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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

#101

Post by mitstake »

davedx wrote: post #35
beklein wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

Most weather data isn't generally available by easy to query REST API's (at least not at the original sources). One side project I had I wanted to use NOMADs data, and it was quite a grind downloading and processing the raw datasets into something usable at an application level (or viable to expose via an API).

Check out open-meteo. They’ve got pretty extensive historical and forecast weather apis in easy to consume formats. https://open-meteo.com/en/features#available_apis

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

#102

Post by skylurk »

joe_mamba wrote: post #94
jandrewrogers wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is widely acknowledged as having arguably the best global weather systems. This isn't new. There are only a handful of organizations world-wide maintaining global weather models. The US government, uniquely, maintains two independent global weather models. Neither is as good as the European model. Arguments have been made for combining the US budgets to produce a best-in-class weather model but politics makes…

>Europe is widely acknowledged as having arguably the best global weather systems. The US government, uniquely, maintains two independent global weather models. Neither is as good as the European model. Which EU weather forecast provider is best and most accurate? I want to move away from just googling the weather or the weather app on my phone.

Try Windy.com, it's got ECMWF data, among others.

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

#103

Post by neop1x »

cyclotron3k wrote: post #15

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

EU citizens can get free access to it via Eumetcast DVB-S service for non-commercial use. A registration, an off-the-shelf DVB-S data receiver, a satellite dish and their decryption USB key is required. FOSS software like Satpy is available for processing those radiometric data. More info: https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/eumet-cast-e...

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

#104

Post by mturmon »

aleciffo wrote: post #2

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

Replying very late, but with an actual answer.

It turns out that yes, better forecasts is a large part of what motivated the launch of this instrument.

High-spectral-resolution IR spectra at GEO allow estimation of vertically-resolved temperature and water vapor (over large spatial areas, at high temporal cadence), which are then assimilated. Forecasts and nowcasts thus improve.

These "spectra-to-get-temperature-and-water" measurements were pioneered by other instruments in LEO (e.g., NASA's AIRS, https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/overview/), but LEO does not provide enough coverage to help forecasts.

To understand the benefits of GEO IR spectra, we do "OSSE's" (Observing System Simulation Experiments) to quantify how much improvement you get. You take a "Nature Run", make simulated observations (existing and proposed), and see if there is an improvement. (Since the Nature Run, which you made, provided ground truth, you can judge if there really was an improvement.)

Thankfully, many people have already done this. See: https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/geo-ir-sounder/osse/

In particular, looking at the figure there from Li et al., compare panels:

* (d) -- (Nature Run) - (existing data) ("CNTRL")

* (e) -- (Nature Run) - (existing data + GEO IR)

which both show differences between the Nature Run (NR) and the forecast.

The RMSE improvement (on a CONUS storm) is given as RMS of 0.55 (existing) versus 0.43 (with GEO IR), in degrees Kelvin. So that's 0.12 Kelvin or 0.22 Fahrenheit. Also, and probably more interestingly, the spatial pattern changes.

There are a lot of OSSE's reported on that page for these sounders. NASA is also conducting OSSE studies for a more ambitious multi-spacecraft observing system (https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/decad...).

Studies like this (i.e., OSSEs like the ones above) are one of the main ways we decide how to build the next instruments -- what provides the most benefits vs. cost, which system parameters to push to improve and which are good enough.

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

#105

Post by Levitating »

maciejzj wrote: post #61

ESA has done a lot of good for public benefit with the Sentinel-1/2 missions. I happen to work with remote sensing and Sentinel data has been my entry point to the field. I hope that ESA keeps pushing forward even more. I am afraid that although Sentinel missions are great, ESA projects are a bit demo-like and limited in scope. Europe should focus on scaling up and applying the tech, not just proving that ambitious p…

> ESA projects are a bit demo-like and limited in scope

I am kind of confused by that statement, what more would you expect from the Copernicus Programme? Isn't it a technical improvements over NASA's LANDSAT programme?

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

#106

Post by NoiseBert69 »

tcumulus wrote: post #42
IshKebab wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being down-voted. US weather models are free. EU models are not.

Depends on which model. Only really the ECMWF weather model is not fully free. The German, French, Dutch, ... models are all free (regional and global models). Of course, these global models are generally less accurate than ECMWF, still ECMWF has a lot of free data available too. US models are also freely available, and quite easy to work with (as opposed to some European ones).

You can see the most important charts from the ECMWF model for free on ecmwf.int. But you will not get the data behind them.

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

#107

Post by NoiseBert69 »

joe_mamba wrote: post #94
jandrewrogers wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is widely acknowledged as having arguably the best global weather systems. This isn't new. There are only a handful of organizations world-wide maintaining global weather models. The US government, uniquely, maintains two independent global weather models. Neither is as good as the European model. Arguments have been made for combining the US budgets to produce a best-in-class weather model but politics makes…

>Europe is widely acknowledged as having arguably the best global weather systems. The US government, uniquely, maintains two independent global weather models. Neither is as good as the European model. Which EU weather forecast provider is best and most accurate? I want to move away from just googling the weather or the weather app on my phone.

ECMWF is the best which is available globally.

But often there are local models with are better for specific regions.

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

#108

Post by maciejzj »

Levitating wrote: post #105
maciejzj wrote: post #61

ESA has done a lot of good for public benefit with the Sentinel-1/2 missions. I happen to work with remote sensing and Sentinel data has been my entry point to the field. I hope that ESA keeps pushing forward even more. I am afraid that although Sentinel missions are great, ESA projects are a bit demo-like and limited in scope. Europe should focus on scaling up and applying the tech, not just proving that ambitious p…

> ESA projects are a bit demo-like and limited in scope I am kind of confused by that statement, what more would you expect from the Copernicus Programme? Isn't it a technical improvements over NASA's LANDSAT programme?

I don't mean "demo-like" in terms of poor technology. I meant that this technology doesn't yield products or services with global scales to an extent it happens in the US. Google Maps successfully uses both LANDSAT and Sentinel imagery. This is the wider problem of European failure to build companies/systems on top of technology.
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