strategy is intended to give NOAA greater flexibility to work with emerging data providers, including engaging with companies before their satellites are operational. “If you’re going to be on orbit in six months, nine months, 12 months, let us know,” he said. “We will start planning when we can ingest those datasets into our numerical weather prediction models.”
NOAA is also exploring new procurement models that would allow it to buy “data as a service,” paying for access over time rather than obligating large sums upfront. “We want to move into a more flexible construct, where we’re able to pay as we go,” Jordan said, adding that such an approach could allow the agency to move more quickly as new data sources become available.
