- News

The latest spacecraft in Europe's long-running Meteosat series has just gone into orbit on an Ariane rocket.

It is now being manoeuvred into a position some 36,000km above the Earth from where it can keep a constant watch on developing weather systems.

The spacecraft is the 10th Meteosat platform to go into service since 1977.

Its pictures will soon be feeding into the daily forecasts provided to the public by national meteorological agencies right across Europe.

Read more.

Useful teaching resources in the National STEM Centre eLibary:

GRIP Hurricane Observation Satellite Programme
From NASA, this video shows how the GRIP project is using satellite observations from space to track and understand hurricanes on Earth. It helps to illustrate how satellites are used to monitor the Earth's climate.

The Weather Forecast
The Ginn Science information book The Weather Forecast was written for Year One (Primary Two) students aged five to six years and published in 1991. It relates to the content strand ‘Earth and space’ and shows how the television weather forecast represents different types of weather on the map and shows what each type looks like when they happen.

Watching over the Earth
This resource, from ESA, is intended to familiarise students between the ages of 11 and 14 with the subject of satellite imagery. Satellite images are of increasing importance in a great many domains and are dramatically changing the way the world and physical phenomena are perceived. Their use and understanding by students is one of the aims of this project. The topics and examples in this pack were chosen to match the content of school curricula in Europe, especially in geography, life and Earth sciences and physics.

Meteorology – Careers
A Catalyst article about careers in meteorology (weather forecasting) and climate science. The article explains the work of EMARC (Environment Monitoring and Response Centre) and provides some advice on training as a meteorologist.

Image credit: ESA/CNES/ARIANESPACE