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Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images
- aleciffo 9mo agoDoes anyone know what are we talking about in practice in terms of weather forecast prediction improvement? Like MAE/RMSE
- atoav 9mo agoThis is an improvement as it provides better data and has nothing to do with the models that are used in a separate step to forcast anything. But that is said in the article as well, with the satellite being the first hyperspectral view on Europe and North Africa. I am not sure what to make if your question.
- KeplerBoy 9mo agoUltimately better data will lead to and enable better models and forecasts, but I'm sure it's not super easy to put a number to that.
- monkeydust 9mo agoBeen pulling in some of the newer data and concepts from open-meteo to my home weather display specifically the ensemble data, helps to provide some level of spread over the forecast, I mean I am not that sure how useful it is but I kinda got used to reading it of the display. https://openmeteo.substack.com/p/ensemble-weather-forecast-api https://openmeteo.substack.com/p/ensemble-weather-forecast-a... https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ecmwf-api https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ecmwf-api https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ensemble-api https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ensemble-api
- hobofan 9mo ago> I am not sure what to make if your question. They are asking for a quantification of improvement. "better" predictions could range from "only experts notice" to "the daily/7 day weather is now noticeably more accurate for all citizens of Europe".
- junofan 9mo agoI was curious but it’s surprisingly hard to find info. These guys [1] are pretty stoked about “nowcasting”—which seems to be on sub-10-minute timescales to issue local severe weather warnings and such. It appears current sounders don’t scan as often. This project ppt from 2011 [2] references different requirements for different areas/teams and shows the instrument spits out readings at 150 Mbit/s, which seems like a good clip. Overall it sounds like a lot of local knowledge is involved in turning this output into forecasts. Maybe there’s not a precise answer to your question. Somebody else must know more. [1]: https://www.eumetsat.int/features/think-global-act-local https://www.eumetsat.int/features/think-global-act-local [2]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Donny-Aminou/publication/249326050_Meteosat_Third_Generation_The_Infrared_Sounder_Instrument/links/57c8004208ae28c01d509002/Meteosat-Third-Generation-The-Infrared-Sounder-Instrument https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Donny-Aminou/publicatio...
- lauri_jo 9mo agoThis data is from the third generation of Meteosats, which are the European meteorological satellites. A lot like GOES in the north-America. The main improvement is really significant improvement in resolution. The resolution is, depending on the channel, 9 times better than in the second generation. The main improvement in forecasting comes due to better information in the initial condition of the numerical weather prediction, but it is hard to quantify in advance. I'd be surprised if MAE, over the 15 days the prediction spans, would improve more than 0.1 C, if we talk about the raw prediction. There are plenty of things that this data is used for, but I would say that improved nowcast of cloud coverage, and energy production related parameters are likely to benefit most from the improvement in resolution.
- mjanx123 9mo agoI use windy.com for its 'compare models', the models can differ by ~2C sometimes
- Beretta_Vexee 9mo agoThe difference in wind speeds can be quite significant, which greatly alters some forecasts. The question is often when it will rain, not if it will rain.
- mturmon 9mo agoThey also feature that the IR hyperspectral measurement is new -- 1700 channels in IR for a telescope in GEO seems new to me, but I'm not sure what exists now in this space. They say they hope to retrieve trace gases at that global scale (seemingly with 30 minute cadence), which I think would be new. Also, they seem to say that this spectral resolution would enable them to retrieve temperature and humidity as a function of height -- not just surface temperature and column-integrated water content ("humidity"). Aha, here's a nice link (https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/geo-ir-sounder/ https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/geo-ir-sounder/) on exactly this question, pointing out the NASA IR sounders that have existed for many years (AIRS). These instruments get vertically-resolved atmospheric information, but they are not at GEO so their coverage is different. This makes them less useful for NWP.
- mturmon 9mo agoReplying very late, but with an actual answer. It turns out that yes, better forecasts is a large part of what motivated the launch of this instrument. High-spectral-resolution IR spectra at GEO allow estimation of vertically-resolved temperature and water vapor (over large spatial areas, at high temporal cadence), which are then assimilated. Forecasts and nowcasts thus improve. These "spectra-to-get-temperature-and-water" measurements were pioneered by other instruments in LEO (e.g., NASA's AIRS, https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/overview/ https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/overview/), but LEO does not provide enough coverage to help forecasts. To understand the benefits of GEO IR spectra, we do "OSSE's" (Observing System Simulation Experiments) to quantify how much improvement you get. You take a "Nature Run", make simulated observations (existing and proposed), and see if there is an improvement. (Since the Nature Run, which you made, provided ground truth, you can judge if there really was an improvement.) Thankfully, many people have already done this. See: https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/geo-ir-sounder/osse/ https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/geo-ir-sounder/osse/ In particular, looking at the figure there from Li et al., compare panels: * (d) -- (Nature Run) - (existing data) ("CNTRL") * (e) -- (Nature Run) - (existing data + GEO IR) which both show differences between the Nature Run (NR) and the forecast. The RMSE improvement (on a CONUS storm) is given as RMS of 0.55 (existing) versus 0.43 (with GEO IR), in degrees Kelvin. So that's 0.12 Kelvin or 0.22 Fahrenheit. Also, and probably more interestingly, the spatial pattern changes. There are a lot of OSSE's reported on that page for these sounders. NASA is also conducting OSSE studies for a more ambitious multi-spacecraft observing system (https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/decadal-pbl/ https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/decadal-surveys/decad...). Studies like this (i.e., OSSEs like the ones above) are one of the main ways we decide how to build the next instruments -- what provides the most benefits vs. cost, which system parameters to push to improve and which are good enough.
