We know that with global warming, thunderstorms, storms, torrential rains, will multiply. In this context, these new MTG geostationary satellites that the European Space Agency is about to launch will be of great help.
The first of them, a big machine weighing nearly four tons, should be put into orbit by the end of the year. With this third-generation imager, it’s a bit like going from the cathode-ray television screen to the flat screen. The images sent to Earth will be twice as precise and more frequent, explains Sylvain Le Moal of the Météo France space weather center in Lannion. A scan of the earth will happen every 10 minutes instead of 15 currently.
Another innovation, and this is a first in Europe: this satellite will be equipped with a lightning detector. So far in Europe, the observation of lightning is done from the ground. This is much less accurate because terrestrial systems do not detect lightning at cloud level. However, these can be the harbinger of violent storms.
With this new system, it will be possible to detect from space any flash in the atmosphere, day or night, even if it only lasts six milliseconds (barely the time of a blink of an eye). eye), and even if these flashes remain aloft.
This first satellite will soon be joined by other new generation instruments, one of which will be able to probe the composition of the atmosphere in its height and it will therefore be easier to detect convective phenomena, these movements of the atmosphere which can cause storms. And therefore, in fact, to give the alert more quickly in the event, for example, of violent storms like the one which occurred in Corsica in August.
All of these new generation satellites should be deployed in 2025, for a total budget of more than four billion euros. With this more precise data, coming from space, it will also be necessary to increase the computing power on earth since the volume of data sent by these satellites will be 50 times greater than today.