World-Class Science and Engineering Team to Measure Hurricanes from Space – to provide faster, more accurate measurements and forecasts of intensities and tracks, potentially saving billions of dollars and thousands of lives annually
Current space-based methods of measuring the intensities of hurricanes have large errors and have not significantly improved for decades. This uncertainty has created a lack of trust in the “official” weather predictions by millions of people worldwide affected by these catastrophic events. Consequently, the predictions and warnings often result in complacency and inadequate response or cause unnecessary overreactions. A team of MIT atmospheric scientists and aerospace executives have devised a unique new space-based approach to address this critical problem. They have formed Tropical Weather Analytics, Inc. (TWAI) to provide the most accurate worldwide measurements and forecasts of hurricanes (also called tropical cyclones and typhoons). With a world-class atmospheric science/engineering team applying unique space-based data acquisition technologies and analytic tools, TWAI will provide proprietary insight into major tropical cyclones for industrial partners, financial institutions and world governments.
TWAI’s operational constellation of microsatellites with onboard sensors is called the Tropical Cyclone Intensity Measurement System (TCIMS). Once TCIMS is deployed, TWAI will provide hurricane measurements that are up to twice as accurate and four times more frequent than today’s satellite-based approaches. This accuracy improvement has been empirically demonstrated to result in major reductions in the uncertainties of damage predictions. TWAI’s technology is complementary to NOAA’s hurricane hunter aircraft and will bring the same level of measurement accuracy, so effectively demonstrated with Hurricane Matthew, to the rest of the world. TWAI’s enhanced insight into tropical cyclone intensities and tracks will have enormous impact on reduction of loss of life and property caused by these catastrophic storms.
TWAI is pleased to announce that the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (JHU/APL) has agreed to partner with TWAI for the system engineering of TCIMS. JHU/APL has been the prime contractor on many upper-atmospheric and space programs, including NASA’s ongoing, highly successful “New Horizons” mission to explore Pluto, its moons, and objects of the Kuiper Belt. It has also played a central role in numerous projects involving the use of low-cost microsatellites.
A.T. Stair, Founder/CEO of TWAI and the Chief Scientist of many space programs, along with Paul Joss, Founder/CTO of TWAI and Professor Emeritus of Physics/MIT, and their team have established new methods that TWAI will use to measure key properties of tropical cyclones from space. To quote Prof Joss, “At TWAI, we are implementing major innovations in atmospheric science. We will be the first to bring the theory of the fundamental thermodynamics of tropical cyclones into the realm of practical measurements of these powerful storms. In doing so, we will carry tropical cyclone measurements to a level heretofore impossible with space-based imaging techniques.” George Lauro, Executive Chairman of TWAI’s Board, former Partner at Wasserstein Perella and a veteran VC investor, states “I am excited to be working with this team of leading atmospheric scientists and space executives on an initiative of such significant and positive societal impact. I look forward to helping the team build TWAI into a high-value commercial enterprise.”
With Headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, TWAI is now in the startup phase. We are seeking partnerships with corporations and industrial partners. If you would like to learn more about TWAI and/or would like to explore commercial partnerships, please contact:
George.lauro@tropicalweatheranalytics.com
More about Tropical Weather Analytics
Once TWAI’s microsatellite constellation, TCIMS, is fully deployed, TWAI will provide other proprietary measurements of weather and environmental phenomena, including 3D, wide-field, high-accuracy, high-resolution maps of clouds and “cloud streets” with accurate altitudes and velocities. In addition, worldwide selectable sea surface (and land) thermal maps with at least 50 meter resolution and ~3ºC temperature accuracy will be available from TWAI. Our target customers include insurance and re-insurance companies, as well as other major companies who want to make a significant positive impact on society while having a potentially high return-on-investment. Other potential TWAI partners include weather services and financial traders who can benefit from high-accuracy and high-frequency data on major tropical cyclones and related phenomena. (www.tropicalweatheranalytics.com)
The above is an official press release from TWAI distributed on October 10, 2016. The owner of Drew Ex Machina, Andrew LePage, is one of the founders of TWAI and a member of its science team.