Privacy Policy Open-weather All activities Contribute to the public archive Public Archive Open-weather apt Contact Sheet Mini Nowcast Nowcast 2020 About People and ground stations Public Archive Data MoU Take part Contact

Privacy Policy

Open-weather

All activities

Contribute to the public archive

Upload your recording and help create a collective record of earth and its many weathers.

We accept recordings of automatic picture transmissions (APT) from satellites NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19.

Please note that by submitting this form you agree to license your contribution under the Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. You can revoke this permission at anytime by writing to us.

Public Archive

A patchy record of DIY satellite imagery and weather notes since 2020. The open-weather public archive is open to everyone willing and able to contribute.

Open-weather apt

A browser-based decoder for automatic picture transmissions (apt) from satellites NOAA-19, NOAA-18 and NOAA-15. Open-weather apt was developed to improve access to satellite signal decoding for all practitioners.

Contact Sheet

Mini Nowcast

Nowcast 2020

About

Open-weather is a feminist experiment in imaging and imagining the earth and its weather systems using DIY tools. We weave speculative storytelling with low cost hardware and open-source software to transform our relations to a planet in climate crisis.

Co-led by Soph Dyer and Sasha Engelmann since 2020, open-weather makes artworks, leads inclusive workshops and develops resources on satellite imagery reception and reading. Through these activities, a network has formed around the project, currently numbering more than one hundred DIY Satellite Ground Station operators around the world, from Buenos Aires to Berlin.​​

In the tradition of intersectional feminism, open-weather investigates the politics of location and interlocking oppressions that shape our capacities to observe, negotiate, and respond to the climate crisis. In doing so, open-weather challenges dominant representations of earth and environment while complicating ideas of the weather beyond the meteorological.

As well as working with schools and small groups, we have been commissioned by The Photographer’s Gallery (UK), Sonic Acts (NL), Nieuwe Instituut (NL), Library Stack (US), Ràdio Web MACBA (ES), Onassis Stegi (GR), Getxophoto (ES), Our Networks (CA) and Sound Camp (UK) among others.

Open-weather catches a satellite in London on the first day of COP26. From left to right: Sasha Engelmann, Sophie Dyer. Image: The Photographers’ Gallery

Funding

We are always fundraising, if you are able and would like to support open-weather’s activities, please get in touch. Our current fundraising focus is labour and materials costs to cover the Year of Weather.

Open-weather is the recipient of funding through the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, in the framework of Sasha Engelmann’s early career Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship ‘Advancing Feminist and Creative Methods for Sensing Air and Atmosphere’ (2022–2024).

In 2024, open-weather is also supported by British Academy Talent Development Award (UK), the Open Science Hardware Foundation (US) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (US).

We have received financial support by way of project-based commissions:

‘When I image the earth, I imagine another’ was supported in eBook form by Library Stack (US) and NN Contemporary Art (UK). An installation of ‘When I image the earth, I imagine another’ was shown at Getxophoto Festival (ES) in June 2022. The original online artwork ‘When I image the earth, I imagine another’ (COP26 nowcast) was commissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery (UK) in partnership with CCIC Tabakalera (ES) in 2021.

The Impossible Weather Station has been supported and hosted by Lothringer 13 Halle (DE) and Getxophoto Festival (ES). Video works by open-weather have been supported by Well Projects (UK) and Collective Gallery (UK). Sound works by open-weather have been supported by Soundcamp (UK) Movement Radio (GR) and Make Me A Signal (CH).

Open-weather DIY Satellite Ground Station workshops have been supported and hosted by: Akademie Schloss Solitude (DE); Wagenhallen Kunstverein (DE); Lothringer 13 Halle (DE); Kunsthochschule, University of Kassel (DE); The Photographers Gallery London (UK); Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art (PL); Opolno Zdroj Community (PL); Onassis Stegi (GR); Sonic Acts (NL); Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University (UK); Royal College of Art (UK); Claiming*Spaces at Technische Universität Wien (AT); Rhode Island School of Design (US); Digital Cultures Lab at Nieuwe Instituut (NL); Royal Holloway University of London (UK); Peak (UK); Ràdio Web MACBA (ES); Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (NL);

Open-weather has held funded artistic residencies at Akademie Schloss Solitude (DE, 9 months) and Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art (PL, 3 months).

