NOAA Awards Spire 6-Month Contract for Commercial Weather Data

Artist rendition of Spire’s Lemur-2 satellite. Photo: Spire

The National Oceanographic and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) has awarded Spire Global a six-month contract for commercial weather data. Spire announced Tuesday that this order represents the largest volume of commercial weather data purchased to date by NOAA under the Commercial Weather Data Buy Program. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Spire will provide NOAA with commercial Radio Occultation (RO) weather data for the administration’s operational Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. Spire said this data will increase the volume of RO data available for national weather prediction models, to improve their accuracy and decrease uncertainty in weather forecasting. 

NOAA will be purchasing Level 0 and Level 1 RO profiles from Spire. The order will provide 3,000 radio occultation profiles per day, out of Spire’s constellation’s capacity of more than 10,000 profiles per day. The data will also be made available to international meteorological organizations and the broader U.S. federal government. 

“As we see the effects of global warming impacting our weather patterns and events across the globe daily, the U.S. has a duty to its citizens to increase its weather forecasting capabilities to ensure the protection of millions of lives from extreme weather events,” said Peter Platzer, CEO of Spire. “By providing data and analytics to NOAA’s weather prediction models, we know we can strengthen those models, ultimately saving lives and millions of dollars.” 

Spire operates a constellation of just over 100 Radio Frequency (RF) data collecting satellites that have weather, maritime, and aviation use cases. The company recently became publicly traded after a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger.