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Europe's next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Meteorological_missions/meteosat_third_generation/Europe_s_next-generation_weather_satellite_sends_back_first_images
147•saubeidl•2h ago

Comments

aleciffo•1h ago
Does anyone know what are we talking about in practice in terms of weather forecast prediction improvement? Like MAE/RMSE
atoav•1h ago
This is an improvement as it provides better data and has nothing to do with the models that are used in a separate step to forcast anything. But that is said in the article as well, with the satellite being the first hyperspectral view on Europe and North Africa.

I am not sure what to make if your question.

KeplerBoy•58m ago
Ultimately better data will lead to and enable better models and forecasts, but I'm sure it's not super easy to put a number to that.
monkeydust•49m ago
Been pulling in some of the newer data and concepts from open-meteo to my home weather display specifically the ensemble data, helps to provide some level of spread over the forecast, I mean I am not that sure how useful it is but I kinda got used to reading it of the display.

https://openmeteo.substack.com/p/ensemble-weather-forecast-a... https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ecmwf-api https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ensemble-api

hobofan•2m ago
> I am not sure what to make if your question.

They are asking for a quantification of improvement. "better" predictions could range from "only experts notice" to "the daily/7 day weather is now noticeably more accurate for all citizens of Europe".

peyton•1h ago
I was curious but it’s surprisingly hard to find info. These guys [1] are pretty stoked about “nowcasting”—which seems to be on sub-10-minute timescales to issue local severe weather warnings and such. It appears current sounders don’t scan as often.

This project ppt from 2011 [2] references different requirements for different areas/teams and shows the instrument spits out readings at 150 Mbit/s, which seems like a good clip. Overall it sounds like a lot of local knowledge is involved in turning this output into forecasts. Maybe there’s not a precise answer to your question.

Somebody else must know more.

[1]: https://www.eumetsat.int/features/think-global-act-local

[2]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Donny-Aminou/publicatio...

lauri_jo•5m ago
This data is from the third generation of Meteosats, which are the European meteorological satellites. A lot like GOES in the north-America. The main improvement is really significant improvement in resolution. The resolution is, depending on the channel, 9 times better than in the second generation. The main improvement in forecasting comes due to better information in the initial condition of the numerical weather prediction, but it is hard to quantify in advance. I'd be surprised if MAE, over the 15 days the prediction spans, would improve more than 0.1 C, if we talk about the raw prediction. There are plenty of things that this data is used for, but I would say that improved nowcast of cloud coverage, and energy production related parameters are likely to benefit most from the improvement in resolution.
hubraumhugo•1h ago
I recently met a European space startup founder and was surprised to learn how much space innovation is happening in Europe with ESA. Europe wants to become less depended on SpaceX and NASA, and is heavily investing there. More funding + strong aerospace programs at universities like TU Munich has led to companies like ISAR Aerospace (SpaceX competitor), which is great to see.
KellyCriterion•1h ago
There are even Hackathons from ESA:

"Act in Space"

https://actinspace.org/

I worked at one of the hosts of one these events years ago - very intersting people there!

3D30497420•58m ago
Very cool!

Small odd thing, but that's the first tracking warning modal I've seen that says they don't actually use tracking. And I can decline the no tracking? Kinda funny.

saubeidl•1h ago
Europe is behind in launchers, but the stuff they send up is top-notch.

Euclid, the latest ESA telescope is particularly mind-blowing, capturing a third of the visible sky in incredible detail.

Check out this update video, it's insane how they can zoom in on stuff: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXCBFlIpvfQ

TrackerFF•58m ago
I work in the domain, and it is true that many of the startups will almost entirely use free data, like from the sentinel satellites via ESA. It really lowers the barriers to entry, if you have a nice idea.
simgt•56m ago
maiaspace (https://www.maia-space.com/) also intends to compete with SpaceX and is an Ariane spin-off, they're meant to do their first launch this year and start putting satellites in LEO in 27
dagi3d•40m ago
There is also a Spanish company which according to them, they were the first private European company to reach space with their rocket: https://www.pldspace.com/en/
joeig•52m ago
If you are ever in Munich and want to find out more, be sure to visit the ESO Supernova[0].

[0] https://supernova.eso.org/

cyclotron3k•31m ago
Would the data from this satellite be freely available to the public? I couldn't see anything obvious
bitschubser_•8m ago
I guess you will be able to access the data with copernicus (usually thy even provide raw L0 data)
pastage•4m ago
As most EU projects yes. There was test data released last year to get you started.

https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/getting-star...

jcattle•4m ago
Yes, it will be freely available to the public
beklein•2m ago
As far as I can tell, they say: "Mission control and data distribution are managed by EUMETSAT." They have published their own blog post here: https://www.eumetsat.int/features/see-earths-atmosphere-neve...

There they say that: "Observations made by MTG-S1 will feed into data products that support national weather services …". So I guess there will be no simple, publicly available REST API or so... but if anybody finds anything, let us know here :)

eypandabear•5m ago
Also check out the EUMETSAT site if you want more information on how the data is used:

https://www.eumetsat.int/features/see-earths-atmosphere-neve...

Europe's next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Meteorological_missions/meteosat_third_gener...
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