Weather Forecasting Satellites – Past, Present, & Future

Climate change has made weather more erratic and unpredictable. As a result, a growing need to develop more reliable short term Weather Prediction Models paved the way for a new era in satellite instrumentation technology, where Radar systems for meteorological applications became critically important. Recent advancements in Remote Sensing technology have come a long way since the early Weather and Climate Monitoring Systems of the 1960s. For instance, the APT TV Camera System, installed aboard the NIMBUS-1 satellite, was one of the pioneering meteorological technologies of its time. The next phase of satellite platforms is to leverage the advantages of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based satellite constellation deployments for near-real time tracking of Atmospheric Hydrometers and Precipitation Profiles through innovative methods. These methods involve combining the collected Data into Big-Data lakes on Internet Cloud Platforms and constructing innovative AI-based Weather Prediction Models specifically tailored to Remote-Sensing. In the coming decade, the significance of recently implemented technology will form the basis for new applications in Aviation, Severe Weather Readiness, Energy, Agriculture, and more.