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

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Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#81

Post by mulcyber »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #78
cyclotron3k wrote: post #15

Would the data from this satellite be freely available to the public? I couldn't see anything obvious

Unlikely. EU countries are consistently restrictive about access to this kind of data. Even when it is available, it often has odd restrictive licensing. This is an area where the US, with its liberal data access policies, is far ahead of Europe. Something else to keep in mind is that the data products are extremely large. It would be expensive to give the public access. I used to host these types of data sets for EU…

I don't know what you mean.

Data from the Copernicus program has always been fully available, served with a nice web UI, API for both near real time data and archives.

It's the best source of open satellite data by far.

As for the licensing, I never actually looked it up, so maybe you're right.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#82

Post by mturmon »

lauri_jo wrote: post #18
aleciffo wrote: post #2

Does anyone know what are we talking about in practice in terms of weather forecast prediction improvement? Like MAE/RMSE

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…

They also feature that the IR hyperspectral measurement is new -- 1700 channels in IR for a telescope in GEO seems new to me, but I'm not sure what exists now in this space.

They say they hope to retrieve trace gases at that global scale (seemingly with 30 minute cadence), which I think would be new. Also, they seem to say that this spectral resolution would enable them to retrieve temperature and humidity as a function of height -- not just surface temperature and column-integrated water content ("humidity").

Aha, here's a nice link (https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/geo-ir-sounder/) on exactly this question, pointing out the NASA IR sounders that have existed for many years (AIRS). These instruments get vertically-resolved atmospheric information, but they are not at GEO so their coverage is different. This makes them less useful for NWP.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#83

Post by dylan604 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #53
pastage wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! That government agencies data is PD is a nice feature of US law, we should implement that in EU.

Try to ask the NRO for their images and see how you go :)

Intelligence gathering data vs weather data. Yeah, that's the same thing.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#86

Post by jandrewrogers »

Archelaos wrote: post #84
Archelaos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has always been #1 in weather forecast.

[flagged]

As with everywhere else, it is not unusual for people with little knowledge to have strong opinions. Humans doing human things.

Europe having the best weather model is not remotely controversial to anyone familiar with the subject.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#87

Post by KellyCriterion »

3D30497420 wrote: post #10
KellyCriterion wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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.

"Advanced EU-regulatory conform implementation of latest requirements" ;-) ;-)

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#88

Post by Aloisius »

cyclotron3k wrote: post #15

Would the data from this satellite be freely available to the public? I couldn't see anything obvious

Core data is CC-BY-4.0, "recommended" data is licensed with a fee for certain commercial uses.

https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/data-registr...

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#89

Post by jandrewrogers »

mulcyber wrote: post #81
jandrewrogers wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. EU countries are consistently restrictive about access to this kind of data. Even when it is available, it often has odd restrictive licensing. This is an area where the US, with its liberal data access policies, is far ahead of Europe. Something else to keep in mind is that the data products are extremely large. It would be expensive to give the public access. I used to host these types of data sets for EU…

I don't know what you mean. Data from the Copernicus program has always been fully available, served with a nice web UI, API for both near real time data and archives. It's the best source of open satellite data by far. As for the licensing, I never actually looked it up, so maybe you're right.

There are two aspects to this.

The licensing commonly restricts you to small hobbyist use cases. There are typically restrictions on use of data, the amount of data, and retention of data. I've never looked at Copernicus data before but it appears to have the same kinds of restrictions. This is the licensing equivalent of "source available" rather than true "open source". Hopefully they are improving on this front.

While the data may be available in theory, no one ever invests in the data infrastructure that would allow people to access it in practice. They always have a nice website and API but it is like trying to watch Youtube over a dial-up modem. Usable access is reserved for researchers with an approved use case.

The US government does an unusually good job at both of these in my experience. Even when US public data sets that are not readily available online, you have to contact someone, it is usually for good reason. For example, because they are multi-exabyte data sets sitting on tape somewhere that almost no one ever asks for.

Re: Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

#90

Post by sgc »

The most surprising thing on this page for me was:

> The areas of least atmospheric humidity ... a large area of ‘dry’ atmosphere also covers part of the South Atlantic Ocean (centre of image).

This area is not that far south as to basically indicate the antarctic, and it is warm season in the southern hemisphere. I did not even think it would be possible to have a larger area of low humidity over a massive ocean like that.

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