[HN Gopher] Europe's next-generation weather satellite sends bac...
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Europe's next-generation weather satellite sends back first images
Author : saubeidl
Score : 639 points
Date : 2026-01-29 07:07 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esa.int)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esa.int)
| aleciffo wrote:
| Does anyone know what are we talking about in practice in terms
| of weather forecast prediction improvement? Like MAE/RMSE
| atoav wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Ultimately 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 wrote:
| Been 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-a... https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ecmwf-api
| https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/ensemble-api
| hobofan wrote:
| > 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".
| peyton wrote:
| I 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
|
| [2]: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Donny-
| Aminou/publicatio...
| lauri_jo wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| I use windy.com for its 'compare models', the models can
| differ by ~2C sometimes
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| They 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/) 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.
| hubraumhugo wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| There are even Hackathons from ESA:
|
| "Act in Space"
|
| https://actinspace.org/
|
| I worked at one of the hosts of one these events years ago -
| very intersting people there!
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| Very 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 wrote:
| "Advanced EU-regulatory conform implementation of latest
| requirements" ;-) ;-)
| saubeidl wrote:
| Europe 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
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I 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.
| simgt wrote:
| maiaspace (https://www.maia-space.com/) also intends to compete
| with SpaceX and is an Ariane spin-off, they're meant to do
| their first launch this year and start putting satellites in
| LEO in 27
| dagi3d wrote:
| There is also a Spanish company which according to them, they
| were the first private European company to reach space with
| their rocket: https://www.pldspace.com/en/
| panick21_ wrote:
| There were once about 300 small rocket companies. About 250
| of them are dead by by now.
|
| The Europeans were late to the game, and their companies got
| some late investment.
|
| Out of those 300 companies basically 0 of them have actually
| made money with rockets. Companies like RocketLab pivoted to
| in-space stuff and that's where they actually make money.
|
| Pretty much every single small rocket company has lost money
| with small rockets and pivots to larger rockets where there
| is more demand because of constellations. But in Europe, that
| will be near impossible because of the Ariane monopoly.
|
| And closing the case on reuse for small rockets is even more
| difficult.
|
| I really think calling companies that have barley done a
| test-launch 'spacex competitors' is a silly. At best its a
| luxury competitor to SpaceX ride-share launches.
| joeig wrote:
| If you are ever in Munich and want to find out more, be sure to
| visit the ESO Supernova[0].
|
| [0] https://supernova.eso.org/
| jahller wrote:
| definitely worth a visit. loved the exhibition about the
| Atacama desert telescopes. especially great for kids.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| The Trump administration is probably helping quite a bit on two
| fronts here:
|
| - A very strong political will to decouple strategic industries
| from the US
|
| - The US is making it a lot harder to work there. So top talent
| stays in Europe.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| - Top talent doesn't even want to move to the US anymore
| either.
|
| I mean really I'm super progressive and LGBTIQ+ aligned. I'm
| not even flying there for a meeting anymore, sorry. My
| employer is European and I'm part of the inclusion team, they
| are understanding me refusing US travel.
| riffraff wrote:
| there's a pretty great blog following european space news
|
| https://europeanspaceflight.com/
|
| A lot has been happening in recent years with launchers once
| ESA broke the Ariane "chokehold".
| panick21_ wrote:
| Except of course the Ariane chockhold never existed for small
| rockets. Because Vega exists. And for large rockets the
| "chokehold" very much continues to exist and shows absolutely
| zero evidence of going away in the next decade.
|
| So far the support for these small launchers has been mostly
| for new missions and nowhere near in the volume to support
| even two of these small launch companies. Specially if Vega
| also survives as a rocket.
|
| Europe simply does not produce enough launches for these
| companies. And all of them will suffer from very low launch
| rates and non will be able to seriously compete for
| international payloads.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Can you show some actual evidence of that? Because evidence
| actually shows that commercial growth in the US outpaces Europe
| by a gigantic degree. The traditional European companies like
| Airbus has made lots of loses. European companies are not even
| competing in the LEO race to any serious degree.
|
| Their 'compete with SpaceX' Ariane 6 rocket has been an
| unmitigated disaster. And in order to 'compete with SpaceX'
| they are giving billions in subsidies to Amazon instead, I
| guess that is better. And its exactly what they didn't want to
| do when they designed the Ariane 6 program in the first place.
|
| > companies like ISAR Aerospace (SpaceX competitor)
|
| If anything they are a far, far, far inferior competitor of
| RocketLab. SpaceX isn't even in the same universe as ISAR.
|
| The simple fact is, small rocket companies are not viable, and
| pretty much all of them are not profitable and/or go bust.
| RocketLab itself basically never made money from rockets, the
| pivoted mostly to in-space stuff.
|
| Maybe one of the small European rocket companies can survive if
| it gets enough support from ESA, but then moving on to anything
| beyond that is going to be hard.
|
| > NASA, and is heavily investing there
|
| If we look at ESA and EU space budget, we can see that it goes
| up a bit, but nowhere near close to anything in the US.
|
| So yes, there is some energy in the European space sector, but
| its very easy to overestimate, and specially if you look at it
| compared to the US.
| usrusr wrote:
| At this point, calling ISAR a competitor to SpaceX feels a bit
| like calling Pringles a competitor to TSMC, but it's certainly
| good to see some movement happening.
