Introduction
The Bureau collects, uses and archives various data from satellites in the World
Meteorological Organisation's World Weather Watch system. This system of satellites
enables the routine monitoring of day to day weather conditions and longer term climate
change over the entire globe. Over the Australian region, the Bureau obtains realtime
data from the Japanese Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS) series, the United
States, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) series and the China
Meteorological Agency's Fengyun 2 satellite via direct readout into its national ground
station network. Meteosat data and GOES data are received by mutual arrangement
from the Space Science and Engineering Centre (SSEC) in Wisconsin via the Internet
and ERS scatterometer data are received via the Global Telecommunications System
(GTS). The schematic details of the Bureau's reception, processing and archive
system are shown in Figure 1.
The Bureau has just completed the installation of a second Medium scale Data
Utilisation Station (MDUS) at Darwin to complement its MDUS in Melbourne. Two more
stations are planned for Sydney and Perth as part of the Bureau's commitment to regional reception.
The regional reception of GMS satellite data ensures that reliable, full resolution S-VISSR data is available within 5 minutes from the end of the scan rather than waiting for the data to be subsected and disseminated over the Bureau wide area network.
