GeoOptics

GeoOptics is a Pasadena, California-based commercial weather data company founded in 2006 that operates the CICERO (Community Initiative for Continuous Earth Remote Observation) satellite constellation, collecting GNSS radio occultation (GNSS-RO) atmospheric profiles for operational weather forecasting, climate research, and space weather monitoring. GeoOptics was one of the first commercial companies to develop a business model around selling GPS radio occultation data to government meteorological agencies, pioneering the commercial weather data market that NOAA's Commercial Weather Data Pilot program subsequently formalized.

CICERO satellites use multi-frequency GNSS receivers to track signal bending from GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou constellations as they set and rise behind Earth's limb, producing vertical temperature and moisture profiles from approximately 50 km altitude down to within 1 km of the surface. These profiles have 100–200 m vertical resolution in the troposphere — finer than conventional radiosonde balloons — and are globally distributed without geographic gaps, making them particularly valuable over oceans and the Southern Hemisphere where conventional sounding networks are sparse.

GeoOptics secured contracts under NOAA's Commercial Weather Data Pilot (CWDP) program in 2016 — the first cohort of commercial RO data vendors — alongside Spire Global and Stellar (now PlanetIQ). NOAA subsequently evaluated the commercial data's impact on forecast skill and determined it provided measurable positive impact when assimilated into operational models, leading to expanded commercial procurement programs. GeoOptics delivers CICERO data to NOAA's NCEP (National Centers for Environmental Prediction) for assimilation into the Global Forecast System (GFS) and other operational forecast models.

Beyond tropospheric meteorology, CICERO's high-altitude occultations provide ionospheric electron density profiles for space weather research and GPS navigation error correction services. GeoOptics competes primarily with Spire Global — the dominant commercial RO provider by constellation size and occultation count — and PlanetIQ in the commercial GNSS-RO data market.