Much more accurate weather forecasts thanks to the new satellite

The satellite will be launched from South America around 9:00 p.m. (Dutch time): from a launch pad in French Guiana, east of Suriname. The satellite will replace another weather satellite that has been in space since 1977. Meteosat-12 will give us a more complete picture of weather conditions in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. According to experts, it is not yet known when this will take place.

The new satellite can send an image of the atmosphere to Earth every ten minutes. That’s five minutes faster than its predecessor.

Better anticipate

In addition, Meteosat-12 has a sharper eye. The satellite can zoom into the sky with much more detail. This will provide a huge amount of weather data.

Thanks to the satellite – which has been in the works since 2006 – more reliable and accurate weather forecasts are possible, says Raymond Sluiter of the Netherlands National Space Agency (officially the Netherlands Space Office), the organization responsible for the policy. national space. “Because we receive more images from space, we can better understand the development of extreme weather events, even on a small geographic scale, such as cities.”

“The autumn wind, for example, is associated with severe thunderstorms that develop locally. With Meteosat-12, we can observe them earlier,” says Sluiter. This makes it easier to anticipate severe storms, such as Storm Eunice, which killed four people in the Netherlands earlier this year.

The satellite is also equipped with a camera capable of detecting lightning. Because lightning is an indicator of strong gusts of wind, precipitation and hail, the satellite will accurately warn of these weather conditions in advance.

Joris Melkert, an aerospace engineering expert at TU Delft, says the new satellite will allow lightning to be observed more clearly: “The new satellite can detect 100% of lightning. Until now, we could only detect lightning that touched the ground here, about 10 percent of the whole thing.”

More satellites

After Meteosat-12, another satellite will be sent into space in 2024. This will measure temperature and humidity in the atmosphere. Another satellite will be launched in 2026. It can take images of Europe every 2.5 minutes. A total of six similar satellites will be launched until 2040.

The launch of Meteosat-12 is tonight to follow live via the ESA website.