World Meteorological day is a perfect opportunity to raise awareness on why understanding the weather is important. In 2020 fires in California & Colorado, due to extreme drought were recorded to be their largest ever, extensive flooding over large parts of Africa & Asia led to 155 deaths and 875,000 people affected in Sudan and Brazil is estimated to have suffered agricultural losses nearing 3 billion US dollars due to severe droughts.
With such figures, national weather centers are facing increasing pressure to provide information essential for risk management and saving human lives. To help them, CLS provides accurate local, regional, global and real-time information on weather and ocean conditions, a key actor in global weather systems.
Understanding the weather at CLS
Observing atmospheric and ocean changes is essential when trying to understand, model and predict the weather. For 30+ years CLS has provided expert satellite services to the meteorological & oceanographic communities.
Understanding the atmosphere:
CLS provides Iridium connectivity to around 90 weather balloons every month, a primary source of atmospheric data. They measure pressure, temperature and relative humidity as they ascend into the atmosphere. Even when facing temperatures as cold as -95°C and wind speeds of almost 320 Km/h (200 mph) a transmitter on the radiosonde sends the data back to the ground which provides valuable information for computer forecast models, research and predicting weather and storms.
Understanding the ocean:
Since 1986, CLS has been an important partner of major international oceanography programs such as the Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP) and Argo, acquiring, processing and preparing datasets for information networks shared by meteorology professionals around the world (via WMO’s Global Telecommunications System – GTS). As a provider of both Argos and Iridium connectivity to over 6 000 oceanographic platforms every month, CLS helps maintain a connected ocean and, with the arrival of the Kineis constellation of 25 nanosatellites, more than 2 million objects will soon be able to collect valuable ocean and atmospheric data in near real-time.
CLS, Key partner to the international meteorological community
Thanks to its expertise in the in-situ ocean observation platforms that contribute to marine meteorology, including gliders, drifting buoys, moored buoys, profiling floats, and Automatic Weather Stations, EUMETSAT and the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology & Geophysics have chosen CLS to lead two major projects.
About TRUSTED
A EUMETSAT/Copernicus project, CLS leads the TRUSTED project, aiming at developing 150 SVP-B drifters, fitted with HRSST sensors, in order to provide fiducial reference measurements that will be used to calibrate and validate Sentinel Satellite measurements
About MMS1
The Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology & Geophysics has chosen CLS to lead a consortium and create an advanced Marine Meteorological System. A system that will help develop the maritime economy and promote the tourism sector by providing key information such as weather forecasting
