Tag: sustainability

Weather radars see more than just the weather: they see smoke from fires, meteors, birds, mayflies, and almost anything else in the atmosphere. This makes weather radars an invaluable tool for scientists seeking to further the understanding of atmospheric processes and anything else that happens to be flying through the radar’s field of view. The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) seeks to accelerate sustainability-related innovation and research by helping to minimizing the cost and time required to store, acquire, and analyze large weather and climate datasets.

The AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program makes high-value, cloud-optimized datasets publicly available on AWS. This quarter, we released 44 new or updated datasets including satellite imagery over Africa, a large-scale climate ensemble, and product listings with 3D renderings. Learn how you can put these open datasets to work.

We are happy to announce the selection of the 10 finalists and participants in the inaugural AWS Clean Energy Accelerator program. These ten companies were selected by a panel from AWS and Freshwater Advisors, from 218 applications received from 38 countries around the world. The applicants ranged from pre-revenue to $50M in annual revenue and from 1 to more than 500 employees.

With a rapidly growing population, the world is increasingly dependent on the ability to develop and maintain sustainable agriculture and healthy environments. Learn how BASF Digital Farming is leveraging both National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather data hosted on AWS, and commercial weather data, to develop digital solutions to help farmers effectively monitor and manage their fields, and help drive farm sustainability.

OCEARCH is a data-centric organization built to help scientists collect previously unattainable data about the ocean. Their mission is to accelerate the ocean’s return to balance and abundance, through innovation in scientific research, education, outreach, and policy, using unique collaborations of individuals and organizations in the US and abroad. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), we invited Fernanda Ubatuba, president and COO at OCEARCH, to share how her organization is making strides in helping ocean conservation and how AWS is supporting her mission.

Addressing climate change requires innovation across the world, across industries, and across startups and multi-national corporations. From distributed energy to storage solutions to efficiency and optimization software—clean technology investment and innovation is surging. With this surge in demand comes a rapid proliferation of startups working to solve today’s biggest energy challenges. To help foster this innovation, AWS is launching the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator.

What if we were to democratize access to data and compute so that anyone, anywhere in the world could contribute to climate science? The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) seeks to accelerate sustainability research and innovation by minimizing the cost and time required to acquire and analyze large sustainability datasets. ASDI supports innovators and researchers with the data, tools, and technical expertise they need to advance sustainability initiatives. ASDI is committed to making climate-relevant data easier to access and analyze. ASDI’s growing data catalog comprises petabytes of open data.

Today, Amazon announced that it is now hosting petabytes of data from the largest and most updated climate simulation dataset in the world. Through two cloud grants from the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) to the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), Amazon is enabling climate researchers worldwide to access and analyze the dataset used for the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC-AR6) on the AWS Cloud. The report—scheduled to be published in May 2022—provides policymakers worldwide with the latest assessment of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The climate simulation dataset, also known as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) data archive, traditionally hosted and distributed through the ESGF servers, aggregates the climate models created across approximately 30 working groups and 1,000 researchers working on IPCC-AR6.

C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change. C40 empowers cities to collaborate effectively, share knowledge, and drive meaningful, measurable, and sustainable action on climate change. C40 delivers insights to help city governments understand how to deliver emission reductions and climate resilience. C40’s primary platform for sharing this knowledge is the C40 Knowledge Hub, launched in 2019, to provide all participating cities with the knowledge and tools necessary to drive large-scale climate action. The Knowledge Hub is an online platform bringing together insights, practical experiences, and tested approaches from leading cities, for cities at every stage of their climate commitments.

Saildrone builds and operates a fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) designed to collect high-resolution oceanographic and atmospheric data in remote oceans. Known as saildrones, each vehicle can stay at sea for up to 12 months, transmitting real-time data via satellite. The data collected is used to inform climate models and extreme weather prediction, maritime domain awareness, maps and charts, and sustainable management of resources. Using clean, renewable wind and solar power, saildrones provide access to the world’s oceans at a fraction of the cost of traditional ship-based methods, while drastically reducing the carbon footprint of global ocean observation.