tndl

These models actually outperform traditional methods on many fronts, including accuracy a lot of the time. They are technically generative AI models, but they're definitely not LLMs.

Really exciting to see NOAA finally make some progress on this front, but the AIGFS suite likely won't outperform ECMWF's AIFS suite any time soon. The underlying architecture between AIFS and GraphCast/AIGFS is pretty similar (both GNNs), so there won't likely be a model-level improvement. And most of ECMWF's edge lies in its superior 4DVar data assimilation process. AIGFS is still being initialized on NOAA's hybrid 4DEnVar assimilation process as far as I understand it, which is still not as good as straight up 4DVar unfortunately.

That seems to be the case from what I've heard.

Things are changing quickly in this area. Several projects/companies working on AI data assimilation (an alternative route to creating analysis data like ERA5)[0].

Also a lot of companies working on the data collection side, replacing/augmenting government data collection. Spire's an example of this in the space domain, and Windborne and Sorcerer (my company) do weather balloons.

[0]: E.g. Brightband's AIDA (https://www.brightband.com/blog/aida/) and Project Aardvark (https://www.turing.ac.uk/blog/project-aardvark-reimagining-a...)

Very interesting, I'd love to hear more about it! In short, yes, we plan to do descents near urban areas if there's a route where we can go down to a safe height and stay away from any airspace. What cities are you looking at right now?

Send us an email! team@sorcerer.earth

One of the first ideas we explored was putting an electrolyzer on the balloon to replenish hydrogen over time. Unfortunately right now, for balloons our size and power budget it's just not feasible. And actually, we can get a pretty low leakage rate with our materials which lets us stay aloft for a really long time, but eventually the UV degradation becomes to extreme.

We're actually just going to have kids launch our balloons, it's no problem:

  A person who is 6 years of age or younger who
  intentionally releases, organizes the release of, or
  intentionally causes to be released balloons as 
  prohibited by s.
  379.233 does not violate subsection (4) and is not. 
  subject to
  the penalties specified in subparagraph 1.

I don’t know much about WAPS at all, but generally speaking, we’re only interested in doing weather sensing. As of now, we’re not planning to license the vehicle at all. And generally speaking our platform doesn’t work for payloads that are heavier than ~0.25lb and have more than minimal power requirements.

This might be the coolest use case I’ve heard suggested. We’re not quite at the level where all of this is user friendly enough, but let’s catch up in 9-12 months

Not yet, but keep an eye on https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

Reach out if you think we could help at all :)

What's the project? Maybe we can help!

Can I ask how you handled the regulatory aspect of launching from urban areas in SF? I can imagine the FAA would have given you some trouble?

We actually fall under a weather balloon exemption to the normal FAA rules for unmanned balloon flights. Here’s a quick rundown of the relevant rules and regulations (Part 101.1) for weather balloon flights in the U.S. Our balloons fully comply with all of these:

- Any on-board cellular tracking devices must be set to Airplane mode before takeoff (we don't have any cellular) - Each individual payload box/package must weigh less than 6 pounds (ours is <250g)

- If a payload has a weight-to-size ratio exceeding 3.0 ounces per square inch, it must weigh less than 4 pounds.

  - Calculation: Divide the total payload weight in ounces by the area of its smallest face in square inches.

- The string connecting the payload to the balloon must break under an impact force of no more than 50 pounds (our string is 30g)

- It’s prohibited to design or operate an unmanned free balloon in a way that poses a hazard to people or property.

- Dropping objects from the balloon that could endanger people or property is not allowed.

We don't have to notify the FAA about our operations as long as we meet these criteria. To be super safe, we don't launch near airports or other busy areas.

That's the goal. We're all from Florida, so the possibility of reducing the damage caused by hurricanes was a big reason we started the company in the first place.

Our balloons are actually cheap and steerable enough that we plan to fly them into TS/Hurricanes to get data way out in the Atlantic, farther than hurricane hunters can operate.

