Satellite Imagery

Satellite images and the data they provide are likely the biggest-single advance in weather forecasting. Let’s take a closer look at weather satellites.

Tim Vasquez

Friday, December 27, 2024 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

This close-up look at the modern GOES satellite shows the key equipment packages that are on board. (NASA/NOAA)

Key Takeaways:

Pilots primarily use geostationary satellites like GOES for continuous, wide-area weather views, while low-earth orbit satellites offer global coverage, including the poles, with specialized sensors.
Visible imagery, available during the day, provides high-resolution, intuitive views crucial for identifying low-level features like fog and stratus, whereas infrared imagery (day and night) relies on thermal emissions and is often enhanced for better cloud identification.
For accurate weather assessment, especially at night, pilots should utilize advanced multispectral products like "Night Microphysics" to detect low clouds and fog, and prioritize high-quality, full-resolution web-based satellite data sources over most mobile apps.

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Sliding into the winter months, VMC gets a little bit more difficult to find. All pilots end up digging into their toolbox of weather resources to avoid the clouds and precipitation. METAR and TAF reports help out a lot, but one of the longtime favorites for this problem is weather satellite data. Of course to make the most out of this tool we need to understand a little more about the satellites we have available and how they collect the data.

How It Works

As you might guess, we can get a weather satellite by simply launching a camera into space. In fact, the very first satellite image of clouds came from a captured V-2 rocket launched in 1946 at White Sands, New Mexico. But designing a useful weather satellite system that can be used as part of a forecast system involves much more than simply launching a camera.