Better Arctic and global weather forecasts
Accurate weather forecasts are an essential part of everyday life, used from simply deciding what clothes to wear to planning crop harvesting, ship routing and managing renewable energy resources. Today, satellites, both those in geostationary orbit and in polar orbit, provide a wealth of information that meteorologists use routinely to forecast the weather.
However, while Europe’s Meteosat geostationary satellites positioned 36 000 km above the equator return images every 15 minutes, they have no visibility of higher latitudes, closer to the poles, so cannot be used for Arctic weather forecasting. The MetOp satellites do return data over the poles as they a circle Earth pole to pole in a lower orbit, but it can take up to 24 hours to achieve global coverage.
There is an urgent need for more frequent weather data over the Arctic, but also globally, – particularly data on water vapour, which can change rapidly.
By providing global measurements of atmospheric temperature and humidity with frequent revisit times, the polar-orbiting Arctic Weather Satellite mission would complement MetOp and its counterpart US NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System.
The Arctic Weather Satellite mission would supply an almost constant stream of temperature and humidity data from every location on Earth – allowing, for the first time, for very short-range weather forecasting, or ‘nowcasting’, in the Arctic. Meteorologists will also use the mission to improve weather forecasts around the world. This enhanced sounding will capture short fluctuations in humidity that can be used to better infer wind information for tracking storms and extreme weather.
As well as improving nowcasting and numerical weather prediction, the Arctic Weather Satellite mission would also support research into climate change. Climate change is occurring at a higher pace in the Arctic compared to other parts of the world and these rapid changes are affecting the Earth system as a whole.
The Arctic Weather Satellite is conceived as a constellation of small polar-orbiting satellites, each carrying a single instrument: a 19-channel cross-track microwave radiometer. Being much smaller than the polar-orbiting MetOp satellites, which carry a wide range of measuring instruments, the Arctic Weather Satellites would complement the MetOp series as well as the US NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System by providing observations that are more frequent.
Embracing the New Space approach to prove new concepts in a cost-effective and timely manner, ESA is developing a prototype satellite as a first step, the funding for which was received at ESA’s Space19+ Ministerial Council.
Launch of the prototype is envisaged for 2024, with a view to building the constellation shortly afterwards.
For the Arctic Weather Satellite prototype, OHB Sweden leads the industrial consortium, which includes Omnisys Sweden as the prime contractor for the microwave radiometer and Thales Alenia Space France as prime contractor for the ground segment. The industrial team includes 31 companies, including 14 small and medium-sized enterprises from 12 ESA Member States.
Looking forward, ESA would develop the envisaged constellation in cooperation with Eumetsat, along the same agreement that led to the implementation of the generations of Meteosat and MetOp satellites.
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