The European Space Agency (ESA) has presented this Monday the first sequence of images from the meteorological satellite’s lightning detector Third generation Meteosat imager (MTG-I1), which can warn of severe storms, helping to improve severe weather forecasts.
Manufactured by the Italian group Leonardo and owned by ESA and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat), it is the first instrument of its kind in Europe capable of detecting a single flash of light, both day and night. The satellite operates in geostationary orbit at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers from Earth.
“Lightning gives a strong indication of where the most extreme weather is occurring. Where the rain is heaviest there is always lightning, so it will help track and predict storms,” Phil Evans, CEO of Eumetsat, told reporters.
He added that “in a world where climate change is aggravating the intensity of climatic phenomena, instruments like this will be increasingly important.”
According to Evans, in the last 40 years these phenomena have caused damage of 500 billion euros in Europe and the death of up to 250 thousand people.
The coordinator of the Leonardo project, Guia Pastorini, explained that the so-called “ray hunter” has four cameras capable of taking a thousand images per second, which will cover Europe, Africa, the Middle East and part of South America.
Some of the image sequences obtained during one minute were presented this Monday, showing the first results of MTG-I1.
The images showed active storms at different points on Earth, allowing us to see, for example, how in southwestern Europe, especially in Mediterranean Spain, more lightning occurs as the heat increases during the day.
“They show the instrument’s ability to effectively and accurately detect lightning activity across the cameras’ entire viewing area, which covers about 84 percent of the Earth’s disk,” said Simonetta Cheli, Director of Observing Programs at ESA Earth.
The images will help meteorologists make more accurate predictions of severe storms, particularly in remote regions and over the ocean, where lightning detection capabilities are currently limited.
Processed directly on board the satellite, the data will be provided to weather services in 30 Eumetsat member states, as well as partners in Africa and other regions of the world “with limited capabilities for terrestrial lightning observations.”
Source: TSF
