Watching the weather

It is easy to take our daily weather forecasts for granted, but the social and economic benefits of accurate forecasts are huge – and this is largely thanks to satellites. Europe’s fleet of weather watchers include two families, MetOp and Meteosat, which use different orbits to provide complementary information for weather forecasting. These satellites record a range of weather and atmospheric phenomena. Next-generation weather satellites, such as MetOp Second Generation (MetOp-SG) and Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) will significantly improve on current capabilities. The next-generation missions build on the long-standing cooperation between ESA and Eumetsat.