MSG monitors a quarter of the Earth and its atmosphere from a fixed position in geostationary orbit at 0º longitude, 35 800 km above the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of equatorial Africa.

The satellites transmit raw data from the SEVIRI and GERB instruments to the Eumetsat control and processing centre in Darmstadt, Germany, via its primary ground control station in Usingen. GERB data are forwarded to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, UK, for processing.

Eumetsat, with support from other satellite applications facilities throughout Europe, extracts information from the processed SEVIRI data and turns it into 'products' of particular use to meteorologists and climatologists, such as wind field diagrams, maps of upper tropospheric humidity and analyses of cloud shape and height.