Factors like these mean in prior decades the total damage costs may have been more similar to today's than they appear but a lot of the damage data we gather and report now wasn't counted or gathered then

This is definitely part of it. Another part is that people live in more at-risk regions now than in the past (Florida is a great example, population has more than 10x'd since 1950).

Ultimately, the way we think about it is no matter what the underlying cause, weather-related damages could be significantly reduced with better data/forecasts

What we're doing wouldn't be possible without the work the Loon team did (and published)

This is super interesting, I'd never come across ARGO before. Data assimilation is a similar problem for our data, and there currently exist systems for assimilating weather balloon observations into gridded reanalysis data (https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/). One thing we believe, however, is that the reanalysis step in weather forecasting is unnecessary in the long term, and that future (ML) weather models will eventually opt to generate predictions based on un-assimilated raw data and will get better results in doing so.

That being said, trajectory-based data tooling could be super interesting to us. Let's definitely chat: austin@sorcerer.earth

And re: recovery, we're pretty confident we'll be able to recover the majority of our systems. Being in the air has the advantage that we can choose to 'beach' ourselves in a specific location, rather than the first place we run across land like with the buoys. At his previous company, Alex wrote a prediction engine able to get similar balloon systems to land in a predicted 1kmx1km zone for recovery

a little bit of each right now, depending on what the customer wants

1. Wind speed/direction, air pressure, temperature, humidity, and solar irradiance. We are considering doing atmospheric composition as well, there are a couple of partners that are interested in GHGs, VOCs, water vapor, etc. We have the weight budget to do it, but we haven't flown any production payloads with those sensors yet.

2. The US National Weather Service actually has a commercial data buy program called MESONET [0], where they buy weather data from both academic and commercial partners. We're in the process of becoming one of their commercial partners now. Once we are, a single balloon will pay for itself in a matter of days with the data it can collect, which will let us scale up the number of systems we have deployed. The data we collect right now also lets us build niche weather forecast products like the stratospheric wind forecast mentioned in the post. Once we have enough balloons up, we can start producing useful weather forecast products at a regional and then global scale.

[0] https://nationalmesonet.us/

We're not hiring right now, but definitely check back in a few months. As for advice, there's almost always a place for talented engineers. https://www.climatetechlist.com/ and https://jobs.climatebase.org/ both aggregate jobs at climatetech cos specifically if that's what you want to pursue.

XD

Very cool! Are you working on some kind of airborne solar platform?

Yeah, it's a shocking number, and it's just for the US. The global estimates for severe weather are even higher [0], and in places with less infrastructure, the costs are usually more heavily weighted toward human life lost.

Obviously what we're doing can't prevent severe weather from happening, but even very small improvements in accuracy and timelines can have a massive beneficial effect when a disaster does happen. My cofounders and I are all from Florida, so hurricanes are the most visceral examples for us. When hurricanes hit, there are always issues along the lines of "we didn't have the right resources in the right places to respond effectively." Those types of issues can be combated with better info.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/818411/weather-catastrop...

For sure, we'd love to do some launches with some local folks. We've done launches with a few different companies in SF at their offices too, send me an email and we can figure something out: austin@sorcerer.earth

We do all comms via satellite, including the current GPS location, no comms over VHF. I'm curious how you're tracking down a traditional radiosonde though, do you actively chase while it's in the air and then use visual reference as it comes down?

We've deployed a few dozen, and we don't have a public API right now but send me and email: austin@sorcerer.earth

Pretty much this. We add the data the balloons themselves are collecting to make things more precise as well

Every once in a while things go spectacularly wrong up there and we kick ourselves for not doing a b2b saas

How we make it go up and down is the secret sauce :) I'm a hangglider guy, so I'd love to be using thermals, but I can say that's not how we do it right now

We're not hiring right now, but send me an email (austin@sorcerer.earth). And Max did the website, it's built on webflow