[?] Subscribe To This Site

An image satellite weather folks check.

More about weather satellites.

To use the pictures from the image satellite weather specialists need to process and customize the information. How do we interpret satellite imagery?

Image satellite weather technology has been around a while. It has become vital to the great advances in weather forecasts that

we have seen over the last 50 years or so.

For example, see a sample satellite image for Calgary, Alberta Canada.

We can derive planet temperatures, humidity pictures, cloud pics and wind data from the satellite depictions. Both for identifying long-term trends and providing the greater precision needed for short-term weather predictions, sometimes called nowcasting.

It has other uses. Satellite pix offer us enhanced perspective for use in air pollution studies for instance.

Large scale image satellite weather photography has become important to pilots flying into areas with a sparse surface weather data. We can extract the information they need from a series of photographs.

Weather satellite history

The first weather satellite: The world saw Tiros-1 (1 tiros) launched in 1960, USA.

Since then we have become used to a

world monitored by five geo-stationary and four polar orbiting satellites.

That was brief.

Are you in the satellite business? Selling satellite receivers and signals? Or do you have anything to do with imagery? If so, sell your stuff online. Can I make it easier? Check this out and find out how I made this busy web site.

Geostationary?

A satellite can be engineered to fly with a perfect combination of acceleration, speed, velocity and height so that its position above a particular spot on the rotating earth never changes. That's what geostationary means.

It has to be over the equator for this to work. And since it is so high, around 22,000 miles or 36,000 km, it can give us a good equator map and cloud pictures over most of the earth, except for the poles. It has to go nearly 7,000 miles or 11,000 km per hour relative to the earth's axis to stay properly positioned.

Portable weather stations, kind of…

We receive a fresh image satellite weather snapshot of varying energy-frequency-wavelength values for a large area of the planet every 15 minutes. These are quite good for animating satellite photos.

Five satellites allow us to see the entire earth between around 60°N and 60°S. They linger above the equator at 75°W, 135°W, 140°E, 70°E and about 0°, the prime meridian.

What's even better, if one of the satellites fails, the others can reposition themselves to compensate for the shortfall until it gets working again.

The vehicles, at nearly half a ton each, rotate rapidly for stability while the cameras are held steady and they get useful solar energy from various sunlight wavelengths. Clever thinking on the part of these engineers.

The satellite instruments provide photos using infrared radiation and visible light, plus a collection of other data sources. A telescope scans the earth to give us illustrations with the required resolution.

Onboard transmitters then send the data to the ground where computers overlay the continent geography maps. The completed image then goes back to the satellite for worldwide distribution to forecast centres, tv stations and whatnot.

Though it's not flawless, the whole system is quite dependable.

Great Forecasts

Know a better place for forecasts? Really cool graphics or super-accurate information?

All weather people like to find new places for unusual data, and here's your chance to help. Feel free to comment; nobody bites around here.

What do we call it?

Give us the story here. [ ? ]

Have a picture for this one? [ ? ]

Add Picture Caption (optional)

Author Information (optional)

To receive credit as the author, enter your information below.

Your Name	(first or full name)
Your Location	(ex. City, State, Country)

Submit Your Contribution

Check box to agree to these submission guidelines.

(You can preview and edit on the next page)

What have the other people said about it?

Scan here to see contributions from other visitors to this page...

I want to see my house to day 5/14/2009
i want to see my house to day on the sattelite how I can get help?

Barry's Response Go to maps.google.com Enter your address and hit "search maps"...

Forecasting the Future Not rated yet
Although weather predictions are not always accurate and despite the fact there are days where we would all like to strangle the weather person that told ...

Actual Forecasts for me is Yahoo Weather Not rated yet
I usually prefer yahoo weather forecasts for up to date accurate information in my area.

Yes satellite is definitely an important tool for modern weather ...

survelliance through satellite Not rated yet
Satellites play an important role in weather forcasting. These satellites collect images and then the metrological people forcast the weather for the coming ...

Eyes in the Sky Not rated yet
Weather satellites are a very important tool in the art and science of weather forcasting. Data gathered from satellite images allows meteorologists to ...

Complete coverage every day! Not rated yet
We've become accustomed to timely and accurate weather forecasting. Developments in the late 20th Century in imaging and control systems enabled the use ...

Local weather Not rated yet
A project at my old elementary school took measurements directly from the roof of the school building and made the information available to the public....

Sweeping the earth below…

We have to make a trade-off here. High-altitude weather satellites can see larger areas, anytime, but with a comparatively low resolution. Polar orbiting satellites, which fly at much lower elevations, can see much closer and clearer, but not very far and so they have to move across the earth to get a broad image satellite weather picture.

Only 500 miles/800 km up or so, thee polar orbiting satellites

race from North Pole to South Pole and back again in less than two hours. All this speed in a vessel weighing about 3/4 of a ton.

This is fast enough so that each satellite's orbit remains fixed relative to the sun and it always makes its northbound journey near noon. As a result each place gets its photo taken at roughly the same time every day. The industry calls this time-coordinated quality sun-synchronous.

Visualize the satellite photos resembling ribbons stretching up and down around the earth. Naturally, there will be increasing overlap closer to the poles. The extra data in these regions are used for making more complete North Pole maps.

This increased temporal resolution, frequency, gives high-latitude meteorologists good North Pole pictures and usable animations. That's very important to these people because of the poorer image satellite weather photo quality from the geo-stationary satellites in these Polar Regions.

This so-called Television Infra-Red Observational Satellite (TIROS) comes complete with cameras and other high-tech image satellite weather devices such as radiometers, sounders, data collection systems and monitors.

Receivers that can "see" the satellite can get data from it and the High Resolution Picture Transmission (HRPT) images can be quite amazing.

Search this site for more information now.

The big picture comparison

These two types of satellites provide us with at variety of angles for interpreting the imagary and making sense of the chaos.

Geostationary - Steady, high frequency image satellite weather pictures and large area photographs. Good for animated satellite displays.

Polar Orbiting - Greater image satellite weather resolution for studying and analyzing photos, but not for animating them. This one's also less costly.