Microsoft’s Planetary Computer

• Microsoft’s Planetary Computer provides climate and other professionals with access to huge amounts of public-domain data.
• The Planetary Computer consists of free visual tools, APIs, and an optional Azure Kubernetes Service–based workbench, which could entail charges.

Microsoft’s Planetary Computer (PC) project provides applications with petabytes of environmental data. Data in the PC’s collection includes satellite imagery from Landsat, GOES, Sentinel, and others, wildlife images, maps of biodiversity, vegetation, fires, and weather, as well as reports and forecasts from governmental agencies, including the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the UK Met Office. The Planetary Computer could be useful for climate scientists tracking climate change, weather forecasters, and data scientists in agriculture, shipping, aviation, and logistics.

The Planetary Computer consists of the following components:

Planetary Computer Explorer (pictured). The Explorer is a free online portal that allows users to explore numerous datasets. Users can select the imagery source (in this case, Landsat satellite imagery), time frame, and color or filter (natural, infrared, moisture index, and others). When the “Explore results” button at lower left is clicked, Explorer generates a complete Python program, including map coordinates, to access the results programmatically using the STAC API (see next paragraph). The PC also supports QGIS, a popular open-source desktop tool.