Satellites to transform global weather forecasting

Global weather forecasting will be transformed this week with the launch of the first of a new generation of weather satellites that seeks to significantly increase the amount of data that is currently available to meteorologists.

The system, called the Meteosat Third Generation, or MTG, will utilize three satellites positioned above the equator over Africa, providing images of Europe taken every two and a half minutes.

The project, which is reported to cost 4.3 billion euros ($4.5 billion) and should be fully operational by 2026, is the result of 12 years of development by the European Space Agency, which has provided one-third of the funding, and Eumetsat, the 30-state European weather and environment satellite agency, which will be responsible for its operation.

Much of the construction was carried out by a joint French-Italian group called Thales Alenia Space, involving 70 subcontractors across Europe.

The launch will take place on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, with the technology having left the south of France for an ocean voyage of almost three weeks at the end of September, and will be livestreamed on the Eumetsat website.

According to the European Space Agency website, the MTG has two cutting-edge tools, a flexible combined imager, which will provide increased capacity and higher definition versions of monitoring technology already in use, and Europe's first lightning imager.

This, the website said, "will continuously monitor more than 80 percent of the Earth disc for lightning discharges, taking place either between clouds or between clouds and the ground".

"The purpose (of MTG) is to provide meteorological services with a vastly increased amount of more precise information, which will help them protect lives, property, and infrastructure," said Eumetsat Director-General Phil Evans.

Paul Blythe, MTG program manager at the ESA, added: "As the storm is developing, we can see it. It (MTG) is picking it up and we can then predict it."

Cristian Bank, development director at Eumetsat, told the Reuters news agency that "the more responsive and more capable these satellites are, the better they can follow extremely dynamic weather events".

When they are operational, the new satellites will fit into a global monitoring system observing the weather from a range of vantage points, operated by countries including China, the United States, and Republic of Korea.

Tony McNally, head of earth system assimilation at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said the new capability would be "critical for many applications, including accurate forecasts of severe weather.

"The MTG satellite could capture the genesis or rapid intensification of a tropical cyclone in the Atlantic — that's literally a life or death situation for the people of the Caribbean," McNally said.