Company deploys sensors over oceans to improve weather forecasts

Sofar Ocean, a company that makes instruments that collect vital ocean data, known as the Spotter, has now spread enough of these sensors to give them a glimpse into half of the world’s oceans, the company announced Friday. By the end of 2021, the company hopes to cover all the oceans.

There are already more than 1,000 low-cost, remotely controlled Spotter coastal and open ocean drifter buoys deployed, and the data coming from them goes into a proprietary marine weather prediction model and can also be used to help improve models run by others, including government agencies.

Although there are many of them, the drifter buoys that move along with ocean currents are not as sophisticated as many more expensive government-deployed sensors, such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) network of buoys.

However, the company provides an example of what the private sector is increasingly capable of doing on land, sea, air and in space.

Namely, gathering data, processing it and selling it to paying customers as well as providing it to government agencies.

The next NOAA leader will need to think through how the National Weather Service and other agencies take advantage of private sector firms operating everywhere from low Earth orbit to underwater in order to obtain the most reliable data possible, potentially at a lower cost than in the past. NOAA is already working with private sector satellite companies to help improve the accuracy of its weather forecast models.

Sofar Ocean CEO Tim Janssen said the company is rooted in “The premise that ocean data is inherently valuable,” he said in an interview. “Clearly from an environmental perspective that’s the case.”

“If we can show that we can actually help industries perform better, save them money by collecting more ocean data that means that the paradigm of ocean sensing is going to change fundamentally,” Janssen said.

Each Sofar Ocean drifter buoy provides real-time wave, wind, temperature and ocean current information, and can be deployed by hand aboard a ship.