Tomorrow.io’s Microwave Sounder Satellites Capture Critical Atmospheric Insights

BOSTON, September 5, 2024 – Tomorrow.io, the world’s leading Resilience Platform™, today announced that its first two microwave sounder satellites, Tomorrow-S1 and Tomorrow-S2, have successfully captured initial atmospheric observations within days of their August 16 launch. Tomorrow-S1 began collecting data just 11 days after launch, with Tomorrow-S2 following suit on August 30. This milestone represents a key step for Tomorrow.io in achieving its goal of providing unprecedented sub-hourly revisit rates—an industry-first.

The observations from both satellites provide cutting-edge insights into atmospheric conditions, including temperature, humidity, and precipitation patterns, which are particularly impactful over data-sparse regions like oceans where other sensors are limited. Of particular note is the detailed multi-channel imagery captured of Typhoon Yagi, demonstrating the satellites’ advanced capabilities in observing complex weather systems.

“The initial data from our microwave sounders is already delivering high-quality results,” said Rei Goffer, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Tomorrow.io. “The high-resolution imagery and frequency of observations we’re achieving are set to revolutionize our weather prediction models, particularly in tracking rapidly evolving systems like typhoons.”

While AI weather models are showing great promise, the global weather data problem remains a significant challenge. Tomorrow.io’s constellation addresses this issue by providing a comprehensive global dataset crucial for training AI models and initializing them with real-time observations. This is particularly valuable in regions where traditional weather measurements are lacking, effectively creating the missing link for advancing AI-driven weather forecasting on a global scale.

Tomorrow.io has developed its sounders payload in collaboration with MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MITLL), building upon radiometer innovations that MITLL developed for NASA’s TROPICS mission.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Tomorrow.io and build upon LL’s radiometer technology for use within Tomorrow.io’s microwave sounder constellation. Our work together marks a breakthrough in the revisit capabilities of these extremely valuable measurements,” said Bill Blackwell, Laboratory Fellow at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Principal Investigator of NASA’s TROPICS mission. “By increasing the frequency of global atmospheric observations, we are poised to transform our understanding of rapidly evolving weather systems, particularly in data-sparse regions. This advancement has the potential to greatly improve weather forecasting and climate monitoring on a global scale.”

While calibration is ongoing, both Tomorrow-S1 and Tomorrow-S2 are already integrated into the Tomorrow.io platform for real-time tracking. This deployment sets the stage for seamless coverage in their orbital plane once commissioning is complete, paving the way for full data integration in the near future.