Satellites have a role to play in mitigating against climate change. Spire COO and member of the board of directors Theresa Condor explains her vision and shows how the work being done by Earth observation data solution firms like Spire play an integral part of the present and future.
KL: You’ve said in the past that space offers potential resolutions to climate challenges, thanks to the gathering of Earth observation data. Can you please tell us more?
Theresa Condor: When it comes to a response to climate change, there are a number of things that humanity can do:
Monitor the status of the earth and natural resources, and changes over time: this includes things like monitoring the global average temperature along with extremes, polar ice melting, deforestation, desertification, ocean levels, etc. In order to do this across the globe and in remote areas for a holistic understanding of what is happening, you need to use satellites.
Avoid making climate change worse by undertaking activities that decrease our greenhouse gas emissions and generally are considered as contributing to net zero targets. This can include things like routing ships or aircraft more efficiently based on weather conditions, wait times at destination, and speed in order to minimise fuel consumption throughout the supply chain. Collecting the data to do this kind of analytics must come from satellites since these transportation assets are operating in a global way and across large remote areas. Another example is regular monitoring of wetland areas around the world, which are usually large and in remote areas, in order to restore or maintain them. This can be important since wetlands act as a natural carbon sink, but when they are degraded it releases stored greenhouse gases. Today, it is difficult to get a regular and updated inventory of global wetland health in order to determine how to protect them.
Adapt to climate change: this usually means finding a way to manage risk and often involves the collection of more weather data from satellites to better understand a hurricane’s path, forecast a flooding event, or make a better decision about what to plant and when to harvest it.
Can you describe some of the data Spire is collecting and explain how it will be crucial for the world in coming years?
It is very important to collect data about the weather, both on the surface of the earth as well as all the way up the atmosphere so that it can contribute to better, more accurate forecasting for people and businesses to make decisions. Other types of monitoring will be important to understand wetlands, deforestation, desertification, ice melting, soil health, oceans, etc.
Other types of monitoring will look at wildfire risk and early detection. And coming out of COP26 (2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference) there is growing interest in using satellites to monitor greenhouse gas emissions to ensure compliance with net zero targets. There are a variety of different types of sensors and processing techniques that can be used such as radio frequency measurements, optical imaging, radar, thermal imaging, hyperspectral, etc.
“AI is going to be important, including the use of AI directly on the satellite network so that decisions coming from the data can be taken immediately and autonomously.”
Theresa Condor
The satellites being used by Spire are the size of a bottle of wine, with each carrying different payloads (sensors). What is the principle, do you get orders from clients, and then make the satellites accordingly?
Spire evaluates a particular market opportunity and whether a particular problem can be solved in a good way using our technology platform. Then we decide to invest our capital in deploying a solution. We have done this related to our business lines of Maritime, Aviation, and Weather. We collect and process the data, create certain tools and insights, and then deliver it to our customers as a subscription product.
For our Space Services business, we enable customers to use our platform and technology to deploy any other type of sensor or application that they specifically want. In this scenario, we provide all of the space infrastructure and technology know-how, and the customer gets a subscription to our software interface that lets them use that infrastructure, similar to how companies deploy applications to the cloud.
Two thirds of data needed to stop global warming are harvested in space. How challenging is it to crunch and organise all that data?
This is a statistic that I read in relation to data for monitoring the essential climate variables as listed by the WMO (World Meteorological Organization). From my perspective, the big problem is collecting the data in the first place, since it relies on space infrastructure that can collect it at high spatial and temporal resolution related to many different variables. And then yes, it still is a challenge to also analyse all of the disparate data sets to get meaningful insights from it. This is where AI is going to be important, including the use of AI directly on the satellite network so that decisions coming from the data can be taken immediately and autonomously.
The satellite industry is still developing. Where do you see it in the next five and 20 years?
I think that in the future, all companies will be using space assets to manage risk and optimise their operations. The business model of Space as a Service, where an organisation does not need to worry about any of the space infrastructure in order to use it, combined with AI and a networked satellite constellation, will make this simple and cost effective to do. Space technology, especially related to satellites, is increasing by up to ten times every five years and this will create opportunities that we can’t even predict right now. Picture where we were in the mid-’90s with personal computers and the internet. That is about the current phase of the space sector at the moment. There is a lot more coming.
“I am optimistic that humanity has and will continue to develop the technology and tools that can help with monitoring, mitigation, and adaptation.”
Theresa Condor
We need to fix Earth, but space debris is also a problem – how would you handle that problem?
Space debris is a problem, especially when you have irresponsible actors that are actively creating debris or not building in relevant de-orbiting mechanisms. It is also important to understand that the responsible use of space brings massive benefits for humans on Earth. So collectively the sector needs to find ways to agree on how to appropriately use this space and create the right incentives for it to be followed. Part of the solution will include better monitoring of debris and part of it will probably relate to licensing. One thing that is extremely important is that there is a level playing field for organisations that show they operate responsibly, rather than giving special consideration to whomever can pay the most.
What proportion of your clients are working on climate change solutions and how willing are you to publicly share the data being gathered?
Spire is a publically traded organisation with a duty to create value for its shareholders. We also recognise that our data can be very critical for decision-makers. We work together with a number of organisations such as the European Space Agency, NASA, and the Luxembourg Space Agency, to make our datasets available to users without payment at the point of use. Our Data Lake, co-sponsored by Spire and the LSA, is a good example of this.
In other scenarios, we have provided operational data for short-term use as a community contribution. During the early months of the covid-19 crisis, for example, we provided operational weather data to ECMWF [European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts] and some other forecasting centres to help prevent a degradation in weather forecasting accuracy after the grounding of the global aviation sector and the loss of weather data collected by aircraft.
You have a unique perspective on how important it is to harvest and analyse information and data. Do you think that with modern tools like Spire satellites we will be able to do something about global warming? Are you optimistic?
I am optimistic that humanity has and will continue to develop the technology and tools that can help with monitoring, mitigation, and adaptation. Whether we can work together to apply these tools in a successful way is a political question.
If you could name three things one can monitor from space, but are harder or less effective to monitor from Earth, what would they be?
Weather measurements for forecasting, global greenhouse gas emissions, and global wetland monitoring. It is important to note that all of these things can be monitored from earth, especially in smaller, local areas. For high frequency, global monitoring it is necessary to complement ground-based measurement techniques with space.
