Not Lost in Space

Image: NASA

From 250 miles away, scientists are literally working at a higher vantage point from the International Space Station to study the Earth’s climate. Pictures of massive wildfire plumes and volcano eruptions show far reaching impacts. Temperature and pressure measurements on Earth can be triangulated with those from space to validate various hypotheses. Distances between land and water markers can be measured to track changes in time.

Source: NASA

Source: NASA, wildfire plumes

Emerging companies like Satellite Vu are creating climate imagery and data software platforms, dare I say climate-as-a-service, to facilitate decisions that lower climate impact. Legacy companies, like Surrey and its existing satellites, are finding renewed opportunity by applying its existing technology to the climate use case.

Source: NASA

One application of all this new climate data could be as input for simulation models to run what-if scenarios and create AI-trained decision agents that integrate into business workflows for use cases such as mining, logistics, and shipping. Enabling transparency has been a consistent software capability. Scientific measurements without human bias and not lost in translation: things that resonate with me as an engineer at heart.