5. Weather satellites

Weather satellites are designed to monitor the Earth and so they are fitted with a whole array of specialised sensors, such as Infra-Red, radar and optical sensors.

Weather satellites monitor

  • Cloud cover
  • Storms, Hurricanes and Typhoons
  • Surface temperatures
  • Rainfall
  • Ice and snow cover

They are an essential tool to help warn people of impending storms and weather extremes. They are critical for monitoring and measuring the effects of global warming.

For 'whole world' monitoring a weather satellite is placed in geostationary equatorial orbit. But for close up mapping of the weather, they are placed in polar orbit only a few hundred kilometers up..

Although many weather satellites are owned and operated by national governments, there are also a number of commercial operators who then sell their images to other organisations such as television companies wanting to show weather maps.

Advantages
Disadvantages
Can monitor weather in 'real-time' Satellites are expensive to launch and operate
Can monitor indirect effects such as energy use by measuring the amount of city lights on the night side of the planet Satellites have a limited life span due to their on-board fuel limit.
Can monitor short term events such as a bush fire or volcanic eruption There is a lot of 'space junk' up in orbit which are a serious hazard for further missions. Dead and broken satellites do not help with this problem.

 

challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: weather satellite