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| For sure, it's booming in the current climate. My biggest bet
| for 2026 is Eutelsat which is the biggest star link competitor.
| cyclotron3k wrote:
| Would the data from this satellite be freely available to the
| public? I couldn't see anything obvious
| bitschubser_ wrote:
| I guess you will be able to access the data with copernicus
| (usually thy even provide raw L0 data)
| cess11 wrote:
| If they'll publish it through Copernicus, it'll probably show
| up here:
|
| https://browser.dataspace.copernicus.eu/
| pastage wrote:
| As most EU projects yes. There was test data released last year
| to get you started.
|
| https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/getting-star...
| SirHumphrey wrote:
| Well, 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 wrote:
| Not sure why you're being down-voted. US weather models are
| free. EU models are not.
| tcumulus wrote:
| Depends 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).
| pastage wrote:
| Yes! That government agencies data is PD is a nice feature
| of US law, we should implement that in EU.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Try to ask the NRO for their images and see how you go :)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Intelligence gathering data vs weather data. Yeah, that's
| the same thing.
| stiray wrote:
| Not Public Domain, TD - Taxpayers Domain. :)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Take a look at https://zenodo.org/communities/eu/
|
| Yes, it's not everything, but it's a start.
| graemep wrote:
| It is not an EU project. It is an ESA and EUMETSAT project.
| Neither is an EU organisation. Both have multiple non-EU
| members, and I do not think all EU countries are members of
| either.
| jcattle wrote:
| Yes, it will be freely available to the public
| beklein wrote:
| As far as I can tell, they say: "Mission control and data
| distribution are managed by EUMETSAT." They have published
| their own blog post here:
| https://www.eumetsat.int/features/see-earths-atmosphere-neve...
|
| There they say that: "Observations made by MTG-S1 will feed
| into data products that support national weather services ...".
| So I guess there will be no simple, publicly available REST API
| or so... but if anybody finds anything, let us know here :)
| jcattle wrote:
| https://user.eumetsat.int/api-definitions/data-store-
| downloa...
| jahller wrote:
| nice find. so you need a client_id to access the API
| jonnybgood wrote:
| Read the data store user guide. You have to register.
| Alexander-Barth wrote:
| For the datasets, I tried to access (like the full disc
| image in visible wavelength, MTG 0 degree), it is
| sufficient to register at eumetsat to get a username and
| password. The eumdac python tool is probably the easiest
| way to access the data:
|
| https://pypi.org/project/eumdac/
|
| (If you do not want to use python, the --debug option is
| quite useful to see exactly the request made. The output
| is either some JSON metadata or a large zip with the
| netcdf data)
| davedx wrote:
| Most weather data isn't generally available by easy to query
| REST API's (at least not at the original sources). One side
| project I had I wanted to use NOMADs data, and it was quite a
| grind downloading and processing the raw datasets into
| something usable at an application level (or viable to expose
| via an API).
| Gigachad wrote:
| That's why you have service/products that have the sole
| purpose of taking all these region specific data sources
| and processing them in to a generic json api.
|
| The government orgs probably do it intentionally so they
| don't have ten million devices pinging their servers to
| update weather widgets.
| plantain wrote:
| Definitely not in anything like realtime, maybe an archive.
| There's a licence fee of 8000EUR/yr to access real-time
| EUMETSAT data. Welcome to Europe, where you pay for everything
| twice.
| anfogoat wrote:
| Hah! I don't believe this for a second. No, you need the 8k,
| a business entity (at the very least), five different
| licenses of some sort, and then some form of accreditation.
| vidarh wrote:
| There's an 8k license for "recommended" (not "core", which is
| free under CC-BY-4.0 for all purposes) data if you are a
| _service provider or broadcaster_ :
|
| https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/data-
| registr...
|
| There are also fees in some other circumstances, but not for
| "personal, educational, research" use.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| lame, with GOES-18 you can just download the latest full disk
| image in real time. Makes for a nifty desktop background when
| combined with a systemd user timer that fetches the current
| picture of the earth every 15 minutes.
|
| https://www.goes-r.gov/multimedia/dataAndImageryImagesGoes-1.
| ..
