Company Spotlight: Spire
Marketing
“With insightful conversations about our path and growth plans, the Satellite Applications Catapult recognizes the right strategies to help emerging providers like our company to penetrate new markets”
Darija Trgovcevic – Sales Manager, Agricultural Weather, Spire
Understanding weather data and having access to accurate forecasts are crucial to the agriculture industry. From individual farmers, to countries tackling widespread food insecurity, weather data and knowledge of future threats save agricultural operators money by reducing risk and uncertainty.
The high-resolution imaging that can be accessed from satellites give us more accurate and reliable weather data, plus, space technology has more potential for upgrades and innovations compared to other sensors and technologies used in the industry.
At farm level, farmers can use weather forecasts to mitigate the effect of severe weather, the data enables them to plant, fertilize, and harvest, at the best possible times – for example avoiding a temperate drop that could result in frost damage, or postponing grain drying in advance of a storm.
On a wider scale, this data is pivotal in predicting and monitoring the major causes of food insecurity and famine; extreme flooding, droughts, and pests. Areas prone to excessive flooding can see their plants defences drastically weakened and, even after the waters have receded, an increase in plant pathogens. Inversely, information about precipitation, temperature, and soil moisture can feed drought early-warning systems. These same indicators, combined with pressure and wind data, are used to forecast locust plagues.
Spire is a satellite-powered global data company offering advanced and innovative solutions in the field of weather forecasting. With a proprietary constellation of 94+ satellites, they are able to uniformly observe global weather patterns, including less-populated areas that are traditionally under-observed.
Their LEMUR satellites (Low Earth Multi-Use Receiver) have the advantage of collecting the data about weather conditions (temperature, humidity, pressure and soil moisture) with no interference of clouds and precipitation, which provides highly reliable measurements globally.
Spire are leveraging their notable technology advantages to create a unique weather forecasting service, covering everything from the basics (forecasting temperature, winds, and precipitation) to very advanced fields like forecasting 10-days evolution of root-level soil moisture/temperature. Radio Occultation (RO) technology used to collect the data with their satellites, provides an incredibly precise understanding of global atmospheric conditions at any given point in time.
RO technology gives better global weather visibility, allowing better predictions of disruptive and/or extreme weather events, and to bring a high quality weather forecast that is experimented in highly developed regions the other 6 billion people who need it.
Spire’s team is developing their global weather models that not only leverage the RO dataset, but also guarantees that they are constantly bringing innovation in their weather modelling skills with cutting-edge optimization, for instance by using artificial intelligence to continuously improve their weather forecasts.
Want to find out more about Spire? Check out the resources below or visit their website.
- VIDEO: Spire Weather Day
- VIDEO: Innovations for Numerical Weather Prediction
- VIDEO: Spire Global is part of Scotland’s Space Race
- BLOG: Top 5 Reasons You Should be Using Specialized Agriculture Weather Forecasts
- BLOG: How Spire Weather is driving weather technology forward
- BLOG: How sustainable agriculture is directly tied to advances in weather forecasting
