Meteosat Second Generation

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The method HelioSat-2 is applied onto the Meteosat images to produce the HelioClim3 database. Therefore, the images and the database have the same spatial resolution and geographical coverage. The images are acquired every 15 minute, and the HelioClim3 database is built using the images from 3:00 UT to 20:45 UT (72 images). The method is launched at 21:00 UT and takes approximately 2:30 to process all the images and update the database.
NB: please note that we will use the name "MSG" as a shortcut to designate the current second satellite of the Meteosat Second Generation satellite (MSG-2.

Click here to visualize the location of the MSG pixels on your region under interest.

Spatial resolution and geographical coverage
Meteosat historic

Spatial resolution and geographical coverage

The spatial resolution is the size of the projection a pixel of a MSG image onto the Earth. It depends on the latitude and longitude of this projection.
If:
r_t is the radius of the earth (≈ 6378 km)
δlat_ij the variation in latitude in radians seen by the MSG pixel ij
δlon_ij idem for the longitude
lat_ij is the latitude in radians of the pixel ij

As δlat_ijδlon_ij<<1, the spatial resolution in the north/south direction (R_ns) and in the west/east (R_we) direction are given by:
R_ns = R_t * δlat
R_we = R_t * δlon * cos(lat_ij)

Consequently, you obtain the area A of a given country is given by:
A = R_ns * R_we
= Σ cos(lat_ij) dlat_ij dlon_ij R_t²

Resolution of MSG. The center is (lat, lon) = (0°,0°), and the resolution is decreasing as we moved away from this point. The resolution ranges from 3 km at Nadir, to more than 12 km on the edges of the planet. Click here to magnify the image. Copyright Mines ParisTech 2009.

Area	number of MSG-2 kilo pixels
Whole image	9000
Europe	354
France	48
Turkey	63
Northern Africa	1010
Arabian peninsula	307
Provence-Alpes-Côtes-d'Azur	5
Corsica	2

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Meteosat historic

These satellites are geostationnary, i.e. they operate in equatorial orbits at an altitude of 35 790 kilometers above the surface of Earth. The size of each image is 3712*3712 pixels For more information on Meteosat satellites, go the corresponding wikipedia page.

	Period	Temporal resolution	Spatial resolution (at Nadir) and number of channels	Comments
MSG-3 (futur)	2017 - ...	10 min	500 m
Meteosat-9 or MSG-2	2006 - ...	15 min	1 km (for HRV) and 3 km (2 VIS, 1NIR, 6 IR and 2 WV)	Current location: 0°. Name of the imager: SEVIRI. View from space:
Meteosat-8 or MSG-1	2004 - ...	15 min	1 km (for HRV) and 3 km (2 VIS, 1NIR, 6 IR and 2 WV)	Current location: 9.5° East. Backup for MSG-2.
Meteosat-7	1997 - 2013	30 min	2.5 km (for the channel VIS/HRV) and 5 km (for the IR and the WV channels)	Current location: 57.5° East. Current operational IODC satellite. View from Space:
Meteosat-6	1993 - 2006			Current location: 67° East. Backup in the Meteosat-7 IODC service.
Meteosat-5	1991 - 2005			Current location: 63° East. This satellite was relocated at this location on July 1st 1998 for the study of the Indian Ocean in the framework of the IODC service (Indian Ocean Data Coverage). Meteosat-7 replaced Meteosat-5 as the operational IODC satellite on Feb 6th 2007. link to the IODC - Eumetsat page.
Meteosat-4	1989 - 1995
Meteosat-3	1988 - 1995
Meteosat-2
Meteosat-1	1977 - 1979

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