Arctic Weather Satellite’s benefit to forecasts

Launched just seven months ago, ESA’s Arctic Weather Satellite has been proving how the New Space approach can accelerate the development of missions capable of delivering detailed temperature and humidity profiles for short-term weather forecasts. Moreover, the impact of this small prototype satellite goes even further – remarkably, its measuring instrument has been recognised as able to provide data on par with traditional large missions.

The graph illustrates the estimated contribution of various passive microwave instruments to short-range forecast accuracy within the ECMWF system, based on an approximate measure of Forecast Sensitivity of the Observation Impact. It highlights that the Arctic Weather Satellite's impact is comparable to that of instruments on larger platforms.

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