Weather Geeks

Guest: Chris Van Arsdale, Google Climate & Energy Research LeadWildfires aren’t just a summer problem anymore. This past January, California faced an unusual and intense wildfire outbreak, with flames ripping through communities and forcing thousands to evacuate. What if we could catch wildfires in their earliest stages, before they spiral out of control? That’s the goal of Google’s FireSat, a revolutionary satellite system designed to spot fires as small as a campfire and deliver updates every 20 minutes. Today on Weather Geeks, we’re talking to Chris Van Arsdale, a leader behind the FireSat project, about how it all works and how they are using AI to help the firefight before it even startsChapters00:00 Introduction to Wildfire Challenges and Firesat03:10 Chris Van Arsdale's Journey to Google and Climate Research06:09 Understanding the Firesat Satellite System09:01 Operational Use and Future of Firesat11:48 The Role of Google in Wildfire Detection15:06 Machine Learning and Data Challenges in F