In the Beginning

YES was founded in the late 1980s by a team of scientists and engineers who combined their experience in theoretical physics,  software, and precision analog electronics to tackle worldwide environmental challenges. In the late 1980s scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration approached the team about developing improved technology for measuring ultraviolet radiation, which is critical to understanding stratospheric ozone depletion.

The result was one of the company's flagship products, the UVB-1 pyranometer, with patented thermal-stabilization technology to ensures a uniform response from instrument-to-instrument. Based on results from an independent National Institute of Standards and Technology evaluation, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) selected the YES UVB-1 as a core instrument in its UV-B monitoring program. The success of this first product, along with the company's reputation for state-of-the-art methods and a commitment to quality, spawned further research and development in the areas of scientific and industrial instrumentation and also led to collaborative projects with government and educational institutions. One such relationship is the ongoing research between engineers at YES and scientists at the Atmospheric Sciences Research group in the Center for Environmental Science and Technology Managementon the campus of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, NY.

In the early 1990s, SUNY and the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratory jointly granted an exclusive license to YES to manufacture and sell the multifilter rotating shadowband (MFR) technology. Since then, YES has expanded this technology into the UV to provide the same high-quality measurements at narrowband wavelengths as offered by the UVB-1 in the broadband. Both the MFR and UVMFR join the UVB-1 as key instruments in the USDA's UV-B monitoring network. The latest development from the SUNY partnership is a line of visible/NIR and UV shadowband spectroradiometers, which use innovative state-of-the-art optical CCD technology, challenging the standards in the field today.

With initial SBIR support from the USDA, in the mid 1990's YES introduced the Total Sky Imager, the world's first low cost commercial digital sky imaging system. The TSI is a fully automatic camera that permits airports and weather stations to fully automate the measurement of present weather sky conditions and cloud fraction, and to some extent visibility and cloud type. 

Today, YES provides a complete line of professional reference-grade optical water vapor instrumentation using the latest digital chilled mirror technologies and thermal stabilization. Most of our water vapor humidity instruments are microprocessor-managed and benefit from adaptive digital control loop technology. Many of our instruments are TCP/IP network-ready, for example, our Rotating Shadowband Spectroradiometers and Total Sky Imager systems are internet-ready, and data can be viewed by anyone with a web browser. 

Our goal is to market technology that reduces both the subjectivity and overall dependence on human labor for routine environmental observations, thereby increasing data quality and lowering the its customers' cost of daily operations. Measurement products cover surface and upper air weather parameters for solar radiation, air temperature, ambient dew point/humidity, barometric pressure, winds and precipitation, and eventually even space weather, covering "mud to sun." YES specialize in creative adaptation of these core sensing technologies to address customer's custom remote observation applications.

Our Philosophy

Since 1989, Yankee engineers have been focused on solving some of the most difficult measuring problems known to man, including global warming, acid rain, and ozone depletion. Our instrumentation products help solve some of your most difficult challenges in temperature and moisture, atmospheric radiation and remote automated weather observation. More recently, Yankee has focused its efforts on operational meteorology and homeland defense, such as tracking winds that might carry a plume from a dirty bomb. Automated Total Sky Imagers and Radiosonde Launchers reduce or eliminate the need for human observers, freeing personnel to work on more value-added tasks. Yankee introduced the world's first no-moving-parts precipitation sensor based on Total Meteorology Station technology. This novel sensor will lead to important improvements in air and road safety in winter conditions.

YES is committed to building a leadership position in the advanced environmental sensing. How has a small company developed so many new innovative products? Over the past decade, YES engineers have teamed with several world class research universities, including:

• Virginia Tech
• The State University of New York at Albany
• The University of Massachusetts at Amherst 

... as well as major national laboratories including: 

• DOE Pacific Northwest National Laboratory 
• Air Force Research Laboratory's Sensors Directorate 
• National Center for Atmospheric Research 
• DOE Savannah River National Laboratory
• Office of Naval Research 

YES has worked with these organizations on both R&D technology development programs and product licensing arrangements. 

Yankee is an engineering and customer-driven organization, and this fact shows in its innovative environmental sensors, known for their high-quality and long term stability. Unique internet-enabled data collection and storage approaches used in the line of Automated Radiosonde Launchers, Rotating Shadowband Spectroradiometers and Total Sky Imagers represents the future of remote weather observation systems. State-of-the-art detectors, electronics, temperature-stabilization, and rugged mechanical packaging helps ensure accurate long term operation. A long term investment in extensive automated calibration laboratories has resulted in a suite of advanced NIST-traceable facilities supporting the characterization of  sensors. 

YES optical humidity and water vapor instruments are used in a wide range of process control and industrial dew point measurement. Our radiometers are used extensively on aerosol and ozone research, as well as air pollution studies. You can view real-time data from our pyranometers and shadowband radiometers in the United States Department of Agriculture's UV-B Monitoring Program, operated by Colorado State University, by browsing http://uvb.nrel.colostate.edu/UVB/ on the web. You may also visit our instruments located at Turners Falls using our YESDAS WebAccess facility.

It's About Technology

All YES products involve state-of-the-art sensing technologies. YES technology forms the core of several important operational and climatological monitoring networks around the world. Through multiple parallel R&D programs, YES is focused on using updated electro-optical techniques to provide commercial instrumentation for both operational meteorology and research. Initially, efforts focused on problems affecting our global population such as acid rain, ozone depletion, air pollution, and global warming. More recently, these research areas have expanded to operational weather forecasting and defense applications such as ground truth of remote sensing platforms. Historically, the company has been a leader in the area of chilled mirror optical dew point hygrometers, as several other legacy humidity measurement companies were started by YES founders in the 1960s and 1970s.

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