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| There was a good CCC talk on pulling images from weather sats
| (and data from other satellites) -
| https://youtu.be/fM5w7bFNvWI?si=Dq6S6nYOE_frAd7b
|
| It's been done before, but this was a great talk imo.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Unlikely. EU countries are consistently restrictive about
| access to this kind of data. Even when it is available, it
| often has odd restrictive licensing. This is an area where the
| US, with its liberal data access policies, is far ahead of
| Europe.
|
| Something else to keep in mind is that the data products are
| extremely large. It would be expensive to give the public
| access. I used to host these types of data sets for EU
| countries. The workload just from authorized users is resource
| intensive, it doesn't scale cheaply. (I once woke up to find a
| metaphorical smoking crater where my server racks were because
| an authorized user shared his credentials with a few friends
| overnight.)
| Propelloni wrote:
| Isn't EUMETSAT data usually under CC-by-SA 3.0? So all you
| have to do is to register with them and get your client ID
| for API access, or are there more hoops to jump through?
| mulcyber wrote:
| I don't know what you mean.
|
| Data from the Copernicus program has always been fully
| available, served with a nice web UI, API for both near real
| time data and archives.
|
| It's the best source of open satellite data by far.
|
| As for the licensing, I never actually looked it up, so maybe
| you're right.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| There are two aspects to this.
|
| The licensing commonly restricts you to small hobbyist use
| cases. There are typically restrictions on use of data, the
| amount of data, and retention of data. I've never looked at
| Copernicus data before but it appears to have the same
| kinds of restrictions. This is the licensing equivalent of
| "source available" rather than true "open source".
| Hopefully they are improving on this front.
|
| While the data may be available in theory, no one ever
| invests in the data infrastructure that would allow people
| to access it in practice. They always have a nice website
| and API but it is like trying to watch Youtube over a dial-
| up modem. Usable access is reserved for researchers with an
| approved use case.
|
| The US government does an unusually good job at both of
| these in my experience. Even when US public data sets that
| are not readily available online, you have to contact
| someone, it is usually for good reason. For example,
| because they are multi-exabyte data sets sitting on tape
| somewhere that almost no one ever asks for.
| ChromaticPanic wrote:
| Well it makes sense the public API has restrictions. They
| probably have separate enterprise licensing.
| davidw wrote:
| > restrictive about access to this kind of data
|
| After all, we don't know if the weather consented to having
| its data displayed, or if it even allowed cookies.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Core data is CC-BY-4.0, "recommended" data is licensed with a
| fee for certain commercial uses.
|
| https://user.eumetsat.int/resources/user-guides/data-registr...
| complex_pi wrote:
| EUMETSAT publishes data as CC-BY 4.0 past a timeliness of 1
| hour https://www.eumetsat.int/data-policy/eumetsat-data-
| policy.pd...
|
| Look for your dataset here https://data.eumetsat.int/ (Note:
| you need registration but it is free).
| eypandabear wrote:
| Also check out the EUMETSAT site if you want more information on
| how the data is used:
|
| https://www.eumetsat.int/features/see-earths-atmosphere-neve...
| haritha-j wrote:
| I 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)
| riffraff wrote:
| I see this comment being downvoted, but it made me giggle,
| thanks :)
| Y-bar wrote:
| Don't worry, it's just a few shadows of the Vogon Construction
| fleet: https://scifi.fandom.com/wiki/Vogon_Constructor_Fleet
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I wonder if hobbyists would be able to pick up this data using
| some sort of RF capture device.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| See my comment above re a CCC.de video from 38C3.
| NoiseBert69 wrote:
| Picking 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 wrote:
| >"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 wrote:
| (Wrong thread; think you meant to post this on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46809069.)
| trilogic wrote:
| Europe Is back on the map. It's going slow but steady. Hope they
| involve community in their tech projects.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Europe has always been #1 in weather forecast.
| nszceta wrote:
| Google 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...
| scottyah wrote:
| Probably because that was Deepmind, which has been located
| in Europe since before and after the google acquisition.
| scottyah wrote:
| I 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
| NoiseBert69 wrote:
| Europe was always great in weather/earth observation from
| space.
|
| Their stuff basically works 24/7/365 without causing much
| noise. With fully automated data intake processes.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Europe is widely acknowledged as having arguably the best
| global weather systems. This isn't new. There are only a
| handful of organizations world-wide maintaining global weather
| models.
|
| The US government, uniquely, maintains _two_ independent global
| weather models. Neither is as good as the European model.
| Arguments have been made for combining the US budgets to
| produce a best-in-class weather model but politics makes that
| unlikely to happen.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> Europe is widely acknowledged as having arguably the best
| global weather systems. The US government, uniquely,
| maintains two independent global weather models. Neither is
| as good as the European model._
|
| Which EU weather forecast provider is best and most accurate?
| I want to move away from just googling the weather or the
| weather app on my phone.
| mediaglitch1 wrote:
| my weather app is still gonna tell me its raining while its not
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Probably, 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 wrote:
| ESA 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 wrote:
| ADM-Aeolus was a stellar project too.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Don'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
| dylan604 wrote:
| Don'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.
| goldenarm wrote:
| With the massive budget cuts of the NOAA and DMSP, I am glad
| someone else can fill that gap.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Those are proposed cuts and it is certainly possible Congress
| pushes back on most of those, as they did with NASA.
| accrual wrote:
| Congrats 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 wrote:
| Is 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.
| sgc wrote:
| The 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.
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(page generated 2026-01-29 23:00 UTC)