Monitoring the weather and climate from space

Today’s World is being monitored constantly by a global system of weather satellites that can predict our weather days in advance.This is made possible through a partnership between Eurmetsat, the organization that owns and runs Europe’s system of high precision weather watching machines and ESA, who spearhead their development. In order to provide as much accuracy as possible - Europes fleet of satellites observe the Earth 24 hours a day from 2 different orbits. The Geostationary orbit Meteosat sattelites, survey the earth from the same spot above the equator, sending a high resolution image back to earth every 15 minutes and the polar-orbiting Met-op satellites, measure every aspect of the earts surface in detail.over a 24 period. The instruments aboard the third generation of Meteosats, due for launch in 2017, will further add to Europe’s capabilities in the increasingly important area of understanding and predicting the weather and climate of the future.