The first version of website was made possible by Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (PL).

People and ground stations

Open-weather

Sophie ‘Soph’ Dyer (they/all) is a designer, artist and researcher living between Vienna and Durham. Their work combines visual, aural and spatial storytelling with investigative and participatory methods. Soph teaches the Critical Cartographies studio at Design Academy Eindhoven and is an External Advisor to Forensic Architecture. They have worked in digital investigations and until 2023 was a member of Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab. At Amnesty, Soph led the organisation’s crowdsourcing initiative to create the first city-wide map of surveillance cameras in New York, which was used to successfully sue the NYPD. Prior to Amnesty, they were a Senior Researcher with the transparency group, Airwars, and worked for more than a decade with different cultural groups. Collaboration and experiments in pedagogy run throughout Soph’s practice. They co-organised and ran the Feminist Open Source Investigations Group (2019–2022); Free Seminar at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths (2015–2017); and Parallel School Glasgow (2014) among other initiatives.

Sasha Engelmann (she/her) is a London-based geographer exploring interdisciplinary, feminist, and creative approaches to environmental knowledge making. Her current AHRC funded project – Advancing Feminist and Creative Methods for Sensing Air and Atmosphere – explores the value of feminist principles, creative practices and ‘social design’ tools for citizen-led monitoring of air quality and weather patterns in a time of climate crisis. Her book Sensing Art in the Atmosphere: Elemental Lures and Aerosolar Practices (Routledge, 2020) investigates the role of artistic communities in activating political awareness of air and atmosphere, from clean-air breathing rights to campaigns for ‘lighter-than-air’ mobility. She is Senior Lecturer in Geohumanities at Royal Holloway University of London where she teaches at the intersection of geography and the arts and humanities.

Open-weather network

The open-weather network is a group of people, spread around the world, operating DIY satellite ground stations and contributing field notes on weather and climate to the open-weather archive.

Below is a list of people and ground stations who contributed to the nowcast for COP26. Many others have participated in DIY satellite ground station workshops and submitted imagery to the open-weather archive.

Current and core collaborators

Beyond open-weather network, collaboration is intrinsic to how open-weather works. Below is an incomplete list of current and longstanding collaborators. Check the “Credits” section on individual pages for more comprehensive attribution.

Data and permissions

Please practice careful and equitable attribution when using our materials. When referencing open-weather in academic writing, please cite us.

Unless stated, all images on this website and content in the open-weather Public Archive can be shared under the Creative Commons license:

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED)

Read more on the Creative Commons website.

Unless a different credit if provided, all content on this website should attributed to “open-weather”.

We moderate submissions to the open-weather Public Archive. In a distant future, when open-weather ceases activity, we are committed to uploading the archive to the Internet Archive or a comparable archiving project.

We do our best to get informed consent from anyone who is in documentary photographs or videos. We recognise that this consent is ongoing and it can be withdrawn at anytime. If you have submitted materials to the open-weather Public Archive, feature in documentary material or you name or image is being used in a way that you would prefer not (you do not need to tell us why), you can withdraw your consent by writing to us at: openweathercommunity@gmail.com

Public Archive Data MoU

The open-weather Public Archive is open access and licensed under the Creative Commons licence Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. If you are a contributor, you can revoke this permission at any time by writing to us.

In addition to this Creative Commons licence when downloading, storing, using and sharing this data we ask that you honour the conditions of this Data Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Data provenance

1.1 Open-weather
Open-weather is a feminist experiment in imaging and imagining the earth and its weather systems using DIY community tools. Co-led by Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann, open-weather encompasses a series of how-to guides, critical frameworks and public workshops on the reception of satellite images using free or inexpensive amateur radio technologies. In the tradition of intersectional feminism, open-weather investigates the politics of location and interlocking oppressions that shape our capacities to observe, negotiate, and respond to the climate crisis. In doing so, open-weather challenges dominant representations of earth and environment while complicating ideas of the weather beyond the meteorological.

1.2 Open-weather network
The open-weather network is made up of more than one hundred DIY Ground Satellite Stations across the world. Open-weather recognises that there may be varied levels of engagement with the Public Archive by different members of the platform, and considers each of these engagements as legitimate.