- hubraumhugo 9mo agoI recently met a European space startup founder and was surprised to learn how much space innovation is happening in Europe with ESA. Europe wants to become less depended on SpaceX and NASA, and is heavily investing there. More funding + strong aerospace programs at universities like TU Munich has led to companies like ISAR Aerospace (SpaceX competitor), which is great to see.
- KellyCriterion 9mo agoThere are even Hackathons from ESA: "Act in Space" https://actinspace.org/ https://actinspace.org/ I worked at one of the hosts of one these events years ago - very intersting people there!
- 3D30497420 9mo agoVery cool! Small odd thing, but that's the first tracking warning modal I've seen that says they don't actually use tracking. And I can decline the no tracking? Kinda funny.
- KellyCriterion 9mo ago"Advanced EU-regulatory conform implementation of latest requirements" ;-) ;-)
- saubeidl 9mo agoEurope is behind in launchers, but the stuff they send up is top-notch. Euclid, the latest ESA telescope is particularly mind-blowing, capturing a third of the visible sky in incredible detail. Check out this update video, it's insane how they can zoom in on stuff: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXCBFlIpvfQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXCBFlIpvfQ
- TrackerFF 9mo agoI work in the domain, and it is true that many of the startups will almost entirely use free data, like from the sentinel satellites via ESA. It really lowers the barriers to entry, if you have a nice idea. EDIT: We actually work close with one startup that sprung out from academia. The founders wrote their masters thesis on object detection and pattern recognition using sentinel imaging. They had basically one product: to detect certain objects. After a couple of years they had gotten a handful of customers (basically they'd receive coordinates to some are of interest, and then tasked with trying to detect something), which afforded them to purchase commercial data (from other types of sensors) for building more robust systems. This in turn grew their customer bas, and they started adding products. Then they were acquired by one of the largest private space companies. But, in any case, it all started with access to free data. Would they have started a company like this, if they hadn't had access to the data from ESA? Who knows, but it made it all much easier. And they were able to completely bootstrap the company.
- cyclotron3k 9mo agoWould the data from this satellite be freely available to the public? I couldn't see anything obvious
- bitschubser_ 9mo agoI guess you will be able to access the data with copernicus (usually thy even provide raw L0 data)
- cess11 9mo agoIf they'll publish it through Copernicus, it'll probably show up here: https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/ https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/
- pastage 9mo agoAs most EU projects yes. There was test data released last year to get you started. https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/getting-started-using-data https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/getting-star...
- SirHumphrey 9mo agoWell, at least in my experience with EU projects, they tend to be much more restrictive with data sharing than equivalent US institutions: e.g. a lot of paid EUMET data has publicly available NOAA equivalents - though usually of worse quality.
- IshKebab 9mo agoNot sure why you're being down-voted. US weather models are free. EU models are not.
- tcumulus 9mo agoDepends on which model. Only really the ECMWF weather model is not fully free. The German, French, Dutch, ... models are all free (regional and global models). Of course, these global models are generally less accurate than ECMWF, still ECMWF has a lot of free data available too. US models are also freely available, and quite easy to work with (as opposed to some European ones).
- eypandabear 9mo agoAlso check out the EUMETSAT site if you want more information on how the data is used: https://www.eumetsat.int/features/see-earths-atmosphere-never https://www.eumetsat.int/features/see-earths-atmosphere-neve...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- haritha-j 9mo agoI hate to worry everyone, but I think there might be some triangular chunks missing off the corners of our planet, someone should probably look into this. (Specifically around 2, 5, and 10 o clock on the orientation of the images provided)
- ibad66777 9mo ago[flagged]
- ibad66777 9mo ago[flagged]
- andrewstuart 9mo agoI wonder if hobbyists would be able to pick up this data using some sort of RF capture device.
