Christine Thropp
Spire Global has booked a $9.9 million order from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to deliver commercial radio occultation satellite weather data to the agency in support of the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service.
The fifth and final delivery order was awarded under an existing indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for purchasing vertical atmospheric temperature profiles and other RO data supporting operational weather models and several applications, NOAA said Tuesday.
Chuck Cash, vice president of federal sales at Spire, pointed to the agency’s Commercial Data Purchase program as an example of a public-private partnership that aims to address complex global challenges.
“We value our long standing relationship with NOAA in helping to improve the accuracy of weather forecasting so that as a society we can better predict, adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change for the protection of life, property and the environment,” Cash added.
Under the order, Spire will provide NESDIS with 3,300 RO profiles daily over a six-month period that will commence Jan. 18, 2023. The delivery is in line with the initiative’s Commercial Data Purchase project that supports operational weather forecasting.
NESDIS offers the use and distribution of the RO data without restrictions, promoting open sharing of near-real-time data among all global users.
NOAA is already planning to continue commercial data purchases via another IDIQ to sustain integration of data into the numerical weather prediction models of the agency.
