Satellite Image Home Page

The Bureau receives low resolution Meteosat from European Organisation for Exploitation of Satellites (Eumetsat). Also GOES imagery by mutual agreement with the Space Science and Engineering Centre (SSEC) using their propriety software via McIDAS's Abstract Data Distribution Environment (ADDE). This software enables the Bureau to extract only that part of the GOES imagery required for analysis and prognosis requirements. The data are received every three hours. They are not archived by the Bureau.
[Cooperative Institute of Meteorological Satellite Studies (CMISS) - University of Wisconsin, USA | NOAA/NESDIS - Research and Applications] 

Fengyun 2 (FY-2)

China launced its latest geostationary meteorological satellite, Feng Yun-2B (FY-2B), on 25 June 2000 via a Long March-3 vehicle from the Xichang Launching Centre, Sichuan Province, China. The satellite is located above the equator at 36,000 km altitude at longitude 105 degrees East and will undergo in-orbit testing for six months before becoming operational. The satellite provides hourly full-disk images of the Earth in visible and infrared wavelengths. The first successful test images received by the Bureau of Meteorology were obtained at 0132 UTC on 19 July 2000.

The Bureau is therefore receiving intermittent test data from the China Meteorological Administration's FY-2B. Effort will be made to develop a full end-to-end processing system and to incorporate the data into the McIDAS system (Man-computer Interactive Data Access System, a suite of software tools for processing, analysis and display of meteorological and related data). Navigation and calibration issues are being addressed and once finalised, the data will be fully utilised operationally within the Australian Integrated Forecast System (AIFS) environment and archived as part of Australia's climate record.

[China Meteorological Administration (CMA) | The CMA National Satellite Meteorological Centre (NSMC)| FY-2 Stretched VISSR Data format details]

ERS-1 & ERS-2 

The Bureau receives scatterometer data from ERS-1 and ERS-2 via the GTS network. This data is used to supplement the conventional data with surface wind speeds for input into the global and regional NWP models.

[ ERS Home Page] 
MTSAT

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) is now developing the Multi-functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT-IR), which is planned to be operational in a geostationary orbit at 140 E in 2003. It is the successor to MTSAT which was lost as a result of an unsuccessful launch in November 1999. 

Digital image data for Medium-scale Data Utilization Stations (MDUS) are called High Resolution Image Data (HiRID) and will be disseminated via MTSAT in place of Stretched Visible Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer data (S-VISSR) of GMS-5. MTSAT -IR will be equipped with an infrared sensor of 3.7m band (IR 4) in addition to the infrared sensors (IR 1-3) and visible sensors (VIS) of GMS-5. The observation data with all the sensors is disseminated by HiRID . Data in all infrared channels (IR 1-4) of MTSAT has 1024 (10-bit) quantization levels which is increased from 256 (8-bit) levels of GMS-5. Image-processing programs in the current MDUS need to be modified in order to use these new data. The format of the upper 8-bit data of IR 1-3 and visible (VIS) data of MTSAT-IR are same as S-VISSR data. Therefore image-processing programs in the current MDUS can be used without modifications to obtain HiRID data with the same bit depth as S-VISSR. MTSAT-2 is schedule for launch in 2004/05

[MTSAT Technical Information]
EOS AM and PM

 [ NASA EOS Home page]