- pbhjpbhj 9mo agoSee my comment above re a CCC.de video from 38C3.
- NoiseBert69 9mo agoPicking it up is no problem for some specialists in the (ham) radio scene. They are mastering X- and S-band stuff so good that even the NASA asked them to join in some observations in the past. But: Meteosat is very famous for encrypting their stuff.
- FpUser 9mo ago>"Most engineers (including me) spent months grinding LeetCode ..." I have not done it once (work in programming for 40+ years) as independent. Few times potential clients tried to play this game but I just simple refuse. On was surprised and asked why? My answer was - I have a track record of successful deliveries, here is big list of projects, emails and phone numbers to confirm. If you are going instead to rely on some tests to prove my abilities I have better things to do then be a schoolboy on exams.
- sophiebits 9mo ago(Wrong thread; think you meant to post this on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46809069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46809069.)
- trilogic 9mo agoEurope Is back on the map. It´s going slow but steady. Hope they involve community in their tech projects.
- Archelaos 9mo agoEurope has always been #1 in weather forecast.
- Archelaos 9mo ago[flagged]
- jandrewrogers 9mo agoAs with everywhere else, it is not unusual for people with little knowledge to have strong opinions. Humans doing human things. Europe having the best weather model is not remotely controversial to anyone familiar with the subject.
- nszceta 9mo agoGoogle partnered with European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to build weather models. Which begs the question: why didn't it partner with NOAA on its home turf? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/google-reveals-new-ai-model-that-predicts-weather-better-than-the-best-traditional-forecasts-180985608/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/google-reveals-new...
- scottyah 9mo agoProbably because that was Deepmind, which has been located in Europe since before and after the google acquisition.
- scottyah 9mo agoI find HRRR3 typically predicts better for my use cases, do you have more information on how Europe has always been #1 in weather forecast? I wonder about what the asian people have done too
- mediaglitch1 9mo agomy weather app is still gonna tell me its raining while its not
- celsoazevedo 9mo agoProbably, if your weather app doesn't use a good data source for your area(s). Try a different app. Some let you choose from a list of different weather sources.
- maciejzj 9mo agoESA has done a lot of good for public benefit with the Sentinel-1/2 missions. I happen to work with remote sensing and Sentinel data has been my entry point to the field. I hope that ESA keeps pushing forward even more. I am afraid that although Sentinel missions are great, ESA projects are a bit demo-like and limited in scope. Europe should focus on scaling up and applying the tech, not just proving that ambitious projects are possible for their own sake.
- NoiseBert69 9mo agoADM-Aeolus was a stellar project too.
- saubeidl 9mo agoDon't forget about Euclid, giving us by far the most in-depth view of our universe! Check out their video on what kind of data it unlocks if you have five minutes and want to get your mind blown. https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXCBFlIpvfQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXCBFlIpvfQ
- dylan604 9mo agoDon't forget terrestrial observing from the ESO with ALMA, VLT, and the under construction ELT down in Chile. Edit: If you watch the Euclid link above, please don't make the mistake I did and let the player auto select the crappy 720p50 version. Jump up to the 2160p version. It is more than worth it. But as advertised, if you are not impressed with Euclid's imagery after viewing the video, you must be dead.
- Levitating 9mo ago> ESA projects are a bit demo-like and limited in scope I am kind of confused by that statement, what more would you expect from the Copernicus Programme? Isn't it a technical improvements over NASA's LANDSAT programme?
- maciejzj 9mo agoI don't mean "demo-like" in terms of poor technology. I meant that this technology doesn't yield products or services with global scales to an extent it happens in the US. Google Maps successfully uses both LANDSAT and Sentinel imagery. This is the wider problem of European failure to build companies/systems on top of technology.
- goldenarm 9mo agoWith the massive budget cuts of the NOAA and DMSP, I am glad someone else can fill that gap.
- NetMageSCW 9mo agoThose are proposed cuts and it is certainly possible Congress pushes back on most of those, as they did with NASA.
- griffoa 9mo ago[dead]
- accrual 9mo agoCongrats ESA! Those first images are pretty striking. It's pretty cool to see the contrast between the blue high altitude clouds and the red hot surface, particularly just below the Sahara.
- lormayna 9mo agoIs there any info about the modulation/encoding/frequency? It would be great to have an open source decoder for RTL-SDR like we have for NOAA or METEOR.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- sgc 9mo agoThe most surprising thing on this page for me was: > The areas of least atmospheric humidity ... a large area of ‘dry’ atmosphere also covers part of the South Atlantic Ocean (centre of image). This area is not that far south as to basically indicate the antarctic, and it is warm season in the southern hemisphere. I did not even think it would be possible to have a larger area of low humidity over a massive ocean like that.
- satjohnlon 9mo ago[dead]