1.3 Open-weather Public Archive
The Open-weather Public Archive is a repository of satellite imagery, metadata, textual ‘Weather Notes’ and visual documentation uploaded by the open-weather network. The archive launched in 2020 using Google forms and sheet, before relaunching in 2024 on a Greenhost

1.4 NOAA POES Satellites
The satellite images in the Open-weather Public Archive are from the three US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites, NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19. The images were received on the satellites’ analogue 137 MHz Automatic Picture Transmission (APT). NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 satellites are classed as Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) and are part of a larger fleet of satellites, the first of which were launched in the 1970s.

Citation

2.1 Citing the complete dataset
Open-weather Public Archive, 2020 – YYYY, multiple locations. Open-weather CC BY 4.0

2.2 Citing a subset of entries
When citing under 20 entries, list the ground station operator names in last-name alphabetical order:
Name [first last], Name [first last]… and Name [first last], Year [or range], open-weather Public Archive, Location [or Multiple locations]. Open-weather CC By 4.0

For example:
Soph Dyer, Sasha Engelmann, and Lotti Jones, 2024, open-weather Public Archive, Multiple locations. Open-weather CC BY 4.0

When citing over 20 entries, mention the criteria used to define the subset:
Open-weather Public Archive [define subset], Year [or range], open-weather Public Archive, Multiple locations. Open-weather CC BY 4.0

For example:
Open-weather Public Archive (manual ground stations only), 2023 – 2024, open-weather Public Archive, Multiple locations. Open-weather CC BY 4.0

2.3 Citing an individual entry
For an individual entry include:
Name [first last], open-weather Public Archive, Date [Month DD YYYY], Location. Open-weather CC BY 4.0.

For example:
Lotti Jones, open-weather Public Archive, September 14 2024, Leipzig, Germany. Open-weather CC BY 4.0

Privacy and consent

3.1 Privacy
Unless the Contributor Form is submitted, no data is stored by open-weather. The use of legal names is optional. Pseudonyms or anonymous contributions are welcomed.

The latitudes and longitudes entered into the Contributor Form are truncated to two decimal places so as to protect the precise location of satellite ground stations.

3.2 Consent
Contributions to the Public Archive are made with the understanding that a snapshot of the archive can be downloaded at any given time.

If you download and adapt the material for another purpose, when feasible, we ask that you cross reference with the current online version to see if any permissions, specifically contributor names, have been changed or revoked.

If you are a contributor and you would like to change or revoke your authorship, please contact us.

Storage

4.1 Storage of this Data MoU
This Data MoU is intended as part of the Open-weather Public Archive. It should be stored alongside downloaded copies of the Open-weather Public Archive, whole or partial.

Acknowledgements

5.1 Thank you
We, open-weather, thank the contributors who populated this archive. We also thank our collaborators who built its social and technical infrastructure, especially Rectangle (Lizzie Malcolm and Daniel Powers). The redesigned archive (2024–) was made possible by the U.K. Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and British Academy.

 


Last edited by open-weather on 16 October 2024

Take part

Contribute to the open-weather Public Archive

Submit your satellite recording and field notes to our Public Archive, be part of the open-weather project, and help to build a collective record of the earth and its weather systems during an era of climate crisis.

Use our Resources

To learn more about our politics, explore the ‘Feminist open-weather handbook‘.

To find out more about our planetary “nowcasts”, watch our 30 minute talk for Sonic Acts Biennial.

To engage with our academic research, read ‘Open-weather: speculative feminist propositions for planetary images in an era of climate crisis‘.

Set up your own DIY Satellite Ground Station

Jump to how to build your ground station or deep dive into pedagogical tools in our ‘DIY Satellite Ground Station Workshop Resource‘. The resource is designed so that you can run a DIY Satellite Ground Station workshop and teach others.

Past versions of the ‘DIY satellite ground station workshop resource’ have been translated into French and Polish. If you are interested in a French, Polish or other language version, please email us.

Already familiar with satellite image reception? Read more about signal decoding and how open-weather’s decoder works in ‘Learn how the decoder open-weather APT works

Take part in the Year of Weather

Public launch in autumn 2024.

Sign up to our ‘low frequency’ email list

To receive invitations to participate in collective earth imaging events and occasional updates about open-weather, please email us with the subject: Newsletter. To unsubscribe at any time, email us.

Contact

Email: openweathercommunity@gmail.com

Instagram: @open_weather

Twitter: Not in use