Europe's next-generation weather satellite sends back first images

Summary

Applications Europe’s next-generation weather satellite sends back first images 27/01/2026 13972 views 43 likes The first images from the Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder satellite have been shared at the European Space Conference in Brussels, showing how the mission will provide data on temperature and humidity, for more accurate weather forecasting over Europe and northern Africa. The images from Meteosat Third Generation-Sounder (MTG-S) show a full-disc image of Earth as seen from geostationary orbit, about 36 000 km above Earth’s surface. These images were captured on 15 November 2025 by the satellite’s Infrared Sounder instrument.In the ‘temperature’ image (below), the Infrared Sounder used a long-wave infrared channel, which measured Earth’s surface temperature as well as the temperature at the top of clouds. Dark red corresponds to high temperatures, mainly on the warmer land surfaces, while blue corresponds to lower temperatures, typically on the top of clouds.As would be expected, most of the warmest (dark red) areas in this image are on the continents of Africa and South America. In the top-centre of the image, the outline of the coast of western Africa is clearly visible in dark red, with the Cape Verde peninsula, home to Senegal’s capital Dakar, visible as among the warmest areas in this image. In the bottom-right of the image, the western coast of Namibia and South Africa are also visible in red beneath a swirl of cold cloud shown in blue, while the northeast coast of Brazil is visible in dark red on the left of the image. Global surface and cloud-top temperatures by MTG-Sounder The ‘humidity’ image (below) was captured using the Infrared Sounder’s medium-wave infrared channel, which measures humidity in Earth’s atmosphere. Blue colours correspond to regions in the atmosphere with higher humidity, while red colours correspond to lower humidity in the atmosphere.The outlines of landmasses are not visible in this image. The areas of least atmospheric hum...