EUMETSAT presented the first images of the Earth, obtained from the METimage instrument, installed on the new Metop Second Generation A1 satellite (Metop-SGA1).
The first picture, covers Europe and North Africa, reflecting complex weather systems, cloud fronts and cloudless landscapes with impressive accuracy. The image shows a cold front over Central Europe, storms over the Adriatic and the Mediterranean Sea, and surface details are also clearly distinguished - from the lakes of Turkey to the contrasts of the deserts and the green of North Africa.
Other pictures, obtained during a global scan, include Hurricane Humberto over the Atlantic, tropical storm Neoguri in the Pacific Ocean and highly detailed images of weather phenomena and terrain - from fog over the US Great Lakes to cloudless panoramas of Asia, where the snow-covered valleys of the Himalayas are clearly visible.
The METimage device rotates in height 830 km and is the newest multispectral radiometer with 20 channels in the visible and infrared bands with resolution 500 meters. It provides almost global daily coverage, twice as clear as the previous AVHRR instrument, which allows for more accurate cloud tracking, aerosols, land and ocean temperature, ice, vegetation and forest fires.
First received data, including high-resolution cloud maps, are already demonstrating the ability of METimage to improve numerical weather forecasts, improve the accuracy of short-term forecasting of storms, accelerate fire detection and refine air quality forecasts.
According to Phil Evans, General Director of EUMETSAT, the appearance of such images is especially important in the conditions of the year, which brought devastating floods, heat and fires in Europe. High granularity of data will help national services to warn about danger faster and more accurately, reducing the risks to people, infrastructure and economy.
European Space Agency (THIS) emphasized, that the Metop-SG mission will be critical for weather forecasting and climate monitoring, and also confirmed the value of cooperation between ESAs, EUMETSAT and industrial partners.
At the German Space Agency (DLR) noted, which, thanks to the high spatial resolution of METimage, will significantly improve the quality of forecasts, and the first results confirm that the device fully met expectations.
Source: https://www.spacedaily.com